xps 15 AUO17ED LCD has 3D qualities??

I know it sounds crazy, but I started watching Dexter (copied from Showtime) on the AUO17ED LCD through those cheap 3D cardboard glasses, and the pic has 3D qualities!

It is not the 3D you see at Best Buy on the new 3D HDTVs when watching, say 3D Avatar DVD, but it is a subtle 3D effect.

I first noticed this 3D quality when I looked closely at authored DVDs on the screen. Words in authored titles seem to have slightly offset shadows. That seemed strange, and prompted me to put on a pair of those cheap 3D cardboard glasses and watch an episode of Dexter on the xps 15. What a surprise!

Will other owners having the AUO17ED LCD watch a DVD wearing those cheap cardboard 3D glasses and comment? Do you see what I see?

BTW - I am watching the Dexter episode using PowerDVD 8, set for hardware acceleration (nVidia PureVideo enabled). The colors are so pure, fully saturated, and under video acceleration motion is very smooth.

Use Avatar (SD) as your test DVD, if you wish, to see the subtle 3D quality on the AUO17ED screen. My settings in Power DVD 8 for Avatar are: Brightness (0), Contrast (+6), and Saturation (+10). You cannot adjust Color 1 and 2 when nVidia PureVideo acceleration is enabled.

 

What do you mean by cheap cardboard glasses? the ones with a blue and a red lense or the glasses that just look tinted e.g current movie theatre 3d glasses.

If it's the latter then I think it's your imagination as for the 3d to work it would require the screen to be polarizing the light? well polarizing 2 pictures and those pictures matching up with the polarization of the glasses lenses. Your SD movies won't have the two different pictures to start with... and even if they did - a screen with 3D polarizing capability would be marketed as such.

See movie theatre 3D and home TV 3D also differ, you can't use movie theatre 3D glasses even on a 3D TV playing a 3D dvd. Home TV 3D glasses require batteries / charge and are far more expensive than movie glasses, in the UK a set of movie glasses will cost around £3, for home tv 3d glasses £100+ and by the looks of it the Nvidia 3D glasses will be the same as used in homes..eg the £100+ versions.

Maybe your glasses are just pronouncing the shadows more and maybe giving the illusion of more depth

 

Yes the current movie theatre 3D glasses.

Three other people have viewed Avatar on the AUO17ED since yesterday and all have remarked they can see "some depth" to the Avatar(SD) DVD!

I wonder if the "3D-like quality" has something to do with the combination of the AUO17ED LCD -- coupled with enabling nVidia PureVideo acceleration (within Power DVD 8) during playback?

Remember, the xps 17 wth "true 3D" playing capability (announced at CES yesterday) accomplished this feat (as I understood) using a newer NVIDIA gpu (555 gpu?) and a special LCD panel.

Anyway, don't dismiss the observation b/c it "sounds crazy". Try watching Avatar(SD) on an xps 15 with an AUO17ED panel - using nVidia PureVideo hardware acceleration - first. Don't forget to turn up the contrast and color saturation as I described, for best "3D-like" viewing experience.

After trying out this experiment, please report your impressions here!

 

I don't think the observation is crazy at all. Avatar is a very immersive movie and the scenes are designed to look like they have depth so that when you watch it in 3D.. they do have depth. I think the NVIDIA 3D stuff the XPS 15 has is unrelated though, I should think that just means that when there is a 3D feed it is capable in layering the two pictures over each other and then flickering the two pictures at a frequency that matches the active shutters on the NVIDIA 3D glasses when watching with a real 3D LCD or the same if running it through a 3D TV. Cinema 3D and home TV 3D are completely different so your wearing of the cinema glasses should have no bearing at all on what you're seeing, in fact they most likely just counter the brightness you turned up as in effect they're acting like sun glasses.

I believe what you're seeing is a film which was designed to "pull you in" and then a nice quality screen and you should witness the same effect regardless of whether you have any of the nVidia things. I think it just serves to show both the filming of avatar and the quality of the xps screen.