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Author Topic: Quality of 3D on DVD Joshua Waaland Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: Cleveland, Ohio Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-14-2008 10:59 PM                     We picked up a copy of Polar Express yesterday at Toys R Us even though we already had it on dvd because it boasted 3D on the cover in big letters. I was skeptical but decided to get it anyways. It came with those stupid paper red/blue glasses. Well, it didn't work. It only made my right eye more dominant as the darker red shut my left eye off. My wife didn't think it worked either. The note inside said to raise the brightness level on the tv to make it work. I tried it on my 51" HD projection tv and my 27" tube tv in my house. It didn't work on either no matter how I played with the picture. Do these dvd 3D movies work at all or am I doing something wrong? I was wondering if some of those gray lens 3D glasses with a red plastic frame would be better suited for this. Anyone have any ideas?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 12-14-2008 11:09 PM                        The first strike against it is MPEG 2 compression. Both the reds and the blues are absolutely destroyed. DVD is inferior and should be abandoned by everyone. The second strike is very few TVs display red and/or blue the same as other TVs or even properly to begin with, especially in NTSC. The third strike could be the glasses themselves. Believe it or not, they do make a difference.  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 12-14-2008 11:13 PM                     I'd try adjusting the tint on the TV to try to fix the balance between the eyes. Anaglyphic on a whole sucks.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-14-2008 11:22 PM                     Anaglyphic 3D sucks ass, even on Blu-ray Disc. The only way I'm bothering with 3D at all is if I can see it in full color -in IMAX 3D preferably or the digital 3D theatrical variants (Real-D, Dolby 3D). Until full color 3D is feasible for "home theater" I don't think Hollywood should be screwing around with it at all. But I think some new generations of HDTV monitors, Blu-ray players and computer controlled LCD shutter glasses will be in order to make full color 3D work in the home. For one thing, 240Hz refresh rate HDTV monitors will be a must. That very high refresh rate is a common denominator for both 30fps and 24fps material. Double the frame rate to 48Hz and 60Hz and the 240Hz thing still works. Then you need a generation of LCD shutter glasses that runs fast enough to accommodate a 240Hz refresh rate. It's also likely new Blu-ray players and PS3 gaming consoles would be needed to deliver that high speed refresh rate too. Those are the technology goals. It's a pretty simple target to identify. And current technology and cheap compromises isn't going to get the job done. So that is how it is and there is no alternative. Simple as that. DLP and RPTV technology is a dead thing. So no one needs to even raise the polarized glasses angle. If 3D is going to happen in home theater it has to happen in a manner compatible with flat panel LCD or Plasma driven HDTV monitors. If the developers can't make home 3D work with LCD or Plasma then it isn't going to happen at all.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-14-2008 11:33 PM                    Joe hit it right on all 3 strikes. The type of color subsampling (4:2:0) used in the DVD standard prior to the MPEG2 compression in both NTSC or PAL, screws up the edge of the different colors, which mind you, is exactly where the "3D" resides. Then the MPEG2 compression farther garbles this whole thing up. DVD is quite unsuitable for "perfect" anaglyph 3D video by design. Then the colors produced on the TV screens have to match the colors of the filters used in the glasses. And mind you that no 2 TV's in the market put out the same RED and BLUE Then comes the filters on the glasses, which should be made of a density enough to cancel the other image effectively but to allow similar luminance levels to go through, as the brain gets really bothered with images of different intensity on each eye and has a halleluyah time trying to fuse them. Mind you the included glasses seldom have any of this in account and they merely go for the ones that cost 1 cent less than the other cheapest one they could find. And we can add a handful more of strikes if you wish. For once, the anaglyph system (no matter what their proponents say), is never very effective for full color images, although it can work great (with enormous effort and care) for black and white or limited color subjects. So even if it worked perfectly, it still wouldn't quite be all that great and strain-free. But one quick reminder is to test wearing the glasses "the other way around" (i.e. with the blue filter on the other eye). You would be surprised how often I've found DVD's with instructions to place say the red lens over the right eye while the movie was actually encoded the other way So the short answer is yes: most 3D DVD's with red/blue glasses on the market (the majority) are ... how can we put this ... errr ... below what could be considered a high quality presentation (some less conservative would say they suck or they don't work at all). Comparing to this, that's why so many people are so happy when they see a Real/Dolby 3D film And about home 3D systems, I don't know why the fixation on active glasses and refresh rates. Monitors and large TV's using polarized image separation are in the market and are cheap. Read this post for more info: http://www.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000256;p=2#000021 $3500 will buy you a 1920x1080 46" polarized 3D (alternating scan line) Hyundai TV in Japan TODAY. http://item.rakuten.co.jp/getplus/1643383/  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-14-2008 11:46 PM                     quote: Julio Roberto And about home 3D systems, I don't know why the fixation on active glasses and refresh rates. Monitors and large TV's using polarized image separation are in the market and are cheap I'll repeat: DLP driven rear projection screen HDTVs is a DEAD technology. No one wants a 500 pound, huge bulky-assed TV with the depth of a side by side refrigerator gobbling up space in their living room. The vast majority of people are never ever going to spend the huge bucks on a pair of 1080p DLP driven video projectors either. That's why I insist any full color home 3D system absolutely must be able to operate with flat panel HDTV sets. And that means working with plasma and LCD designs that never do work with polarized systems. Active LCD shutter glasses will be a mandatory feature of any full color home 3D system.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-14-2008 11:50 PM                    quote: Bobby Henderson That's why I insist any full color home 3D system absolutely must be able to operate with flat panel HDTV sets. And that means working with plasma and LCD designs that never do work with polarized systems. Active LCD shutter glasses will be a mandatory feature of any full color home 3D system. Errr, not so LCD flat panels capable of displaying 3D pictures visible with simple (not active) polarizing glasses have existed for over 10 years. I can assure you, since I own one. Let me also repeat. I'm not talking about DLP rear projection sets. I'm talking about FLAT LCD MONITORS which show both color images on the screen at the same time but each one of them with a different polarization direction (or circular orentation) which you can watch in 3D with simple (cheap, passive, confortable) polarized glasses. Read the included links and you'll find out how they work. They have existed for a long time (over 15 years when LCD panels were 14" tops and costed >$3000, starting with Vrex's upol technology for flat 3D LCD panels). The simplest system polarizes each line of pixels with a different direction, so you do lose half the vertical resolution, but still a good compromise. Plus both images are exactly on the screen at the same time, so no refresh problem, flicker, temporal disparities or anything like that. Other systems sandwich two panels and no resolution is lost, as one panel acts as a polarization steering for each subpixel. http://www.iz3d.com/t-3dproductex.aspx http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/product_read.asp?idx=219 And those are only the non-professional products in the market TODAY *everywhere* (check your favourite online electronic shop) for under $500. Get your credit card ready, ask for next day delivery, and tomorrow you can be watching a full color flicker-free stereoscopic 3D movie in a high resolution 22" flat monitor in your house with passive glasses (as long as you own some 3D movies in a suitable format and a computer to play them back ... shall you decide to do this, let me recommend the Zalman). The Hyundai 46" full HD 3D TV (not just a monitor, a full flat panel 1920x1080 resolution LCD TV) is only available in Japan right now and at $3500 is not all that cheap. Glasses are regular passive circular polarized ones, although the ones they sell with the TV are rather ugly black plastic ones. All this available commercially TODAY when there is not even an standard for full color HD 3D delivery system in the movie/tv industry. Whenever one is in place, we'll see 50" full color, full HD resolution polarized-3D FLAT PANEL tv's the following week for only a bit more than their 2D counterparts. And non-commercially, every single large manufacturer have shown prototypes of similar (flat, NOT rear projected but true-flat panel) 3D monitors/TV's over the years. Sharp, Sanyo, Toshiba, LG ... they all have them ready for whenever the market requires them (read, whenever a TV/HD 3D standard is agreed upon and sufficient 3D blu-ray movies are offered by hollywood). It all comes down really to Hollywood and TV industry willingness to produce tons of 3D material. The technology to take it to the home and watch it reasonably well and confortable for cheap is already there. I mean, it's already HERE. But if you must insist on flat panels with active glasses, you can ask Sony to mass produce this 240fps FED flat monitor: http://www.sonyinsider.com/2008/11/19/sony-shows-off-gran-turismo-5-at-240fps-on-a-fed-display/ Note that you could also use passive polarizing glasses with such a system by placing a z-screen (like Real 3-D's) on top of it to rotate the polarity 240 times per second. And trust me, you have NOTHING to worry about pricing for a z-screen of just about any size. You can have one manufactured for the price of a McMenu (although not so much above about 120hz, but even then not much more and available all the way to the >1000hz range). Like this, but using a fast LCD or rather a fast FED or SED or OLED flat display instead of a CRT: http://www.vrlogic.com/html/stereographics/monitor_z-screen.html So my guess is that active shutter 3D glasses are NOT the way of the future when simple cheap passive ones would do just fine through no less than 7 different technologies that can be applied to flat panel displays. [ 12-16-2008, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: Julio Roberto ]  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-16-2008 02:13 PM                    Or you can get this other one if you are based in England and are in a hurry : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-060-HY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnauH6JQtY0 Plenty of offers available today to the general public and many more in the back-burner ready to come out when needed for the home market. And at a professional level, I think it was 1986 when I bought the first micro-polarized LCD panel (to be used as a polarized stereoscopic 3D flat monitor or retroproyector). Wow, over 20 years ago. It sold for something like $10.000, IIRC. It coupled perfectly with that domestic Toshiba 3D camcorder of the time  |  IP: Logged Joe Tommassello Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 547 From: Coatesville, PA, USA Registered: Jan 2008 posted 12-16-2008 04:43 PM                  quote: Joe Redifer The third strike could be the glasses themselves. Believe it or not, they do make a difference. Starz On Demand is playing Hannah Montana in 3D (both STD and HD versions). They actually have an instructional video on how to make your own anaglyph glasses with cardboard, plastic wrap and magic markers. I wonder if that works? I believe Bobby has it right. They have to integrate the higher quality TVs properly with the shutter glasses technology. That's seems most likely to yield acceptable results in the foreseeable future.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 12-16-2008 09:50 PM                    Well, if you rather use active glasses for whatever reason (although they will always be more expensive, flicker somewhat and have a temporal disparity compared to passive glasses), then you can get flat panel TV's such as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV1hy7sEGqc There are many flat panels in the market capable of proper 120hz refresh rates, which is ok, but worse than the 144hz of Dolby or Real3D, and a bit far from an almost "perfect" (good enough) theoretical 200hz/240hz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJdIOcYWjoI Only professional (expensive and not too large) flat panels models exist capable of 240fps using exotic techonologies, like FED, SED or OLED. And few are commercially available and only for mucho $$$$$. And if you rather don't use glasses at all, and although this is really not-practical for general purpose home viewing, you could use many many flat panels in the market today or appearing in 2009. A few examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pmO3NySaQw http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/3d-tv-lg-shows-off-at-ces/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2aaK2PIT4g There are many many more. But as I said, those systems are neither practical not recommended for home viewing and targeted to professional applications only (advertising and the like).  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 12-17-2008 08:16 AM                    Don't fall into the trap of tying the standard to the display technology. By saying "the only way it will work is with shutter glasses" you're encouraging the Blu-Ray group to go with a field sequential standard instead of a standard that can output two simultaneous full HD streams. THAT is what is needed. Once that is in place, display manufacturers can figure out how they want to display it. If someone wants to build a single DLP projector with two inputs, two light sources and two polarized lenses on it, they can do that. If someone else wants to build a new fancy schmancy flat panel display that takes the two images uses the Dolby 3D technique they can do that too. If someone else wants to build a shutter glasses solution, that's possible too. Or you could just go with the displays that are already out there as Julio pointed out.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 12-17-2008 12:00 PM                     Whatever technology is used to get the job done right is fine -as long as it can work in a flat panel television. If it can't work in a flat panel TV form factor then the idea will just go nowhere. That's the market reality. If people have to choose between full color 3D or a flat panel TV the vast majority of people will just go with the flat panel TV. They're not going to choose some bulky device or a complicated multi-projector setup just because it can do 3D. The space saving convenience and decorator-friendly nature of flat panel televisions has them here to stay. If anything, new televisions are just going to get bigger and thinner.  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 12-17-2008 03:17 PM                        Oh man Bobby that is just like debt it gets bigger while my wallet gets thinner! I realize that the film companies are totally in to 3d but it isn't that big of deal to me. I don't know what is the glasses over my glasses or what!  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 12-17-2008 03:41 PM                        It's not worth the investment in technology to have 3D in the home. The effect is simply not worth it. It is very gimmicky. Good luck selling it to the public.  |  IP: Logged Joe Tommassello Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 547 From: Coatesville, PA, USA Registered: Jan 2008 posted 12-17-2008 04:06 PM                  I agree with Joe. The only way it will ever catch on with the public is if the TVs can display it in their native state and the cost for a 3D add-on is merely nominal. I don't see a majority spending premium dollars on hardware or software to view 3D content at home. I don't see how they will display two hi-def images on one plasma or lcd screen without it being field sequential. Otherwise wouldn't they have to cut the resolution in half?  |  IP: Logged

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