3D hack for 2D TV

[ScottSwing]

Are there any hacks that will allow one with a regular television to use shutter glasses?
I was thinking of using an HDMI splitter, connect one end to the TV and the other to an IR dongle sitting atop the television.
Is there hardware readily available for this? Or are there sites that explain exactly what infrared signal is sent to the glasses?

Or maybe I could use it without infrared and just calibrate it once. How bad could it desync?

 

[Ben90]

Unless you have a very special TV, it will not accept an input of over 60hz. The only difference between a normal TV and a special 3D one is every 3D monitor in production accepts a video input of over 100fps.

Since the TV needs to display one frame to each eye it effectively cuts the frame rate in half. I am not sure how well the brain handles 3d simulation at 30fps and its very possible the effect could be lost. Either way, if you plan to game with it, it will be very choppy.

I did a quick Wikipedia search of 3D movie theaters and it seems they just still display a 24hz to each eye, needing only a 48hz capable display. This may prove my upper statement wrong as the effect may still work with such low refresh rates. I didn't really do that much research so its possible they could show the same frame multiple alternating times to each eye at a higher refresh rate. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure thats what happens, but like I said I really didn't do that much research.

 

[ScottSwing]

Unless you have a very special TV, it will not accept an input of over 60hz.

I have a 120Hz TV.

The only difference between a normal TV and a special 3D one is every 3D monitor in production accepts a video input of over 100fps.

And they send an infrared signal to the glasses to sync with the video signal.

Since the TV needs to display one frame to each eye it effectively cuts the frame rate in half. I am not sure how well the brain handles 3d simulation at 30fps and its very possible the effect could be lost. Either way, if you plan to game with it, it will be very choppy.

Most games are at 30Hz, movies are 24Hz. And the effect works even for still images.

 

[EightySix Four]

I've been bothered by this as well. It would be reasonably simple to sync up the timing between the IR repeater and TV as well, much like you have to do with rock band and guitar hero so the timing is right. Plasma's do 600hz and would only have to accept a 48, 60, or 120 hz signal.

Seems like the tv manufacturers are just trying to sell more sets.

 

[Ben90]

I don not wish to imply; but, I highly doubt your television allows for a 120hz input. If it did it, It would have 3D capable labels all over it and this thread wouldn't exist.

Please be aware that your TV is most likely refering to its ability to display 120hz output while only receiving a 60hz max input. Inside your TV very complex algorithms interpolate the signal and smooth out the image over multiple frames. This is different from a true 120hz display which accepts 120hz over either Dual Link DVI or HDMI 1.3+.

There is a huge amount of misunderstanding what display specifications mean as the mentioning of 600hz plasmas concludes. Simple math done by a high school dropout proves this.

Take the first plasma TV I could find online:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16889005133
600hz at 1920x1080! What a beast! Unfortunately the math reveals the marketing tricks:

1920x1080x600x24x5/4bits/s = 37,324,800,000bits/s = ~34.7Gb/s
HDMI v1.3/1.4 have a maximum video bandwidth of 8.16Gb/s making this completely impossible. Welcome to the world of marketing.

 

[ScottSwing]

I don not wish to imply; but, I highly doubt your television allows for a 120hz input. If it did it, It would have 3D capable labels all over it and this thread wouldn't exist.

Please be aware that your TV is most likely refering to its ability to display 120hz output while only receiving a 60hz max input. Inside your TV very complex algorithms interpolate the signal and smooth out the image over multiple frames. This is different from a true 120hz display which accepts 120hz over either Dual Link DVI or HDMI 1.3+.

I don't know. There's a special setting on my PS3 for 24Hz movies. I suppose I could try to encode a 120Hz movie and see what happens.

Either way, 3D at 30Hz is still pretty good for a hack.

There is a huge amount of misunderstanding what display specifications mean as the mentioning of 600hz plasmas concludes. Simple math done by a high school dropout proves this.

Take the first plasma TV I could find online:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16889005133
600hz at 1920x1080! What a beast! Unfortunately the math reveals the marketing tricks:

1920x1080x600x24x5/4bits/s = 37,324,800,000bits/s = ~34.7Gb/s
HDMI v1.3/1.4 have a maximum video bandwidth of 8.16Gb/s making this completely impossible. Welcome to the world of marketing.

Well, that just means you need a quad link HDMI cable. ^_^

 

[ScottSwing]

Okay, I made a test video at 120Hz and one at 75Hz and it does appear that I am lacking 120Hz input, or it may just be a compatibility issue with my PS3.

Is there any hardware difference between HDMI 1.0 and 1.4? What happens when you play a 3D Blu ray on a 2D player?
Can anyone point me to a site where the shutter glasses' infrared signal is explained in detail?

 

[Modelworks]

You can use a CRT monitor for 3d and they can easily do 120Hz and higher.
I have a Sony trinitron that can do 1280x1024 at 120hz, good enough for 720p.

The infared signal syncs with the video so that when the frames for the left eye are displayed the glasses send current to the lcd over the right eye causing it to become opaque. Repeats for each frame alternating between eyes.

Nothing new really. It was available for CRT displays years ago.

 

[ScottSwing]

Well, the idea is that I don't want to purchase a new display. And I think I can do 120Hz at 720p now. And I'd still need to hack the infrared signal.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Unless you have a very special TV, it will not accept an input of over 60hz. The only difference between a normal TV and a special 3D one is every 3D monitor in production accepts a video input of over 100fps.

Since the TV needs to display one frame to each eye it effectively cuts the frame rate in half. I am not sure how well the brain handles 3d simulation at 30fps and its very possible the effect could be lost. Either way, if you plan to game with it, it will be very choppy.

I did a quick Wikipedia search of 3D movie theaters and it seems they just still display a 24hz to each eye, needing only a 48hz capable display. This may prove my upper statement wrong as the effect may still work with such low refresh rates. I didn't really do that much research so its possible they could show the same frame multiple alternating times to each eye at a higher refresh rate. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure thats what happens, but like I said I really didn't do that much research.

With what i remember and memory services me right, is that although the frame rate is 24 Hz, the shutter of the analog projector is going at 2x or 3x of the speed the individual pictures of the film is traveling. Thus 24 x 2 = 48 Hz refresh rate. 24 x 3 = 74Hz refresh rate. If correct, that could explain why nobody has headaches in the cinema.

But for as far as is know, most theaters are switching to digital projectors. Although, i had a conversation with a projector technician once and he mentioned that analog projectors are cheaper in every way when compared to digital projectors at the same quality of resolution and easier to upgrade.

 

[DominionSeraph]

With what i remember and memory services me right, is that although the frame rate is 24 Hz, the shutter of the analog projector is going at 2x or 3x of the speed the individual pictures of the film is traveling. Thus 24 x 2 = 48 Hz refresh rate. 24 x 3 = 74Hz refresh rate.

No, that would be a double exposure.

If correct, that could explain why nobody has headaches in the cinema.

24fps is fine for cinema because the camera captures motion blur. Contrast to say, a first-person-shooter, where 24fps of perfectly rendered scenery is going to look jerky as hell.

 

[ScottSwing]

I remember playing Quake III at 15fps on my PowerPC 603ev overclocked to 250MHz with a Rage 128.

Man, you guys are spoiled.

24fps is fine for cinema because the camera captures motion blur. Contrast to say, a first-person-shooter, where 24fps of perfectly rendered scenery is going to look jerky as hell.

It looks like they do. Much to the world's chagrin.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2082412


I'm mainly wanting to use this for movies and I'm well aware the image quality will suffer. That's why I want the parts to be as close to free as possible.

 

[William Gaatjes]

No, that would be a double exposure.

You are not right. It is called flicker rate.
But i did forgot the polarizing filters. A shutter or 2 seperate shutters would be needed with polarization filters. Would be loss of light but that is not a problem for a stationary device to increase the amount of light to the needed level
.

A commonly-held misconception is that film projection is simply a series of individual frames dragged very quickly past the projector's intense light source; this is not the case. If a roll of film were merely passed between the light source and the lens of the projector, all that would be visible on screen would be a continuous blurred series of images sliding from one edge to the other. It is the shutter that gives the illusion of one full frame being replaced exactly on top of another full frame. A rotating petal or gated cylindrical shutter interrupts the emitted light during the time the film is advanced to the next frame. The viewer does not see the transition, thus tricking the brain into believing a moving image is on screen. Modern shutters are designed with a flicker-rate of two times (48 Hz) or even sometimes three times (72 Hz) the frame rate of the film, so as to reduce the perception of screen flickering. (See Frame rate and Flicker fusion threshold.) Higher rate shutters are less light efficient, requiring more powerful light sources for the same light on screen.

http://www.answers.com/topic/movie-projector-1

 

[Modelworks]

The rates for human vision to process images is about 1/100 seconds maximum or 100hz. That is the highest rate that a human eye is capable of converting light into electrical signal . It also varies with the amplitude of the light, going from light to dark it takes .33 seconds and to process the change from dark to light is around .48 seconds . That is the time it takes for the eye to send usable signals that can differentiate chroma/color . This does not take into account persistence of vision which allows people to see something flashed for 1/200th a second on a screen. In that case the image is held in a sort of buffer made up of the time it takes for the rods and cones to lose the image, which can be as high as .5 seconds. Persistence of vision really complicates determining what an eye needs to view for motion to appear fluid since the eye never sends a 1/100th sample but instead a merged image of the previous, current, and next image. In film the higher shutter rate decreases the time that the black areas between the frames are shown making them less likely to be retained in the eye and added to the frame.

When I do a 3d animation I have to use motion blur because computers generate frames where each frame is an exact period of time that have no data from the previous image. Film does natural motion blur because it works similar to the eye recording a slice of time 1/48th of a second in length. Motion blur tricks the eye by generating the previous, current , and next image data in a frame that the eye would normally see in the world. For 3d what we usually do is create the video as 24 frames then let the computer interpolate another 24 frames based on the originals. The interpolated frames are what an audience would see.

 

[ScottSwing]

I just tried to run the MLB 10 3D demo and got this error:

"FAILED TO DETECT A 3D CAPABLE DISPLAY"
Possible reasons:
*The Connected display is not HDMI 1.4 compliant

So apparently there's some kind of HDMI 1.4 support.

I remember people bashing Sony before the PS3 was released because they wanted to include 120Hz support, but I don't know how far they got with it.

 

[borisvodofsky]

You can use a CRT monitor for 3d and they can easily do 120Hz and higher.
I have a Sony trinitron that can do 1280x1024 at 120hz, good enough for 720p.

The infared signal syncs with the video so that when the frames for the left eye are displayed the glasses send current to the lcd over the right eye causing it to become opaque. Repeats for each frame alternating between eyes.

Nothing new really. It was available for CRT displays years ago.

You lucky FUCK, I only have cheapo 17 n 19 inchers with 640x480 120hz and 800x600 120hz

 

[Modelworks]

You lucky FUCK, I only have cheapo 17 n 19 inchers with 640x480 120hz and 800x600 120hz

You can find plenty of them on places like craigslist and ebay.
Look for sony trinitron monitors. Be warned they are very heavy. Mine weighs about 75lbs.

On ebay they show up as FD trinitrons or 21", or GDM monitors

 

[Ben90]

Yup, I wonder how much of a market there would be for performance CRTs. There are some CRTs able to push 120hz at resolutions under 1600x1200. Some company over in Europe like iliguna or something like that, I know its Il-something

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Yup, I wonder how much of a market there would be for performance CRTs. There are some CRTs able to push 120hz at resolutions under 1600x1200. Some company over in Europe like iliguna or something like that, I know its Il-something

Give me a 26" CRT with a 25" viewable at a good price and I'll put this HP LP2475w out to pasture so fast it will make your head spin.

The only things I don't miss with CRTs is the weight (e.g. making your desk sag, moving the damned thing), and convergence/geometry issues.

 

[iNGEN2]

I don not wish to imply; but, I highly doubt your television allows for a 120hz input. If it did it, It would have 3D capable labels all over it and this thread wouldn't exist.

Right...and that Q6600 won't ever operate stably at 3.0GHz. If it could Intel would have marked " 3GHz! WOW! " all over the box, smashed the competition, and this comment wouldn't exist.

Not being an ass, it's just a more comical way of saying absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Companies fail to market features of their products everyday for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the capabilities of the products themselves.

 

[Ben90]

No, your analogy sucks. A HDTV officially supporting only 60hz input but technically supporting 120hz would be the same as a Q6600 only officially supporting dual channel ram, but technically supporting quad channel.

You can overclock processors and you can overclock monitors, overclocking doesn't magically add hardware though.

Please show me one HDTV not marked, but able to receive an input of 120hz

 

[ModestGamer]

I don not wish to imply; but, I highly doubt your television allows for a 120hz input. If it did it, It would have 3D capable labels all over it and this thread wouldn't exist.

Please be aware that your TV is most likely refering to its ability to display 120hz output while only receiving a 60hz max input. Inside your TV very complex algorithms interpolate the signal and smooth out the image over multiple frames. This is different from a true 120hz display which accepts 120hz over either Dual Link DVI or HDMI 1.3+.

There is a huge amount of misunderstanding what display specifications mean as the mentioning of 600hz plasmas concludes. Simple math done by a high school dropout proves this.

Take the first plasma TV I could find online:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16889005133
600hz at 1920x1080! What a beast! Unfortunately the math reveals the marketing tricks:

1920x1080x600x24x5/4bits/s = 37,324,800,000bits/s = ~34.7Gb/s
HDMI v1.3/1.4 have a maximum video bandwidth of 8.16Gb/s making this completely impossible. Welcome to the world of marketing.

Plasma operate at 600hz. At least the screen does.

 

[ModestGamer]

No, your analogy sucks. A HDTV officially supporting only 60hz input but technically supporting 120hz would be the same as a Q6600 only officially supporting dual channel ram, but technically supporting quad channel.

You can overclock processors and you can overclock monitors, overclocking doesn't magically add hardware though.

Please show me one HDTV not marked, but able to receive an input of 120hz

You could shove it in. But will it care ?

 

[Modelworks]

Right...and that Q6600 won't ever operate stably at 3.0GHz. If it could Intel would have marked " 3GHz! WOW! " all over the box, smashed the competition, and this comment wouldn't exist.

Actually you can run them at 3GHz and higher completely stable. When a cpu is released there is a lot more going on than selling the highest speed possible. A good portion of cpu on the market are never tested for anything higher than the speed they were designed to run. If yields are higher than expected ,as is often the case, then they can run at higher speeds than the original design was based upon.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Actually you can run them at 3GHz and higher completely stable. When a cpu is released there is a lot more going on than selling the highest speed possible. A good portion of cpu on the market are never tested for anything higher than the speed they were designed to run. If yields are higher than expected ,as is often the case, then they can run at higher speeds than the original design was based upon.

I'm not sure where you are getting your information, but that isn't correct. I have tested and binned CPUs at work and I assure you they are released at their maximum stable frequency the vast majority of the time.