The Official VEFXi 3D-Bee Owners' Thread - Page 9

I don't have a 3D Bee, but I'm thinking first the Oppo, then the 3D BEE (to see the Oppo), then the projector. My Optoma HD3300 sometimes doesn't recognize signals, and I have to turn the sources off and on again in signal producing order. Though I don't have to turn the projector off and on again. Also, there is an issue with short (less than 6') hdmi cables for some sources (ie. the Darbee has this issue), so try a longer hdmi cable between sources if you are using 3 footers. And it should be 1.4 compliant, I think.

excuse my ignorance as i havent read through all 9 pages, but can i use a 3dbee on my passive vizio tv to get 3d imaging from normal tv and dvd's? which unit would i use or can i use the cheap monoprice unit?

I intend to get one of these to check it out, but I noticed this on their website:

Compatibility720p or 1080p 3D TVs or 3D projectors that support side-by-side 3D format and 3D projectors that support 120Hz frame-sequential 3D format at 720p.

Does concern me for my 1080p projector, but I will wait and see...

I didn't have any trouble with these configs:

Dish DVR > Yamaha A3000 AVR > 3D-Bee > Epson 6010.
Oppo 93 > (same)
HTPC > (same)

The 3D-Bee and Darbee didn't play nice together in the same chain, but I didn't try different power-on sequences or reverse the order of the Darbee and Bee. That looks like it might take more work to get working properly. I still plan on using the Bee with my Samsung plasma, but I like it enough that I'm considering adding one to the Epson as well. I like the effect a little more on the big screen than the smaller one.

Your issues are probably caused by some weird HDMI handshake issue. I have a love/hate relationship with HDMI. Did your Bee work with the Acer?

I bought the 3D-Bee Diamond from Crutchfield for $349.99. After trying it out for two days, I am returning it tomorrow.

I found the 3D effect terrible with no realistic 3D no matter what setting I tried. It seems to me that if you want good 3D, don't use a 2D to 3D converter.
Marty
Edited by Videoguy68 - 1/24/13 at 3:33pm

I felt the same way after 2 days, and I had already contacted them about a return, but I decided to give it another try on day 3. I used it with a Blu-ray called "Over America" (using the "movie" mode) and my opinion changed completely. It looked amazing. The next day I tried it with Monday night football (using the "sports" mode), and I loved what it did for the game. Then I tried it with some of my own 3D footage, shot at the Missouri Botanical Garden. I can honestly say that some shots taken with my 3D camera (output as 2D only video) look better going through the 3D-Bee than they do as native 3D footage. That's because of the narrow interaxial on my camcorder, though. For close ups and medium shots, native 3D (obviously) is going to look more natural almost all of the time. I found it hit or miss with many films and television shows. But for me, just knowing what it does for documentary and travel type footage, and football, makes it worth the price. I like it so much for some of my own footage that I'm hoping I can convince the 3D-Bee people to convert a few of those shots so I can use them in a 3D video I'm doing about the Garden (perhaps as a barter arrangement if I edit a 3D demo video or two for them). We may not be able to work anything out, but... after watching these shots in native 3D, in 2D only, and as they looked being run through the 3D-Bee, there's no doubt in mind which looks better. It's the Bee conversion.

I think it should go without saying that the Bee will not convert 2D into 3D with results as consistently good looking as native 3D. It's going to make mistakes. But I think it does a phenomenal job with certain kinds of material. You have to manage your expectations and gauge whether you can live with the Bee's limitations. I can, but I'm sure many people will find the limitations outweigh the benefits.

Received my Darbee Diamond couple days ago and have mixed results so far. I have a 2D-3D conversion setting on my Sony 590 bluray player as a reference. I watched Alien as it has a lot of closeups, scene changes, space shots, etc. to compare with. Here's my reaction:

The Darbee has both distance and volume settings. The distance (Z) setting expands the farthest (infinity) separation to give more depth. The volume setting (D) gives more rounded effect--if you look with glasses off, it creates a weird crooked line for both eyes. Both settings were set in the middle. As I expected some scenes were good, some excellent and some terrible. The D setting makes text stick out--not in a good way. It also takes some objects like heads and makes them round, but also takes some objects and reverses them--inside out. I found this highly distracting. On slow pans where people weren't in the picture, the 3D was excellent with lots of depth. Once people moved into the scene, the weird roundness/reversed imaging action gave me eyestrain. I really like having some depth feeling to the whole spaceship, but in the end I switched back to the 3D conversion built in to the 590 and found that better as it seemed to only do motion-vector 3D and not that weird roundness 3D. I played with the settings and found the D setting was best in the lowest position. Part of the issue with me could be my very large screen--159" Dalite High Power. I suspect with screens of 100" or less, the eyestrain would be less and the image more enjoyable.

I agree that it might work well for certain types of 2D footage, but for action movies with lots of actors moving around, it can be very upsetting. I will check out more movies, but I'm leaning towards returning it now.

I own A LG LM6200 3DTV, it has a pretty good converter. how does the 3d-bee compare and what about the monoprice 3d converter I heard Its much cheaper and performs better(better popout)?

I have an LG LM7600 and I'd rate it's 3D conversion closest in quality to the 3D-Bee. It's better than my Samsung D7000 plasma, which is much better than my Epson 6010 projector. The LG is very close for documentary type footage, although it doesn't give you adjustment options.

joseph, thanks for the reply.

I just ordered the monoprice do you think it will perform better or worse?

should I cancel while I still have time?

Sorry, I've never used the Monoprice converter.

Conversion will never look as good as the real thing. A converter will miss much of the time. You just have to figure out if you can live with the misses.

how do these converters compare to the built in converters?

The builtin converter on my Sony 590 bluray shows non-moving scenes in simple depth with little foreground/background difference--ie. pushes the 3D window back into the screen by a couple of feet. It does not bend the window from bottom to top like some converters do on non-moving scenes--ie. where it "thinks" that what is near to the scene is at the bottom and far is near eye level. When scenes or objects move, it then tries to place them near or far depending on their relationship to other moving objects, which I believe is motion-vector only conversion. No eyestrain, and what I would call okay to good 3D. I found it adds some interest in movies that I've been bored with over the years and find myself watching again. The Darbee, however, adds both depth and volume (roundness) to the scene, where some scenes--especially slow panning--are near perfect 3D and others--with lots of people and action--are so mixed as to cause eyestrain. With constant scene changes, some movies are unwatchable, and I only recommend it on screens less than 100" to avoid eyestrain. I tried to minimize the roundness effect to avoid eyestrain, but even at it's lowest level, there was just too much weird image deformation. It has it's place in the conversion world, but for me, I still favor the conversion of my bluray player.

Edit: I said the Darbee, but meant the 3D Bee. I have a Darbee as well and it works great to improve sharpness for 2D and 3D.
Edited by threed123 - 2/23/13 at 8:16am

so will the 3d effect be stronger or should I cancel both orders?

It's so subjective, you'll have to make up your own mind. There isn't one solid love it or hate it trend on this board that I can see. I would like to hear your opinion, though based on your 3D display.

I tried the diamond. I was dissapointed. To me it was no better than the tv converison on a couple different displays. no matter what, I could get no pop out. When using settings to get pop out it just made it flatter with less depth.It can do ok but 500 WOW not even. more like 50 bucks maybe. na not even that much for me.

funny how they claim 1-3 feet of popout yet its technically impossible with flat 2d images...imho the lg does the best job out of all converters and sets..lm6200 ftw

I like the LG's built in conversion, too. It's definitely a lot better than other conversions I've seen, and I've seen a few. Epson projector - waste of time. Sony LCDs - waste of time. Samsung - second to the LG, sometimes quite convincing. Panasonic Blu-ray player - waste of time. Many of the conversions simply push the image into the background. That can fool some people, but it provides no real sense of depth other than that you're looking at a picture at the bottom of a box. The LG, and the Bee, are much more than that. None of these converters is going to get it right all the time, or even most of the time. I never say never, but I think it will be a long time before a converter gets it right enough to be able to say it looks like real 3D the majority of the time. You just have to learn to manage your expectations. I can live with the limitations for the cost of the Bee.

well I own the lm6200 as I said before. I just purchased a monoprice 3dconverter. heres what happened

i hooked it all up and put on farcry 3, it looked horrible in sbs. I then switched to 1800p not knowing it was passing the signal through, I was amazed it looked 3d and was a very happy camper. funny thing though is, It was lgs 2d-3d conversion lol. placebo effect it looked like 10 times better than I remembered as I don't use it at all.funny but true story

Next I played with the monoprice settings and could not get 1080p 3d to work as 720p looked awful for real could not read the text at all. I then found out I had to set my laptop to 1080p60fps mode and use the 3d dlp setting on the monoprice remote. walla 1080p 3d via mono price. I put on far cry 3 again and noticed their was no popout but a little depth and the 3d was of a different kind, it looks spectacular. but then again so does the lgs converter. I then hooked the MP up to the tv box and tried that out I paused a frame and tried sbs, 3d dlp, and 2d - 3d via LG the lg simply had more depth period. if you saw what I saw you would not argue that. I then played a few nature shows ect it looked good either way.

Not sure if I should return it or not I need to do more testing then ill report back. but LG is fantastic. monoprice is also very good not sue which is better though so ill report back and let you know who th ewinner is

lmao. what was I thinking. 3d is moreso about depth and the monoprice mops the floor. I cant wait to get a 3d-bee..what do you guys think should I get one or return the monoprice

New to this forum. Have just upgraded my projector to an Optoma HD33 - which has been great. But also love my LG TV's ability to do 2D to 3D - even though it is a gimmick. So I'd like to do it on the projector too. Ordered the Monoprice unit. Installed it last week. I have been able to get it to run on the PS3 and the IPTV unit I have, but the Xbox360 does like it. It took some time to get it set up. For the most part, it is actually hard to watch. I notice that the "outlines" of things tend to be very jagged. Text is terrible and hard to read. When it is running 3D on a movie, it can be quite nice. But the annoyance of the jagged edges and the inability to do the xbox has made me unplug it. Some notes on my installation for reference.

I have a PS3, Xbox360, and a Motorola Digital box. These all go into a Pioneer VSX 1122-k receiver through short high speed cables. From the receiver, I have a 30 foot run to the projector. The 30 ft run is actually a 4 year old HDMI 1.1 cable. (I bought a new high speed 22 guage cable to replace it with, but when I tested that cable vs the other one, there was absolutely no difference). I had even moved all components into the same location to test all short run, high speed cables. No difference. So unless I have a whole big batch of bad cables (very unlikely), it can't be the cables or the cable length. Also, tried bypassing the receiver directly. No difference.

So, I've ordered the 3D Bee Diamond. I am hoping to have some good results with that. I'd love to do the 2D to 3D conversion if it can work. But so far, I haven't had much luck.

By the way, can the diamond pass through native 3D signals yet, or do i have to manually bypass? (I've heard mixed results on that one).

I have trouble passing through native 3D to a Pioneer 820 receiver and Samsung 3D plasma with the 3D Bee in the chain. I get only green and blue, no red. The 3D effect is still there, but the color is wrong. But I had a similar problem with video from my 3D camcorder to that TV, so I think it's a display problem rather than a Bee problem.

kdh

the iogear 3d complete can do popout. sucks for gaming though impossible to play with the lag but if you just want to watch movies and get popout i think iogears device is the only one on the market that can do popout

Not true. The Bee can do popout. It has two different preset popout modes, as well as the ability to manually adjust popout depth.

well on their site they have popout examples and i saw no popout?????????????? and kdh owns one and says there is no popout..

do you work for them or something? cause its not adding up sir

No need for accusations. I certainly do not work for them. Popout simply means that objects extend out from the screen plane. That can be difficult to pick up on, and I don't care for it in 2D to 3D conversions, but the effect is created by the Bee. How well it's created is a matter of interpretation.

with the iogear and the right settings i put my finger on the screen and noticed 1 foot of popout.
with the 3d bee i noticed it was an inch behind my finger.

maybe placebo effect of spending 500 on garbage

Sounds like you need to send the Bee back for a refund.

Got my 3D-Bee Diamond in! So here are my initial thoughts and observations (and compared to the Monoprice).

Having everything setup as I already had the Monoprice, it was easy to install. Just plugged it in and transferred the cables. The Monoprice didn't like my XBox360 (in fact, it wouldn't work at all), so I tried that first. Turned everything on and... I got the 3D-Bee select your 3D type screen. Selected mine (SBS) and it worked! Nice and easy. PS3, Blu ray, TV, etc all worked too. No issues. Also, with the Monoprice, I noticed that "text" seemed somewhat jagged. Not sure if that is normal, or if there is something wrong. Everything else is clear, but text seems to be jagged. Not an issue with the Bee though. All is nice and clear.

On to testing 3D passthrough. I tried the movie Tangled 3D using the PS3. However, it just ended up splitting the images - half on top, half on the bottom. Very odd! I also noticed that going back from a 3D movie to the 2D home screen on the PS3, the images were now messed up. I had to reset the Bee to get it back to normal. So passthrough does not seem to be working. (Note: It does seem like order of connections is important for the passthrough. Not an issue for 2D to 3D though.)

Now for the 2D to 3D test. I first tried Tangled 2D - to give a comparison. (To be fair, not a good comparison - 2D up convert to natural 3D). It was no comparison. The natural 3D was MUCH better. Next I tried just the PS3 home screen, moving through the menus etc. Yes, it does give a "mild" 3D effect. The icons seem to be in front of the background. So onto something a little more challenging for the Bee... I started up Netflix. I am presented with my Netfilx experience choices screen - Netflix or Netflix for kids. Here I played with the Z and D settings (and the other Movie, Sports, Game, Popout settings). I found the best for me was Movie+. I am sure this is a personal preference as other viewers thought it was too harsh. The popout setting seemed to be straining my eyes... I tried a couple of TV shows. Nobody viewing could notice any 3D effect on any setting. Actually, the Z - - setting seemed to have the only effect - looking like things went 'into' the screen. Next I tried a cartoon movie with vibrant colors - The Reef. Here you can notice some real depth. Certain scenes, you'd notice nothing at all - looked very 2 dimensional. Others, it looked very 3D. Again, I preferred the Movie+ setting and others felt it was too much. Overall, I'd say the effect was so - so. Nothing to get excited about. The best 3D seemed to be the Netflix menu with all the movie box cover icons. There was some real depth on some of the movie picture icons.

Now on to the XBox 360. My son had his Skylanders disk is already, so I thought I would give that a go. Here again, the menus seemed to have real depth - in front of the background. The game however, would have times where the 3D was obvious and other where it looked very 2D (on any setting or adjustment).

Early impression: To be honest... Not very impressed at all. But certainly head and shoulders above the Monoprice. However, it is early; so I will keep on testing some different combinations and options. As posted earlier, some time and certain material might make a big difference...