### Building a 3D Home Theater Setup: Challenges and Solutions

The quest for a 3D home theater setup reveals unexpected challenges and rewards, reigniting a love for immersive cinema.

### Journey to a 3D Home Theater: From Concept to Reality
* 🎬 Two years ago, the author promised their kids a viewing of "**Avatar 2**" after they experienced the original film in **3D**, leading to a quest for a **3D home theater setup**.
* 🏠 Despite the convenience of home viewing, the author discovered that supporting hardware for 3D was **nearly extinct**, with many solutions requiring **uncomfortable active shutter glasses**.
* 🔍 The decision was made to pursue a **passive 3D setup with dual projectors**, which posed challenges such as finding **compatible filters and projectors**.
* 💰 After extensive research and spending over **$1,500 on high-quality polarizing filters**, the author faced additional hurdles with projector alignment and screen choice, ultimately opting for a **$6,000 Silver 5D screen**.
* 🎥 Initial attempts at setup revealed issues with **polarization and image quality**, prompting the need for a proper **remuxing process** to achieve the desired **3D effect**.
* 🛠 The project took unexpected turns, including **creative solutions for mounting the screen and projectors**, leading to a **successful test of the 3D setup** after two years of effort.
* 🎉 Ultimately, the author and their family were thrilled with the results, finally ready to watch "Avatar" and enjoy a **rich library of 3D content**, marking the **culmination of their long journey**.
* 👟 The video also included a sponsorship segment for Vessi, promoting their **functional footwear** during the home theater adventure.

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 unobtanium 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. [Music] Before you 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 time 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 going to turn these 3D projectors into a gigantic downgrade for anything that's not 3D. We're going

to 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 LS2000 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

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 Optima UHD30 doesn't have lens shift

to help us line up the images, but what it does have is 4K output, 3400 lumens of peak brightness, which is really important when you're using a polarizing filter. It's going to sap so much of your brightness and perhaps most importantly, give you pick-up for as little as $500.

Freedom do 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. Who there they are. This pair of clockwise and counterclockwise polarizing filters, also a family pack of 3D glasses, set us back over $1,500. 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. Wow, like it blocks holy cow the light. Oh dude, this might actually be cool, but it's 3D, of course it's cool.

Here's the thing though, Elijah, remember how we reviewed the 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 eyeholes 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 Elite 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

Stewart this is their Silver 5D screen 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 is 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 cuz if not this video is done for I don't think I'm going to invest in another attempt at this why don't you just buy a Clex projector why don't you

just buy a CLE, oh but I can't afford a complex. The theater industry is 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, yeah, 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, 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 going to 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, okay.

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 cross talk. 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. Uh, okay, well they have their own problems but anyway, oh, oh, I don't have the filter on it again. Damn it. Okay, you don't want to 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 had put it down, for it was the reason I did that. Yeah, these kind of suck by comparison. You can really tell.

you know 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 going to 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, it'll actually switch which I can see and which one I can't, and it can also be

worse for giving people headaches. So, um, 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 going to be, as we say in the biz, a b... uh, I think we're going to go top and bottom, sure that works. All right. Wow, wow, that's pretty great. It's [Music] 3D. It's going to be great trying to line

this up now, and then we move in there and we're going to 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 going to 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? I'm 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 you 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 r/v to remux it back into a 3D file format using a program

called bd3d to mk3d. Then we just need another program called Stereoscopic 3D Player from 3DTV. We adjust the output settings and Vel, half frames on one side, half the frames on the other side. VOA. What? When

you say VOA, you're supposed to show it working. Oh well, let's get it working then. Okay, cool. If you thought all of that was too fast and made no sense, that's okay. We're going to have that guide and all the products that we used in the

video description. For now, let's watch a movie. Oh God. Oh God. Oh, that is not good. Oh, we might have remuxed this file in the wrong format. The crosstalk's very good, but wa, hold on. No, you can see it's split in half. Oh balls. Part of that whole BD

3D 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 dude, it's totally 3D. 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 dude, yeah, it's pretty sick. Okay, 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, wow, dude, the she, 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 lb. 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 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 uh 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 [Music] 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 I'm off I'm off I'm off down it comes I'm off okay those did not clear oh those really look like

they were going to clear they did not can you imagine watching the room in 3D on this I did not hit her Me by zo's 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 I helped um basically we made a platform we got some counter balances um 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 4 years this is it huge moment two years

in the making does it work stopped making it after like six months 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 encoding instead of

synchronizing them yeah 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 huh I mean you spend that much on 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 like how well this is actually working cuz you know for you guys it looks blurry and crappy and crappy put goggles over the camera yeah it doesn't work that way it quite work that

way we'd need two cameras and two glasses and then they would need 3D glasses and on their side now the moment that you have waited over 2 years for my son Avatar oh man 100% worth it 100% worth it dude

dude this is insane obviously we can't sit and watch the whole film or whatever but but suffice it to say this is freaking awesome this result is so much better than I would have expected there's so little cross talk very very little I mean that's what happens when

You're using professional-grade optics, so uh, family movie night this weekend, we finally watch Avatar. Worth the wait, well, 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? Uh, well, I mean, it'll be in our house.

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My Most Unnecessary Home Project in YEARS

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

Initial Idea and Challenges of Building a 3D Home Theater

The family's desire to watch Avatar 2 in 3D sparked the project.

The decision to build a home 3D theater instead of going to a cinema.

The realization of numerous challenges in building a 3D home theater due to lack of hardware support.

The difficulty in finding suitable hardware and the discomfort caused by active shutter glasses.

The decision to opt for a passive 3D setup using dual projectors and polarizing filters.

Projector and Filter Selection and Challenges

The initial projector (Epson LS2000) proved incompatible with polarization.

Acquisition of Optima UHD30 projectors from eBay, lacking lens shift.

The importance of high lumens due to brightness loss from polarizing filters.

The high cost and difficulty in sourcing high-quality polarizing filters.

The expensive purchase of polarizing filters and 3D glasses from American Polarizers Inc.

Challenges in maintaining polarization after light bounces off the screen.

Rejection of the initial screen due to incompatibility with passive 3D.

Purchase of a Stewart Filmscreen Silver 5D screen optimized for 2D and 3D.

The high cost of the Stewart Filmscreen and the long wait before installation.

Poor off-axis viewing angles of the new screen.

Difficulty in aligning the projectors due to lack of lens shift.

The challenge of aligning the image properly and dealing with imperfections.

The process of obtaining and preparing 3D content for playback.

The complex process of ripping, remuxing, and playing 3D Blu-ray files.

Troubleshooting issues with frame splitting and remuxing.

Creating a makeshift projector mount to attach the screen to the TV.

Final adjustments and testing of the 3D setup.

Successful playback of Avatar 2 and overall satisfaction with the results.

High quality of the 3D image with minimal crosstalk.