LG 3D Cinema goodness

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Fex
One Eyed Hopeful
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:31 am

LG 3D Cinema goodness

Post by Fex »

Hi 3d lovers,


I'm here to welcome myself to yet another community since I have recently become the proud owner of a LG Cinema 3D passive HDTV! I'm hoping to get some more information about the set and the ideal setup for me to enjoy 3d movies and 3d gaming. Up until now it has been awesome!

Let me start by saying that I am 100% happy with my LG Cinema, the model number is LG 55LM640s and was bought at Saturn in Europe for a lousy 980 euro's! Unfortunately I do have a little edge bleeding so I am expecting a mechanic to arrive soon to check it out! LG support was very quick and straightforward, no problems there. The bleeding isn't real bad but I can still see it emitting from the top left corner at daytime using normal settings! Be sure you check this out when you get yours! LG Cinema's seem to have this problem quite often. I'm hoping it takes a few bangs and screws to solve ..

To get it all up and running I did need to do a little research. I'm currently sporting with these options:


1. To play 3D movies from a Blu-ray source (either via physical drive or ISO mount) I am using Arcsoft Totalmedia Theater 5 (TMT). In order for 3D to work properly I had to turn OFF my Nvidia drivers "Enable Stereoscopic Support" checkbox in the Nvidia control panel and run TMT in full screen mode. Initially my TV set didn't detect the 3D settings automatically so I had to toggle the 3D button in the TMT software and the 3d setting on my TV set. The 3D effect was very noticeable but I had a feeling it could be better so I decided to install Cyberlink PowerDVD 12. PowerDVD works a lot better but I noticed that my DTS streams were going out of sync halfway through the movie. Also both players seem to forget to reset my desktop settings sometimes resulting in a different primary desktop, a different resolution than before or re-arranged desktop icons.

The solution that made both TMT and PowerDVD work perfectly was to disable my secondary monitor. Setting the TV as my primary display device wasn't enough. My set requires the following output to allow 3D framepacking mode (the mode 3D blu-rays prefer): 1920x1080@24hz. PowerDVD and TMT both automatically set the output to 1080p@24hz, but if you have another monitor on your graphicscard running at 60hz (or other than 24hz) you will have problems. It feels quite cumbersome to do, but once I disable the PC monitor, the TV set will automatically detect the 3D framepacking mode with MUCH better results than before. For some reason the DTS streams in PowerDVD are now keeping up to. Before performing this step the TV would not recognise 3D and I had to set 3D to row interleave mode.

2. To play MKV files in SBS format all I needed was my trusty MediaPlayer Classic (MPC). Be sure you install the latest DirectX runtime binaries. To have hardware acceleration for h264 video with subtitles you will need to set the output decoder to EVR (Enhanced Video Renderer). Otherwise MPC will have a performance impact on your CPU.

The TV set needs to be put into 3D side-by-side (SBS) mode to enable 3D, which luckily my set has. If you have another TV set that doesn't have the SBS setting, you can try to use Stereoscopic Player. This player will allow you to set the input format (SBS) and the output format (e.g. Row Interleave). Unfortunately MPC doesn't have these options yet. Stereoscopic Player isn't free but does have a trial version for you to play with.

3. To play 3D games I first tried to use Nvidia 3DTV Play driver. Let me first point out that you need to pay for this driver which I think is bogus! I have a 200 euro Nvidia Geforce GTX650 and a 900 euro 3D TV along with a 60 euro copy of Battlefield 3. All I can say is that I am disappointed.

The 3DTV Play works nicely if you have installed the latest versions correctly and also disable your secondary monitor. The 3DTV Play wizard will actually show you (a faulty) 3D vision driver setup which is not what you are supposed to get when you "Enable 3D Stereoscopic" in the Nvidia Control panel. Make sure you only have your 3D display connected when you set this up.

The above was initially the reason why I couldn't get 3DTV Play to work with my passive set, because the 3D vision driver relies on active/anaglyphic drivers. So I was set out to find another solution, I assumed 3DTV Play was a part of 3D vision (which it is) but I also mistakenly assumed that it required 3D vision glasses.

After all those years and Rage (game), I am still a fan of ID Software so I decided to give Doom3 BFG a spin. This game works in 3D without any additional drivers and works GREAT! Even at 1080p at 60hz with 120FPS in-game I am enjoying this game at the ultra glorified settings! Thank you ID software for showing the industry that a simple post processing shader is enough to enable 3D. I was a little surprised to be honest, especially since nVidia's 3d Vision isn't free (did I mention that already? ;))

Doom allows you to toggle SBS, TopBottom, Column/Row interleave and something called OpenGL Quad-buffer. If you know what that means and how to configure it, please let me know! I have tried the Quad-buffer setting but it does not work for me!

Anyway, I have a lot of games on my PC and none of them have the built-in 3D modes that Doom has, so I was still looking for a better solution. I noticed a lot of posts about iZ3D drivers but those drivers aren't updated anymore because the developers have ceased. Very unfortunate if you ask me! The reviews on the internet are quite good.

After a while I found the Tridef 3D drivers. And boy do they work! All you need to do is install the application and configure your games. If the game is supported you will be able to launch it using the Tridef application and play it in 3D. I have tested the following games with Tridef and I am very HAPPY: Far Cry 3, DiRT Showdown, Giana Sisters, Prototype 2 and Battlefield 3. The reason I like Tridef is because you can customize a lot of settings during gameplay and all the games I have tried worked perfectly in my opinion.

4. To play 3D games on your Xbox you need to setup your 3D display in the settings of the Xbox dashboard. This is not all you need to do though, Xbox uses SBS which you need to enable in the game itself as well. I have tested this with Gears of War 3 and without going to Start > Options > Video > Setup 3D TV it doesn't work out of the box. When it does work you will see a SBS image on your display and you will need to set your 3D to SBS.


5. Last but certainly not least, BUY a HDMI 1.4 cable!!!



One of the things I noticed with all of the above, either 3D gaming via Nvidia 3DTV Play or Tridef and also while watch movies, you always need to play around with the 3D settings. The most helpful setting to me is swapping the Left/Right eye. I prefer to do this on my PC (in the Tridef driver/PowerDVD) but you can most likely also do it on your TV set. Swapping the eye instantly transforms 3D awkwardness into sexiness if you are experiencing that. I usually start out by resetting the Depth and Viewpoint settings on my TV and watch the display without glasses to calibrate it for the scenario. What I do is eliminate the double vision as much as I can for distant objects in the scene, and create the double vision for objects closer in the scene. In DiRT I do this until the back of my vehicle is popping out of the screen, it really works nicely. Giana Sisters features very nice 3D backgrounds which requires different settings, you just need to play with that each and every time you want to play something in 3D.


To sum it all up:

- Make sure you disable your secondary monitor. Even if you are outputting the correct resolution and hertz, it still makes a difference.

- 3D blu-rays work awesome in TMT and PowerDVD.

- MKV SBS can be played through virtually every media player, I am using MPC.

- Nvidia 3D vision works nicely but it still has some quircks

- Tridef is superior to Nvidia 3D vision in my opinion

- Nvidia Stereoscopic support needs to be enabled if you want to use 3D Play TV (either games or movies) but disabled without.

- Xbox 3d works nicely if you enable it both in the game and in the Xbox dashboard. However the SBS 3D is less desirable making the PS3 a better console for 3d gaming.


- HDMI 1.4 cables are mandatory


All in all it has been quite a journey to get this up and running. I can only imagine that 3D tv's arent for all consumers right now, you certainly need to know your stuff.


If you read this post are think I have a few things wrong, let me know. I have only just begun exploring this configuration and my findings could be off here and there. I've written this all down to hopefully get feedback from others but also to help you if you are having troubles.

I have three questions for you guys in the forums:

1. When I set my PC to 1080p@60hz and watch a movie or play a game in 3D interleave mode I am experiencing jerkiness. When looking without glasses I can see the left and right images shift back and forth. You could achieve this manually by changing the depth setting on the TV. The best way to explain it would be to call it 3d depth jerkiness. Has anyone ever experienced this? Why is this happening? I have updated the FW on my TV and it still does this. The depth really changes as if the TV is trying to calibrate itself for the 3D content. Other modes do not have this. I have not seen it @24hz and I have seen it during gaming and watching 3d movies. At first I thought Tridef was the cause but the other solutions have the same problem.

2. The OpenGL quad buffer setting, how does that work? What does it do? Is it the same as framepacking? It doesn't work on my TV!

3. Right now I am using Tridef for 3D gaming. But I can only get it to work SBS and interleave mode (the latter has some jerkiness). Does Tridef support framepacking? That should be possible right? If I am not mistaking PS3 also uses framepacking for games. When I use the Direct3D Stereo the Tridef driver gives me the following message: "Direct3D stereo initialization failed."


That would be all .. thanks for reading!



Fex
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cybereality
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Posts: 11406
Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:18 pm

Re: LG 3D Cinema goodness

Post by cybereality »

Hey man! Glad you got everything working. I will try to answer you questions.

1) This may be caused either by pulldown (most likely) or some sort of motion-interpolation. The best thing to do while watching movies is to set the TV to 24P. For games, that is a little strange. Maybe there is a setting on the TV that could fix this (ie turing off interpolation/smooth-motion, etc.).

2) Quad-buffer is a 3D format, but it is different that frame-packing. It think Nvidia restricts this to their professional line of GPUs, so I don't think it will work on your system.

3) TriDef supports frame-packing, but only with AMD GPUs. I'd recommend getting the Nvidia 3DTV Play software, as you will be able to us frame-packing with that.
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Silversurfer
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Re: LG 3D Cinema goodness

Post by Silversurfer »

Fex wrote:Hi 3d lovers,


The solution that made both TMT and PowerDVD work perfectly was to disable my secondary monitor. Setting the TV as my primary display device wasn't enough. My set requires the following output to allow 3D framepacking mode (the mode 3D blu-rays prefer): 1920x1080@24hz. PowerDVD and TMT both automatically set the output to 1080p@24hz, but if you have another monitor on your graphics card running at 60hz (or other than 24hz) you will have problems. It feels quite cumbersome to do, but once I disable the PC monitor, the TV set will automatically detect the 3D framepacking mode with MUCH better results than before. For some reason the DTS streams in PowerDVD are now keeping up to. Before performing this step the TV would not recognise 3D and I had to set 3D to row interleave mode.


Fex
I know it's been a few years since this but I just got the 2016 LG OLED55C6V passive 3D and I'm having a mayor setting up the passive 3-D using the new PDVD 16 ultra, can you tell me if your above setup is still working in Windows 10 etc?

EDIT:
Nevermind it's sorted, on the LG's you need to choice 720p @60Hz in Nviida control panel settind NOT 1080p @24Hz.
Got a release or 3D news story to share? Email press@mtbs3D.com, and we'll put it up!

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