3D Vision Blog

The company IOGEAR is not new to 3D-capable products and more importantly to interesting and innovative such ones, you may remember their wireless 3D video streaming product. Now they’ve just announced another interesting device that centers around a 4-port HDMI switcher with some interesting 3D capabilities as extra. The device called 3D Complete+ comes with a built-in 2D to 3D autoconversion functionality, allowing you to convert pretty much any 2D source with HDMI output into stereoscopic 3D, though mind you it is still an automatic conversion, so it will not be as good as good real stereo 3D content being played back on a 3D-capable display. There isn’t a lot of information regarding the 2D to 3D conversion algorithm being used or what results should you expect, this is something that needs testing, but the interesting thing is that the user has control over not only the strength of the simulated 3D effect, but also on the level of depth and pop-out.

Furthermore the IOGEAR 3D Complete+ features some built-in video enhancement functionality intended to improve the quality of the content you are watching using the device, especially when playing back more seriously compressed video from Internet or and SD video that can be upscaled 480i/p to 720p HD and 720p to FULL HD 1080p). Support for de-interlacing, bad light correction and adaptive sharpening as well as de-blocking and noise reduction are among the built-in video enhancement function available with the device and apparently you have the ability to see a split-screen before and after image with and without the image enhancements active (you can disable them of course). But the extra functionality that doesn’t get that much attention in this device is the ability to output 3D content in “Page Flip” or “Frame Sequential” format intended for use with “3D Ready” (3D DLP) projectors connected as output 3D device. The device itself features HDMI 1.4 support for 3D content and you should be able to feed it with HDMI 1.4 frame packaged content from lets say a Blu-ray 3D player and output the 3D in frame sequential or page flipped format on a 3D DLP projector that does not feature HDMI 1.4 support. This extra functionality makes the IOGEAR 3D Complete+ even more attractive solution for people looking for an adapter to allow them to get HDMI 1.4 support on their earlier 3D-capable DLP projectors that don’t have hardware support for it.

The IOGEAR 3D Complete+ has an MSRP of $199.95 USD and should soon be available. The only problem with this device in particular as well as with all other IOGEAR products is that aside from North America they are not that easy to find elsewhere…

If you’ve seen the Clash of the Titans in 3D last year you might’ve left the movie theater very disappointed, both from the movie being nothing special and the fact that the 3D was actually quite bad, so bad in fact that when talking about bad conversion to 3D of a movie most people directly associate it with that particular title. And indeed the conversion from the 2D footage that was originally shot for that movie to 3D wasn’t done good and the fact that the movie was full of special effects did not help much the conversion to 3D. And now it is time for the sequel of the movie called Wrath of the Titans (3D) and yet again it was not shot in 3D, but was instead shot in 2D and them converted to 3D in post, so are you ready for another disappointment? Haven’t seem the movie myself yet, and I’m not really sure that I’d go to see it after the disappointment from the first one and the first reviews about the Wrath of the Titans aren’t doing it any good without even mentioning the 3D of the movie. So would you go and watch it and in 3D or not, knowing that it is converted to 3D and with all the bad reviews from the previous movie?

Roughly 20 years after the original premiere, the classic movie Jurassic Park will be seeing its re-release on the big screen, converted in 3D format. The premiere of the 2D to 3D conversion of the movie has been announced for July 19th, 2013 or a bit more than a year from now. There was already information about the possibility of the conversion to 3D for Jurassic Park circling around for a while now, but now it has been officially confirmed by Universal Pictures as they have apparently convinced the director Steven Spielberg to also take active part in the conversion. This will be the first of Spielberg’s directed movies to get the 2D to 3D treatment following in the footsteps of Lucas’ Star Wars and Cameron’s Titanic 3D conversions. And if you ask yourself if the 3D conversion of Jurassic Park will be any good, hopefully it will be as there is enough time to make it good, but we’ll have to wait and see…