3D Vision Blog

HP is finally joining in with a 3D LCD monitor, after the company also released a 3D-capable laptop quite a while ago in the Envy product line. What is interesting in this announcement is that the HP 2311gt monitor is a passive 3D solution and not an active 3D one as HP has shown last year with HP 2310g. So it seems that we won’t be seeing a 3D Vision-ready monitor for now from HP and they have apparently abandoned the idea to release the active HP 2310g 3D LCD monitor and have replaced it with the HP 2311gt passive 3D model.

The 23-inch HP 2311gt LED backlit 3D monitor uses Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology, offers native 1920×1080 resolution, comes bundled with 2 pairs of passive 3D glasses, Cyberlink PowerDVD software bundled to offer 2D to 3D video conversion and playback as well as DDD’s TriDef Ignition software for playing games in stereoscopic 3D format. This new 3D monitor from HP is apparently already available in some parts of Europe…

HP 2311gt Monitor Specifications:

Viewable Image Size: 58.42 cm (23.0-inch) diagonal
Display Type: TN LCD active matrix
Response time: 5 ms typical
Pixel Pitch: 0.265 mm
Brightness: 200-250 cd/m² (2D mode); 100 cd/m² (3D mode)
Contrast ratio: 1000:1 static; 3000000:1 dynamic (2D mode)
View angle: 170° horizontal, 160° (2D mode) and 12° (3D mode) vertical
Maximum Graphics Resolution in 2D: 1920×1080 @ 60 Hz
Maximum Graphics Resolution in 3D: 1920×540 @ 60 Hz
3D Glasses: 3D Passive FPR (Film-type Patterned Retarder) Glasses
Video Input Terminals: VGA, DVI, and HDMI
Power Consumption: 45 watts max, 33 watts typical, 0.5 watts sleep
Dimensions (W x D x H): 557.95×159.0×416.48 mm (21.97×6.26×16.40 in)
Maximum Weight: 4.3 kg (9.5 lb)

What is interesting is the fact that HP is giving out all the not so attractive specs that most of other makers of passive 3D monitors tend to “forget” to mention to the customers. I’m talking about things like the reduced brightness in 3D mode, the very small vertical viewing angle in 3D mode, the lower resolution in 3D mode. Most others just save you these important things and focus on the better points in passive versus active 3D solutions, leaving the impression that it is much better and does not have any drawbacks.

DDD has just released an update to their TriDef 3D software after a bit more than 3 months with no updates. The other AMD HD3D partner – iZ3D, should’ve also had a new beta available (“before the end of March”), however there is still nothing new and they haven’t released updates for more than 5 months already, but hopefully they will soon have something new too. Getting back to the new TriDef 3D software version 4.5, it apparently now supports over 460 games (430 DDD game profiles and 30+ user submitted profiles) or about 40 new profiles since the previous version 4.4. Among the new game profiles added are Dragon Age II, Men of War Assault Squad, Bulletstorm, Assasin’s Creed Brotherhood, Lineage 2, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Tron Evolution, and apparently a lot of Chinese and Korean MMO games. There are also several game profile improvements relating to auto-focus, Virtual3D, scan rules, icons, performance and crashes. (for games such as Metro 2033, Starcraft II, Prince of Persia the Forgotten sands, Aion etc…). DDD is promising significantly improved cursor and window handling on some systems and games as well as improved the user friendliness of several error messages. There is also a hot-key added to Toggle Virtual 3D On/Off – Alt+Shift+V. This all goes for the TriDef 3D Ignition and apparently there is nothing new fixed or improved in the TriDef 3D Media Player.

- To download the latest version 4.5 of the DDD TriDef 3D Software…

I haven’t covered new driver updates from DDD and their TriDef 3D Software for a while, but that doesn’t mean the company has stopped working on their software. Just in time for Christmas comes a new update version 4.4 that brings even more improvements and fixes, with it DDD claims to have support for over 420 games – 383 with DDD game profiles and 50+ with user submitted profiles. There is also improved NVIDIA 3D Vision interoperability (for multimedia playback), new game profiles added for FIFA 09, 11, Lost Planet 2, NBA 2K9, Allods Online, The Settlers II – 10th Anniversary, and other games. An interesting update for the TriDef 3D Media Player is the addition of support for .srt and .sub subtitle file formats.

The previous updates were not that significant, but what is noticeable as a trend is that DDD is quite active lately and has been constantly adding a lot of new game profiles with every single update. And that is a good thing, especially since not every user will want to tweak or create his own profile in order to play games in stereo 3D, so this activity is much appreciated. Since version 4.3.1 when the support for AMD HD3D technology on ATI Radeon HD 5000 series and AMD Radeon HD 6000 series cards was added DDD had 329 profiles for games made by them and now they are 383 (over 50 new profiles for two months). On the other hand iZ3D has been quite silent as usual in terms of updates and since the late October official release of their iZ3D Driver version 1.12 they haven’t had any update.

- To download the latest version 4.4 of the DDD TriDef 3D Software…