T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

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PressBot
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T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by PressBot »

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Let's hope this is a sign of things to come!  Gadmei has announced plans for the T863-3D budget tablet featuring 1280X768 resolution glasses-free 3D display.  Running on Android 2.3, the unit includes a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and Mali 400 graphics.  Fellow 3D HDTV owners can rejoice because it features a 3D compliant HDMI output, 8GB of storage, and a microSD card slot.  Specs also feature 802.11b/g/n WiFi, stereo speakers, and a 5,000mAh battery.
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LeeN
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

I ordered one from this site yesterday I have no idea when it ships
http://usb.brando.com/gadmei-t863-3d-ta ... 1d015.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by DigiMagic »

I keep telling myself that I don't really need a tablet, but... this one has everything! I could even do, sort of, 3D presentations at meetings with partners and customers. Hmmm...
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

It's shipped (free shipping), and they say 7 to 20 days for it to arrive, it's coming from over seas.

Things I wish it had:
1) Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich. There is a tablet out there with same Amlogic configuration cpu/gpu that has ICS, so it may be possible to upgrade it later.
2) Bluetooth, for audio, keyboards, mice, and game controllers, although it sounds like USB may work for some of those.
3) GPS

I don't see anything about an SDK, I'm wondering how developers can support it. I wonder if it has a perminant parallax barrier or if it is turned on and off in software.

GADMEI has 3D PMPs as well, they can be seen on the brando website and youtube has a review or two.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by The_Nephilim »

Would like to know if you do in fact recieve this tablet.. I am thinking of getting one for my niece??
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

I recieved it. I actually got it earlier this week but it was registered mail, so I had to be home and sign for it.

The 3d works, although you have to hold it far away, like arm length for me. The 3d seems to work well and when there is ghosting artifacts it has a color shift. The screen quality itself is not as good as other tablets I've used, it reminds me of laptop screens.

It doesnt have android market, which I kind of figured. I'm going to look for away around that. I need to get a better keyboard.

I also saw they had this tablet at CES running with ICS (Android 4), so I'm also going to look for that.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

This is my mini review of the tablet.


Display

Most displays have colorful uneven speckles in them, and usually the quality of the display depends on how small these speckles are, and it also depends on how close your face is to the display. My usual distance to a tablet display is about 14 inches, and at that distance I can see the speckles on this display. The 3D viewing distance though is about 24 inches, and at that distance I can't see the speckles. I've had/used laptops and tablet PCs in the past that have had really bad speckles, I would say this one is not as bad but still not as good as some other android tablets I've used.

The backlight also reminds me of a laptops backlight, where the horizontal (long) directions of the display has more consistent lighting, while the vertical (short) angles have a sharp fall off in one directly while becoming really bright in another. This kind of makes the display lighting uneven when holding it in portrait mode, but works fine in landscape.

The display is also reflective so it is best to watch movies in a dark room.

I also have a 3DS and a LG Optimus 3D, and I have to say all these auto-stereoscopic displays kind of suck. They are not terrible but content makes a huge difference in how much ghosting you see (I haven't had problems with ghosting in shutter glasses for a decade now). The 3DS seems to me to be the best of them, but even it will have a lot of ghosting with high contrast content, plus it is hard to get content on it to compare and it has the smallest screen. The LG Optimus 3D was bad because the idea spots for the left and right eyes had different vertical positions, so you either tilt your head or just try to ignore the ghosting. The Gadmei tablet has color shifting when phasing between left/right images, this actually helps in some ways because your eyes will either ignore the discolored ghosting or it wont bother you as much. But with that said, in some cases I found it difficult to find the sweet spots that had no ghosting, and also it seems that rather than just contrast being the source of ghosting, it seems that now it is more about color contrast (red and blue) that cause ghosting artifacts the most.

I used a (high contrast) Tron Legacy trailer as a test and the Gadmei tablet handled it better then the LG in terms of ghosting. But then I tried several images of screen shots from 3D games and I found a lot of discolored ghosting and high difficulty in finding the least annoying spot to view from.

I also tried several other 3D videos and it seems the Gadmei display for some reason handles 3D in videos very well in comparison to looking at 3D pictures. This could be due to the lack of separation control in their 3D video player, and also because with the pictures I had a lot of separation because of my settings in the games they were taken from. The Optimus 3D display on the other hand needs the separation control more because it is such a small display and movies have very little depth in them and the extra separation probably had made the ghosting look worse on the optimus 3D.

I feel like in the future I would want a passive 3D display (not the red/blue stuff) for a tablet (and other devices). The auto-stereoscopic 3D displays are limited. Although I do think the Gadmei tablet is good enough for watching 3D movies.

You do also kind of have 3 positions that can be used to view 3D movies, although I'm not sure how comfortable it would be for 3 people to sit next to each other that close, 2 people should be able to watch just fine in the off center positions.

If you are someone who wants high quality perfect 3D you will be disappointed by this tablets display, especially if you have ever used a 3DS or Optimus 3D and didn't like those displays.


USB OTG

I tried 5 external USB drives, 3 worked and 2 didn't.
Generic 2GB USB flash stick drive worked (FAT32).
Edge Disk Go, 320GB USB hard drive worked (FAT32).
IO Mega, 512GB USB hard drive worked (FAT32).
WD, 2TB USB hard drive wasn't working (FAT32), but I always have trouble with this drive because FAT32 doesn't really support large hard drives well, and windows 7 is slow with working with the drive.
WD, 2TB USB hard drive wasn't working (NTFS), I didn't really expect it to support NTFS since I don't believe it is an open standard.

I tried 3 keyboards and a mouse.
My mini keyboard didn't work, it could be a power issue since the LEDs on it were flickering a little.
I have an old ergonomic Microsoft Keyboard that worked perfectly.
My other keyboard is a logitech gaming keyboard that also has a USB hub built in, it didn't work but I wouldn't imagine it working.
My logitech MX518 mouse worked (a mouse cursor appears when plugged in).


HDMI

HDMI output works, but it looks like it is running the same resolution as the device itself and is simply scaling it up.

When HDMI is connected a notification appears, and when you tap on it, it brings up a dialog that lets you select output to the tablet or HDMI 720p or 1080p. In HDMI mode the tablet display turns off, a mouse cursor is shown on the TV, and the tablet becomes a touchpad that moves the mouse with double tapping to click things.

I don't have a modern HDTV with HDMI 3D support (I only have an LED DLP 3D HDTV) so I can't say whether that would work or not, but when I use the 3D player in HDMI it shows everything vertically interlaced, instead of side by side. I guess you would need to have a 3D HDTV that lets you manually turn 3D on, and then use the normal video player instead of the 3D one to play side by side content. Another weird thing was that 1080p would look kind of messed up when using the 3D player, while 720p looked correct.


Apps

The 2 main pre-installed apps are a 3D video player and a 3D image viewer, there are a hand full of other apps like a Browser, Camera, Calculator, Clock, Email, FileBrowser, Gallery, Music [player], VideoPlayer, and Wifi Analyzer.

The 3D video player is not bad, it played 3d mp4s, avis, and wmvs but some files didn't play. I have wmvs that didn't work which the resolution for them was 1280x1440 (above/below) so that may be the reason why. The first time you play a new 3D video, you can select left/right or above/below. I didn't see a separation control.

The 3D image viewer was kind of a pain, it seems like it only works with side by side 3D pictures that have squished aspect ratio, so I had to convert some jps files to work with it. It does have a slider so you can adjust the separation of images, you have to tap the left side of the screen to bring that up.

It comes with a number of apps that are not pre-installed. There is an app installer program that will find these apps on the device and let you install them. It has 2 Ninja type games, one of them is 3D (not stereoscopic 3D) and performed decently. There is what looks like an Asian equivalent of the Android Market.

There is no Android Market, and from what I have read on the web to install the Android Market you need root access, which I have not found a way to do yet.

With out market access I searched for open source apps to install and installed these:
http://code.google.com/p/adw-launcher-android/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostcommander/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://code.google.com/p/unflobtactical/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://code.google.com/p/softkeyboard/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Misc Stuff

The camera is a traditional low quality web cam.

For the touch screen I ran TouchTest:
http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/down ... st-1.4.apk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The screen seems sensitive enough and multiple fingers work well, but the calibration seems to be off, by about 2.5 mm. I think also if the CPU is being heavily used the response of the touch screen goes down, because I've had it not respond to presses when browsing the web.

The speakers were good, they are actually better than some other tablets I have used. I tried 2 different in-ear head phones and while one of them worked perfectly and sounded good, the other one for some reason the voices of people talking sounded muffled.

The tablet crashed on me once, it turned off by itself for some reason (battery was fine), but of the other android devices I have used, it's not uncommon.

Overall it doesn't seem like a bad deal for $199 tablet.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by cybereality »

Thanks for the review. But its strange that you say that the auto-stereo screens you've seen "suck". All the ones I've used have been very good, including the 3DS Fujifilm W3 and HTC Evo 3D. I have noticed very little ghosting, less than with active shutter glasses (Nvidia) or passive (FPR). Sure, there is still ghosting, but it is low and hasn't been an issue to me.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

They *kind* of suck. I mean my DLP HDTV has no noticeable ghosting, the only issue I have with it is the brightness has to be adjusted, where as these devices require you to find the sweet spot and to stand still in that spot or you get ghosting. I think the 3DS gives the most wiggle room, and it makes sense that they would want it to because you will be jamming on the controls which will tilt the screen a bit.

And I'm not sure your preference but I prefer having a LOT of depth, and that probably means I see more ghosting on these displays. So these displays are probably good enough for a lot of people but I think I'd like a passive glasses solution better, or some other solution with little ghosting and a lot more viewing angle.

And it seems apparent to me how bad the ghosting is really depends on the content you are looking at, how much contrast and how much separation there is. So I am not sure what you have seen.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by Likay »

I think it depends. For small displays like phones, the 3ds or w3 camera etc glassesless solutions are more than ok. I got a w3 and a 3ds myself and i would not want to grab a pair of glasses for those. It's kind of ridiculous talking about immersion on such small displays anyway. Ghosting is acceptable but you really have to be in the "sweet spot", sidewise as well as depthwise. 8" screens like in the T863-3D might be borderline and the cons could very well overshadow the pros.
Imo glassesfree solutions have way too many cons to be acceptable for homecinemas, at least in their current shape. Too much restrictions with viewing angle versus rendering multiview problems...
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by Fredz »

LeeN, could you try to take a photo of the DDD image displayed on this tablet ? It would also be nice if you could do the same with your DLP TV to see the difference.

As an illustration here is an example of ghosting with the Nintendo 3DS (from the MTBS3D review). There is quite faint ghosting but the resolution is quite low and the white levels are burned, so it may look better than what can be seen in reality :
Nintendo 3DS - Left.png
Nintendo 3DS - Right.png
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LeeN
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

Here they are! I took the pictures from my LG Optimus 3D.

I'm not sure why the tablet pictures came blue. I tried taking several pictures and changing the lighting in the room they were all the same. But it should give you an idea of the ghosting, at least until I find my real camera.

I also discovered that the tablet doesn't work with 3d pictures in the png format, I had to convert the file to jpeg.

With my DLP you will see color difference in the left and right images, that is correct for my setup although it is not as apparent in real life as it is in the photos. The reason for the color difference is because I am using DLP glasses for projectors and I think the HDTVs work differently, I have another pair of DLP glasses that don't have the color issue but they use a special battery (actually a CR2032 wrapped in plastic :P), the one I am currently using has built in rechargeable. I don't think I see any ghosting in the photos.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by Fredz »

Thanks for the photos, it illustrates quite well the superiority of DLP over any other 3D technology in regard to ghosting.

I'm a bit disappointed by the photos of the tablet, I didn't expect such a bad ghosting, especially for zones with high contrast (center). Now I understand why you didn't like it, it's worse than the worst LCD TVs (active or passive).

Don't hesitate to post other images with higher resolution and image quality if you hapen to find your real camera.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

I'm a little suspicious about their image viewer. I've been watching 3d movies and they look good to me. I'm going to try making that image into a video file and see if there is a difference.

The parallax barrier I'd guess is a color LCD panel instead of a monochrome one, at least that would explain the red and blue shifts. I'm not sure how much control software has over it but there might be a difference in the image viewer.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by cybereality »

Yeah, that doesn't look so hot. Certainly not on the level of the 3DS or W3.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by LeeN »

I did some sleuthing around in the sysfs and found out you can enable the parallax barrier by doing this in an adb shell:
echo 1 > /sys/class/enable3d/enable-3d
and of course disable it with:
echo 0 > /sys/class/enable3d/enable-3d

I also found some other interesting sysfs files but they seem to only control the video decoder output, not general graphics. I used the regular (non3d) video player and was able to make it display 3d using those sysfs files but when I tried doing it for youtube videos it looks like they were doing their own video scaling which ended up scaling the interlaced lines.

I took the LG Optimus 3D example source code and modified it to work with the T863 using a stencil buffer to do the line interlacing and it worked quite well. I might try to modify my LG Optimus 3D Quake2 port, but it uses the gyroscope sensor, I'd have to come up with touch screen controls.



The T863 can be rooted with SuperOneClick. Although at this point I am not sure what to do with this, I was thinking of trying to create an opengl wrapper to convert normal opengl games into stereoscopic games like what TriDef, iZ3D and Nvidia do, and I have done something like this before on the PC with opengl and Doom3 but it's a huge task.



I've been looking at Wikipad youtube videos from CES and the weird thing is, one of the Wikipads chassis (the one with out the game controller) looks identical to the T863 (the hdmi/usb/audio-jack/microsd etc), but instead of saying Gadmei, it says Wikipad. I also read some where that Gadmei is manufacturing the Wikipad, and they have a newer model called the E-3 that has a better glasses-free display then the T863.

For anyone who has not bought the T863 it is probably a better idea to wait for the Wikipad, I think I will upgrade to that when it comes out in March, simply for the game controller (in addition to the 3d display).

I was reading on some sites that the Wikipad is to have Tegra 3 in it, I think that is either a lie, a mistake, or a strategy change. If it's true, that is awesome, since the Wikipad is only $200, but the price seems kind of low for that, and they don't state this on their official website, and in a video interview they stated the reason the price is so low is because they make every component in the tablet, and since as far as I know they are not making the Tegra 3, I doubt it will have it.
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Re: T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by gl »

Thanks for the review, and excellent work on figuring out how to trigger the barrier. I emailed Gadmei about it weeks ago as I might try some programming on it (eye tracking would be interesting), but they never got back to me.

Also great news that it can be rooted, doesn't that mean you can get the Android Market on there?

As for the colour fringing, it's caused by the RGB sub-pixels of the display - on the T863, they are positioned horizontally (with respect to the barrier). So if you're not in the perfect sweet spot, the barrier is blocking out some of these sub-pixels only (rather than the entire RGB stack for a pixel), that causes the colour shift.

The newer E8-3D screen fixes this (RGB is stacked vertically), and also has a wider sweet spot according to the reviews, so it seems they optimised the barrier on it. The Wikipad apparently shares the same screen (and probably almost everything else). I'm holding out for these to launch (E8-3D unconfirmed, Wikipad supposedly March/April worldwide).
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T863-3D Tablet Revealed!

Post by Neil »

The following is an excerpt of a blog article.  Read Full Article

Gadmei T863 3D Tablet

Let's hope this is a sign of things to come!  Gadmei has announced plans for the T863-3D budget tablet featuring 1280X768 resolution glasses-free 3D display.  Running on Android 2.3, the unit includes a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and Mali 400 graphics.  Fellow 3D HDTV owners can rejoice because it features a 3D compliant HDMI output, 8GB of storage, and a microSD card slot.  Specs also feature 802.11b/g/n WiFi, stereo speakers, and a 5,000mAh battery.

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