3D Vision Blog

It seems that this year, for a third consecutive year the Masters Golf Tournament will be broadcast in 3D, continuing the tradition that this event has started back in 2010, and successfully continued in 2011 as well. This year the event will again be broadcasted in 3D both online and on ESPN 3D (possibly on other 3D channels as well), there is already some information about the schedule of the 3D broadcasts – they will not cover the whole event.

The 3D broadcasts of the Masters 2012 Golf Tournament will begin on April 4th, the third practice day as the first practice day is today, and will continue until the last day of the tournament – April 8th. If you want to be able to watch the 3D coverage online, you will need a 3D capable computer with a 3D monitor and 3D glasses (not limited to specific 3D setups) along with a 3D media player with support for Windows Media Video and Side by Side 3D video format.

The 3D coverage will be available during the following windows:

- Wednesday 4 April 2012: 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
- Thursday 5 April 2012: 4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
- Friday 6 April 2012: 4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
- Saturday 7 April 2012: 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
- Sunday 8 April 2012: 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

The information listed above contains broadcast windows in Eastern Time (ET) in USA, the online 3D coverage may not be available worldwide or in some countries, there is no clear information on that yet, but make sure that you get the right time for your Time Zone. Probably the online stream will be rotating a recording during the rest of the time when there is no real-time online broadcast, but you should not rely on that.

- For more information about the 3D broadcasts of the Masters 2012 Golf Tournament…

Last year’s Masters Golf Tournament has been broadcasted in 3D online and apparently they’ve decided to do it again this year, they’ve already started on 6th this month actually, but you still have the time to catch up until the last broadcast in Sunday. The video stream is in Windows Media format and the 3Dvideo is packed in Over/Under format, so you should be able to play it on a 3D-capable desktop PC or a 3D laptop directly, or even from a normal computer to a 3D HDTV if you have one.

The 3D coverage will be available during the following windows:

Wednesday 6 April 2011: 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Thursday 7 April 2011: 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Friday 8 April 2011: 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Saturday 9 April 2011: 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Sunday 10 April 2011: 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

And although the golf may not be the best sport that everyone likes, at least outside of the US, it is still something that you can check out of sheer curiosity just to see how the 3D works with sports broadcasts. I know I’ll be doing just that as I’m not that big fan of Golf, but I can say that I’ve played some and that I’m not very bad at it actually, so with some more time and training… who knows.

Here is the URL you need to open in the 3D Vision Video Player, the Stereoscopic Player or any other compatible with the MMS streaming protocol player in order to get the streaming 3D video content from the 2011 Masters Golf Tournament:

mms://a1980.l858434369.c8584.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1980/8584/v0001/reflector:34369

And you are of course welcome to share your feedback in the comments below, is it working for you, how well does it work, do you like what you see, what do you think about sports in 3D in general and golf in 3D more specifically and so on…

- For more information on the 3D Online streaming feed of the Masters Golf Tournament…

Neil Schneider from MTBS3D has pointed out something quite interesting, regarding the upcoming Hockey Night in Canada that will be broadcasted in stereo 3D too. Namely the fact that the broadcast will be in Side by Side format, but not all of the 3D HDTVs out there have the option to activate the stereoscopic 3D mode (automatically or manually) if the currently selected video input is not an HDMI one. And as you probably know HDMI output is a more recent addition to the Set-Top-Boxes, so older models will most likely be only equipped with analog Composite or Component video outputs and yo might not be able to activate the 3D mode due to that fact if your TV set only supports 3D over HDMI. You can of course choose to get a replacement unit that has an HDMI output if you have a broadcast that is going to be in 3D and want to be able to watch it, but what will happen if you figure it out at the last moment and you have no time to make things work. Another possible issue can be present even if you have a newer Set-Top-Box that does have HDMI output, but you haven’t been using that as the image quality seems the same even over the Component connection and you don’t have an HDMI cable handy. But you can much easily go out and quickly find an HDMI cable in the nearest electronics shop and thus solve the possible issue you may encounter with this.

So here comes a question and something that I want to ask owners of 3D-capable television sets to try on their devices, so that we can help other users that may be facing the issue described above as well as maybe even help 3D HDTV manufacturers to consider fixing that issue where it is present with a system software update for their products. So do try to activate the 3D mode in Side by Side or Over/Under mode manually when you switch the TV to use input from a connector other than any of the HDMI ports available – try the component, composite, SCART if you have them present and report your findings in the comments below. Please provide the brand and the model of the 3D TV you have and if you could activate manually the 3D mode or not…