I just want to watch 3D movies without having to fire up a second device...

[AlexR44 3]

I have a brand new projector that supports 3D but requires the signal to tell it it's 3D, it cannot be selected manually. I have tested this with a bluray player it works perfectly. 

It's AMD CPU, NVidia RTX3060 video card, So far, everything seemed to be working fine - surround sound, hdr, everything direct plays, I haven't seen any encoding since I got all the initial setup bugs worked out.. 

The setup is this: 1 PC server and client same machine. Hooked to denon receiver then Viewsonic projector. 
Same exact configuration used with the BR player that works, so it's not the receiver being the loop.

What do I need to do, in this year, 2025, to watch a 3D mvc rip from my PC? Please, don't anyone send me outdated info for plugins and third party apps from 5+ years ago, they don't work anymore, or the instructions are imcomplete and cannot be followed anymore.

I've ripped the files into MKV and chosen the mvc stream, the Emby GUI says it's a 3D file, but is only ever playing back in 2D.

I went down a rabbit hole and found other players in conjunction with something called madVR, that looked like it was almost going to work, but never actually send the correct signal to the projector. 

 

Why is this so hard? Why can we spend literally thousands of dollars on a PC with insane capabilities, but we can't just watch a 3D movie easy peasy... is this not like 10+ year old tech by now? 
I'm so frustated... Just throwing money and time away on stuff that doesn't do what it claims it'll do. It's just Emaby either, it's everything these days. Nothing does all of the things it claims to be able to do, except may a hammer, but i dunno, haven't bought one in years. They [robalby come with flaky bluetooth now. 

 

I'm sure I'll just be stuck using the physical blu-ray player, but, I dunno... starting wonder if I should've just stuck with Jellyfin.

 

Any help woul dbe greatly appreciated. 

[TechStuff 1]

Have you gone into metadata on the movie in emby and changed it to 3d ?

[AlexR44 3]

Yes. I think that's how the Emby GUI recognizes iit as a 3D movie, it even automatically populated the dropdown with mvc as the choice, so that part seems to be working correctly. 

[TechStuff 1]

I only ever watched 3d movies that were sbs format on quest 3 headset using emby inside the quest 3 web browser and it works really good. I never watched 3d on a projector screen mines not even hooked up anymore.

[AlexR44 3]

yeah, I was going to try movies in a VR headset, but, I can't image that being as good as the big screen and surround sound. 

[TechStuff 1]

Actually it's better and that's why my projector is back in it's box in the closet.

[AlexR44 3]

10 minutes ago, TechStuff said:

Actually it's better and that's why my projector is back in it's box in the closet.

Oh my bad, didn't realize you were the deciding factor of what's better, I'll return the projec.... oh wait, you're just wasting my time,

I'm looking for techinical help on how I'd like to watch the movies, not opinions on how YOU like to watch movies. 

[TechStuff 1]

Sorry I don't have an answer for you, hopefully you get it working 

[Luke 42077]

HI, what Emby app are you trying to play with?

[AlexR44 3]

The Windows one, running on the same PC as the server. 

[TechStuff 1]

It would be so great to have 3d native running on emby, projectors headsets all streaming clients this would be really great.

[Luke 42077]

28 minutes ago, AlexR44 said:

The Windows one, running on the same PC as the server. 

You may need to setup an external player for this in the app's settings. Please note, our new app in the store doesn't support external players yet. We will be adding that, but in the meantime our old app can be downloaded here:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-windows/releases

The UI for it is still updated regularly.

[AlexR44 3]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

You may need to setup an external player for this in the app's settings. Please note, our new app in the store doesn't support external players yet. We will be adding that, but in the meantime our old app can be downloaded here:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-windows/releases

The UI for it is still updated regularly.

Thanks, but I think I've exhausted every avenue, I've tried several different players, nothing on my PC will work because apparently Nvidia removed the ability to send 3D frame packed info to displays from their drivers. I guess there just is no way to do it with modern hardware.

What a stupid world we live in. VR is taking over, and I'm just late to the party and don't wanna watch a movie with a teathered headset on. I can't believe how alone I am in this. People are just all too satisfied to take the garbage manufacturers give them and I'm too poor to vote with my spending. (Sorry, minor rant there)

 

If anyone has done this lately (2024 or newer) and gotten it to work, I'd love to hear explicit details. I'm using an RTX3060 and AMD ryzen5 3600.  I've also tried with Intel hd 730 on a different PC, but only tried briefly on that one. 

[brothom 177]

1 minute ago, AlexR44 said:

Thanks, but I think I've exhausted every avenue, I've tried several different players, nothing on my PC will work because apparently Nvidia removed the ability to send 3D frame packed info to displays from their drivers. I guess there just is no way to do it with modern hardware.

What a stupid world we live in. VR is taking over, and I'm just late to the party and don't wanna watch a movie with a teathered headset on. I can't believe how alone I am in this. People are just all too satisfied to take the garbage manufacturers give them and I'm too poor to vote with my spending. (Sorry, minor rant there)

 

If anyone has done this lately (2024 or newer) and gotten it to work, I'd love to hear explicit details. I'm using an RTX3060 and AMD ryzen5 3600.  I've also tried with Intel hd 730 on a different PC, but only tried briefly on that one. 

To be brutally honest with you; in my direct environment the hype surrounding 3D died a long time ago.

The last time I remember when VR was a thing is when VR Chat came to Steam around 2017. Since then there have only been a handful of content creators occasionally using 3D in their videos on platforms like Twitch and Youtube, but in the real worl, nobody I know regularly uses their headsets or beamers anymore. 

Maybe when something new sparks new life into VR/AR it'll become popular again but for now I suppose there just isn't a market for it anymore.

[AlexR44 3]

1 minute ago, brothom said:

To be brutally honest with you; in my direct environment the hype surrounding 3D died a long time ago.

The last time I remember when VR was a thing is when VR Chat came to Steam around 2017. Since then there have only been a handful of content creators occasionally using 3D in their videos on platforms like Twitch and Youtube, but in the real worl, nobody I know regularly uses their headsets or beamers anymore. 

Maybe when something new sparks new life into VR/AR it'll become popular again but for now I suppose there just isn't a market for it anymore.

I hear ya. People are quite fickle and transition quickly from fad to fad these days. Everything from cars to phones, companies these days just keep looking for that profit increase instead of taking care of their existing users. Something like 3D movies would've taken a long time to adopt to mass popularity, but I guess  the studios and equipment manufacturers just didn't want to do it any longer, not enough profit soon enough.

Basically the answer to every time I ask myself "why don't we have X, as a society?", the answer is almost always either A. Not profitable enough, or B it's simply impossible. 

It sucks being as old as I am, I saw a time when innovation and features drove sales, prices were competitive and options were varied. Now everything is the same, just different content to consume. I mean... Look at cars... We went from dozens of shapes, colors, and definitive styles, to any cross-over suv you want; without a frame and in black, white, or silver. And now, you can even choose from 3 different engines, all 2.0L or less and with cheap turbos that'll cook before the tranny does. None of them powerful enough to tow home another when it bricks itself due to some dumb sensor gone bad that wouldn't ultimately effect the safety of the vehicle anyway. (Yet, legit safety recalls are are in record numbers) 

Whoops... I've gone off on another rant. I should go coffee and eat before replying any more.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with Emby overall, despite the few areas that navigating with a remote control doesn't work, it's otherwise, one of the best things I've done with a computer (at home) in over 25 years. It's quite good . 

[brothom 177]

1 minute ago, AlexR44 said:

Whoops... I've gone off on another rant. I should go coffee and eat before replying any more.

Haha don't worry, I'm sure a bunch of people around here can relate to that. You're right, the world is less competitive in the sense of innovations. Each product has to be able to perform any task, even ones it wasn't designed to do. We're silly as a society like that. 

3D also has a lot of proprietary tech in it, so some options simply aren't available for platforms like Emby because they're not allowed to ship their product with certain supports without paying (most of the time astronomic) fees. 

Maybe the near future will bring some standardisation.

[shamair 0]

On 8/14/2025 at 9:00 AM, AlexR44 said:

I hear ya. People are quite fickle and transition quickly from fad to fad these days. Everything from cars to phones, companies these days just keep looking for that profit increase instead of taking care of their existing users. Something like 3D movies would've taken a long time to adopt to mass popularity, but I guess  the studios and equipment manufacturers just didn't want to do it any longer, not enough profit soon enough.

Basically the answer to every time I ask myself "why don't we have X, as a society?", the answer is almost always either A. Not profitable enough, or B it's simply impossible. 

It sucks being as old as I am, I saw a time when innovation and features drove sales, prices were competitive and options were varied. Now everything is the same, just different content to consume. I mean... Look at cars... We went from dozens of shapes, colors, and definitive styles, to any cross-over suv you want; without a frame and in black, white, or silver. And now, you can even choose from 3 different engines, all 2.0L or less and with cheap turbos that'll cook before the tranny does. None of them powerful enough to tow home another when it bricks itself due to some dumb sensor gone bad that wouldn't ultimately effect the safety of the vehicle anyway. (Yet, legit safety recalls are are in record numbers) 

Whoops... I've gone off on another rant. I should go coffee and eat before replying any more.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with Emby overall, despite the few areas that navigating with a remote control doesn't work, it's otherwise, one of the best things I've done with a computer (at home) in over 25 years. It's quite good . 

There might be a bit of a workaround here. Does your BluRay player support DLNA exploration? You can use something like SkyBox to create a DLNA server on your LAN, and then use the BluRay player to play the file. It should just serve the file as-is and let the player handle all the processing. You wouldn't necessarily be using Emby for 3D movies, but still use your rips stored on your HTPC without having to go get up and swap discs.

I use my LG's built in DLNA explorer to watch 3D movies from my PC this way, and it automatically receives the 3D signal to play frame packed 3D.

Edited January 7 by shamair
addition of last comment