Aaron Ledger
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swoon
It looks like there has been some progress on this as the first driver has been released though it only supports the wired controller at this time.
[quote=htpc_user]
[quote=swoon]
We’ll just have to wait and see what the studios do. FWIW, the 2010 BD does explicitly state on the front cover that it is 3D only.
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Where does it state “3D only”? I looked this afternoon after reading your post thinking it might help with finding out that info on future discs…you know, show me what to look for. But I didn’t see it any where (other than it just saying 3D).
Last night I was looking for 3D movies on Amazon, and I came across the new Resident Evil that is coming out this month. I noticed that it says, “This Blu-ray disc will display only in 2D without special hardware.”
Edit: After posting, I looked up A Christmas Carol, and it says the same thing. So Amazon’s info is probably not a reliable source to tell you if the 2D has been disabled. They are probably making a general statement going with the assumption that the discs are playable in 2D.
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I am looking at the front cover of “The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Film in 3D” BD as I type this and it states:
ONLY PLAYS IN 3D
plainly on the front cover.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the studios do. FWIW, the 2010 BD does explicitly state on the front cover that it is 3D only.
I was able to play the 3D disc of A Christmas Carol in 2D. It did so on the PS3 any way; I’m not sure what it would do on any other (2D) bluray player. But I wouldn’t think there would be anything “special” about the PS3 that would allow it.
That’s good to know. I have the disc, but haven’t tried it yet. Blu-ray.com review stated:
Please note that 2D playback on this 3D disc has been disabled; to see the 2D image, viewers are forced to play the included 2D-only Blu-ray disc.
[quote=babgvant]
MVC is supposed to be backwards compatible, so most 3D BD should also play in 2D. The player will decode and present one eye’s worth of data.
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In theory at least. I wouldn’t be surprised though if there are older decoders that choke on an MVC stream and thus this is why some newer 3D BDs are apparently 3D only.
The studios are likely putting out separate discs for multiple reasons. It could be the space issue or perhaps older players would need some firmware update to be compatible playing back 3D discs in 2D mode. I think the studios also want to differentiate (and thus charge more) for 3D vs. 2D.
Another interesting thing you might notice is that 2D playback has been disabled on the 3D A Christmas Carol BD. The 2010 World Cup BD is apparently mastered this way as well.
What’s the model #? Maybe something can be gleaned from the manual.
You basically need to determine what is better at scaling, your source or your display. If it is your display, then you’ll want to use the native resultion of the content. Scaling in both source and display should be avoided. A downside to native resolution output for some source devices like a DirecTV box is possibly the speed of switching channels, but this is probably YMMV depending on the device and circumstance.
For PCs, there is no choice to output native resolution due to the inherent video processing so you want to set the output to your display native resolution and use 1:1 pixel mapping. Scaling is therefore performed in the PC and not the display.
I’m going to grasp for straws on this one, but maybe it could be the card or DVI to HDMI dongle is not capable of handling HDMI audio. You also might want to try the Realtek HDMI driver as well if you aren’t using it already.
In your case, the expansion slots can probably be disregarded. I like to keep my options open for the boards I buy as I like the option of redploying in a different use case. For example, if you ever got the crazy notion of adding 1 or 2 Ceton InfiniTV cards, a GPU, a second NIC, SATA card, etc. it would be more difficult or impossible with only two free PCIe slots.
I’m running a Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 board with the i3-530 and it has been solid. Yes, it has the Realtek NIC and Intel NICs are generally superior, but for HTPC use, the Realtek on this board has been perfectly adequate. I recommend not buying this board though if you don’t have PCI cards because it has a 2x PCI + 2x PCIe configuration instead of 3x PCIe + 1x PCI configuration. PCI peripherals are a dying breed these days.
I can also say that a 10s boot on this board is not realistic. It probably takes that long to load the BIOS + discs.
Yes, the NVIDIA 4xx series can bitstream audio. Be aware that the driver is still young (see Andrew’s review). ATI 6xxx are supposed to be HDMI 1.4-capable, but no cards currently released in that series are HTPC-focused ATM. ATI has talked about their 5xxx series being 3D-capable, but I don’t think anything’s been released there yet.
What you most likely are going to need is an HDMI 1.4-capable GPU such as the NVIDIA GT 430 if you expect to play 3D Blu-ray discs and other frame-packed sequential 3D source material. I can verify that the GT 430 is fully capable of 3D BD playback using HDMI 1.4. You can also check out Andrew’s review of the GTS 450.
If the source material is frame-compatible, e.g.side-by-side, then you can use your existing GPU. Broadcast 3D like ESPN 3D is currently using frame-compatible.
I wouldn’t worry about it. It sounds like normal behavior. You most likely fixed your issue by installing the latest drivers.
Just to be sure, have you installed the latest drivers from the NVIDIA web site?
Is Windows telling you there is an IRQ conflict, or are you deducing this just by looking at the device properties? Windows often gives the same IRQ to different HW devices and this does not mean there is a problem perse.
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