Synch dongle for PC allows use of many new TV's for 3D - Blu-ray Forum

globalimages2 · 09-19-2024, 12:23 AM

There are a couple of just-out-of-beta-testing devices, USB-A bluetooth "dongles", that will allow many of the shutter glasses in the market to synch with the playback on windows pc's to fast-refresh-rate modern TV's.

This means that many TV models from the last few years capable of "true" 120hz refresh rate or above, especially many OLED models, could be used to display 3D films with reasonable (very low) flicker, with results in many cases similar or better than old "active" 3D TV sets (i.e. Samsungs) or even similar to the experience in many movie theaters (i.e. RealD 144hz modulators, in spite of use of "passive" glasses, the "screen" itself "flickers" at 72hz per eye).

Some TV sets, "LED" (LCD) tv's or less likely OLEDs, might have some issues with many shutter glasses due to polarization conflicts, so just beware that your TV, in spite of being 120hz capable, might not work "correctly" (be much too dark or have one of the eyes "blank") with some or even "all" of the available shutter glasses. This shouldn't be very common, though.

When I receive mine, hopefully in a week or two, I'll post the results on how well it works and more details.

The "system", the USB dongle, drivers and software player, only works on PC's/Laptops running windows 10 or 11. Also, the graphics system must be capable of output to HDMI 1080p/120hz or above to really be useful.

It won't playback blu-ray's directly, so blu-rays would have to be first converted to something compatible with the player(s) software under windows, and mostly only works with TV's capable of true 120hz input/refresh rate or higher and certain (many, actually) types of 3D active shutter-glasses (RF, DPLink, IR, BT3D), as long as the glasses are fast enough to support the desired refresh rates. You might need a USB male-female extension cable to place the USB dongle correctly for your glasses.

It will also work with some combinations of PC's and older TV's, but the flicker and/or ghosting in those cases is probably going to be problematic, so it's not a good universal solution.

It's probably not going to be for everyone as a certain proficiency with windows computers will be necessary to install and adjust the drivers to properly synch with the glasses, but it may be a good solution for finally watching 3D content in full-color on many available modern TV's and not need to rely on projectors or VR goggles exclusively.

The dongle is around $80, and compatible 3D glasses can often be found for well under $30, so at least it's not an expensive option if you already own a fast-refresh-rate TV set and a half-way-decent windows PC or laptop that supports at least 1080p/120hz output over HDMI. There is a more limited, cheaper, similar sync-dongle product for $40, but limited to one model of glasses and possibly much more limited in the number of cases it will work properly.

Please note that at this moment some of the products have just finished development and are not a universal solution for all hardware cases. If you are planning on returning the product if it doesn't work for your use, I suggest you better wait a bit until it's more tested and developed so you can be more sure it would likely work for your case.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a small "one man" operation and it's better not to purchase the products if you are not sure what you are getting into and are not willing to take the risk of ending with a purchase that doesn't work for your case and would like to return it in that situation.

But if you are tech savvy, know what you're getting/doing, think it's likely it will work for you and are willing to bite the bullet if it doesn't or resell it to someone with a compatible setup, well what else can I say.

I have a production unit on its way and hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll start seeing more reports on how well it works in different hardware configurations on the support group.

The page of the developer is

https://en.gradient-sg.com/

Hopefully some of us might at last be able to get a good 3D viewing experience in a good choice of current and future TV sets.

**Please note that I don't endorse anyone and haven't tested the product personally, so take it with healthy dose of skepticism and proceed at your own risk. The wise choice might be to wait until reviews of the product show up etc. As I said, the products have just been out of development and advertised as finally available only days ago.

mattmarsden · 09-27-2024, 03:10 PM

Thanks for the info - do you know when its going to arrive? I wonder what video playback programs will support it? I would love to use it with Kodi.

TripleHBK · 09-29-2024, 03:52 PM

This is very intriguing. It's unfortunate that Blu Ray Discs themselves won't be supported directly (though understandable given licensing fee's) but the concept, if it works as advertised, could be fantastic for 3D content going forward. Bee Link and several other mini pc brands have mini pc's affordable at sub $300 prices that would easily be able to provide the horsepower to make this work and when combined with a Kodi/Jellyfin/Plex client could make for an effective media player solution that doesn't feel too cumbersome. I'll be interested to hear your impressions of it once you've had a chance to play around with it.

globalimages2 · 09-29-2024, 09:22 PM

Well, due to life matters to attend to, I have only been able to test this thing for some 10mins. All I can say at this point is that I received a pair of glasses and the synch module (USB dongle) as advertised from that developer and in a timely manner. Packing was sparse, but it survived the trip. The dongle and glasses seem to power up and look ok. Glasses were smaller than I imagine, dongle looks exactly as advertised.

Now as I said I was only able to spend a few minutes with this and, as expected, wasn't able to get it to work "as I needed" in that very short amount of time. Only had time to scratch my head as to if the glasses needed battery charging first or be permanently plugged into a USB port or what (glasses uses micro-usb cable, not included, is NOT USB-c). Then the software player wasn't as intuitive as I hoped, I guess, and also not 100% bug free (click mouse to display menu, might have issues with scaling if not set to 100%, crashed one time out of some 7 tries), but after getting used to it I was able to apparently playback a side-by-side ("half" resolution HSBS, 24fps) film at apparently 120hz frame sequential (and "unstreched"). Not sure if I got audio output or not, possibly not, but wasn't checking that on my improvised setup of windows 10 with nvidia 3060 (latest regular drivers) to output 120hz 1080p into a media AV receiver (DENON) and then to a Samsung S95B oled tv. The film seem to "flicker" fine in frame-sequential 3D from the player, the glasses didn't seem to always work (battery empty??, needs pointing or closer to dongle???, not sure, only got to try it twice for like 1min each time), a few times the glasses did synch to something (started to flicker for a minute), I don't think they were always detected by the PC (technically by the driver or the player). The player did detect the dongle 100% fine. In any case, there wasn't any successful synch to the film out-of-the-box from the glasses. This, remember, is expected, once everything is "working" and detected one must adjust the parameters in the player/driver to manually make the synch signal turn each eye in the glasses on-and-off at the correct time and then adjust the blanking period to rid of any ghosting (by sacrificing brightness).

Anyway, this is all I was able to test at the time. I'll have more time to test again tomorrow, lots of things I would still need to try, lots of Nvidia settings that might affect the result, also perhaps the glasses needed battery charging first, etc etc. I just literally just had time to plug in and fiddle with the software player.

Sorry for this totally inadequate "first impression", I just wanted to let you guys know that at least I have received the ordered items, and it looks "potentially as advertised" but as expected not "trouble free just plug and play" but some tinkering and setup might be needed in many cases probably.

I'll give it a much proper try tomorrow and report if I can get it to work with my setup.

globalimages2 · 09-30-2024, 10:58 PM

Ok, today I had about 1h to play with this and have a better grasp of things.

Most important conclusion is that this is not a finished developed product at all but still in the work-in-progress category. The problems are many, varied and of all sorts to bother listing at this point, so you should consider this as a non-working, unfinished product, and my OPINION is that it will remain this way for at least 1 month, possibly 2 or 3 before it starts working "ok" for many cases, but probably still not fully debugged.

So my advice is to kind-of just forget-about-it and check back once or twice a month to see how development is advancing and see at what point it MIGHT work for your intended usage.

Like I said, there are so many issues and problems with the product(s) that there is no point trying to list them all, with the developer promising to address the most important ones in a weekly basis so perhaps, in my OPINION, in 3-4 weeks it might be worth it to post a more detail report on what works and what not.

At this point I can say that the product is "real", the firmware on the emitter updates, I got it to "work" once and the driver indeed changes the blanking interval in the glasses and the offset of the sync-sequence so in theory in should work.

But the player crashes with most content, the sound is not compatible with many formats, the playback speed is often not correct (i.e. a 24pfs film is running at ~1.3x speed), it doesn't support full-screen output (only windowed ATM) etc

The glasses I was shipped has an older firmware on it (1.2, properly detected by the update tool) but I don't have the newer versions, the developer did promptly answered my request saying to hold off for a few days as he was readying an even newer one and would make it available very soon. Also, I have serious doubts my set of glasses hold battery charge (i.e. pbbly has "bad/expired" rechargeable batteries).

I tried with Samsung glasses ssg-2100ab and ssg 2100T/XC, but w/o success. Also didn't work with some random EPSON glasses I had (not expected, those are specifically not supported) nor with a random chinese DLPlink ones, which also seem to have "bad batteries", so anyways ... Most of my other active glasses are in storage and/or probably no longer working or are wired models, so at this moment I can't really test more.

So the product is "legit" as that, when it works, it does what it says: controls the sync of some active 3d glasses in a way that can be controlled by a software player (offset, blanking interval of each individual lens) so in theory it should be able to provide 3d playback on fast refresh rate displays. But at this point, this is all I've been able to accomplish and have not gotten any successful 3D viewing experience out of it.

Whenever I get my promised soon-to-be-released firmware update for the glasses I'll report again. The firmware for both the bluetooth and main microcontroller in the dongle-emitter were successfully updated to a just a few days old released version.

If I understood correctly what the developer said in his (again, quick) reply for support that I made, the highest chances of success as this moment would be with Nvidia IR glasses, but I don't think I have any of those to test.

So:
-Software player: development unfinished, not compatible with many audio formats (would have to have the audio converted first). Also, not properly keeping playback speed. No full-screen mode. Needs lots of development work, possibly months.
-Driver: seems "fine" and working well enough and solid enough.
-Glasses: seem behind in development, buggy, questionable batteries. Update seems to be coming soon.
-IR (infrared) compatibility with other glasses: haven't been able to properly test due to lack of "confirmed-working-order" compatible glasses, but whatever I have been able to test (Samsung), didn't work at all for me.

I'll keep you guys posted whenever I get any updates but not planning on spending too much time with this until then.

globalimages2 · 10-01-2024, 04:06 AM

Another quick update to report that I randomly got the glasses to work again through a direct USB connection to the computer (they can sync just by a direct USB cable as well as through bluetooth) and again the drivers settings could be changed (offset and blanking) correctly and I even got to, finally, watch several minutes of 3D content "properly", that is, in 3D, without ghosting and low flicker, but in this particular test without sound and with the film "sped up" by some 1.3x and with the glasses tethered by USB cable to the computer.

But then I fiddled more with the settings and both lenses got permanently dark and it took quite some effort to get them to switch off (transparent again) and once again haven't been able to get them to work pretty much at all, which has been the norm basically. So I either got shipped a defective pair of glasses, or indeed the much older firmware I got the glasses shipped with (1.2, current is 1.4) hangs constantly when interacting with the 1.4 firmware in the computer "drivers", as the developer told me was likely the cause and just wait a few days for the new glasses firmware.

A few times they just randomly "worked" but only twice I've had them working long enough to test the settings, once through bluetooth and once with direct USB cable connection, and they seem to work properly.

Certain things on the "driver" never fail, like it performs LED tests on both the emitter and the glasses just fine, and also the "lens test" on the glasses has always worked (gets them to "flicker" at about 60hz as a test). The glasses themselves seem to have been manufactured in 2017.

Anyway, just letting people know that, if you happen to have a pair of glasses that work properly and is a supported model, you might be able to get 3D out of the 3Demitter working as intended. Playing back your favorite media is another issue, I've only tried some random 4 or 5 files (SBS and O/U) but all have failed except one (HSBS, 23.97fps, stereo AAC 48khz, 32bits sound won't play, mp4 container) which plays "fine" but fast and without audio.

Also, if you get an unit, do not update firmwares without consulting me or the developer first, as the instructions given in the webpage are not 100% properly explained and there might be a "catch".

globalimages2 · 10-01-2024, 05:35 AM

And one more update to happily report that I've been able to get it to work synching the glasses through the USB cable more consistently (still not 100%, seems after it's turned on wired mode, only way to turn it back off is through a command on the driver interface) and the glasses keeps the sync quite nicely by themselves once unplugged, at least for the aprox 10 mins of 3D viewing I did with the free version of StereoscopicPlayer which plays audio and video perfectly fine https://www.3dtv.at/Index_en.aspx

So I was able to watch proper 3D, for 10mins at least, with no ghosting, tough I used the darkest longest black-out setting rather than fiddle much with the offset since I'm not sure the buttons on the glasses are working and the USB interface makes it hard to watch the film and change settings at the same time.

So 1080p, 120hz frame sequential on a ~1 year old Samsung S95B 55" display with a PC with win10 and an Nvidia 3060 card over HDMI (through a DENON a/v receiver).

On the other side, the 3demitter dongle has no longer ever recognized the glasses since it had the firmware updated through bluetooth. And even before it was spotty and random that it would connect to the glasses.

So the 3D glasses CAN work, it's just that in my case it's a total mess, could be due to old firmware, which hopefully will get a promised update this week, or bad battery or something else.

The dongle CAN work, but I don't really have proper working supported glasses to verify this fully, but it did manage to change the settings on the glasses at least once wirelessly, so in theory it should be able to work as well.

The software player is really not up to the task, but since the glasses/dongle allow for changing the offset of the glasses' sync and the blanking intervals, seems at the very least should work with other software players, at least the ones using OpenGL for the rendering (tested with Stereoscopic Player, 10 mins of fine 3D with picture and sound from the movie Hugo).

So still a work in progress system, but certainly one that can likely work.

mattmarsden · 10-21-2024, 06:20 PM

Can you tell me what settings you used in Stereoscopic player to get it working? The only option I see is that might work is quadbuffered OpenGL but I dont think that works with most graphics cards - mines an Nvidia 4070. Thanks

globalimages2 · 10-21-2024, 10:04 PM

I don't recall exactly; it was something called something like "simulated opengl quad-buffering". I used a Nvidia 3060 which also doesn't support the hardware quad-buffering in the drivers. Also, the glasses were sync-ed at that time by USB cable, rather than by blue-tooth or IR.

I still don't have IR glasses that work, though I expect to receive some very soon and also the developer is working on support for some Samsungs that I already have.

I also found out the source of most of my problems with the system, and it had to do with the extreme short range that the blue-tooth was communicating (successfully) with the glasses ... I had to use a USB extension cable and place the emitter within 1m! (yes, like only 3feet) away from me/the glasses to get it to work well consistently. Don't know the real problem yet, I think my only pair of working glasses has bad reception (rather than the dongle having bad transmission), or maybe there's too much interference from other electronics in my area (I do have several blue-tooth devices), but basically the system is still buggy enough for me to wait further development, which BTW is happening fairly fast (2 newer firmware releases for the glasses since I received them).

Haven't been able to do any more tests for the past weeks though.

mattmarsden · 10-22-2024, 08:21 AM

Can you tell me what format file you were using in Stereoscopic player - was it mvc or SBS?

mattmarsden · 10-22-2024, 08:57 AM

Also I don't have a 'simulated' opengl quad-buffering setting just a opengl quad-buffering setting, not sure why I can't get it to work.

globalimages2 · 10-22-2024, 11:50 AM

It was SBS ... viewing method was "Software pageflipping", at somepoint it asked that it couldn't do hardware opengl quad-buffering and that I could use a simulated software method.

I was also using the S3D player to access the emitter/glasses settings to turn them on and adjust the timing and then switching to the stereoscopic player to actually play the content.

I only did this as a test for some minutes, but the result was a proper 3D view, though in my case fairly dark (I set the closed timing interval in the glasses to the minimum so I wouldn't have to fine tune the timing too much). Also, in the Nvidia drivers I set vertical sync to on. Also enabled triple buffering, but this should pbbly only improve performance for DirectX software, I think, and not sure what StereoscopicPlayer uses for pageflipping.

In case anyone is trying their own similar syncing solutions with other hardware etc and this is of any help https://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood...nal11/rsomers/

mattmarsden · 10-23-2024, 01:20 PM

OK interesting - I can't immediately see in the S3D software how to just turn the glasses on - is there a setting somewhere?

Krobar · 11-01-2024, 10:11 AM

If you use Stereoscopic Player with these will it work with MVC MKVs? Anyone tried it with OLED TVs? (The web page mainly talks about monitors)

Krobar · 11-23-2024, 06:47 AM

I got the glasses earlier in the week. So far no 3d but the glasses are detecting and switching and adjust from the app so it might be to do with my display.

Installing the driver with nothing connected by right clicking the inf file and clicking install worked for me.
It took a couple of goes to get the DFU utility to work. Mine came with Firmware 1.3
After programming the Oct 30th 2024 firmware file it now shows firmware version 1.4
Downloaded the S3d app, I had to rename pthreadvc2.dll to pthread.dll to make it start.

09-19-2024, 12:23 AM	#1
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	Synch dongle for PC allows use of many new TV's for 3D There are a couple of just-out-of-beta-testing devices, USB-A bluetooth "dongles", that will allow many of the shutter glasses in the market to synch with the playback on windows pc's to fast-refresh-rate modern TV's. This means that many TV models from the last few years capable of "true" 120hz refresh rate or above, especially many OLED models, could be used to display 3D films with reasonable (very low) flicker, with results in many cases similar or better than old "active" 3D TV sets (i.e. Samsungs) or even similar to the experience in many movie theaters (i.e. RealD 144hz modulators, in spite of use of "passive" glasses, the "screen" itself "flickers" at 72hz per eye). Some TV sets, "LED" (LCD) tv's or less likely OLEDs, might have some issues with many shutter glasses due to polarization conflicts, so just beware that your TV, in spite of being 120hz capable, might not work "correctly" (be much too dark or have one of the eyes "blank") with some or even "all" of the available shutter glasses. This shouldn't be very common, though. When I receive mine, hopefully in a week or two, I'll post the results on how well it works and more details. The "system", the USB dongle, drivers and software player, only works on PC's/Laptops running windows 10 or 11. Also, the graphics system must be capable of output to HDMI 1080p/120hz or above to really be useful. It won't playback blu-ray's directly, so blu-rays would have to be first converted to something compatible with the player(s) software under windows, and mostly only works with TV's capable of true 120hz input/refresh rate or higher and certain (many, actually) types of 3D active shutter-glasses (RF, DPLink, IR, BT3D), as long as the glasses are fast enough to support the desired refresh rates. You might need a USB male-female extension cable to place the USB dongle correctly for your glasses. It will also work with some combinations of PC's and older TV's, but the flicker and/or ghosting in those cases is probably going to be problematic, so it's not a good universal solution. It's probably not going to be for everyone as a certain proficiency with windows computers will be necessary to install and adjust the drivers to properly synch with the glasses, but it may be a good solution for finally watching 3D content in full-color on many available modern TV's and not need to rely on projectors or VR goggles exclusively. The dongle is around $80, and compatible 3D glasses can often be found for well under $30, so at least it's not an expensive option if you already own a fast-refresh-rate TV set and a half-way-decent windows PC or laptop that supports at least 1080p/120hz output over HDMI. There is a more limited, cheaper, similar sync-dongle product for $40, but limited to one model of glasses and possibly much more limited in the number of cases it will work properly. Please note that at this moment some of the products have just finished development and are not a universal solution for all hardware cases. If you are planning on returning the product if it doesn't work for your use, I suggest you better wait a bit until it's more tested and developed so you can be more sure it would likely work for your case. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a small "one man" operation and it's better not to purchase the products if you are not sure what you are getting into and are not willing to take the risk of ending with a purchase that doesn't work for your case and would like to return it in that situation. But if you are tech savvy, know what you're getting/doing, think it's likely it will work for you and are willing to bite the bullet if it doesn't or resell it to someone with a compatible setup, well what else can I say. I have a production unit on its way and hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll start seeing more reports on how well it works in different hardware configurations on the support group. The page of the developer is https://en.gradient-sg.com/ Hopefully some of us might at last be able to get a good 3D viewing experience in a good choice of current and future TV sets. *Please note that I don't endorse anyone and haven't tested the product personally, so take it with healthy dose of skepticism and proceed at your own risk. The wise choice might be to wait until reviews of the product show up etc. As I said, the products have just been out of development and advertised as finally available only days ago. Last edited by globalimages2; 09-19-2024 at 02:38 AM.*

09-30-2024, 10:58 PM	#5
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	Ok, today I had about 1h to play with this and have a better grasp of things. Most important conclusion is that this is not a finished developed product at all but still in the work-in-progress category. The problems are many, varied and of all sorts to bother listing at this point, so you should consider this as a non-working, unfinished product, and my OPINION is that it will remain this way for at least 1 month, possibly 2 or 3 before it starts working "ok" for many cases, but probably still not fully debugged. So my advice is to kind-of just forget-about-it and check back once or twice a month to see how development is advancing and see at what point it MIGHT work for your intended usage. Like I said, there are so many issues and problems with the product(s) that there is no point trying to list them all, with the developer promising to address the most important ones in a weekly basis so perhaps, in my OPINION, in 3-4 weeks it might be worth it to post a more detail report on what works and what not. At this point I can say that the product is "real", the firmware on the emitter updates, I got it to "work" once and the driver indeed changes the blanking interval in the glasses and the offset of the sync-sequence so in theory in should work. But the player crashes with most content, the sound is not compatible with many formats, the playback speed is often not correct (i.e. a 24pfs film is running at ~1.3x speed), it doesn't support full-screen output (only windowed ATM) etc The glasses I was shipped has an older firmware on it (1.2, properly detected by the update tool) but I don't have the newer versions, the developer did promptly answered my request saying to hold off for a few days as he was readying an even newer one and would make it available very soon. Also, I have serious doubts my set of glasses hold battery charge (i.e. pbbly has "bad/expired" rechargeable batteries). I tried with Samsung glasses ssg-2100ab and ssg 2100T/XC, but w/o success. Also didn't work with some random EPSON glasses I had (not expected, those are specifically not supported) nor with a random chinese DLPlink ones, which also seem to have "bad batteries", so anyways ... Most of my other active glasses are in storage and/or probably no longer working or are wired models, so at this moment I can't really test more. So the product is "legit" as that, when it works, it does what it says: controls the sync of some active 3d glasses in a way that can be controlled by a software player (offset, blanking interval of each individual lens) so in theory it should be able to provide 3d playback on fast refresh rate displays. But at this point, this is all I've been able to accomplish and have not gotten any successful 3D viewing experience out of it. Whenever I get my promised soon-to-be-released firmware update for the glasses I'll report again. The firmware for both the bluetooth and main microcontroller in the dongle-emitter were successfully updated to a just a few days old released version. If I understood correctly what the developer said in his (again, quick) reply for support that I made, the highest chances of success as this moment would be with Nvidia IR glasses, but I don't think I have any of those to test. So: -Software player: development unfinished, not compatible with many audio formats (would have to have the audio converted first). Also, not properly keeping playback speed. No full-screen mode. Needs lots of development work, possibly months. -Driver: seems "fine" and working well enough and solid enough. -Glasses: seem behind in development, buggy, questionable batteries. Update seems to be coming soon. -IR (infrared) compatibility with other glasses: haven't been able to properly test due to lack of "confirmed-working-order" compatible glasses, but whatever I have been able to test (Samsung), didn't work at all for me. I'll keep you guys posted whenever I get any updates but not planning on spending too much time with this until then. Last edited by globalimages2; 10-01-2024 at 04:09 AM.

10-22-2024, 11:50 AM	#12
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	It was SBS ... viewing method was "Software pageflipping", at somepoint it asked that it couldn't do hardware opengl quad-buffering and that I could use a simulated software method. I was also using the S3D player to access the emitter/glasses settings to turn them on and adjust the timing and then switching to the stereoscopic player to actually play the content. I only did this as a test for some minutes, but the result was a proper 3D view, though in my case fairly dark (I set the closed timing interval in the glasses to the minimum so I wouldn't have to fine tune the timing too much). Also, in the Nvidia drivers I set vertical sync to on. Also enabled triple buffering, but this should pbbly only improve performance for DirectX software, I think, and not sure what StereoscopicPlayer uses for pageflipping. In case anyone is trying their own similar syncing solutions with other hardware etc and this is of any help https://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood...nal11/rsomers/ Last edited by globalimages2; 10-22-2024 at 11:57 AM.

09-27-2024, 03:10 PM	#2
mattmarsden Junior Member Member since:Feb 2023	Thanks for the info - do you know when its going to arrive? I wonder what video playback programs will support it? I would love to use it with Kodi.

09-29-2024, 03:52 PM	#3
TripleHBK Blu-ray Duke Top contributor Member since:Aug 2012 Location:Lincoln, NE Home Theater Gallery:52 4K collection:249 Blu-ray collection:3649 DVD collection:742 Blu-ray reviews: 17 Trading Score:47	This is very intriguing. It's unfortunate that Blu Ray Discs themselves won't be supported directly (though understandable given licensing fee's) but the concept, if it works as advertised, could be fantastic for 3D content going forward. Bee Link and several other mini pc brands have mini pc's affordable at sub $300 prices that would easily be able to provide the horsepower to make this work and when combined with a Kodi/Jellyfin/Plex client could make for an effective media player solution that doesn't feel too cumbersome. I'll be interested to hear your impressions of it once you've had a chance to play around with it.

09-29-2024, 09:22 PM	#4
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	Well, due to life matters to attend to, I have only been able to test this thing for some 10mins. All I can say at this point is that I received a pair of glasses and the synch module (USB dongle) as advertised from that developer and in a timely manner. Packing was sparse, but it survived the trip. The dongle and glasses seem to power up and look ok. Glasses were smaller than I imagine, dongle looks exactly as advertised. Now as I said I was only able to spend a few minutes with this and, as expected, wasn't able to get it to work "as I needed" in that very short amount of time. Only had time to scratch my head as to if the glasses needed battery charging first or be permanently plugged into a USB port or what (glasses uses micro-usb cable, not included, is NOT USB-c). Then the software player wasn't as intuitive as I hoped, I guess, and also not 100% bug free (click mouse to display menu, might have issues with scaling if not set to 100%, crashed one time out of some 7 tries), but after getting used to it I was able to apparently playback a side-by-side ("half" resolution HSBS, 24fps) film at apparently 120hz frame sequential (and "unstreched"). Not sure if I got audio output or not, possibly not, but wasn't checking that on my improvised setup of windows 10 with nvidia 3060 (latest regular drivers) to output 120hz 1080p into a media AV receiver (DENON) and then to a Samsung S95B oled tv. The film seem to "flicker" fine in frame-sequential 3D from the player, the glasses didn't seem to always work (battery empty??, needs pointing or closer to dongle???, not sure, only got to try it twice for like 1min each time), a few times the glasses did synch to something (started to flicker for a minute), I don't think they were always detected by the PC (technically by the driver or the player). The player did detect the dongle 100% fine. In any case, there wasn't any successful synch to the film out-of-the-box from the glasses. This, remember, is expected, once everything is "working" and detected one must adjust the parameters in the player/driver to manually make the synch signal turn each eye in the glasses on-and-off at the correct time and then adjust the blanking period to rid of any ghosting (by sacrificing brightness). Anyway, this is all I was able to test at the time. I'll have more time to test again tomorrow, lots of things I would still need to try, lots of Nvidia settings that might affect the result, also perhaps the glasses needed battery charging first, etc etc. I just literally just had time to plug in and fiddle with the software player. Sorry for this totally inadequate "first impression", I just wanted to let you guys know that at least I have received the ordered items, and it looks "potentially as advertised" but as expected not "trouble free just plug and play" but some tinkering and setup might be needed in many cases probably. I'll give it a much proper try tomorrow and report if I can get it to work with my setup.

10-01-2024, 04:06 AM	#6
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	Another quick update to report that I randomly got the glasses to work again through a direct USB connection to the computer (they can sync just by a direct USB cable as well as through bluetooth) and again the drivers settings could be changed (offset and blanking) correctly and I even got to, finally, watch several minutes of 3D content "properly", that is, in 3D, without ghosting and low flicker, but in this particular test without sound and with the film "sped up" by some 1.3x and with the glasses tethered by USB cable to the computer. But then I fiddled more with the settings and both lenses got permanently dark and it took quite some effort to get them to switch off (transparent again) and once again haven't been able to get them to work pretty much at all, which has been the norm basically. So I either got shipped a defective pair of glasses, or indeed the much older firmware I got the glasses shipped with (1.2, current is 1.4) hangs constantly when interacting with the 1.4 firmware in the computer "drivers", as the developer told me was likely the cause and just wait a few days for the new glasses firmware. A few times they just randomly "worked" but only twice I've had them working long enough to test the settings, once through bluetooth and once with direct USB cable connection, and they seem to work properly. Certain things on the "driver" never fail, like it performs LED tests on both the emitter and the glasses just fine, and also the "lens test" on the glasses has always worked (gets them to "flicker" at about 60hz as a test). The glasses themselves seem to have been manufactured in 2017. Anyway, just letting people know that, if you happen to have a pair of glasses that work properly and is a supported model, you might be able to get 3D out of the 3Demitter working as intended. Playing back your favorite media is another issue, I've only tried some random 4 or 5 files (SBS and O/U) but all have failed except one (HSBS, 23.97fps, stereo AAC 48khz, 32bits sound won't play, mp4 container) which plays "fine" but fast and without audio. Also, if you get an unit, do not update firmwares without consulting me or the developer first, as the instructions given in the webpage are not 100% properly explained and there might be a "catch".

10-01-2024, 05:35 AM	#7
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	And one more update to happily report that I've been able to get it to work synching the glasses through the USB cable more consistently (still not 100%, seems after it's turned on wired mode, only way to turn it back off is through a command on the driver interface) and the glasses keeps the sync quite nicely by themselves once unplugged, at least for the aprox 10 mins of 3D viewing I did with the free version of StereoscopicPlayer which plays audio and video perfectly fine https://www.3dtv.at/Index_en.aspx So I was able to watch proper 3D, for 10mins at least, with no ghosting, tough I used the darkest longest black-out setting rather than fiddle much with the offset since I'm not sure the buttons on the glasses are working and the USB interface makes it hard to watch the film and change settings at the same time. So 1080p, 120hz frame sequential on a ~1 year old Samsung S95B 55" display with a PC with win10 and an Nvidia 3060 card over HDMI (through a DENON a/v receiver). On the other side, the 3demitter dongle has no longer ever recognized the glasses since it had the firmware updated through bluetooth. And even before it was spotty and random that it would connect to the glasses. So the 3D glasses CAN work, it's just that in my case it's a total mess, could be due to old firmware, which hopefully will get a promised update this week, or bad battery or something else. The dongle CAN work, but I don't really have proper working supported glasses to verify this fully, but it did manage to change the settings on the glasses at least once wirelessly, so in theory it should be able to work as well. The software player is really not up to the task, but since the glasses/dongle allow for changing the offset of the glasses' sync and the blanking intervals, seems at the very least should work with other software players, at least the ones using OpenGL for the rendering (tested with Stereoscopic Player, 10 mins of fine 3D with picture and sound from the movie Hugo). So still a work in progress system, but certainly one that can likely work.

10-21-2024, 06:20 PM	#8
mattmarsden Junior Member Member since:Feb 2023	Can you tell me what settings you used in Stereoscopic player to get it working? The only option I see is that might work is quadbuffered OpenGL but I dont think that works with most graphics cards - mines an Nvidia 4070. Thanks

10-21-2024, 10:04 PM	#9
globalimages2 Active Member Member since:Apr 2022 Trading Score:1	I don't recall exactly; it was something called something like "simulated opengl quad-buffering". I used a Nvidia 3060 which also doesn't support the hardware quad-buffering in the drivers. Also, the glasses were sync-ed at that time by USB cable, rather than by blue-tooth or IR. I still don't have IR glasses that work, though I expect to receive some very soon and also the developer is working on support for some Samsungs that I already have. I also found out the source of most of my problems with the system, and it had to do with the extreme short range that the blue-tooth was communicating (successfully) with the glasses ... I had to use a USB extension cable and place the emitter within 1m! (yes, like only 3feet) away from me/the glasses to get it to work well consistently. Don't know the real problem yet, I think my only pair of working glasses has bad reception (rather than the dongle having bad transmission), or maybe there's too much interference from other electronics in my area (I do have several blue-tooth devices), but basically the system is still buggy enough for me to wait further development, which BTW is happening fairly fast (2 newer firmware releases for the glasses since I received them). Haven't been able to do any more tests for the past weeks though.

10-22-2024, 08:21 AM	#10
mattmarsden Junior Member Member since:Feb 2023	Can you tell me what format file you were using in Stereoscopic player - was it mvc or SBS?

10-22-2024, 08:57 AM	#11
mattmarsden Junior Member Member since:Feb 2023	Also I don't have a 'simulated' opengl quad-buffering setting just a opengl quad-buffering setting, not sure why I can't get it to work.

10-23-2024, 01:20 PM	#13
mattmarsden Junior Member Member since:Feb 2023	OK interesting - I can't immediately see in the S3D software how to just turn the glasses on - is there a setting somewhere?

11-01-2024, 10:11 AM	#14
Krobar Member Top contributor Member since:Aug 2020	If you use Stereoscopic Player with these will it work with MVC MKVs? Anyone tried it with OLED TVs? (The web page mainly talks about monitors)

11-23-2024, 06:47 AM	#15
Krobar Member Top contributor Member since:Aug 2020	I got the glasses earlier in the week. So far no 3d but the glasses are detecting and switching and adjust from the app so it might be to do with my display. Installing the driver with nothing connected by right clicking the inf file and clicking install worked for me. It took a couple of goes to get the DFU utility to work. Mine came with Firmware 1.3 After programming the Oct 30th 2024 firmware file it now shows firmware version 1.4 Downloaded the S3d app, I had to rename pthreadvc2.dll to pthread.dll to make it start.

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