3D MVC with Plex

[Hooded Crow]

I made an awesome discovery after some extensive googleing and wanted to share it with you guys in case you use Plex and have been wanting to stream full quality 3D MVC files in Bigscreen. Normally when you try to play an MVC file with Plex it just plays back in 2D but I discovered a branch of Kodi that has support for MadVR and therefor will let you play them back in framepacked SBS.

Kodi DSPlayer is what you want to look up if you'd like to set this up yourself. The main version hasn't had any updates since 2017 but there is an unofficial 17.7 version that someone made with some more recent fixes from 2020. You'll need to replace the included LAV filters with the ones from the LAV installer so it support's MVC and then of course install MadVR. After you sign-in to the Plex addon and start streaming a 3D Movie, open the MadVR settings with the taskbar icon and change the 3D output mode to SBS. If you're using a 4K monitor it will be original quality! Just keep in mind that guests will still see it at half quality as bigscreen only supports 1080p streaming.

Anyways, I know its kind of a niche problem but now if you've been using Plex you don't have to rip your blu-rays in HSBS anymore! Keep them all full quality MVC and stream them with Kodi.

[~ Diviad ~]

How much better is this than downloading VLC, then 30 seconds later playing whatever 3D movie you want on your monitor and watching it in Bigscreen?

[Hooded Crow]

This is specific to people who keep their movies on a server. If all your movie files are available on the PC you're using then yeah, use VLC or my personal preference is MPC-HC. I don't think VLC can convert MVC to SBS like MPC-HC can so I assume you keep all your 3D movies at half quality anyway.

Plex also gives you a nice catalog of posters to look at versus just casually browsing to a movie in file explorer, which is fine. It just depends how enthusiastic you are about your movie viewing experience.

[Hooded Crow]

I also forgot to mention that it renders the player interface in SBS as well so you don't have to close one eye when you're trying to use the controls. You'll actually have 2 mouse pointers on either side of the screen, its pretty awesome!