Hi Plex Devs,
Firstly - great job with Plex - it is simply the best media centre solution bar none.
My set up (in case it matters):
- Mac Mini running Plex Media Server & Plex Home Theatre
- HDMI into a 3DTV
- Digital audio into a home theatre receiver.
OK, so over the past 6 months or so, I've been digitising my entire media collection and loading this into Plex.
With my 3D Blu-Rays, I've been ripping them with MakeMKV, however Plex Home Theatre does not currently support MVC-3D, so you only get one eye's video (no 3D).
My solution thus far, was to purchase DVDFab, and use this to rip and transcode the video into either Half-SBS or Half-TAB. This way, I can play the video via Plex and switch my TV to 3D mode, which gives me the 3D picture.
However, if I do anything with plex that brings up the on-screen display (pause, info, fast forward, rewind, whatever), my TV switches back to 2D mode, as the GUI only appears on the bottom of the screen - not on both eye's channels. This is frustrating, but I can live with it.
For Plex Home Theatre to be better at displaying and supporting 3D content, it would be fantastic if:
- When displaying Half-SBS and Half-TAB 3D content, the on-screen GUI would display on both halves of the screen, so that the TV displaying the 3D content doesn't switch back to 2D mode, and the GUI looks correct when wearing the 3D glasses. I suppose Plex could detect this by filename?
- Add support for MVC-3D, so that 3D Blu-Ray rips don't have to be transcoded into Half-TAB / Half-SBS.
- Initially, Plex Home Theatre could render these as either Half-TAB / Half-SBS (set in video playback settings?).
- Eventually (as I understand this is tough and possibly not possible on current Mac Mini hardware?) send the 3D video directly to the TV, so we get full resolution 3D.
I realise this is a big ask, but if anyone can do it...
EDIT: Also, it might be worth also looking at the behaviour of subtitles for the different above 3D content types as well.
If I can do anything to help (providing content, testing), please get in touch.
Thanks for your time.
Kind regards,
Mike Nye
PS: As an aside to anyone interested in purchasing DVDFab to do 3D rips - I've found it to be fairly crap at transcoding 3D and wouldn't recommend purchasing. Quite often, the left and right eyes are a few frames out of sync, which makes for major headaches and sore eyes.