Need help with setting up a pc to play 3d movies on samsung

[planc]

Hello everyone! This certainly looks like the place to be if you need help with 3d so i certainly need to be here. I just recently purchased a samsung hl61a750 3d ready dlp tv because i love 3d movies so much and have grown tired of anaglyph. I originally thought i would use an older pc for 3d playback on this tv but in my research i have discovered that a dual core processor is recommended for 1080p output and my pc does not have that so i am now looking for a pc to run my 3d movies on. I think i have found one that will do the job....please keep in mind i will not be gaming on this because i game via the xbox360 and ps3 so this pc will strictly be used for viewing stereoscopic 3d films and i will be using stereoscopic player for playback. Here are the specs....intel pentium d 950 3.4 ghz cpu/2gb ddr2 ram 667mhz/160gb hard drive along with dvd and cd drives/asrock wolfdale motherboard supporting 7.1 sound/nvidia geforce 8500gt 512mb graphics card. Now does this sound like what i need to play my 3d dvds on that tv? I am really curious about the graphics card because i have read that the series 8 nvidia cards do not support stereoscopic 3d. I really wish there was more info on pc requirements for this out there as it would make it a lot easier on us folks that love 3d but really don't know a heck of a lot about it. I thank you for your help and truly appreciate your opinions.

[planc]

Man i am starting to feel like the only person on earth with one of these tv's that wants to view stereoscopic 3d movies because no one anywhere can seem to answer my question. I certainly should have done a little more research on how the 3d works with these tv's because if i would have seen the absolute total lack of information or anyone who knows about it i would not have bought the thing because now it has become a source of frustration and that is just not how it should be.

[pixel67]

Planc, the hardware you mentioned should work fine for movies, but your bigger problem is actually finding movies to watch! Content has always been the issue. It is a shame that you won't game on this set because it has the best image quality out their right now.

[planc]

Hi and thanks very much for the reply/help. I had read that the 8 series nvidia cards did not support stereoscopic 3d and that the fastest one that did was the 7900. I have many movies to watch in stereoscopic 3d that i purchased from underground3dmovies.com he has all of the ones i saw at the theater in 80's as well as a lot of 50's stuff. The best thing is he puts both anaglyph as well as field sequential versions on his dvds. I am about to go watch andy warhols frankenstein in anaglyph but cannot wait to see the actual true stereoscopic version. I am still stuck on whether that geforce 8500gt card supports the stereoscopic 3d. I suppose i will call nvidia support and see what they have to say. I thank you once again for your help!

[planc]

I certainly never expected help to be so hard to find on this subject. I am now beginning to wish i had never bought this tv for watching stereoscopic 3d dvds because it appears no one out there has the knowledge to do it or if they do they are unwilling to part with it. I just need a simple graphics card that will support stereoscopic 3d....can anyone tell me which one? I have read the nvidia geforce 7900 series is the fastest card with stereoscopic 3d support is that true? This pc is only going to be used for viewing 3d movies on dvd with shutter glasses. Once again any help will be more than greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

[LukePC1]

Hi and welcome

calm down. Its only half as bad as it seems.

1. Why don't you try out your current PC? If it is not that old it should do just fine. I'm not shure, wheter you realy need a dualcore. Most of the movies are lower quality anyway
Just try it out with some movies from the net (or this forum) and the old PC.

2. Stereoscopic player can be used with ANY gpu, so the 8500gt should work. It should be fast enough, too. At least for movies.
You are right, that a 7900 is the newest card supported by Nvidia for GAMING with THEIR drivers.

3. If you are good, maybe even the PS3 can run stereoscopic player and 3D movies with linux? It should have more than enough power to do anything

4. please be patient, since forum users are spread all over the world and have to sleep, work and eat

edit:
5. not that a pentium D will need a lot of elektricity to run! Even a cheap Core 2 Duo will have similar or more computing power (that explains the high price) and most AMD X2 CPUs will need much less power and are as fast as the pentim D.
If you get a more efficient CPU it will need less cooling and thus might be quieter

[Neil]

Hi Planc,

I'm sorry for the late response. Let me size things up for you:

If you are after movies, you're a bit early. Standards are only being discussed right now for getting S-3D content out to Blu-ray disc. If you want to view S-3D from your PC, any dual output GPU should work in combination with a downloadable 3D movie. You will also need to use a 3D movie player like Peter Wimmer's stereoscopic 3D player: http://www.3dtv.at/Index_en.aspx that supports DLP checkerboard output.

The reason people have been suggesting 7900 or earlier NVIDIA graphics cards is if you want to play video games using NVIDIA drivers, you are out of luck until their proprietary shutter glasses are out unless you use their former XP drivers. As long as your GPU has dual output, you should be fine for movies. Our members can confirm their experiences with this as I don't yet own a DLP set. However, their site does not indicate any NVIDIA or AMD limitations or GPU classes.

iZ3D has released non-proprietary drivers that will work with video games, and you can download the latest beta releases in our downloads section. These drivers have no operating system or GPU restrictions, so this should work for you if you have any gaming interests.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,
Neil

[planc]

Thanks for the replies guys and i am sorry if my frustration was beginning to show. I ordered the tv and it will not be here until friday so i was just trying to get everything ready where all i will have to do is hook up and go. I have plenty of stereoscopic 3d dvds to watch as i have purchased them from underground3dmovies.com and have only been able to enjoy them in anaglyph and luckily enough he puts both anaglyph and field sequential versions of the films on his dvds. I am not expecting perfection but he says they look great and i should be able to enjoy them flicker free thanks to this tv.
From what i read on stereoscopic players website you need a dual core to output at 1080p along with the correct graphics card of course. I have read you must output at 1080p to hook the pc up to this tv although i do understand 3d content from these dvds will not be 1080p. I have already ordered the shutter glasses as well as the stereoscopic player software.
The specs of the pc i was planning on using are as follows: Pentium 4 3.0ghz
2gb ddr2 ram
16x dvd drive
cd burner
diamond 7.1 soundcard
radeon 128mb 9800 pro graphics card
windows xp home edition
This is the pc i currently own and was planning on using for running the 3d movies on until i read a little further and got the impression i was going to have to buy a new one. If you guys think this is usable please let me know because after purchasing this tv and a stand for it i would rather not have to buy a new pc. Once again i thank you for your help and please excuse the earlier frustration as it is certainly no one's fault on here that i bought something that has turned into a little more than i bargained for.

[planc]

Just to add i have also read that you need a pci express graphics card as well. The ati radeon 9800 pro i have is an agp card however if this card will not work i would not be against purchasing a new ati agp card that would. I have never cared much for nvidia so i would rather use an ati but have read that they do not support stereoscopic 3d.
As for me being good enough to get the ps3 to accomplish this goal i am afraid i am not...lol i have no experience with linux but boy if that could be done it would certainly save a lot of trouble. I don't mind connecting my pc to the tv though i just want to make sure i have the right hardware to make it work properly.

[LukePC1]

Ok the PC seems to be a little older, but it was very good when it came out. I don't know, what resuloution was common then, but it can't be that hard to output 1080p. In worst case it might be played slower than normal (with less FPS).
You want to use peter wimmers stereoscopic player, right? AFAIK it should work with nearly every hardware. It is very old and supports old stuff but has a lot of updates, so it supports new stuff equally good. I like it very much, but sometimes the performance isn't that great. Especially if you download a HD video that is compressed with some hardware hungry codec.

However I'm afraid you'll need some time on friday...

But for a good preparation: Try out the player and the movies provided with field sequential format on your pc and try to output Anaglyph and Checkerboard. If it is smooth enough your pc is good enough.

I wish you good luck, a happy reading and fun.
Good night.

[BlackShark]

Your current PC will do the job fine.

You do not need a dual core to output 1080p video at all.
The 1080p power hungry stuff is only to decode a 1080p FullHD-video file compressed with the very recent compression algorythm called H.264.
It's a brand new codec that's used for High definition Blu-Ray movies and becoming more and more used over the internet because it's very efficient but heavy on the CPU.

But since you bought your movies on DVDs, they're standard definition so you can be 100% sure that whatever the compression algorithm used, your cpu will be sufficient.

Then about outputs, it's entirely done by the graphics card and your 9800 pro is a good GPU (a bit old for today standards but it used to be a high end gpu in its time, i think you could even play UT2003/2004 in 3D).
It should be able to output 1080p via the DVI connector.

About the nvidia stuff, as neil said, it's only if you want to play games with the nvidia drivers, but iZ3D has just released their new 1.09 beta drivers which also work on Ati cards and the driver now supports your screen. (i've read feedback from 1 user who said in the iz3d topic that it worked, don't remember his name).
But this driver issue is just for games. you don't need to worry about it if you're just watching movies.

[Neil]

I forgot about the dual output detail! My bad!

Regards,
Neil

[BlackShark]

I forgot about the dual output detail! My bad!

Regards,
Neil

Samsung DLPs don't require dual output, do they ?

[planc]

As far as i know they don't. Dvi to hdmi is all you need to connect to the tv.
Well i want to thank you guys for your time and the advice. I must say i am quite relieved that i do not have to buy a new pc now i only hope this radeon 9800 pro will output 1080p but if it does not i think it would be pretty easy to find another ati agp card that does and if that is all i have to buy i will thank my lucky stars. That card was like 450 bucks when it came out now i think it is 50.00.....lol My pc is 4 years old. I will be running stereoscopic player.

[planc]

I do have people messing with me about not gaming with this tv because they say it gets the best picture around for that but i mainly play the consoles however when i get ready i may game a bit but i will have a new pc when i am ready to try it.

[planc]

After further investigationa s to whether the radeon 9800 pro could actually output 1080p i found several people who have tried to get it to work but to no avail so i ordered an HIS Radeon HD 2600 xt iceq turbo with 512 mb gddr3 since it was the only agp card i could find that specifically said it can output in 1080p which i think is required for your pc to hook up to the samsung television.

[BlackShark]

according to Ati, the radeon 9800 pro does support 1920x1080 output at 120Hz with a 16:9 ratio.
http://ati.amd.com/products/radeon9800/ ... specs.html

[planc]

Hi and thanks again for the reply. That is interesting you found that because i had found a couple of people that had put out reviews on this card and they said when they tried to get the 1080p resolution to work on their hdtv's one was a sharp aquous i believe that the picture started getting fuzzy above 768 lines of resolution. I don't know.....you read one thing then another.....i guess it is just basically a trial and error process but after reading that i just did not trust the 4 year old card so i guess it won't hurt to have the new one anyway as it seems to be better. I have already updated to the latest catalyst driver ver 8.8 so all i need now is a coax stereo cable to go from my diamond xtreme sound 7.1 into my pioneer elite av receiver and hopefully when my tv arrives friday i will be good to go. Thanks for your help and i am not going anywhere so i will keep everyone updated on how things are going and what the 3d looks like. I will try to help anyone i can not to have to go through a big mess with the tv's and the 3d.

[tru3d]

Concerning 3D Movie Support for 3D-Ready DLPs:
A few recommendations and some informat to help you out - goto the Tridef website by D.D.D. and try their 3D game launcher and 3D media player. it supports 2D->3D conversion (upsampling) with standard DVDs using both graphics card accelleration and Intel hardware for realtime processing. Additionally, their player supports playing anaglyphic movies in 3D-DLP format (converts from red/blue to 3D-DLP). You should give it a try. You can also download the Stereoscopic Player by Peter Wimmer on the 3DTV.at website. For High-Quality 3D, you can shop around for field sequential 3D-DVDs. If you're comfortable with media conversion, you can use the 2D Version of a DVD Movie and a red/blue DVD Movie to generate a full color Left+Right Movie for watching on your 3D-DLP using a few tools found online such as De-Anaglyph on Peter Wimmer's site. Most 3D-DVDs that have a red/blue version also have a 2D Version in the same box.

For Gaming applications on your 3D-Ready DLPs:
If you're into gaming, try the iz3D 1.09 beta 2 driver with your 7900. It has a new 3D-DLP mode and works great with vista and XP. be sure to update DirectX and your Nvidia Forceware drivers. We recommend the iz3D drivers for your broadest support of titles and the Tridef Game Launchpad to support high-end titles like Crysis and Call of Duty 4. Both the iz3D driver and the Tridef Game Launchpad support 3D-DLP for ATI or Nvida graphics cards on Vista or XP.

the minimum PC hardwarre configuration that we have found for 3D-DLP is:
1. e6600 Core 2 duo or q6600 Quad Core Intel
2. 2Gb 800Mhz DDR2
3. Nvidia 9600GT (8800's tend to lag at HQ settings)
Vista for full HDCP over DVI support.


I personally have many Samsung 3D-Ready DLPs and Desktop 3D-LCDs. If you want to stay with Nvidia Consumer 3D drivers- It is true that Nvidias last driver that was 'patch-able' to support 3D-DLP were version 93.31 / 93.71 for XP. However, they have added 3D-DLP support to some of their new vista drivers 177.83 beta and rumor has it to expect ot see 3D-DLP in NVidia's next 3D Consumer Stereo driver release. We've been playing games and movies on them for almost a year now.

To use the 3D-DLP, you will have to make sure that your computer is set to a resolution listed within the display's native output range. The modes supported by the 1080p are 1920x1080, 1280x1024, 1024x768 with centered or unscaled output. Note, that if your game starts in a resolution other than your desktop, you will need to turn off the 3D on the HDTV and then turn it back on to re-sync the 3D Image to the display. Additionally, you do not need 120Hz output from your PC. Your native signal to the display from your PC is actually 1920x1080@60hz in 3D-DLP stereo mode. The 3D-DLP stereo mode is a post-composite image of both the left and right eye views in a checkerboard format. I.E. if the picture was a checkerboard, red squares would represent left eye pixels and black squares would be right eye pixels. Once the TV sees this input, you may activate the 3D-Mode with your HDTV remote on your 3D-DLP. the DLP chip tv will actually start to wiggle at 120Hz turning the left and right eye pixels on/off alternating so that each eye recieves 60Hz.

EDITED BY MODERATOR. NO ADVERTISING PLEASE.

DO NOT USE IMAGE SCALING OR OVERSCAN MODES as it will re-arrange/stretch pixels and distort the 3D image. For gaming, you will want to make sure the video output is set to centered output - a.ka. unscaled output. The Tridef 3D Game Launchpad and Tridef 3D Media player have special 3D scaling features built in so that you can always get a 1920x1080 3D picture even if your media or game is in a lower resolution. Unfortunately, the iz3D game driver does not yet have this type of processing built in, so some games may only play at resolutions such as 1280x1024 and 1024x768.

This is alot of information, but should provide you with a wealth of starting points for getting the full value out of your 3D-DLP

the company I am with is about to launch an awesome line of 3D-Ready Desktop PCs and 3D-Ready HTPCs.

make sure to get some quality eyewear!