[herhelman]

Hi, I'm from South America, I will travel to USA on mid December and I willing to buy two media players for my TV and a Panansonic AE8000 projector.

I'm reading lots of post and no android box can handle with stability, 3D MVC full 3d bd iso, just Vidon box but it has a lot of bugs in firmware...

Does anyone tested a base chromebox or a Haswell celeron nuc playing those ISOs? On windows can I use a celeron NUC with XMBC and some external player software to play the 3d content?

I have the MICCA ep600 with and old 1186 chipset and , aside of the slow interfase, it can play any iso.... so, i dont know what to do!!

1195 realtek based player are very unstable, android boxes has problems with 23,97 data rate...

I spent only 95 dollars in the past and micca EP600 always delivers... of course has it's flaws...BUT now, i cannot find any player from 60 to 200 that do the job...!!

Any sugestion? Celeron NUC has enough guts to plays 3d iso, chromebox?

thanks in advance to everyone!

[Matt Devo]

the ChromeBox can't currently play frame-packed 3D BluRay ISOs, so if that's a requirement, it should not be a consideration.

[nickr]

Gosh there is a lot of confusion out there about 3d formats.

Frame packing is not mvc and mvc is not frame packing. They are 2 separate concepts.

Mvc is an encoding technology. It encodes the full frame in of one eye, and a "diff " for the other eye. It is what you find on blurays. Xbmc/kodi does not decode mvc, but it can call an txternal player.

Frame packing is a method of outputting 3d over HDMI. Both eyes are packed into one frame, see http://www.best-3dtvs.com/what-is-frame-packing-3d/

[Matt Devo]

right, but the end result is that 3D Bluray content, consisting of an AVC and MVC stream, once decoded is output as a frame-packed signal to the display. which is why people (incorrectly) use the two terms interchangeably.

[herhelman]

the ChromeBox can't currently play frame-packed 3D BluRay ISOs, so if that's a requirement, it should not be a consideration.

Thanks Matt, Your name is an authority in forums!

Ok, I live in Argentina,customs are very strict here, any media player send by mail will tribute a lot of money so I need to make a good choice, and I only have 2 boxes per year and a lot of paperwork to fill when i receive a package from outside.

I need a media player that support 3d iso ( 5% of my movies but i want to have that feature) and HD audio for my Blu ray rips.

I will be in Miami on xmas and january, so that's my chance to buy 2 players , one for livingroom tv, other for my panny ae8000 projector ( a huge sacrifice for me, cost me like a compact car here)

do you have sugestions? also the idea is a simple box that my wife also can drive without tell me " the blu ray player is easier to use!!"

thanks in advance!!

[hdmkv]

I'm reading lots of post and no android box can handle with stability, 3D MVC full 3d bd iso, just Vidon box but it has a lot of bugs in firmware...

Not lots of bugs, some. 3D ISO's play fine as does HD audio, but VidOn lacks 23.976 and there are a few buffering issues with streaming via network. Via attached USB is fine.

If you want proper frame-packed 3D, hd audio, 23.976, and high bitrate network playback, Mede8er X3D series will do it all. But, no XBMC and box is a little sluggish in browsing large media libraries.

[noggin]

Yes - the confusion between MVC and Frame Packing is getting a bit annoying. As nickr has said, MVC is a compression system used for encoding two eye views onto 3D Blu-rays. Frame-packing is a technique used to carry a pair of frames (left and right eye feeds) over HDMI instead of just a single 2D frame. It is entirely possible to play content encoded in codecs other than MVC but to output them Frame Packed.

So there are two questions that are of interest for full-resolution 3D replay :

1. Can a solution decode MVC encoded content? If yes - then it will play 3D Blu-rays, if no then it won't replay 3D Blu-rays.
2. Can a solution output frame packed video over HDMI? If yes then it will output full resolution 3D content - whether this is from decoded MVC (if 1 is yes) or from alternative sources such as Full Resolution SBS or TAB 3840x1080 or 1920x2160 H264 MKVs etc. not using MVC.

[wrxtasy]

Ok I have now read this thread three times, so while we are on the subject - my question is what type (and resolution) of 3D - CAN the Chromebox output when running Linux ?

[nickr]

Certainly HSBS and HTAB (because both are simply 1920x1080 frames containing two subframes).

Full SBS and TAB I am unsure.

[wizziwig]

the ChromeBox can't currently play frame-packed 3D BluRay ISOs, so if that's a requirement, it should not be a consideration.

Ok I have now read this thread three times, so while we are on the subject - my question is what type (and resolution) of 3D - CAN the Chromebox output when running Linux ?

The Chromebox (even the low-end 2955u ones) can physically output frame-packed 3D over HDMI 1.4 in Linux. I tested this with a tiny proof-of-concept program that just displayed a single 3d image for each eye. My external video processor correctly identified the input video format as 1080p24 fp and I could see a 3D image on the screen.

Now to actually make this useful, a Kodi developer would have to add proper support. We would also need a way to decode MVC video in Kodi. Neither is an impossible task but I doubt it's ever going to happen. Very few people are interested in 3D and it's not worth the time/effort.

Windows has 3D BD players like PowerDVD but Windows drivers do not support frame-packed 3D over HDMI on any Celeron processor like the 2955u. You would need an i3 or i5 CPU. At that point, I would just get a NUC.

[nickr]

Now to actually make this useful, a Kodi developer would have to add proper support. We would also need a way to decode MVC video in Kodi. Neither is an impossible task but I doubt it's ever going to happen. Very few people are interested in 3D and it's not worth the time/effort.

I guess you could make use of framepacking with sbs or tab files. This would make tv switching to 3d mode more reliable.

Thank you for your informative post.

[noggin]

the ChromeBox can't currently play frame-packed 3D BluRay ISOs, so if that's a requirement, it should not be a consideration.

Ok I have now read this thread three times, so while we are on the subject - my question is what type (and resolution) of 3D - CAN the Chromebox output when running Linux ?

The Chromebox (even the low-end 2955u ones) can physically output frame-packed 3D over HDMI 1.4 in Linux. I tested this with a tiny proof-of-concept program that just displayed a single 3d image for each eye. My external video processor correctly identified the input video format as 1080p24 fp and I could see a 3D image on the screen.

Now to actually make this useful, a Kodi developer would have to add proper support. We would also need a way to decode MVC video in Kodi. Neither is an impossible task but I doubt it's ever going to happen. Very few people are interested in 3D and it's not worth the time/effort.

Windows has 3D BD players like PowerDVD but Windows drivers do not support frame-packed 3D over HDMI on any Celeron processor like the 2955u. You would need an i3 or i5 CPU. At that point, I would just get a NUC.

I believe there are solutions on Windows that will convert Blu-ray MVC stuff to 3840x1080 (or is it 1920x2160) H264 MKVs which if then played back frame packed would give you Full HD 3D. That would be a (niche) use case on Kodi without integrated MVC decoding?

[nickr]

Yes but it means everyone needs to go through a laborious encoding process rather than simply putting their bluray into a drive and playing, or ripping the ISO without re-encoding. And they need windows which many try to avoid.

[noggin]

Yes but it means everyone needs to go through a laborious encoding process rather than simply putting their bluray into a drive and playing, or ripping the ISO without re-encoding. And they need windows which many try to avoid.

Yep - obviously MVC decoding would be preferable, but there are definitely some people who would go through a couple of extra processes for full resolution 3D to avoid the low-quality limitation of half-resolution SBS/TAB stuff.

[hdmkv]

Why would there be re-encoding if you're outputting 3840x1080 SBS? Isn't this basically unpacking the frame-packed 1080p 3D? Saw this thread a while back and was wondering, if this was possible to do w/o re-encoding, would it be playable in XBMC at full rez via Chromebox?