System for watching 3d movies on OLED displays that support BFI (black frame insertion at 120 hz)
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2023 12:13 am
Hey Guys,
So I'm looking for beta testers and volunteers to help with a system I'm working on I have it working and tested with 2 TV sets already
LG OLED C1 and Sony XBR 48a9s the C1 has zero ghosting/crosstalk whilst the Sony has about 5% at top and bottom of screen, but it's fine for letterbox content.
I need one interested beta tester with a LG CX OLED to help with testing, if you have an LCD TV with 120hz that supports pulsed backlight provide details and you may be eligible for a free testing unit still too.
TV:
I am looking for anyone who wants to help test the unit with LG OLED CX, or other Sony OLEDs from 2019-2021
Your TV must support strong BFI at 120hz, by that I mean it must insert a dark frame for a large portion of the time (preferably as close to or greater than 50% of the time).
If your TV BFI duty cycle is not close enough to 50% you will experience cross talk / ghosting, but it may still be ok for watching letterbox content (with black bars at top and bottom).
I have confirmed that unfortunately the LG C2/G2 and LG C3/G3 OLED's will not work as they have removed 120hz BFI support.
There may be a way to hack it back in with firmware hacks, but that is beyond the scope of this project. If anyone is interested and able to obtain the required data I'm happy to try and locate the firmware changes required.
3D Glasses:
You will also need to own a pair of 3D glasses as I will not be shipping them with the unit.
The unit should support Sony TDG-BRXXX glasses, Panasonic TY-EW3DXXX glasses, 3D Vision glasses.
I may be able to add support for any other 3D glasses that include 4 token signalling (eg open right, close right, open left, close left) if anyone wants to supply a pair of such glasses for testing and analysis.
Additionally I have a custom designed firmware for some versions of the Panasonic glasses that totally eliminates resync issues reducing resync delay from 5 frames to 0 frames.
I may consider making a custom firmware for the sony glasses too, but they are harder to open and program. The pansonic glasses can be programmed through the USB port.
Computer requirements:
Now the best part, this system uses software page flipping in open gl directly so it doesn't require 3d vision or quad buffer opengl.
I have tested it in Windows and Linux.
It works extremely well on debian based linux distros like Ubuntu and you can easily run it from a bootable live usb drive. (occassional glasses resync that appears like you are blinking once every 5 mins or so when working properly).
It is also working very well on windows 10 with very few dropped frames.
There are performance issues on windows 11 with lots of dropped frames.
A cheap laptop with AMD integrated graphics is sufficiently fast to perform the software page flipping at 120hz 1080p.
In theory one could use this system for 4k 120hz oled 3d output, however I don't have a video card capable of outputting 120hz 4k.
There is an issue I ran into with newer windows systems on AMD where it is not possible to disable ALLM (adaptive low latency mode) from the control panel.
There is a workaround for this but it requires using CRU tool to override the OLED's HDMI config to hide ALLM support from the computer. I can provide direction on how to do this if required.
This is not an issue with Linux as far as I can tell, and I don't think this is an issue for nvidia or intel either.
I hope to resolve the performance / dropped frame issue with windows 11 if there is demand.
Hardware:
You will need to mount a tiny device on the top left of your TV screen, it will monitor signals embedded into the video feed that trigger the glasses.
I have done my best to try to alieviate burn in concerns by using soft edges and allowing configuration of the brightness for the embedded signal.
I have 3 devices I will be willing to ship out to beta testers (for their feedback and help) if they cover the cost of shipping via air mail.
If you have any python programming ability and are interested in adding functionality to the software that is a plus
Released so far:
https://github.com/open3doled/open-3d-oled
1) Software for PC to play videos using software page flipping whilst embedding signals for tv mounted sensors.
2) Software for tv mounted sensor, based on atmega32u4 micro controller
3) Hardware design for the tv mounted sensor including Gerber, BOM, etc.
4) Parametric 3D openscad designs for mounts to attach the tv sensors to various shapes and thickness of TV.
Future plans:
1) Release some youtube tutorials and demonstration videos (late February).
2) Put up a webstore where I will sell kits including the hardware and glasses with modified firmware optimized for software pagefilipping. (mid March)
3) Release open source firmware to replace that on sony and pansonic glasses to support improved interaction with software page flipping (dropped frames, and OLED update jitter). (date as of yet not determined)
Background:
I had been using a 3D DLP projector with 3d vision to watch movies but 3d vision isn't supported by new cards and if I'm not mistaken intel and amd also have offerings which are not supported any longer.
I also was using a 3D VIP hardware adapter for a while to convert SBS into 120 hz page flipped, but it wasn't working well with my new OLED TV.
So I've come up with the solution presented above.
If anyone has any questions let me know.
So I'm looking for beta testers and volunteers to help with a system I'm working on I have it working and tested with 2 TV sets already
LG OLED C1 and Sony XBR 48a9s the C1 has zero ghosting/crosstalk whilst the Sony has about 5% at top and bottom of screen, but it's fine for letterbox content.
I need one interested beta tester with a LG CX OLED to help with testing, if you have an LCD TV with 120hz that supports pulsed backlight provide details and you may be eligible for a free testing unit still too.
TV:
I am looking for anyone who wants to help test the unit with LG OLED CX, or other Sony OLEDs from 2019-2021
Your TV must support strong BFI at 120hz, by that I mean it must insert a dark frame for a large portion of the time (preferably as close to or greater than 50% of the time).
If your TV BFI duty cycle is not close enough to 50% you will experience cross talk / ghosting, but it may still be ok for watching letterbox content (with black bars at top and bottom).
I have confirmed that unfortunately the LG C2/G2 and LG C3/G3 OLED's will not work as they have removed 120hz BFI support.
There may be a way to hack it back in with firmware hacks, but that is beyond the scope of this project. If anyone is interested and able to obtain the required data I'm happy to try and locate the firmware changes required.
3D Glasses:
You will also need to own a pair of 3D glasses as I will not be shipping them with the unit.
The unit should support Sony TDG-BRXXX glasses, Panasonic TY-EW3DXXX glasses, 3D Vision glasses.
I may be able to add support for any other 3D glasses that include 4 token signalling (eg open right, close right, open left, close left) if anyone wants to supply a pair of such glasses for testing and analysis.
Additionally I have a custom designed firmware for some versions of the Panasonic glasses that totally eliminates resync issues reducing resync delay from 5 frames to 0 frames.
I may consider making a custom firmware for the sony glasses too, but they are harder to open and program. The pansonic glasses can be programmed through the USB port.
Computer requirements:
Now the best part, this system uses software page flipping in open gl directly so it doesn't require 3d vision or quad buffer opengl.
I have tested it in Windows and Linux.
It works extremely well on debian based linux distros like Ubuntu and you can easily run it from a bootable live usb drive. (occassional glasses resync that appears like you are blinking once every 5 mins or so when working properly).
It is also working very well on windows 10 with very few dropped frames.
There are performance issues on windows 11 with lots of dropped frames.
A cheap laptop with AMD integrated graphics is sufficiently fast to perform the software page flipping at 120hz 1080p.
In theory one could use this system for 4k 120hz oled 3d output, however I don't have a video card capable of outputting 120hz 4k.
There is an issue I ran into with newer windows systems on AMD where it is not possible to disable ALLM (adaptive low latency mode) from the control panel.
There is a workaround for this but it requires using CRU tool to override the OLED's HDMI config to hide ALLM support from the computer. I can provide direction on how to do this if required.
This is not an issue with Linux as far as I can tell, and I don't think this is an issue for nvidia or intel either.
I hope to resolve the performance / dropped frame issue with windows 11 if there is demand.
Hardware:
You will need to mount a tiny device on the top left of your TV screen, it will monitor signals embedded into the video feed that trigger the glasses.
I have done my best to try to alieviate burn in concerns by using soft edges and allowing configuration of the brightness for the embedded signal.
I have 3 devices I will be willing to ship out to beta testers (for their feedback and help) if they cover the cost of shipping via air mail.
If you have any python programming ability and are interested in adding functionality to the software that is a plus
Released so far:
https://github.com/open3doled/open-3d-oled
1) Software for PC to play videos using software page flipping whilst embedding signals for tv mounted sensors.
2) Software for tv mounted sensor, based on atmega32u4 micro controller
3) Hardware design for the tv mounted sensor including Gerber, BOM, etc.
4) Parametric 3D openscad designs for mounts to attach the tv sensors to various shapes and thickness of TV.
Future plans:
1) Release some youtube tutorials and demonstration videos (late February).
2) Put up a webstore where I will sell kits including the hardware and glasses with modified firmware optimized for software pagefilipping. (mid March)
3) Release open source firmware to replace that on sony and pansonic glasses to support improved interaction with software page flipping (dropped frames, and OLED update jitter). (date as of yet not determined)
Background:
I had been using a 3D DLP projector with 3d vision to watch movies but 3d vision isn't supported by new cards and if I'm not mistaken intel and amd also have offerings which are not supported any longer.
I also was using a 3D VIP hardware adapter for a while to convert SBS into 120 hz page flipped, but it wasn't working well with my new OLED TV.
So I've come up with the solution presented above.
If anyone has any questions let me know.