My Most Unnecessary Home Project in YEARS - Home 3D Movie Projector Setup!

Two years ago, my kids asked if we could go out and see Avatar 2, and I said, sure. But only after you've experienced the first one the way James Cameron intended, in glorious 3D. That would have been pretty easy. They put it back in theaters to make sure that everyone could remember the names of the various Smurfs. But then I thought, why go out for theater when we have theater at home? And I was shocked to discover that dozens of movies are still being released on 3D Blu-ray every single year. All I needed to do to enjoy them was to convert my regular old home theater to a 3D home theater. There was only one small problem. Actually, a lot of small problems, which is why we started filming this video in December of 2022, and you're only watching it now. See, in spite of the hype around it back in the late 2000s, almost no new hardware supports 3D anymore. And even if we did go dumpster diving on eBay, most home solutions require active shutter glasses, which give my wife a splitting headache. Leaving us with only one real option, a passive 3D setup like they have in the movie theaters with dual projectors, these unobtainium filters, and a whole lot of jank. Also a whole lot of segue to our sponsor. Vessi, say goodbye to wet socks and hello to big savings. Score up to 40% off select styles during their Black Friday sale at vessi.com or click our link in the description. Before y'all come flooding into the comments, the real reason that I wanted a 3D setup down here was that retrospective that we did back in 2022. I didn't mean to fall back in love with 3D, but come on, how many of you have fallen into the same trap? It's just coffee, right? And who can blame me for getting sucked back in? Even without a ton of new releases, there is a surprisingly rich back catalog of 3D Blu-rays to enjoy, especially computer animated ones that benefit immensely from the 3D experience. Except that now there's a giant elephant in the room. See, back when I had planned this upgrade, I had a projection setup already. Now I have a TV, which is gonna turn these 3D projectors into a gigantic downgrade for anything that's not 3D. We're gonna deal with that later. First, let's take a look at the plan. The first thing we knew we needed was two image sources, each with its own polarizing filter. And this is where we hit our first major roadblock. The Epson LS12000 that I used to have in my theater room uses a laser light source. And after trying multiple filters, both circular and linear, we found that it simply couldn't be effectively polarized. For context, here's how that demo was supposed to go. See how the image gets dimmer, but doesn't turn green? Yeah. Oh, I guess now's a good time to introduce our projectors. Since I've already wasted more resources than I'd like to admit on this endeavor, we went for an eBay special. Now, sadly, the Optoma UHD30 doesn't have lens shift to help us line up the images, but what it does have is 4K output, 3,400 lumens of peak brightness, which is really important when you're polarizing filter. It's gonna sap so much of your brightness. And perhaps most importantly, it can be picked up for as little as 500 freedom dollars each. Next, let's talk about these filters. Careful with that one. Getting these bad boys was both time consuming and shockingly expensive since, you know, no one bothers to build 3D projection setups anymore. There are still commodity options available. We found some pretty affordable plastic and acrylic ones, but the quality was frankly terrible. So after digging through countless ancient forum posts and contacting all the experts we could find, we made our way to American Polarizers, Inc., who appears to be the go-to for professional installations with a price tag to match. This is my first time seeing them. Whoa, there they are. This pair of clockwise and counterclockwise polarizing filters, also a family pack of 3D glasses, set us back over 1,500 US dollars. And the worst part, we are nowhere near ready to actually watch a 3D movie. Buddy, I can already tell just putting these on, these are way better than the cheap single-use glasses and the plastic filters. Dude, check this out. Whoa. Like it? Blocks. Holy cow. The light. Oh, dude. This might actually be cool. What, it's 3D? Of course it's cool. Here's the thing though, Elijah. Remember how we reviewed this script and everything? Yes. This is the part where I'm no longer sure if what we scripted is going to actually happen. Oh. Yeah, it did. Which sucks for anyone trying to make a 3D setup, but it's good for me because it means I didn't waste my money. Here's the thing. As it turns out, there's some pretty dark magic involved in getting the polarized light coming out of our filtered projector to stay polarized after it bounces off of a screen and into your eye holes. Now, before you point out rightly that this is not a screen, this is just a wall, I did try using a proper screen, my old one from Ellune Vision. But even though it mentioned 3D on the product page, it turns out they were only referring to active 3D, like where the projector will alternate between left and right eye images and you have glasses that alternate which eye is covered. By that logic, any screen is a 3D screen. So it had to go. And in its place, I picked up this one from Stuart. This is their silver 5D screen, meaning it's been optimized for 2D and 3D, hence the 5D. Now, the information around how these materials retain close to 100% polarization, a little thin on the ground, but these guys basically have a monopoly on this stuff these days. So after much deliberation, I bit the bullet, the $6,000 bullet. A silver bullet, you might say. This has been sitting in my house for like, I kid you not, over a year. It has not been over a year. Trust me, I know because I tripped over it constantly. It was right next to my car. This better work, because if not, this video is done for. I don't think I'm gonna invest in another attempt at this. Why don't you just buy a Cineplex projector? Why don't you just buy a Cineplex? Oh, I can't afford a Cineplex. The theater industry's not hurting that bad yet. Soon, yeah, give it time. Oh, wow. The off-axis viewing of this is flipping terrible. Like, watch, if I move the, look at that. Actually, man, oh, wow. Even without the polarizing filter, this screen compared to my old one has terrible viewing angles. I mean, you should never be sitting this close to a projector screen anyway. Here, let's stand a reasonable distance away. Hold on, hold on. I mean, that's better, but I guess there's a reason they don't use silver screens anymore. Big moment, here we go. Oh. When were you gonna tell me? I wanted to see how long it would go. Okay, big moment, big moment. Now if it really doesn't work, there's actually nothing stopping. Yes! Oh, shoot. Oh, it works real good. Really? Yeah, okay, check it out, check it out. She bangs. Dude, that's, wow. Yeah. That's really impressive. That is pretty minimal crosstalk. I mean, it should be. This is a professional-grade solution. The disposable glasses work okay with it. I mean, if it's good enough for the theater, right? Like, it's good enough for me. Okay, well, they have their own problems, but anyway. Oh. Oh, I don't want the filter on it again, damn it. Okay, you don't wanna leave the filter super close to the projector like we have it right now because it'll actually heat it up and it can burn the filter. So I put it down for whatever reason I did that. Yeah, these kinda suck by comparison. You can really tell the difference between glass and plastic. Like, it's a super cloudy image and it doesn't block nearly as much, and it distorts it, you see that? Now, I really don't know how much of a guide this video needs to be because probably most of you aren't gonna do this, but our first attempt at finding polarizing filters used linear filters. These are advantageous because they're cheap, but they are disadvantageous because if you tilt your head while you're watching, it'll actually switch which I can see and which one can't, and it can also be worse for giving people headaches. So if this actually works and is awesome, I'm glad we went with the proper solution with circular polarization. Now for the really hard part. Because we cheaped out on our projectors and we didn't get something with lens shift, aligning these things is gonna be, as we say in the biz, a bitch. I think we're gonna go top and bottom. Sure, that works. All right. Wow. Wow, that's pretty great. It's 3D. I'm kidding. It's gonna be great trying to line this up now and then we move in there and we're gonna have to redo it. You know my kids still haven't seen Avatar 2 because we still haven't finished this project. Wow. Yeah, we can go see it two years later. Every once in a while my son brings it up. He's like, are we ever gonna watch Avatar 2? Maybe block the bottom one and we'll try and match the top one to the bottom since we can't figure out how to. Oh, you mean just the IR. Sorry. We know the top of the image is kind of a mess, but the bottom left corner is good enough for us to at least see if it works. Now we just need to figure out content. Now, if I was a boomer or something and I had a Blu-ray player, then this would be no problem. I would just put Blu-rays in it, but I don't and I'm not going to. So how do I get the right image to go to one of my projectors and the left image to go to the other? This actually required more tinkering behind the scenes than, believe it or not, anything else we've done so far. I used our handy dandy video on how to rip your own Blu-rays, except I ripped the 3D versions. Then I followed this Reddit thread on rslashvive to remux it back into a 3D file format using a program called bd3d2mk3d. Then we just need another program called stereoscopic3dplayer from 3dtv.at. We adjust the output settings and voila. Half frames on one side, half the frames on the other side. Voila what? When you say voila, you're supposed to show it working. Oh, well, let's get it working then. Okay, cool. If all of that was too fast and made no sense, that's okay, we're going to have that guide and all of the products that we used in the video description. For now, let's watch a movie. Oh God. Oh, that is not good. Oh, we might've remuxed this file in the wrong format. The crosstalk's very good, but- Wait, hold on. No, you can see it's split in half. Oh, balls. Part of that whole bd3d tool is you can actually choose how you want to split your frames. Left, right, top, center, if you want to split it in half. So half of it goes on one, half of it goes on the other. It took a lot of trial and error and depending on the Blu-ray file itself can actually depend on how you need to remux it. Okay, so this one, no good. Let's try the Tron Legacy one that I know for a fact I got working. Oh, dude. Dude, it's totally 3D. Okay. Holy crap. Dude, no way. That is like actually theater grade too. Dude. This worked way better than I thought it was going to. Oh. Oh, dude. Yeah. It's pretty sick. Okay. Worth it. What about the TV though? Do we want to permanently install this in your theater room? Because if we do, I would say that we would need to get the better projectors before we rip your TV off the wall. I would like to see a not live action film though. Oh, buddy. Dude, the sheep. It's coming right out. It's coming right for us. I had about 4% confidence coming and filming today. How did this not take off? I'm kidding. Now that we've got it working, the next step is the hardest part. Pulling that TV off the wall. Weighs about 400 pounds. Mounting the projector screen, then getting everything lined up. Just kidding. We came up with a better way. I found some random brackets in my garage and we turned them into a projector mount that is going to allow us to mount the screen on the TV. I hope. We're going to find out. Okay, dude, seriously though, this is not as stupid as it might seem. This is the original French cleat mount. You can see it goes there like that. And then just needs to hang off the TV. This feels so wrong. Oh yes, let me just drape my $6,000 screen over my $20,000 TV with nothing but one baby wipe in between. That is perfect. Oh dude, no problem. Obviously this is not, you know, an everyday solution. You know, it's not like, oh yeah, let's watch a 3D movie just to flip over to 3D mode or whatever. Like I could set this up in the time it would take to drive to the theater. So like, that's perfectly acceptable to me. Whoa, whoa, buddy. Off, off, off. Quick. I'm off, I'm off, I'm off. Down it comes. I'm off. Okay. Those did not clear. Oh, those really looked like they were going to clear. They did not. Can you imagine watching the room in 3D on this? I did not hit her. I mean, why is those ass just like coming out of the screen? Okay, mine's in. Dude, that's pretty easy. That's a pretty easy hook. Yeah. Oh my goodness. You got everything set, oh my gosh. Don't act too surprised. You helped. Yeah, I helped. Basically we made a platform. We got some counterbalances. We hooked it up to the home theater audio setup and theoretically this is okay. It's not perfectly aligned, but hopefully aligned enough. We're going to try it. I have some news for you. Okay. Guess what's working. The 3D projector. Yeah. Finally. Wow, really? That took like four years. This is it. Huge moment. Two years in the making. Does it work? Stop making it after the signals. No, we've been working on it the whole time. Here we go. I think there's definitely encoding settings that could probably be improved. Yes. It almost feels like it's alternating which frame it's instead of synchronizing them. So still shots are good, but motion's a little rough. Now this is an older movie. Why don't we try something a little newer? Yeah, anything in motion. Yeah, it's a little problematic. And the imperfect alignment doesn't help. Not helping. But when they're in the center and it's just a static camera shot, like that looks great. That looks kind of awesome. Okay, that's pretty cool. These projectors for 500 bucks each? Dude, like, I mean, you spend that much on two. Don't worry about it. Oh, buddy with the eyes. That was pretty, wow. It's so hard to convince this over camera to you guys. Yeah. Like how well this is actually working. Cause you know, for you guys, it looks blurry. And crappy. Yeah, it doesn't look that way. It wouldn't quite work that way. We'd need two cameras and we'd need two glasses and then they would need 3D glasses on their side. Now, the moment that you have waited over two years for, my son. Avatar. Oh man, a hundred percent worth it. A hundred percent worth it, dude. Dude, this is insane. Obviously we can't sit and watch the whole film or whatever, but suffice it to say, this is freaking awesome. This result is so much better than I would have expected. There's so little crosstalk. Very, very little. I mean, that's what happens when you're using professional grade optics. Yeah. So a family movie night this weekend, we finally watch Avatar. Worth the wait? Okay, don't, yeah. Did I ever tell you you can play games in stereo 3D? No. You can. There's a huge library of games. Guys, leave a comment. If you have any brilliant ideas for the best way to do it, but what I'm thinking is, final form, like the greatest stereo 3D gaming setup of all time. Can I have it? Well, I mean, it'll be in our house. You can use it. But can I own it? You can own the Segway. To our sponsor. Vessi. They offer all kinds of stylish, functional shoes for everyday wear. And now you can get access to their dry sock guarantee for even less. That's right, my friends. You can save up to 40% on select shoes at their Black Friday sale right now. Our team loves their Vessis, because here in Vancouver, the weather is just so unpredictable. And let's face it, finding shoes that match your fit, that's not always easy. 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