3D TV

I post this, despite the fact that it points out how stupid I am, in hopes that it will make it into the search engines to be of help to someone else.

I got a new 3D capable television last week and wanted to watch one of the 3-D movies available on HBO On-Demand. I get my TV through Time Warner Cable, but was very frustrated that the 3-D movie was coming through to my TV as a split screen, side-by-side image - two separate and distinct images of the movie, neither of which was in 3D.

I did a Google search and found some others who had the same problem, but no one offered any definitive solutions (that's why I;m posting this). I saw some vague references to changing the source, so I tried my 3-D Blu-Ray player and that worked just fine. It was indeed the source.

I tried changing all of the settings I could find on the TV, but nothing worked. In fact, under the 3D menu, all of the options were grayed out and unavailable.  I emailed the tech hotline for the TV manufacturer, but got the brush-off - they told me to contact HBO. I did e-mail HBO, but it is 3 days later and still no response from them. Then, this morning, I went to the Time Warner support page and got into live chat with a tech.

It took him about 30 seconds to suggest to me that I needed a 3D capable cable box. DUH - one of those moments when I felt like an ignorant kid again. Still, I'd never heard of such a thing nor had I seen anything in the directions that came with the television that such a thing was needed.

It is also important to connect the cable box to the TV with an HDMI cable, but I already knew that part. I throw that in here in case someone else runs across this and was trying to use RGB cables or some such. Those HDMI cables are pricey!

Now, nothing is working yet - I type this while I wait for this new cable box to download a huge software update - it's going on for about 20 minutes so far.  BUT, I'm assuming I'm all okay.  I'll come back and edit this post if I find out anything else of any importance. Otherwise, here's hoping more 3-D programs show up on cable in the near future.

Update:

So, I got the HD 3D capable cable box (mine is a Cisco Explorer8640, though there a lot of others out there) and hooked it up. It took about 30 minutes for the cable box to download and install software updates, so there was quite a bit of waiting involved. Once it was ready, I still couldn't get the 3D to work.

I had to spend some time, but I finally found the correct combination to make it happen. First of all, using the remote, set to the cable box, I went into "Settings" and under "Quick settings" there was a 3D mode that had to be set to"on."

But I still wasn't done -  the box had come pre-coonfigured to pass along the video signal in 480i resolution - and I knew that wasn't right. I fianlly found the magic combination, again in the "Settings" menu of the cable box, under High Definition and then under Output resolution I turned on all of the settings for 1080i, 720p and 480p. There was also an "auto" setting but I haven't tried that yet.

Voila! At last - HBO On-Demand 3-D worked. Not an easy task, but done at last.  Obviously with a different cable box or satellite box, the location of these settings might differ a little, but if you're having trouble, this might help guide you in what you need to look for.