I recently went to see the third Avatar movie, and of course I saw it in 3D, as Jim Cameron’s blue space cats are the pinnacle of 3D cinema.
Unlike people who think it’s okay to hate things that are extremely popular, I love the Avatar movies. I also love quality 3D movies, but you don’t see home 3D movie systems anymore. That doesn’t mean 3D movies at home are a thing of the past! Hardcore fans keep the dream alive until one day the mainstream gives 3D another chance.
3D didn’t die, it just lost its popularity
You can still find it if you know where to look.
3D movies are not dead at all; You can still watch 3D movies at your local movie theater, but chances are that not all theaters will show 3D movies like they did at the height of the 3D movie craze. So at least we know that movies are still rendered for 3D if they’re not always shown in true 3D.
But it is in the home media market where things are not going too well for the format. 3D never had its own 4K format, so any 3D Blu-ray you watch today is still a 1080p movie. That said, you can still get recent movies on 3D Blu-ray, like those from 2022. Avatar: The Way of Water.
The problem is that the hardware needed to play these discs can be difficult to find. As CNET reportedAs of 2017, Sony and LG removed 3D support from their TVs. That means there are still some 2016 4K OLED TVs with 3D modes, but as you can imagine, finding one won’t be cheap.
Projectors and virtual reality became the new 3D screens
Hidden in plain sight
But you don’t have to buy a decade-old TV in a parking lot to get 3D hardware, nor do you have to pay a fortune for it. While televisions have stopped supporting 3D video, some modern projectors and all Virtual reality headsets support 3D.
Getting a 3D Blu-ray player can be difficultbut you can use a standard PC Blu-ray drive to copy those discs to a digital format that can be played on these devices. Plex, for example. I use a paid Plex client called Movie Deck for Quest which supports common 3D formats and you can sit in a nice virtual cinema with a huge screen.
You can watch Plex in the headset’s browser for free, but I don’t like that so I spent a few bucks. There are also other options, such as big screen for the Meta Quest headphone series. If you don’t want to stream movies from your Plex server, that might be the best option. He video below details how to convert Blu-ray 3D into a format these players can use.
If you have a 3D Blu-ray player, you can connect it directly to your 3D projector. The 3D projectors currently on the market are active types, so they require glasses with an active shutter. Unfortunately, if you want passive 3D projection like in movie theaters, you’ll have to go through this complicated and expensive process that Linux Tech Tips did in this video.
He Hisense M2 Pro It’s a good example of a modern, affordable 4K projector ($1,300 isn’t bad in this context) that supports 3D. However, you will have to purchase the optional active glasses, which are quite expensive. Also, some of the reviews I’ve read make 3D Blu-ray player support seem hit or miss, although it should work since the projector supports the frame packing format used by 3D BDs.
- Brand
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Hisense
- Native resolution
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Ultra HD 4K
An affordable, portable 4K laser projector, ready to provide up to a 200-inch image wherever you need it.
Long live the records!
The big problem here is the content. There are still dozens of movies released in 3D on Blu-ray, but if Blu-rays in general are a niche market now, you can imagine that 3D Blu-rays are even more niche than that.
Few streaming services host 3D content, and those that do may be doing some sort of policing. For example, as of this writing, the only place you can watch 3D movies on Disney+ is using the Apple Vision Pro. There’s no reason why this wouldn’t work on a much cheaper headset like the Quest 2 or 3, but I assume this is part of some kind of deal between Disney and Apple.
So when a movie that was released in 3D in theaters is never released in home format in 3D, there is simply no way to access that version of the movie.
A niche hobby that’s not going anywhere.
Like virtual reality, there have been several attempts to make 3D movies the next big thing. The latter may have been the most successful as 3D is still available in theaters and 3D content is still released on disc, but the big barrier has always been the hassle of hardware.
A VR headset is easy, although of course only one person can watch at a time, or multiple headsets are needed. As for projection, it can be expensive to get active shutter glasses for everyone, and some people get headaches from that technology.
The great hope here is the perfection of glasses-free 3D. We’ve come a long way since the Nintendo 3DS, and maybe one day 3D images on a TV won’t require anything more than your eyes, at which point 3D might finally have its day.
