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Chastepe

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 27, 2010
66
81
Derby, UK
Hello everyone,
I was wondering if any of you has ever connected a Mac Pro with a 3D Monitor (Not TV). I am thinking of buying a 3D LG Monitor that does not require any special graphic cards or active shutter 3D glasses. I know I might need a converter because not all 23" 3D LG Monitors support DVI-D. In addition I know I need to have installed a Blu Ray player. I own an 8-Core Mac Pro (early 2009) with ATI 4870 and 16GB of Ram. I am looking to buy something like this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-D2342P-PN-Monitor-Laptop-Speaker/dp/B007DZR9AY/ref=sr%20_1_10?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1331903802&sr=1-10


Please tell me if it works fine for you and if you were able to watch successfully 3D Content. One more thing, I am also aware that OS X does not officially support 3D enabled movie players but I know there are alternative ways to make it work, so do not tell me about installing Windows. If I had to install Windows, I would never ask this question at first.

Thanks a lot:)
 

CaptainChunk

macrumors 68020
Apr 16, 2008
2,142
6
Phoenix, AZ
Probably not the answer you want to hear, but:

Outside of Mac Blu-ray Player and the MakeMKV/VLC trick (neither solution currently supports 3D), there are no other solutions.

Blu-ray 3D playback on a computer is only available in Windows right now.
 

derbothaus

macrumors 601
Jul 17, 2010
4,093
30
Blu-ray 3D playback on a computer is only available in Windows right now.

Fine by me as I can do without astigmatism for a few more years. I can get into viewmasters, I can get into cheesy horror flicks from the 80's. The rest should stay at your local science center. Tell hollywood to f-off and start paying writers again. And in other news of worthless tech advancements...
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
I don't think 3D works over DVI on this... You need a GPU with HDMI 1.4 and an HDMI 1.4 connection.

Not to mention this monitor comes with glasses. So yes, it does require glasses.

Regardless, glasses or not, you'll need HDMI 1.4.

Edit: It looks like some monitors are doing monkeying with DVI using Windows drivers to get 3D to work over DVI. Obviously this isn't going to work in OS X.
 

CaptainChunk

macrumors 68020
Apr 16, 2008
2,142
6
Phoenix, AZ
Fine by me as I can do without astigmatism for a few more years. I can get into viewmasters, I can get into cheesy horror flicks from the 80's. The rest should stay at your local science center. Tell hollywood to f-off and start paying writers again. And in other news of worthless tech advancements...

My sentiments, exactly. But the OP asked and I gave him an answer. ;)
 

Chastepe

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 27, 2010
66
81
Derby, UK
Thanks everyone for your replies.

I was thinking that if for example you have a 3D movie ripped in your hard drive then why not be able to play it in 3D using this monitor. It uses passive glasses so obviously it does not require any special graphic card. I have no idea if 3D requires HDMI 1.4, but in Windows 3D does not need HDMI to work I think it works through DVI (-D).

Even if it does not work in 3D, will I be able to use it as a normal monitor in OS X?

Thanks
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
I have no idea if 3D requires HDMI 1.4, but in Windows 3D does not need HDMI to work I think it works through DVI (-D).

It depends... 3D Blurays aren't recorded in stereoscopic 3D, so they wouldn't work out of the box. You'd need special software to convert them...

Even if it does not work in 3D, will I be able to use it as a normal monitor in OS X?

Yes.... But honestly.... I own a 55" 3DTV and the 3D sucks on that too. It's really not worth your time. I've used the 3D maybe about twice.
 

initialsBB

macrumors 6502a
Oct 18, 2010
688
2
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

Passive or active, the monitor still needs to receive a 3D signal, so yes you do need a HDMI 1.4 compliant graphics card. DVI-D solutions is just monkeying around.
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

Passive or active, the monitor still needs to receive a 3D signal, so yes you do need a HDMI 1.4 compliant graphics card. DVI-D solutions is just monkeying around.

I think the signal being sent is stereoscopic 3D (which is the worst quality 3D signal out of all the already crappy 3D signals) so it doesn't need to be active. But Mac software needs to know to output that.
 

goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,694
You mean side-by-side ? All 3D is stereoscopic :p

Well, I mean that the glasses are passive and don't require sync, so in theory it wouldn't require HDMI 1.4. But there has to be software to generate the right image. :p
 

igregurec

macrumors newbie
Jul 25, 2009
6
0
Croatia
LEAP motion + 3D monitor

I'm planing to use it with LEAP dev kit. It would be a shame not to use 3rd dimension :S
LG doesn't provide drivers for Mac OSX. Is there any workaround?
 

Macman45

macrumors G5
Jul 29, 2011
13,197
135
Somewhere Back In The Long Ago
I do get why Apple haven't gone down the "View on your Mac" side of things. I have Blu-Ray 3D movies, therefore I also have a 3D Blu-Ray player.

I bought an Asus Blu-Ray drive which supports 3D etc. but it wasn't purchased for that reason...I rip using make MKV and leave the movies in that format, stored on my Pegasus R4...come the time I want to watch them on my iPad if travelling etc. I then encode them in Handbrake. With file sizes now reachinf 40GB in some cases, and encode times using HB running in excess of 3 hours a hit, you have to have a pretty good reason to encode them.


Should add that make MKV is very fast by comparison with even large movies ripping in under 20 mins, or so. The prospect of sitting in front of my 27" Imac wearing 3D specs when I have a top end Sony Bravia TV 3D TV in the same room seems pointless. It would, however be nice to play with 3D from a work perspective, but a decent camera is going to cost < 5K...I think I'll wait a while.
 

cpnotebook80

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2007
1,205
521
Toronto
Since i installed the new sapphire 7950 on my Mac pro 3,1. It was the 3d out capability on the hdmi behind it. I don't have any 3d mac player built into the mac pro. I have a projector i use for my movies and ps3 for rest of the games and streaming. Not sure if I have to invest into a new 3d projector if i want to go the 3d route with movies.
 
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