A-300 3d clarifications

[brad713]

I have read numerous threads regarding the 3D capabilities of the A-300, but I’m still extremely confused, and I was hoping you could clarify a few points for me. Sorry if I’m asking questions that have already been answered but there are a lot of threads out there that directly contradict each other. My ultimate goal is to rip a 3D bluray with the highest quality possible that will play on the A-300.

1. I have seen numerous threads stating that that A-300 will only support HALF SBS 3d mkv. Is this true? I have seen somebody say on these forums that it is possible to get full resolution by ripping with DVDFAB and then using mkvmerge to make a 3d mkv. Are there any instructions on exactly what needs to be done here? I’ve searched the web but have not found any. Furthermore, I used dvdfab to rip a sample 3d video to SBS 3840 X 1080 and put 3dsbs in the filename and the PCH seemed to play it. Was this in fact playing at full resolution or not? In other words, does the PCH actually do the conversion of SBS to 3D, or does it simply pass the SBS on to the TV and the TV is doing the conversion? My info display said the “input” was 1080 3d, so it would seem that it was full resolution, but I might be missing something here.

2. DVDFAB has a 3d bluray to mkv conversion, but it does not work like makemkv where it is lossless. Is this correct? It seems to force a re-encode. I’m used to handbrake and the myriad of settings that comes with it, and dvdfab seems to give only one setting of bitrate. I’m concerned whether it’s re-encoding to a high quality or not – I have no idea. I’ve seen some threads say to rip with dvdfab and then re-encode with handbrake, but it seems that dvdfab is already doing the encoding.

3. I don’t believe this is possible, but can somebody please confirm that this it is or isn’t possible? Can you encode left frame and right frame separately with handbrake and use another program to merge them into an SBS mkv?

4. Am I missing anything here or going down the wrong route? Are there any other program combinations that would allow a high quality conversion to MKV that is playable on the A-300?

Thank you very much for your help. The more I read, the more I’m confused about what the A-300 is actually capable of playing regarding 3d.

[accident]

It's actually very simple. anything can play a 3d sbs or tab movie, not just the pch. It's just a video with either double height or double width consisting of 1 frame for each eye in each frame. It's your tv that does it's thing to make it work how their technology does it. The 3d extras in the pch allows it to turn on or off your tv's 3d mode automatically. Otherwise you need to manually turn it on and off.

The hardware has a very specific ability, to a degree I'm not sure too many people really know the upper limits. One hard upper limit is 1920x1080 output maximum. Now there is limits of how much data can go over the bus to the decoder and from the decoder to the scalar. There is also a limit to how much data the decoder can actually decode. If your lucky enough to be able to get your video through the decoder and to the scalar then yes it'll do larger originals but it's width will never go to your tv larger than 1920 and the height will never be larger than 1080.

These are just the limits of the hardware, there is no update other than picking hardware that can output at quad HD. You'll have to treat each rip you make on a per title basis. some will play right to higher res, work great and in a few years if you update to higher spec hardware (as more comes out) with no re-ripping needed. If it doesn't play, then it's up to you how you want to deal with the rip.