3D Vision Blog

Following up on the story about the Roxio Cineplayer BD With 3D not being available anymore and the fact that there remain only three software Blu-ray 3D-capable players I’ve decided to check the current situation with them as well. I often get questions if somebody would be able to watch 3D movies on his old PC or laptop on a new 3D HDTV, something that seems easy at first, but things may get problematic depending on what is the video card in the system. The problem is that not all software Blu-ray 3D players support every popular 3D output mode and not output modes are available for all output formats.

Below you can find the requirements for playback of 3D videos on HDMI 1.4 3D HDTVs with the different solutions for playing back Blu-ray 3D movies, these are as per the website of the software developers requirements and specifications published on their websites… and they are not that clear.

Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5
- NVIDIA GeForce 200/100 Series (Mobile/Desktop) or newer
- AMD (ATI) HD 5000 series or newer
- Intel G45(?) or newer

Corel WinDVD 11 Pro
- NVIDIA GeForce 500/400/300/200/100/9 series/8 series or newer
- AMD Radeon HD 6000 series or newer
- Intel H5x series or newer

Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 Pro/Ultra
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or newer
- AMD Radeon HD 6800 series or newer
- 2nd generation Intel Core processors with Integrated Graphics

So if you have a system with these specifications as a minimum (the specific GPU depending on the manufacturer), in theory you should not have trouble playing Blu-ray 3D movies on a 3D-capable HDTV using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging. These software solutions of course also support Nvidia 3D Vision, 3D DLP Checkerboard and Row Interleaved (passive 3D), Anaglyph and maybe a few extra ones and with them things are generally easier to setup and they simply work. The real problem is making things work using HDMI 1.4 frame packaging and it might turn to be more problematic, in my experience, to make an integrated Intel GPU work, so as a good advice I’d recommend to download the trial version of the three software Blu-ray 3D players mentioned above and try them all on your PC before deciding which one you should buy. This can save you a lot of trouble in actually making thing work as you want them to and not having to rely only on some requirements listed by the software developer as practice tends to show that these not always turn out to be true or things simply don’t work as you expect them to. Also, another good advice is to always use the latest official video drivers and to have all the updates for the player software as these do help in resolving some issues, although in some rare occasions they also might break compatibility.

Silicon Micro Display is finishing with the initial pre-order promotion for their 1080p 3D-capable Head Mounted Display unit, but you still have some time to catch the last train and pre-order the ST1080 for $699 USD. After the pre-orde promotion ending March 21st, the price will be returned to the normal $799 USD, and SMD is also taking international pre-orders from a limited number of countries worldwide. Have in mind that pre-orders for the ST1080 3D HMD are irrevocable and the payment is being processed at time of pre-order. The estimated delivery for the pre-orders according to Silicon Micro Display is May, so if everything goes well very soon the ST1080 will turn out to be an alternative to Sony’s HMZ-T1 720p 3D Visor that is already available in some countries. And just a reminder, the ST1080 uses HDMI 1.4 frame packaging for stereo 3D content and is thus limited to 1080p 24Hz 3D mode (good for 3D movies) and 720p 60Hz 3D mode (good for gaming).

- For more information about the Silicon Micro Display’s ST1080 3D HMD…

Lately Nvidia has been talking a lot about their new Tegra 3 platform and during MWC 2012 together with their partners they were demonstrating a lot of new products based on it that should soon be coming on the market. Meanwhile the only Tegra 3-based tablet that is already on the market – Asus Transformer Prime is getting a lot of attention, but one of the features of the latest Tegra platform, also supported on the Transformer Prime, is kind of overlooked. While there is still no Tegra-based tablet or smartphone with a built-in stereoscopic 3D display, you are able to actually use these devices with a 3D-capable monitor or a 3D HDTV in 3D mode. The Tegra 3 platform officially supports stereoscopic 3D output over the HDMI 1.4 interface, so if you connect it to an external 3D-capable display you can actually use a device such as the Transformer Prime to play 3D videos, watch 3D photos and of course play games in stereoscopic 3D format…

Actually the most interesting part is that the Tegra 3 uses a very similar technology like 3D Vision on PC to enable the stereoscopic 3D rendering of some games. Thanks to the increased performance of the Tegra 3 you are able to automatically, and in real-time, convert some OpenGL based games and apps into stereo 3D and play them on a big 3D-capable display. And the nice thing is that you also have an easy access to controlling the level of depth on a Tegra 3-based device similar to the way that the depth slider works on the 3D Vision.

Here is what you need to do to activate the 3D mode on a Tegra 3-based device:

- Connect your Tegra 3 mobile device to a 3D-capable monitor to 3D HDTV with HDMI 1.4 support.
- Look for Tegra Zone games that support the “3D Stereoscopic” feature, you can easily spot them on the Tegra Zone app or at Tegra Zone web site, use the “3D Stereoscopic” category filter.
- Start the game, the game will automatically be rendered in stereoscopic 3D mode on the 3D-capable external display as the screen of the Asus Transformer Prime or another new compatible tablet or smartphone based on Tegra 3.
- To adjust the 3D depth in game, pull up the quick settings menu (from the lower right corner of screen) and adjust the 3D depth slider left/right to decrease or increase the level of depth you are getting.

Currently there are 16 game titles optimized for Tegra that are supporting the real-time stereoscopic 3D conversion if you connect your compatible Tegra 3 device to a 3D-capable display and thanks to the ability to also use a console game controller together with your tablet you can get something that is quite close to a 3D-capable console. And thanks to the hardware accelerated video decoding and playback features one Tegra 3-based tablet could easily become a portable stereo 3D video player that would allow you to play 3D HD video clips on your big screen 3D HDTV for example. The last thing would of course need some work to make things work the way you want them to, but since there are still not a lot of options available for portable HD video players supporting stereo 3D video playback it is definitely something to dig a bit into. So maybe I should consider getting a Tegra 3-based Transformer Prime tablet to play a bit with and test and experiment with its 3D-capabilities. If you already own one of these devices and have tried the stereo 3D capabilities together with an external stereo 3D display feel free to share your feedback below…

- For a list of all the Tegra-optimized games that support stereoscopic 3D rendering…