OldBoy

Anyone see an early release of xXx 3D?

Joe Schmoe

Thank you!

Joe Schmoe

Got my Australian version of Underworld: Blood Wars 3D yesterday. For anyone interested, it played just fine on my American PS3... both the 3D disc and the 2D disc. The supplemental material played as well, but the UltraViolet code wouldn't work when I tried to redeem it. (I wasn't really surprised or disappointed about that though.) Ironically/sadly, the 3D effects were nothing to get excited about. I didn't see any pop out, and most of the time any depth that was added was hard to appreciate because the scenes were dark. The surround sound was fantastic though!

E Unit

^^^ Thanks for taking one for the team. I was tempted, even though I didn't care for the movie too much, but I was interested in the 3D. I guess that answers my question on how good it is.

sparks

Yeah, crappy 3D and I double dipped for this. Glad it was only $10.

Alan Smithee

Better crappy 3D than no 3D. I got it from Germany though I likely won't have time to watch it til the next decade or so. Just got The Great Wall in from France today which I'll likely watch sooner, also picked up the Kraftwerk set from the local record store.

Paul_SD

Tried watching X-Men Apocalypse in 3D last night but had to bail after a few minutes because the crosstalk was horrendous. I'm not sure if the glasses had lost too much of their charge, if my eyes are getting too bad, or if it's the projector- but whatever it was, it was very disappointing.

Fortunately I ended up enjoying it in 2D just fine, and not once during the film wished i was seeing a particular scene or effect in 3D.

Alan Smithee

Great thing about passive 3D- no charging! Though it doesn't seem like projectors can do that.

Jay G.

Well, projectors can, see movie theaters, but home projectors typically don't.

I imagine it's related to the cost of integrating the necessary polarized lenses, and the fact that the lenses will dim the output of the projector, with light projected always an issue with projectors. Active 3D is easier, since it requires no additional hardware on the projector.

Movie theater projectors use a "polarization modulator" filter that sits in front of the projector and can be moved in and out of the way. This modulator actually switches between the two polarizations very fast.
https://www.barco.com/en/StaticPages...on%20explained
http://www.depthq.com/cinema-modulator.html

There was such a modulator screen available for home projectors, although it was a bit pricey:
http://www.projectorreviews.com/3d-d...jector-system/
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/24-dig...modulator.html

There's also dual-projector passive 3D setups for home theaters, with each screen showing only their "side" of the image.

hanshotfirst1138

Jay G. is like out very own miniature film school.

Josh Z

Passive 3D projection also requires a special polarized screen, which makes 2D images projected onto it look terrible. Someone who goes the passive projection route in a home theater will really need to have two screens, one dedicated to 2D and one for 3D. That's really impractical and rarely done.

Jay G.

You don't need a "polarized screen," but you do need one that will reflect the polarized image correctly. Simple white screens scatter the light too much, basically "unpolarizing" the image, causing a lot of crosstalk. You need a screen that directly reflects the polarized light without much scattering, typically using silver material. This reflects the light directly, but since all the light is going in one direction, off-center viewing can be severely affected.

BTW, early cinemas used screens with silver materials to reflect more light directly back from the projector towards the center audience, since projector illumination was a lot lower then and they needed all the help they could get. This is where the term "silver screen" comes from. It also helped with the first push of 3D on B&W film, since they could use synced polarized projectors and polarized glasses. However, once projectors started being brighter, theater owners started going with just white screens, which also allowed for putting more seating off-center of the screen, since light scattered off to the sides more. It unfortunately had the side effect of polarized 3D no longer working, which is why the 80s 3D revival through the 90s primarily used the red/blue anaglyph 3D, which didn't work as well as polarized, but worked on the plethora of white screens around at the time.

RealD 3D in cinemas use a silver screen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_3D
http://www.edcf.net/edcf_docs/real-d.pdf
If you don't have seats significantly to the side of the screen in your home theater, a silver screen could potentially increase the amount of light delivered to you and help offset the diminished luminescence from a polarized projected image.

Josh Z

We're saying essentially the same thing.

2D projected onto a silver screen looks awful.

Jay G.

"Looks awful" is subjective. You're going to have a much brighter image while sitting directly in front of the screen, but the viewing angles are going to be a lot more limiting.

There's also probably going to need to be more consideration on where/how you place the projector, as you want to make sure the reflected angle is coming towards you, the audience. So a ceiling-mounted projector may work better, since it projects slightly down to the screen, which then reflects slightly down again to hit the audience. A projector mounted from the floor may be pointing up to the screen, which would then reflect up to the ceiling, reducing what the audience sees.

"Hot Spotting" can also be an issue, but again this can be addressed via projector placement.
http://www.projectorreviews.com/home...ection-part-7/

Josh Z

Silver screens also wash out the black levels in the image and throw off the hue of all the colors.

Jay G.

Are you sure about that?
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/23-scr...er-review.html
I'm not sure why colors or black levels would be affected, since it's simply reflecting more light back to you. Are you thinking of off-center viewing?

DthRdrX

If you want a screen for general viewing, 3D and/or HDR go find a used Dalite Hi-Power. I still have mine and it is amazing for just about everything as long as you keep your projector within a few feet, above or below you. That material would be selling off the rack if it was kept in production.

Alan Smithee

I don't remember any of the 80s 3D movies using the red-and-blue format; in fact I'm wondering how they went about with the silver screens as I saw two of them in really crappy theaters but the 3D worked nonetheless. White screens were the reason why the 3D segment in "Freddy's Dead" used the red/blue format though, as did Spy Kids 3D and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl or whatever it's called.

OldBoy

Treasure of the Four Crowns, Jaws 3D, Friday the 13th, Spacehunter, I believe we're all red/blue...

caligulathegod

No, those were all polarized. They used the single projector "over/under" technique, where they stacked left and right in the same frame and used a special lens to overlap the images, as opposed to the old technique of using 2 projectors.

Josh Z

Freddy's Dead used red/blue anaglyph 3D because the majority of the movie was normal 2D and it only switched to 3D at the climax, where an on-screen cue would signal for viewers to put on their glasses.

Spy Kids and Sharkboy were anaglyph because they were very cheap, independently produced movies and Robert Rodriguez didn't have the resources or the clout to get distribution in any other format.

Josh Z

I have not seen the specific screen material that he raves about. However, my local theater routinely projects 2D movies onto silver 3D screens and they look atrocious. Blacks are a highly-elevated, milky gray, and the colors do not at all look right.

E Unit

I remember seeing Superman Returns at the IMAX and that red pair of eyeglasses that would start to flash when it was time to put on the glasses, just to see the 20 minutes or so converted to 3D. Too bad that may never see the light of day.

mattysemo247

Disney continues the streak of skipping 3D versions of their live action films for US. No Beauty and the Beast is available for the US, but at least it's available in other countries. Now I have to make the decision to import or pick up the Best Buy steelbook next week.

Ghost in the Shell 3D was just announced though for 7/25, so at least that's promising.

Spiderbite

That's cool. Never heard of that and I saw that movie 3 times in the theater.