3D mode on my Mitsubishi DLP's - Page 2

Same here. I bought my set a month ago and wish I'd waited now, but bing was ending and didn't want to miss out. From what I've read here the Optoma dlp link glasses may be the best bet to not see the green blacks, but they may show rainbows and kids can't wear them.

I'm not complaining. Little greenish that I can barely see, woopty F'in doo. The $1000 price for the TV verse the $4000+ price of the same size plasma is worth a little green. The 3D effects still looks awesome on this DLP.

It's not just the green... it's the associated loss of dark detail, contrast, and color saturation. And, in Diamond-series sets with the dynamic iris, the washed-out blacks and increased black level cause a horrible pumping of the iris on some 3D program material.

Not sure what 3D source material you're using, but in dark scenes all of the dark areas are completely washed out. Examples of this include the trailers and film clips on the 3DC-1000 sampler disc, especially the "ghost of christmas past" scene.

Most of the folks who purchase these sets are videophiles. DLPs are marketed for their contrast ratio and film-like dark detail.

The Diamond series (xx837, etc.) contain a dynamic iris for even better dark detail and contrast, as well as ISF settings for professional calibration of the picture to near-reference quality perfection. These sets cost a substantial premium over the non-diamond sets of same screen size- an approximate $1500 premium in the case of the 82 inch sets, based on retail store pricing in my area.

A buyer of this type of product would never expect this type of reduced performance, especially after shelling out over $4000 for it (82837), and it is ridiculous for mitsubishi to expect this type of customer to accept this, especially for such an expensive product.

Nowhere in the sales literature for this product, or in the owner's manual, is there a separate set of specs for 3D mode, or a disclosure that picture quality will not meet published specs in 3D mode.

To a videophile, complete loss of black level, loss of dark detail, associated loss of color saturation, and pumping of the iris are cardinal sins individually, and collectively are a disaster.

It is clearly a design screwup- Mitsubishi themselves have stated that the problem is caused by DLP-LINK being on all the time in the pre-2010 sets.

Why have DLP-LINK constantly on when the set is designed for IR shutter glasses, as evidenced by the emitter port on the back of the TV and mitsubishi's own 3D kit using emitters and IR-emitter glasses?

DLP-LINK should never be turned on when using IR glasses, as the white flashes cause the washed-out looking picture.

Mitsubishi is obviously aware that this is a problem, as they are sending out verbatim canned replys to those who email about it(see the posts earlier in this thread), and they have fixed it in the 2010 models.

It is not a problem inherent to the DLP technology either... the 2010 sets do not have it, as Mitsubishi included a menu item on the TV to enable DLP-LINK, and DLP-LINK is off unless explicitly enabled by the user.

The problem only exists because Mitsubishi senselessly and foolishly designed and sold a 3D system based on IR-shutter glasses that has DLP-LINK permanently on all the time on all pre-2010 sets.

If the picture degradation doesn't bother you, that's fine. Some people are happy with crap- look at all the 128kbps mp3's out there. If this were a mainstream mass-market product, it might be to a slight extent a different story. But these are expensive high-end products, and when I spend close to $8000 for a pair of high-end TVs and they look like crap, I am extremely unhappy.

The difference in 3D quality between the 2009 and 2010 sets is quite substantial. Had I known of this, I would have waited and not bought my 82837s.

I haven't seen any 3D on a larger 82837, but you make it sound absolutely horrible to view 3D content. Is it really that bad? I don't get that feeling so much with a smaller cheaper 65C9. I did notice the screen was in gulfed in green when I took my glasses off when watching MvA. Didn't really notice green with the glasses on.

Hi Hyabusha,

I might be mistaken but weren't you having a tech come out to check out the 3D tint? If so what was the result?

FWIW, in early July I bought a 73C9 along with a Panasonic DMP-BDT350 blu-ray player that supports the checkerboard 3D format - so I didn't need the 3DC-1000 to watch 3D discs.

I absolutely agree with diamondpilot, the black and contrast levels are significantly degraded. If I have to trade that much picture quality just to get the 3D effect, well... screw 3D. It's just not worth it to me.

I returned the BDT350, 2 pairs of XpanD X102 glasses, and cancelled my pre-order for a 3DC-1000.

Potential buyers of 3D ready TVs that are looking at pre-2010 model Mits DLPs should be made aware of this quality trade-off. Best to visit a showroom and ask to watch some 3D content. Decide for yourself if the trade-off is worth it.

Hi Walford,

Could you please elaborate? The only feature I would really be interested in would be the ability to make Dlp-link light flashes optional in 3D mode. They are turned on and off in sync with 3D mode and I would hope that the forced link between these two could be removed.

In response to DenisG

It's not always absolutely horrible, depending on the source material, but it is not what it should be, and it is a significant degradation from the 2D mode and from what the 2010 sets can do with DLP-LINK off.

How bad it looks depends on the source material.
With a very bright, colorful source recording it can look good, albeit not right.

But on darker material, movies with a lot of darker scenes, it is pretty bad to me. The green skew doesn't bother me as much as the loss of dark detail and to a lesser extent the iris pumping.

It is also much more noticeable at night or in a very dark room, as ambient daylight will itself wash out the dark detail and make it harder to notice how un-black the blacks are.

The best analogy I can come up with to describe it is this:

I have an old 1999 model LCD front projector which was my home theater for many years... an MT-830+. If you are familiar with the inherent shortcomings of LCD in terms of blacks & contrast, especially the older projectors from the 1990's, the effect is similar.

On the NEC LCD projector, very bright, colorful DVD recordings such as "Austin Powers-Goldmember" look quite nice on it. But anything without such a bright transfer (gamma?), and anything that has a lot of dark or darker scenes, looks washed out.

Quite frankly, the dark detail and black level of my 11-year-old NEC MT-830+ LCD projector is better than the 3D mode on my 82837s- and the MT-830+ is weak in this area.

And the MT-830+ is only rated 200:1 contrast ratio. So arguably the 3D mode on the Mits DLP probably displays less than that.

And the MT-830 doesn't skew it's not-quite blacks to green or blue.

If you put a greyscale staircase test pattern on the screen and turn 3D mode on, the bottom several gray levels are washed out. Used both the THX calibration test patterns which is a bonus feature on one of my DVD movies, as well as the Video Essentials test DVD as source. With 3D mode off, the set is only incapable of displaying the lowest shade of grey. With 3D mode on, it can't reproduce the lowest several shades.


Wearing the glasses only seems to improve black levels because the glasses are tinted and they darken the whole picture- making the washed out blacks look blacker in the process. But they do nothing to recover all of the lost dark detail. The dark areas in dark scenes are completely masked by the increased black level.

The effect the glasses provide is the equivalent of hypothetically putting a dimmer knob in series with the projection bulb and turning it down. Blacks look closer to black because the light level is lowered closer to the threshold of our ability to see light. But the dark detail is forever lost in there.

A very good scene to demonstrate the dark detail problem is the "ghost of christmas past" scene on the Mits/Disney 3D demo disc. Almost the entire contents of the scene is lost to the jacked up black level- only the ghost and the man are detailed, the entire background is washed out.

There is another clip on the Disney demo disc that looks pretty bad due to this problem. Not sure the name of the film, but there is a live action 3D chase scene with mice or hamsters or something. At the beginning of these scene there are two men talking in a car. looks very washed out, dark detail is gone.

So, in summary, how bad the problem looks depends on how bright and contrasty the source material is. Something like "Up" would probably look fairly good in 3D, although still not quite right. A darker live action movie looks pretty bad.
A movie that frequently alternates between bright and dark scenes will have an iris-pumping effect that I find positively annoying on sets with a dynamic iris.
This is much like how a worn-out, washed out CRT rear projection set can still look decent on certain program material.

Is it at all likely that a firmware update will fix this issue?

I got my 3DC-1000 kit yesterday and was quite a bit disappointed with the blacks looking dark teal. Brighter scenes looked fine, and even the PS3 games I tried out. One of my biggest worries is when the 3D Bluray version of Avatar is released and it ends up looking like crap in the numerous darker scenes.

I've only had my 65c9 for a few months now, and I'm fearing that I'm going to regret my purchase.

Why has it taken this long for the degraded blacks issue to come out? These sets have been used for years by pc gamers, plus some must have seen the blu ray movies before the 3dc1000 came out through the Panasonic checkerboard blu ray players. Is it only an issue with a few people?

There are reports of the Optoma DLP Link glasses not degrading the blacks on these sets, but the polarization on the lenses cause rainbows to be seen. I wonder what would bother me less, rainbows or degraded blacks, or even if the degraded blacks will bother me since it seems like it doesn't bother everyone the same way.

I presume the reason that this issue has not come out earlier is because the 3DC-1000 kit has only been out for a couple of weeks.

The number of folks previously using these sets for 3D gaming is probably extremely miniscule.

And, computer graphics generally tend to be high brightness and low contrast. It is likely that among the tiny few who have been doing 3D gaming on Mits DLPs, fewer yet have noticed or cared about the problem. Many gamers are probably not videophiles.

I have ordered a set of the Optoma DLP-LINK glasses and will report the results when they arrive.

In order for the Optomas to really improve upon the issue, I expect that the following assumptions/criteria will have to be met.

1) the actual video frames generated by the mits sets will have to be full contrast and proper black level. This assumption assumes that the washed out effect is how our eyes perceive the DLP-LINK flashes between frames and is not a result of actual corruption of the video portion of the signal.
2) the DLP-LINK system, and the Optoma glasses, will have to sync in such a way that both lenses are turned off for the duration of all DLP-LINK flashes.

If this is not the case I don't expect the Optomas to improve things.
We shall see.


As far as whether a firmware fix will solve this... one would think it is possible, unless the pre-2010 Texas Instruments chips fail to support checkerboard 3D with DLP-LINK off.

One way or another it should be fixable either via a firmware upgrade, a replacement of a particular IC chip on a circuit board somewhere, or some other hardware mod. The big question is, can we compel Mitsubishi and/or TI to design a fix and make it available. I intend to push the issue until I am happy- i.e. until Mits fixes the problem properly or replaces my set with a 2010 model.

I don't have enough different 3D sources to test blacks yet, but when I compared the colors in Grand Canyon between my 65737 and the panny plasma at BB, I liked the 65737 better. I think the light reduction of the glasses reduces the quality of the dark scenes on all 3D displays.

I need to rewatch a few movies/demo blu-rays, because it really didn't bother me that much. I like a great picture as much as the next guy, but I also tend to not be a real picky person either. Then again, if I paid 4 or 5 grand for my set I would be out right pissed about it.

I don't think it has anything to do with the adapter. When I first got my tv, I turned on the 3D Mode just to see was it did. I was on one of the 3D DirecTV channels (which is just black with a message about "Your TV is not 3D capable").

3D Mode off = black screen
3D Mode on = dark teal/green screen

I had assumed that it was just because I didn't have a proper source hooked up. Then I thought "well, maybe that's just what you get with 3D". Now that I read that the 2010 models aren't having this issue and Mits says the green is "normal", I'm kinda pissed.

Troggie.
What model D* PVR do you have?
Which HDMI input connection do you have the output from the adapter connected to?

Here are the setups and results that I've tried. It's all with HDMI input 1, which is set to "Satellite".

Source: DirecTV DVR model HR22-100
Mits Adapter: No
3D Mode On: Green
3D Mode Off: Black

Source: DirecTV DVR model HR22-100
Mits Adapter: Yes
3D Mode On: Green
3D Mode Off: Black

Source: Playstation 3
Mits Adapter: No
3D Mode On: Green
3D Mode Off: Black

Source: Playstation 3
Mits Adapter: Yes
3D Mode On: Green
3D Mode Off: Black

I have yet to try different inputs on the TV, as it just now occurred to me that I should really check those out too (just in case). I don't have any AV equipment between the source/adapter/TV, just direct connections. Not sure of the firmware version on the TV either. I meant to check that yesterday, but go caught up playing Wideout HD in 3D.

Oh, and I've been saying that it's kind of a tealish color. But by that and "green" I mean something like this:
or this Dark Teal

Troggie, you are correct- it has nothing to do with the adapter.
Whether or not the adapter is connected, whether or not you are viewing 3D content, regardless of what the source is, even if you are directly feeding it checkerboard 3d from a compatible source without the adapter, whether or not you're wearing the glasses, the problem exists as soon as 3d mode is turned on in the TV menu.

See the attached picture. Click on the thumbnail for full-size image.


Just took this with no flash, no photoshop effects, with brightness & contrast set optimally.

With the 3d on, as shown, the entire area of the screen which should be black is in fact lit up blue quite brightly. This appears green with glasses on.

Furthermore, the test pattern at the TOP of the screen consists of TEN gray squares progressing from bright to dark. with the brightest at the left.

In 3D mode, as shown, the TV is only capable of reproducing the first THREE shades of gray. The remaining SEVEN shades of gray are completely washed out and obscured by the DLP-LINK flash/loss of black level.

So, 70 % of the dark detail and contrast is GONE in 3D mode on these sets.
Note that this image is the BEST I could get the TV to do in 3D mode. Doesn't matter whether the deepfield imager is on or off, or what I do with the brightness/contrast settings. Also note that this is shown in the "Natural" picture mode- in other words, no artificial "enhancements" that could degrade black level.

The proof is in the pudding.

Hyabusha, thanks.
You're definitely not crazy, at least not pertaining to this

Based on Mits' email replies acknowledging that all pre-2010 3D models due this because there is no way to turn DLP-LINK off until the 2010 sets, I am not confident that the new board fixes your problem.

UNLESS, the new board you get is a newer revision of the board that came with these tv's, and contains the fix incorporated in the 2010 sets.

A long shot, but will be very curious to see what happens.

Please keep us posted when you get the replacement. Was this a warranty repair? How did you describe the problem to MDEA in order to get a tech sent out?

If it's the DLP-LINK? Can't you just use dlp link glasses?

hard to say... My closest ultimate electronics has this setup on what they claim is a 2009 model. Man it looks awesome to me.

When Mitsubishi designed 3D for older sets the IR-shutter glasses weren't a standard and maybe not thought of. Weather they can add an ability to shut off the DLP-link in older models is up to their design. So I wouldn't call it foolish desogn just that there wasn't another standard for 3D when the sets were designed.

I have the 73738 and I'm getting a red-pink push in my colors when 3D is on. So my white is pink instead. I had the TV calibrated to another user's settings and it looked great before I hooked up the adapter. I still need to mess with some things but looks like there may be some issues with the new sets.

Are you using DLP-Link glasses; if not, is the DLP-Link set to off in the set?

Like all, I support you in pursuing this; however, I did compare the colors between my 65737 and a Panny at BB on GC, and I liked the 65737 better. I suspect all 3Ds suffer black loss(BTW, shouldn't the picture be set to "brilliant," not "natural?").

But in any event--the proof of the pudding is in the eating

TViewer2000,

IR shutter glasses/emitters were available when these TVs were designed (NVidia, for example).

Also, Mitsubishi DID have awareness of and planned for IR glasses when they designed these sets, as evidenced by the 3D IR EMITTER port on the back of the TV.

They clearly designed the TV for IR glasses, and DLP-LINK should never be on when using IR glasses, for with IR glasses DLP-LINK serves no purpose other than to degrade the picture. Design Flaw.

pmalter0,

All 3d TVs that require active glasses will suffer from a loss of light output resulting from the filtering of the glasses.

But they do NOT suffer from increased black level/loss of blacks & dark detail, which is what we're complaining about here. Two different things. In fact, the Mits DLP problem is an increase in light output where there shouldn't be any.

The only 3D sets that have this problem are DLP sets where DLP-LINK is on when it shouldn't be.

The LCD sets don't do it, the plasma sets don't do it, and the new Mits DLP's where DLP-LINK is only on when specifically enabled in the menu don't do it.

No I bought the adapter and I am using the active shutter. DLP-Link was not selected in the 3D menu, however after I powered down everything and started everything back up the redish-pink hue has gone away. Not sure what happened but I'll keep you posted if I can recreate the problem.

Hi folks,

Thanks to everyone for your contributions in this tread and others regarding the Mitsubishi TVs. Been very helpful to me in many ways. Apologies if the following question is ignorant or uninformed.

I have a WD-73837. I am seeing the "black to teal" effect if I turn on 3D mode in the settings menu. The background of the of the 3D options field turns teal. My cable system is broadcasting a 3D channel from time to time, like the PGA today. The presentation is side-by-side. If I purchase 3DC-1000 3D Starter Pack and install it as directed, would I have to turn on 3D mode for it to work with my cable SBS broadcast? If I bought the Panasonic checkerboard 3D Blu-ray player, would I have to turn on the 3D mode?

I agree that this is NOT what we all bargined for when purchasing this TV. 3D should work with minimal, if any side effects.

Interestingly, I went to Best Buy last weekend to see what 3D looked like on current TV/players. Some better than others. But there was a WD-82838 in a room almost by itself and no 3D on the display. When I inquired, I was told they were having a minor problem that would be corrected in a few days...

Thanks in advance,
Marc

if you go back to check it out and they have the mitt corrected find out what they did and report back. thanks have a nice day.