Has anyone used 2D to 3D video converter boxes or TVs? What about to view 3D on regular HDTV?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are a few products on amazon that are converter boxes which claim when hooked up to a regular HDTV will allow you to watch 3D movies (provided you have a 3D blu ray player obviously) even if your TV isn’t 3D. they also claim to upconvert 2D movies to 3D.

I know there are TVs that claim to upconvert 2D to 3D, does anyone have experience either with the TVs or these converter boxes to describe 2D to 3D?

What about the boxes to watch regular 3D in a TV not originally designed for 3D? Any experience with that?

2

I have an LG 3DTV (basic model 55") that has 3D “upconversion” from 2D sources.

It seems primarily to work by assuming that blurry objects are background, sharper objects are closer to the camera. Not sure if it does any calculation based on movement/motion. I think it might. I’ve never tried it to view still pictures (I’d try it right now, but I’ve got to get ready for work, and don’t want to futz with thumb drives and such.)

Nature films/documentaries and action films work quite well with the upconversion. I tried it the other night on an OTA show featuring guys on a boat doing something nature-y, and I’d have been hard-pressed to guess that this was converted, not native 3D. Shots of the crew on the boat were good, there was a natural sense of depth, and mountains in the distance looked properly distant. A throwaway shot of the side of the boat was very good; the ripples in the water stretched off convincingly into the distance. The entire show was presented very well. Similarly for action films. I’ve watched a few 2D films, switched to 3D, and found the presentation to look pretty good.

Other stuff, though, gets bizarre. I watched a cable commercial where a couple of people were sitting on a couch, addressing the viewer. Not much motion in the scene, and nothing in the foreground or background to give the image a sense of depth. As an example, the woman in the commercial was wearing a red v-neck shirt; the TV treated her head and the triangular cleavage as a separate object which appeared to float in front and be disconnected from the red shirt in the background. It’s amusing for a bit to watch news broadcasts this way. Many news shows have a fuzzy background, so the TV creates a depth-filled image… if you don’t mind the anchor’s tie looming menacingly in front of his body.

No experience with the boxes you mentioned. With a 3D source, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be serviceable. I’d mostly be concerned about noticeable flicker when viewing 3D content. The specs on the first box states that it outputs at 60 hz, which means 30 hz to each eye. The minimum specs for actual 3DTVs is 120 hz, or 60hz to each eye. Don’t know if it’d be noticeable enough to cause headaches or anything, but I know motion looks a lot smoother on 240 hz 3DTVs over the 120 hz ones. But, these boxes look cheap enough that it’s not a big loss to take a gamble, and I wouldn’t mind picking one up for the 2D TV in my bedroom so that I don’t always have to be in the living room to watch stuff.

3

I see that at least some of them use the red/blue glasses method, so it is color differentiated not time so the it is still 60 hz to each eye. That even works on old CRT TV’s and a few programs/movies were broadcast in 3D before HDTV was invented. The effect is OK, but nowhere as good as some other methods, and colors are distorted by the lenses, and it seemed to me to show everything ‘behind’ the screen, like it’s all in a fish tank, in terms of depth. Nothing appeared to come ‘out’ of the TV like you can have with other methods, at least that has been my experience.
I also notice of all the brands listed there, none is a name brand. I would expect if it really works well to see major names making them.

4

There are name brand 2D to 3D converters like Sony, Panasonic and Samsung, but they are blu ray players not stand alone converter boxes.

they also cost 2-4x more than the converter box w/o a 3D blu ray player (the person I am thinking of buying this for uses a PS3 so they don’t need a 3d blu ray player).

5

I have no experience with these converter boxes and I’d be very leery of them if they are not name brand and CHECK THE REVIEWS of course.

I do have a 3D tv that does the upscaling, and it’s typically pretty good for movies and such. Regular TV ends up doing some very bizarre things. Video games are hit and miss but the results can be kind of cool, like menus pop out and HUD pops out.

Overall, the upscaling works when it’s built into the TV most of the time, but I don’t know anything about these converter boxes.

6

[alert]Totally different [/alert]

Wait a minute those things are full 3D Blue ray players that are made to send to a 3D HDTV. They have a capability of using a 2d source and trying to make 3d out of it.

This is very different then these converters which try to turn your 2D HDTV into 3D.

7

Yeah you’re right, I got confused.

8

I am using a video converter that support to 2D to 3D, and the output video quality is good which can be played on my 3D TV well. But I am not sure if your TV do not support 3D can have the 3D effect. If you want to enjoy the 3D effect at home, you’d better have a 3D TV.

10

Reported

11

I am using an Iomega 2D to 3D converter box. I have used it for converting various clips to stereo side by side video which I then record with a Hauppauge HD PVR Pro. When it works, it works extremely well. Especially since I jury rigged various connectors to get it down (blu-ray player to 2D to 3D converter box, to HDMI to component converter to the HD PVR Pro…) I have tried viewing the conversion on my 3D laptop using 3D Vision, and it looks ok, but the active shutter glasses make the video too dark. On the other hand, I can view the same video clip using SimpleVR through SteamVR on my HTC Vive, and it looks perfect/brilliant.

I converted several movies that predate the new 3D wave of films that use the RealD Glasses… And some of them came out spectacular. Like they were made for 3D. I also converted a few clips from sci-fi TV shows and some animation, and get mixed results, but when it pops, it really looks great.

Now for the downside… They give you a power supply with a 4 foot cord. And even better, its a real stiff type of sheathing they use. The DC connector that goes into the box barely seems to fit right. Any type of movement of the box will either power it down, or reset it. At first glance, the units is a solid metal box unit. But that power supply makes it a pain to work with. I am probably going to find a better one for that box.

Another issue is occasionally you can see that that until you reset the box a few times, sometimes the video will drop some frames. This has caused some recording issues with my HD PVR Pro. It looks like its recording for the entirety of the film, but cuts off after a scene or two. I strongly suspect that this frame drop issue is at least partly to blame.

Another issue that I have to experiment more with, is that it seems like sometimes when there is a scene change, or sudden fast motion, the box will start freezing frames. And I think that is also partially to blame for the recording issues.

In short, when it works, its pretty awesome. And it even works well for decent quality DVD level videos. I’ve even converted some of my adult material using this device, and you’d be amazed how different of an experience THAT is on my Vive compared to just watching it on TV.

I got the one that is roughoy $70… But I see there are some higher end units that also act as 4-port HDMI switches and have more processing capabilities (some of which are aimed at streaming and compression artifact removal, as well as brightness and color correction, and some manual 3D/POP adjsutments). I might upgrade to one of those units next year if nothing better comes along. But right now $250 is a bit out of my current spending budget…