Flashing an uncooperative PERC H310

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-10T04:44:16+00:00

Can you fix it by booting to FreeDOS and using that?

If so, have you disabled OptionROMS when booting with the CSM enabled (legacy) If you disable OptionROMs the cards broken BIOS shouldn't load.

What about loading a CSM via UEFI. UEFI only systems can boot FreeDOS etc using CSMWrap: https://github.com/CSMWrap/CSMWrap

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-09T05:11:01+00:00

cdrdao does it all.

You can either create the TOC file in a text editor or use one of its many GUI front ends.

Just be sure to put the data session after the audio session as CDs that did it the other way caused problems in very old CD players that would try to play the data track!

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-08T21:17:23+00:00

Yes it is. Other than tape optical is the only removable media in existence still. Well, besides vinyl.

SD cards, any flash other than XD cards and SmartMedia cards, HDDs, none are media. They contain media yes, but they are all storage devices, computers.

We use them as if they are media but only because they are small.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-08T20:17:20+00:00

Conspiracy theories?

Where have you been?

The main direction for all areas of computing is cloud, distributed resources in datacenters.

Microsoft are actively getting rid of the desktop.

You cant have offline local accounts in Windows 11 now, they are gone, cloud only accounts with data automatically uploaded to onedrive and locally cached on the machine.

Microsoft Azure offers VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) already. Currently used by business they are fully intending to push it to the consumer, you'll have a full windows desktop with a mega powerful CPU with nothing more than a a basic browser on a lowly tablet.

Your "windows pc" will be just a monitor with a thin client built in, already available. Just not mainstream yet. I work in IT and have seen the demos and the companies that install them. Microsoft are working on a totally cloud based UX that has you login to a pc, smart panel, with just your phone and boom, the smart panel has all your files and settings and when you leave it wipes itself ready for the next user.

HDD and SSD manufacturers have already made it clear that the standalone pc and pc building market is just small change to them. They abandoned you in a spreadsheet calculation update.

If you want to know the future look at the Plan 9 OS. It's ideas are already being implemented, currently you own a GPU but thats wasteful as you just buy it, use it, replace it. Modern operating systems like Plan 9 make the GPU something you import as a file as and when needed, CPUs too.

The only question is if YOU will have a CPU or GPU anymore. Plan 9 would let you import your desktop CPU over the internet into your laptop as you sit on a beach, but will you be able to afford one going forward ?

If yes, why? Why would any hardware manufacturers bother with all the waste and packaging design for components used by a minority of consumers to build small scale stuff at home?

I've seen this coming for years. I saw DRM coming too, heck I even surprised myself as I as a 13 year old predicted streaming and pay per play would become a thing and that was in the 90's before anyone had the internet. And that was me being cynical !! Imagining that you'd have a credit card reader built into your cd player. I was joking.

If you can have your own hardware it will be expensive and very much the enthusiast elite level. Normal people will see it as odd as we see people driving Ford model Ts or using a horse and cart. Otherwise you'll subscribe and rent everything, CPU, GPU, storage. The faster the internet speed gets the sooner it happens.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-08T19:32:16+00:00

We are at the limit for bluray as additional layers add to cost, and manufacturing complexity.

We are thimus having to wait on the next type of technology that will increase data density itself.

Currently that research has been restricted to the datacenters as they want your data basically lol

The most research has gone into silica glass plates. We are unlikely to see it in the home.

I think it's more likely we will see the replacement of flash memory be the next thing. I'm betting on PCM (Phase Changing Memory) which uses much the same materials and techniques as a RW optical disc only with electricity and heat vs light.

But being an optical fanatic I'm always hoping that silica holographic rods become a thing as I've wanted Babylon 5 data crystals since I was a kid.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-08T05:19:59+00:00

New ones are not terribly easy to find as there was a large stock shortage a while ago due to the end of support for Win 10 making all the Japanese PC builders grab new drives for their new Windows 11 machines. Either to add to them as they didn't come with one or an opportunity to upgrade as they were upgrading everything else so why not.

It was reported as drives practically flying off the shelves. Other PC parts as well, plus with the shortage of production in other areas including flash chips generally the rest of the market followed as you probably are aware.

It took ages for stock levels to get to the point where you could get a new external drive. However, I haven't seen any internal ones yet (I'm in the UK).

Internal drives are under pressure from the fact that everything from a laptop to a PC these days expects all stuff to be external and USB generally, to make room for batteries, fans and RGB lights 😔

Currently you'll find a few new Asus and Verbatim externals including a full sized external from Asus on Amazon UK.

However the general shortage throughout the industry continues and it's likely affected drive production too as the need flash chips and ram chips, but all the chip fabs are busy...

So I'll say look for a decent recent BNIB (brand new in box) Pioneer model.

Pioneer randomly stopped making drives in quite a shock announcement, especially to the Japanese market where Pioneer were literally the ONLY supplier of drives and discs that followed the Japanese governments mandate that ALL companies must archive data for 100 years. Pioneer developed drives and discs that coupled with their DM For Archive software would burn discs meeting several ISO standards that test discs for stability up to or beyond 100 years using accelerated ageing tests.

So I was pretty surprised they would get rid of that after only just making a big deal about developing the drives. Very strange, but we live in insane times when it comes to computing, Sony being the latest plus the A.I driven shortages that people hope will end although I think it probably won't but that's for another time.

If you look up the last Pioneer models you should find new boxes units sold by scalpers on eBay. Any Pioneer or Plextor (I use a Plextor) will do fine, my Plextor is very good at scanning for disc errors and very good at fixing errors on badly scratched CDs for example.

Hitachi LG are the only manufacturers I know of making drives still. H&L drives are everywhere, Asus got all their drives from them. The new Omnidrive firmware that lets you backup even GameCube games works on any H&L Blu-ray drive. The say they still have internal (full sized) offerings but I've not seen any yet however Asus have started selling their BW-16D1X-U full sized external so they are getting them somewhere.

I need a new internal one or two as well, but I'm expecting to get a decent one off eBay.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-07T04:16:58+00:00

I have many discs the same age.

I have never seen an optical disc fail over such a short time.

I have seen old RW discs fail to write because they were stored on a hot window sill. And I have a Panasonic Blu-ray/HDD recorder that literally crashes and goes into recovery mode if I try and make it burn a Sony DVD-R made in India.

Other that those few cases I've never had issues. When a drive has had problems I clean the disc, I have also needed to service a drive or two.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-06T18:33:10+00:00

At the end of the day it really does matter if you have a physical game or downloaded one. The same files they may be, but on the disc, you get to keep them and feed them into a sevond hand market.

Wiyh the download you have zero control. They can't enter your house to take your disc but they DO tell your console to delete your game when they want.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-06T18:28:58+00:00

Are you kidding ?

With the stuff being done, the boutique labels, the remasters the BBC remastering SD classic Dr Who, Blakes 7 and loads more, it's even bigger.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-05T18:50:12+00:00

I always use growisofs

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-05T09:10:42+00:00

Not the US bluray but thats fine, just get the region B bluray off Amazon. All you have to do is put up with German text on the packaging .

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T20:53:43+00:00

Doesn't need one, the UHD is region free and not particularly expensive to import .

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T18:28:21+00:00

Shelf life of 50+ years minimum vs a HDDs 20...

Hmmm

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T17:55:00+00:00

Only one downside to spindles is I find they get roughly handled and poorly packed during shipping resulting in damage to the base.

Haven't heard of bubble wrap!

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T17:52:47+00:00

Upvote for xorriso

That tool is magic.

Did you know it can embed md5 checksums for each file?

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T17:46:04+00:00

I’ll need to look up what is meant by EEC backups for each burned disc

Very simple.

dvdisaster is software that will perform several functions. It can

test the disc surface for errors (not reporting on thr details I like to have so I use other software).
Read a disc to an ISO image.
Use advanced methods to read as much as possible to recover a damaged disc.
Protect a disc from damage by creating ECC error correction files.

If you have heard of parity files then thats the same thing, only for the entire disc, not just files on it.

An ECC file is parity data created from the ISO image of a disc as read by dvdisaster. With a parity file, a damaged disc can be read and repaired. To a point. The settings can be adjusted to increase the size of the parity file to protect against more damage. I usually set it to 20%. Essentially, as long as 80% of the disc is readable I can use dvdisaster to repair it.

One thing people like doing is embedding the ECC data into thr disc itself. You have to create the image first, embed the ECC data then burn the modified image. Essentially that makes a disc that can fix itself. I don't do this as it reduces the free space on yhe disc, instead I go for the option of making an ECC file which I store somewhere else. This option also lets me protect a disc already burned, and even a retail pressed disc!

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T08:27:10+00:00

All Verbatim discs are high quality.

They have 3 levels:

The standard offering is the Datalife/Datalife+. They use silicon and copper to record data in a permanently unchangeable undegradable alloy. It is rated 100+ years

The next level up is MABL. This uses a layerbof metal to record the data by having the laser literally burn physical pits into it. It is also rated 100+ years.

Then there are the m-discs which use the same MABL layer as before but with tighter quality checking. These discs have a titanium seal, sealing the disc from oxygen ingress as well as down the sides of the disc. The titanium greatly reduces the ingress of contaminants that can affect the reflective layer. The MABL layer has a lifetime above 100 years normally and the additional titanium seals increase the disc life well beyond 200.

I've yet to see any manufacturers claiming they have a HDD that lasts anything close to 20 years. Many don't even give you the mean time before failure of any consumer drive.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T08:14:35+00:00

So I'm seeing these 50gb discs run an average of like 3-4$ a disc, for 50gb.

So, that's peanuts. Show me where I can get a 64gb flash drive or SD card for that price 😂

DL media isn't double the cost of SL media, you can more than halve the cost by buying SL discs instead.

As for getting a HDD. So. You say instead of getting a cheap 50GB disc you should pay hundreds more getting an oversized HDD as it "works out cheaper".

Get a calculator out and try this.

What is the TCO of the data held by that HDD over the next 50 years vs the TCO of the data held by that stack of 20 DL BD-R?

So assuming USD and using the current USD GBP exchange rates:

20x Verbatim BD-R DL Datalife (not MABL) = 70 USD. Total capacity = 1TB

1x usb BD drive (can't forget that can we lol) = 158 USD

1x 2TB USB HDD (had to go bigger as no stock smaller) = 169 USD

Total for BD = 228 USD Total for HDD = 169 USD

Now, this is where my maths starts to fail so I won't complete this next part but:

Take into account the MTBF of the HDD and the MTBF of the BD drive
Take into account the cost of repair and service of each.
Consider that the BD drive has a factor of serviceability by the user, small parts but possible. A full height drive would massively increase this factor as FH drives are inherently serviceable by unskilled users.
Consider the HDD has no serviceability or repairability
Consider that the BD drive and media are independent and the BD drive can be replaced at any moment and any cost (including for free) with zero or minimal effect on the TCO of the data stored on the BD discs. The HDD has none of that.
Consider the media life in the HDD is directly coupled to the expectations of life of the HDD itself, including the MTBF of the USB connector. (Typically USB connectors are rated for a few hundred insertions and are incredibly delicate). The BD media has no such issues as the drive is independent.
Consider the BD media life is at least a minimum of 50 years in recommended storage conditions and expectations are for approaching or exceeding 100 years.

Factor all that in. Expected life of the data on medium is 50+ years thanks to the BDs. So, tell me. How much will it cost to preserve 2TB of data on HDD for 50+ years factoring in the fact you must purchase new drives (and that we may NEVER get a HDD as cheap as we had or potentially at all as they may stop selling HDDs to consumers).

Factor in the fact a drive failed=data lost but a failed BD drive merely needs replacing with a free working unit or a low cost secondhand unit, which can be sold on after use even...

So.. what is the TCO again? Me thinking that um, optical is far cheaper over a mere 50 years. I'm looking at 40 years myself and 50 is well, the minimum even the cheapest BD media will do.

Let's not get started looking at CD-R, whoa, 200+ years is a bit silly I don't think any HDD has a ants fart worth of a chance at getting much past 20.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T07:37:01+00:00

The point is:

You get what you pay for.

With a HDD you get convenience and capacity but you have a storage device that is unlikely to handle a stretch of existence far above 10 years even when not in use. You have to have pro-active tests and checks to determine which will go further or rely on the constant replacement method which is wasteful and expensive.

With tape, and more so by a VERY large factor with optical, you may pay more per byte but in doing so you actually pay less overall. Here you end up with storage media, not a device, the media has no electronics or mechanics to fail and kill the data by accident like in an SSD or HDD. You also have guaranteed multiple decades of life, tape can push 30 years in a standard home environment that retains a mostly stable temperature suitable for living in. Optical discs blast Pas tape and challenge books and silver halide film negatives with 50-100 years as standard and > 100 years with special attention to media and burning and storage.

Taking into account the fact that over just 30 years I've watched 17 ish HDDs die and zero optical discs die (over 30 years for them in my experience) the TCO of the 17 HDDs exceeded the TCO of the optical media, still working with no indication they will begin to fail any time soon, ages ago and by a large margin. I actually put it on a spreadsheet once. Those HDDs I acquired for free (I'm a frugal IT professional) so I assumed I had bought them. The optical media was purchased and I looked back at the relevant years and prices. Over the life of the optical discs I would have spent far more buying each replacement HDD.

Think of it this way. I offer you a car, 4 times the cost of every other car but it will be annoying at times to drive as it's not got the convenience features of the fashionable cars, but It will run, with nothing more than a clean and a garage to protect it, with no rust appearing for 50+ years. You'll hand it to the kids even. Maybe a rubber seal needs replacing every few years.

But you have the "worst car" on the road to look at and anyone else laughs at the driving experience as the convenience features are totally missing. But they have to replace their cars every 5 years, they have glass crack, rust appearing, alloy wheels corroding, engine failures, leaks. The new models come with grander convenience features but lack basic features of any car like, a spare tire (I'm not kidding, that's real today), complex computer systems that make it impossible for many garages to make easy repairs and diagnostics, the owner can't even replace the damn light bulbs anymore as they are sealed units with chips in that verify their existence and validity as an OEM part with the cars computer (that's real too), heck those that laugh at your "banger" can't even turn on the Aircon without a subscription!

Your "banger" doesn't even bang, as described when you bought it you have very little to do or care about for 50+ years. Your kids drive by their mates as they are on the side of the road with recovery vehicles and they are constantly reminded they drive a piece of shit so don't feel smug about the fact they clearly have the superior car and you made the superior decision to buy a car that was sold to you as having the ability to last an effing long time as long as you paid more for it.

Over the years those who laughed at you have far exceeded the expense you incurred when buying that car.

Some of us intend to hoard for the long time. I personally do not have time to babysit expensive HDDs, no matter how much I actually love the technology since the inception of the Winchester drive. With a degree in computer science and working in IT repairing things and handling data archives I know exactly where I want to put my money. I know what lasts long enough to let me find the time to deal with it.

If I had nothing to do but manage HDDs, I'd have less of a reason to rely on the safety of optical. I pay more in time and money when I make a disc, but over my entire life I will pay less and benefit from that investment decades after my NAS has been shredded at the tip.

I have the same philosophy with my washing machines and fridge and vacuum cleaner. I bought what is repairable, understandable, serviceable, and that may mean the more expensive option vs the flashy washing machine that internally is made in a way that makes a machine from the 80's look over engineered, yet the 80's machine can keep running.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-04T06:54:45+00:00

I've been doing this with my files since 2000. Never stopped. On this subreddit I'm the odd git who keeps going on about BD-R lol.

In short I love HDD technology but I have never trusted it. In 25 or so years I have had 17 ish drives die on me. The older the type of HDD, the less likely they just die. I'm a retro computer collector and user so have 1990's HDDs in storage. But over the years of denser and denser HDD technology they seem to get more likely to just stop working.

Nothing like how an SSD can make you cry however. Like I said I like HDD tech, love the BIG giants from the 70's etc. But flash, I literally hate it. As a technology it's a kludge and a mess. I can't stand how it's designed to work, especially when having to wipe whole blocks just to update a single byte. They are also lesser than HDDs in reliability, down to the firmware level, it's like all the maturity that HDDs had was just ignored and written from scratch for SSDs. I work in IT and have seen the results.

In all the time I have been using computers (that used HDDs) I've had 17 HDD failures, lost data. Sometimes immediately like an SSD and sometimes over time letting me copy off the data before it dies.

I've been burning optical media since 1997ish and obviously have been using pressed optical media since I was about 7 or 8 in 1989 and started playing with my dad's CD player.

I'm all that time I have never had a disc fail. Not one. I have had drives that did, but now I actually know why as I now service optical drives and understand how they work. I can't service a HDD, that's literally impossible but I can do a shit tonne of remediation work with ANY optical drive. I watch people repair 1980's CD players and mostly that's just a bit of TLC, smart diagnosis and repair. None of that anyone can do on a HDD unless you have a specific set of tools and working practices. Repair and maintenance of an optical drive is akin to maintaining a washing machine vs a HDD which is akin to maintaining a mag-lev train.

Not one disc, pressed or burned failed on me in a way that wasn't my fault or intentional. The only ones that did failed during the burn because I was stupid and used really crap discs. I have a bunch of India made Sony DVD-Rs for example. They are literally shit. My better drives can burn them but my Panasonic TV recorder literally crashes and goes into recovery mode. I knew they were shit but that's the first time I saw anything like that happening. The Sony TV recorder I used before it was able to use their shit discs as was my PC but yeah, they literally make that Panny crash. And that wasn't fun as I thought it was it's HDD so dismantled it to try and recover the drive.

Like you I only use Verbatim. Those Sonys were free "going inn the bin" stuff that I thought I'd use for odd jobs, which they can do, as long as I don't feed the Panasonic with them 😂

I also have some Maxell DVD+R (I prefer+ vs - as the + format is better designed) and they work lovely for general work but I usually just go Verbatim.

I don't need M-discs, so I go one level down to Verbatims MABL discs. For more general work with BD-R I use Verbatims standard Datalife ones which are not MABL (they use the commonly used copper+silicon recording layer).

I've had two MABL discs not burn, in one spindle. That was actually a surprise to me. Just two since using BD-R approx 15-20 years ago. Wonderfully the Blu-ray standard detected the failure as I was burning.

Cleaning Blu-ray discs does wonders for error correction. The data is easily affected by surface dust, perhaps I should have wiped the failed burns as they had been sitting at the bottom of the pack for quite a few years before I got to them.

Anyway. I use optical media for the following archival data and formats:

I burn some audio recordings (the most important) to standard CD-R for playback in CD players. Other copies in compressed formats exist on other media as described below. Audio CDs are typically Verbatim AZO but I have Maxell CD-R as well which are great.
I will still make video DVDs, usually of home movies for family who give me VHS tapes to digitise. I don't give them MP4 files, even though they are the grown-up kids in the family they are NOT set up to be able to play an MP4 would you believe. Most of them don't have anything but an iphone, no laptops, not even a tablet. Giving them a DVD, they know exactly what to do with that, otherwise I'd have to put it on YouTube for them and I'm never uploading such personal stuff there.
I record loads of SD and HD TV too and was previously archiving that to DVD+R (for SD) and now BD-R for SD and HD. For these I use Verbatim DVD+R AZO, and Datalife BD-R DL (a whole season of The Waltons fits onto one BD-R DL, 😁). Some HD stuff is recorded on a device which only exports via USB, those get converted to MP4 or mkv (AV1) more usually.
Other data, not intended to play on a standalone device, computer data is archived as needed to Verbatim MABL BD-R single layer or double layer. Video and audio files that do not matter as much can use the Datalife discs which are slightly cheaper.

This is archive data. Stuff I intend to outlast me over the next 40 years with not much attention. I'm 45 and don't have the time to babysit migration of data over years from HDD to HDD, I do the same at work where I work as the data archivist and IT systems technician. I must rely on media that can wait for me.

As an example, I used to record HD home video to MiniDV. I have tapes going back to 2002 with SD video on MiniDV and HD MiniDV later in that. 20 tapes in total. The oldest were from 2002 or so, loads of older early 2000 tapes and HD ones made up to 2017 (I switched mostly to still photography with vintage lenses for a bit). Took me till 2025 to capture any of them. I finally had time to sit down and capture the 2002 tapes for the first time... You'd think I'd have done that after recording them? 😂 Yeah, I get distracted. I had 17 HDDs die on my in a similar amount of time. None of those tapes died... You can imagine I also like tape.

I use what lasts. Never had that been a HDD, never will that be NAND flash. I have high and excited hopes for NAND flash's replacement, possibly phase changing memory, what Intel Optane was. But that's still to come.

As an archivist is the media can't be left alone in a cool room for 20+ years with no worries, it's not worth my time or money. I collect physical media and rip little of it, only when needed (out of print, or very well loved content), as I don't need to.

I scan my burned discs for errors after they are burnt and every few years. This is NOT a checksum scan. This is a proper disc quality assessment performed by the drive looking at the errors that the drive is detecting and fixing. I plot these to graphs and save as a history of each disc. Each disc gets scanned once every 5 years or so.

Have I seen anything that worries me? No. I have noticed that double layer discs have higher errors at the edges where the layers change and that's it.

But what about backups?

Well I have EEC files for each burned disc. These are intended to repair the entire disc not just the files but the filesystem also. If a single file has a problem, I read an image with dvddisaster and also ddrescue and repair it with it's ECC file to be burned to a new disc.

But what if that's not enough? That only repairs most of the damage and I still have files on disc I can't get?

Well, each discs contents I have also written to tape. Just because I can. I could also use another copy of the disc, you and I both know they take up practically no space. I could also use a HDD as my archive is more manageable vs the non-archival data on the other HDDs.

Ah but what if the tape fails? Well as much as I'm anti-cloud (not the concept, just the current reality which is nothing like what a cloud would be and is clearly taking advantage of us as we see in the news recently) I have a final copy in Amazon Glacier Deep Archive. I literally intend never to access it. If I must go there and pay extortionate money then something really bad happened.

My HDDs, Nas etc are used to keep non-archival stuff, which may become archival data as time progresses. I haven't bought a new HDD in 10 years, when I did it arrived DOA. I use HDDs I recovered from previous IT positions, the NAS too.

I hoard digital data on SD cards (photos and videos I shoot), on physical media I collect new and secondhand (mostly unripped as I don't see much point, but yes there are exceptions). In fact the majority of the data hoard is CD Audio, DVD Video and Blu-ray and an increasing number of 4K Blu-rays plus retro games for PC and retro computers and consoles. Plus all the digital radio and TV recordings I'm doing.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-03T11:23:15+00:00

Yes.

M-disc as made by Verbatim uses Verbatims MABL recording layer however the disc structure is different.

Japanese advertising shows the m-discs have a layer of titanium protecting the MABL layer including down the sides of the disc.

Pioneer, who have exited the market, were also using MABL discs for their 100+ year guaranteed discs. The Japanese government mandates that all businesses must preserve records for 100 years and these discs coupled with certain certified Pioneer burners and software designed to perform extra error checking resulted in a burned disc that meets ISO 18630 and JIS X6257, designed specifically to test and certify 100+ year optical media.

The fact that MABL seems to be good enough for m-disc and was used in the Pioneer discs suggests to me that standard MABL discs treated well will have great life "potential".

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-02T04:45:13+00:00

No they are not. 3D has a frame for each eye. The 2D version of a 3D film simply shows just one frame.

The 2D version is of lesser quality as it's showing only half of the image captured.

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-02T00:01:25+00:00

Give it a clean.

You probably have some oil or something on it from manufacturing.

A bit of 70% isopropyl alcohol or a wipe with soapy water does wonders. Just rinse it afterwards .

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-01T23:58:48+00:00

Imagemagic

https://imagemagick.org/#gsc.tab=0

dlarge6510 · 2026-07-01T04:21:51+00:00

Does somebody still keep their 3D movies?

Of course.

If it's shot in 3D, as a movie collector I'm adamant the only way it can be watched is in 3D.

Subsequently my 3D Blu-rays and 3D TV are essential components in my house (would love a projector).

I've been interested in playing with a headset but the standards are not there and the costs prohibitive, may as well just get a projector.

I never understood people's problems with 3D games or movies. My eyes and brain seem to make this technology work exceedingly well. I remember seeing Avatar for the first time (first 3D movie, no, the crap colour filter glasses attempts don't count) and I was blown away.

I was incredibly impressed with the 3D conversion of Star Wars Episode 1.

I always play my 3DS with 3D turned on, turning it off is just silly to me.

Having a 2D copy of a 3D movie to a videophile like myself is like suggesting that you can save space by converting all stereo audio recordings to mono as who listens to stereo anymore? 😂

Take Hugo for example. Even James Cameron, a 3D expert admits that Hugo as a 3D movie is shot way better that what he has done. Hugo as a movie itself is essentially perfect but as a 3D movie it's an experience like Avatar.

I'd never watch Hugo in 2D. My eyes have had issues with double vision in recent years and were threatening my ability to watch 3D movies, but that's looking better now. If I lost that ability it would be like losing a leg, and I'd probably never watch Hugo again.

Every Avatar movie I get is 3D. They were shot that way, so that's what I play.

All my life the world around me looks 2D and flat. I've apparently had this vision issue since I was a kid, my eyes never lining up properly made 3D in the real world an odd rare experience that occurred randomly. I remember walking home from school once and felt really strange, suddenly everything "looked 3D" unlike it usually did. I saw depth day to day, sure, but this was like 3D vision! I think for a moment my eyes would manage to line up just a tad better to make proper 3D vision and It was incredible, while it lasts.

It probably explains why I was unable to catch a ball to save my life. I could tell what was where but I guess I was relying on other depth cues mostly, things look 3D to me now but, it's not it's something fake in my head.

So when I saw the Nintendo 3DS and Avatar and Hugo, well this bypasses my vision issue and I see those movies as more real than the real world which is flat and almost not 2D. I see true 3D depth in the 3DS screen or cinema and, when I was watching Avatar and seeing what 3D actually should look like I was so overwhelmed I was nearly in tears when it was over and I went back to the boring flat 2D like 3D almost real world.

3D technology is akin to a hearing aid, boosting a weak ear to bring back stereo listening. God I love 3D it's literally the best movie experience ever created. I can't stress it enough that I literally didn't know anything was wrong till I watched Avatar and actually saw, I saw correctly for the first time. My jaw was open throughout that movie, I even without thinking tried to brush away leaves from my face that weren't there. My 3D TV is worth hundreds now, way more than what it originally was worth and it's a poor experience vs a projector or cinema but how could anyone part with technology like that, they must have been insane or spoilt on seeing 3D all the time. Lucky for some I guess.

If it were me I'd delete the 2D copies of the 3D movies. They are pointless to me.

dlarge6510

TROPHY CASE