Warner's "Smilebox" format option for Cinerama films - Page 3

I only recently came across this thread and am also interested in seeing how this looks. It's not exactly my favorite type of movie, but the smilebox format should be interesting.

I went ahead and put disc 2 in my Netflix cue. You mentioned disc 1 wouldn't play on your Pioneer 51 with the latest firmware (v1.65 just came out recently). Maybe it was just a bad disc (the 51 is pretty finicky with less than perfect BDs. That's why I replaced my 51 with a 320.) I hope I won't have any trouble playing disc 2 on my Pioneer 320 (latest firmware v3.65).

Please report back when you have had a chance to check it out and I'll do the same.

Saturn94 -
I'll let you know if Disc 2 will play. Not playing disc 1 was strange - when I have had discs that wouldn't play (there really haven't been too many) the player usually puts out "can't play" on the display. This time it just sat there with "loading", and on the screen the ">" play icon was there, but the screen image was black. I gave up after waiting about 5 minutes, ejected it, and sent it back to Blockbuster. Maybe that's a new way of handling discs it can't read with the latest (Avatar) FW release.

How do you like your 320 ? I hold on to my 51 because of the awesome analog D/A section that has breathed new like into my CD collection which has me thrilled and has renewed my interest in listening to my CD collection again.

Bill

I'll let you know if I have any problems with disc 2.

So far I am happy with my 320 (I've only had it about a month now). I know many like the 51 for it's analog performance. But in my case, running the 51 straight through via analog (with no processing) resulted in worse sound than either letting my Anthem AVM20 processor redigitize the analog signal for processing or just bitsteaming the digital signal to processor (I have some unique crossover setting requirements that the Anthem accomodates that the 51 doesn't). So in my case the 51 doesn't have a SQ advantage over the 320.

For me it came down to BD error correction, and so far, the 320 has done better than the 51.

I got to watch disc 2 last night and it played on my 320 with no problems. The smilebox effect was pretty interesting/different although I think it loses something on a smaller screen (I have a 60" TV). I think you need a really big screen for this format to be really effective. That said it was worth a rental. I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would (not much of a western fan) and the overall PQ was very nice (there are some beautiful shots in this film).

In other words, it's like the difference between IMAX and "IMAX". One is native to the format and uses the full capabilities, the other is essentially a conversion to take advantage of the brand.

My copy arrived Friday and I watched it that night too. Yes, something like this does loose it's widescreen impact on smaller screens. I have a dedicated room with a 115" 2.35:1 screen, so some of the visual impact comes through. I sat for a while about 6' away from my screen and it was pretty cool. Farther back at my usual seating distance of 13' certainly diminished that effect. I noticed too that some scenes were deliberately shot and composed to really immerse the audience into the action. One in particular was early in the movie when a band of indians attacked the wagon train. In a Cinerama theater with curved screen I could imagine feeling part of the raiding party !

Bill

Do you know if there are any other BDs presented in this format?

lmao at 60" being a "smaller screen"!

This film has always been an emotional favorite of mine. I saw it in '62 at the Orpheum in SF. Later, in college, I got rid of the program that I'd picked up when I saw the movie (roadshows in those days almost always had a program, usually in hardback, for $1.00, available in the lobby). After watching the smilebox version, I went looking on ebay and obtained a nearly fifty-year old copy of the same program.

This movie has always struck a chord, whether I'm watching it, or listening to the soundtrack (one of my first LP purchases).

The thing is that the original lenses used to capture the images put distortion into the "flat" image on the film frame... like anamorphic capture. The smilebox actually presents geometry in the image in the most natural way possible... if you watch the film "flat" with the 3 images pieced together, and watch a simple left-right transition like a pan, everything curves up/down in a funky way. The smilebox version actually presents a more realistic geometry of the image content, though the shape of the letterboxing is now curved.

I finally got around to watching this myself over the weekend, and the smilebox format was much more enjoyable of a watch for myself. Sure, I have a tiny 42" screen compared to the small screen mentioned above, but much preferred the feel with the smilebox. The only tough viewing was the rapids scene, where it really seemed the faster action was tough to take. Overall, it was a very impressive technique. I tried disc 1, which I'll have to watch eventually for the commentary, but it didn't have the same appeal.

As for the movie, at the intermission, I was ready for it to be over. It was ok, but not really holding me. The second half, where I finally realized the link between all the individuals, had me very interested. By the time the outlaw came around, I wanted another hour! Still not a movie I'd pull out frequently, but I know I'll view it again in a few years.

Compared to how it would have been in an appropriate theater, yeah 60" is "small".

Although quite effective/interesting on my 60" TV, I can imagine how much more effective this format would be on a giant screen in a theater.

Having seen the smilebox version, I can say I would prefer the smilebox format over a "flattened" version.

Any other BD titles in this format that anyone would recommend?

I agree with Saturn; let's not kid ourselves - nearly any size screen or TV we have at home is small compared to a large screen movie theater. This is especially apparent in films where the director or cinematographer is deliberately trying to convey a sense of space or panorama. Other scenes that come to mind is the slow "flyby" of the Discovery spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the opening scene in Star Wars Ep IV. At home it's difficult to reproduce that sense of scale that you get from an 80' Ultrascreen or on an IMAX screen. In the end, it's the sense of immersion that we lose at home.

Bill

I just have to chime in and remind everyone that "size" is not the biggest factor with immersion... it's viewing angle.

Moving close to your screen at home can produce the same viewing angle as experienced in the theater. 1080p can easily do justice to conventional cinema-viewing angles of 35mm projection. You can even get IMAX immersion by just moving closer to your screen. However, where things start to show their limits is with the resolution of 1080p which doesn't capture enough detail to compete with the clarity of IMAX at very close viewing angles as you move closer than 1.25 screen widths or so. However, immersion-wise, you can still enjoy a wide viewing angle at home even if replicating IMAX immersion reveals a bit of softness.

That's where 4K may really help in the future... you could have IMAX immersion and still maintain resolution and clarity.

BTW, this is one of the reasons I went with my JVC LCOS machine... I can view from 1 screen width comfortably when I want and there is no visible pixel structure... just film like smoothness. It really does change the film experience when the immersion replicates real cinema. I find that I watch more and more films from 1-1.25 screen widths now and let the guests take the back sofa...

I know this is true on paper, but (at least for me) sitting closer to my TV is nothing like viewing in a large screen theater even if the viewing angle is the same. Perhaps it's the sense of scale or space that makes the difference. Whatever it is, it's not the same experience visually for me.

A small TV still locks your brian into a "small" experience because your focal distance is too short when you move into the image to fill your field of vision. Very true.

When you can fill your field of vision and still allow your eyes to relax and focux on something that's about 8-12 feet away, the experience, or "sensation" is much more like the immmersion feeling at the theater.

having the lights off in the room really makes it come together for "real" cinema.

Good info.....thanks.

BTW (sorry for being off topic), but I think I recognize you from the Home Theater Forum (back in 2000 when shopping for my first HDTV). Didn't you start out with the 46" Mitsubishi HDTV back then? If so I see you've upgraded a bit.

If you are not that person, sorry for the mistaken indentity.

True, size isn't the only component to achieve immersion. But my real point is that immersion is difficult to achieve from normal seating distances without it (or that feeling of immenseness you get at IMAX or Ultra Screen). With a 40" TV, you would have to sit 4.5' away to achieve the THX recommended viewing angle of 36 deg. Not being an expert in this area, I don't know if a 36 degree viewing angle fills our field of vision. My guess is not. Seriously, who would want to sit that close ? Also, I think even at distance, we still "know" that the images on that 40" screen are small. In contrast, when we're in at an IMAX, Batman or Ironman look really huge and yet in both situations the screen is filling our field of view. Which one is more immersive, gives you that WOW, that's BIG sensation ? I think we know the answer to that one.

Bill

Bill,

you've uncovered the biggest shortcoming with most so-called "home theaters"... they are sitting way to far away from their particular display to achieve any reasonable cinema-immersion experience.

How to solve it? First off, it sounds weird, but yes, you definitely can slide that sofa or chair forward when watching movies and then slide it back when you're done. That's the cheapest and easiest way to get a cinema-viewing angle from the 40" or 50" flat panel you happen to already have.

The rule of thumb is "1.5 screen widths away from the 16x9 screen". That gets you about 30 degrees of viewing angle. That's like sitting in the middle or rear half of a typical movie theater. If you like to sit closer in the movie theater, then moving closer... like 1.3 or 1.2 screen-widths accomplishes filling your field of vision to the same degree. The focal depth of your eyes is what tells your brain that the picture is big or small, but believe me when I say that filling your field of vision is the most important element of feeling immersed... having a "big" image is helpful too, but it's less significant to the overall experience... you would get much more immersion sitting 1.5 screen-widths from a 40" flatscreen than sitting 2 or 3 screen widths away from a screen the size of a roadsize billboard.

The problem for most people is if you have a small flat-panel TV and are trying to make your living room or den serve double duty as a HT room, then furniture placement would see awkward if you moved the seating forward to get a decent viewing angle with such a such a small screen. Allow me to stress that even if leaving the furniture set up that way long-term is not possible, don't let that stop you from sliding that sofa back/forth when you really want a "real" immersive cinema experience.

However, the easier solution is to get a screen large enough so that your "best furniture placement" distance from the screen *becomes* 1.3-1.5 screen-widths away from the 16x9 screen automatically. This is why so many folks serious about HT are going front-projection... it basically automatically creates the viewing angle of real cinema without having to re-arrange the room (or in some cases actually needing to slide the sofa back instead of forward). The other plus with a large 100" screen is that a 1.3-1.5 distance is far enough away from a screen this size to allow your eyes to start to focus with distance rather than close-up... this allows your brain to think "big picture" which does add to the immersion feeling, but rest assured that moving closer to a smaller screen gets you very close to the same experience (IMO, filling your field of vision is paramount and thinking in your mind that the image is "big" is secondary, though still a good thing).

"Home Theater" is not the same thing as "HDTV"... if we really mean what we say when we say "home theater", that means, to the best of our ability, replicating the video-reproduction aspects to achieve as-good (or better) visual and sound quality as we experience theatrically. The immersion-aspect of films is a key component of what makes a movie a "movie" and not "TV"... so you guys are very right for noticing how when this is missing, "home theater" just isn't the same.


But rest assured that getting the full immersion factor in your home theater is just as possible... you just need to figure out how to best attain that 1.3-1.5 screen-widths viewing distance in your particular situation... at least when it's important to you to experience a particular film with the immersion factor that the director intended you to have.

Widescreen impact is neither loose nor tight.

I thought the new presentation was remarkable, and helped immerse viewers in the larger image (it didn't lose anything). Those people with CIH setups need to realize they are watching on a non-standard format. Don't mistake format support for format standard: BD spec is a 1.78 format.

Had the folks over recently and had to explain yet another picture format (took me a while to convert them to letterboxing back in the early 90's), but they accepted it and got used to it.

I just purchased HTWWW in Blue Ray Smilebos. It really works well on a large screen TV. Is a good simulation of Cinerama. My TV 1s 47" and I recommend nothing smaller than a 40" set. I have also ordered the Sept 25th releases of This is Cinerama and Windjammer. I also recommend viewing on the large TV screen in a lightly lit or dark atmosphere.

Thanks for reviving this thread. I love HTWWW smilebox and had no idea these other titles were being released this month. Just pre-ordered.

Interesting discussion. I don't think I'll be experimenting much with this format until I have a bigger screen, but it's an interesting idea.

 

 

^ I'm not a fan of these 4:3 warp modes and never use em because they make me seasick.  When I watch 4:3 content on my 16:9 CRT, I use about a 10% vertical overscan and open the matte to ~0% overscan on the sides. This results in a modest linear stretch in the horizontal direction, and still keeps the image "title-safe" in the vertical.

 

If your TV uses a concave "pincushion" distortion (as opposed to a convex "barrel" distortion) for it's 4:3 warp mode though, then that might be somewhat similar to the SmileBox process. (You can check the distortion using a simple grid btw.)

 

If my understanding is correct, the SmileBox process seems to be attempting to produce a widescreen image that appears perceptually consistent in height on a flat screen.

 

As someone else pointed out, when you sit close to a large flat screen, the image will appear taller in the center to your eyes than the sides, because the sides are farther away from your viewing position. The effect appears like a barrel distortion...

 

 

It looks as though the SmileBox process is attempting to "undo" this natural barrel distortion effect though, using a reverse-barrel or pincushion distortion on the image...

 

 

When you display the image with the pincushion/SmileBox distortion on a flat screen, in theory it should cancel out the natural barrel distortion that results from perspective, and produce a more or less perceptually flat image to your eyes, so the image appears constant in height at a relatively close seating position.

 

My question is how do you figure out the optimum seating position in relation to the screen so you're seeing the perceptually flattened, undistorted "wrap-around" image as intended? Are there instructions on the discs that explain that?

Edited by ADU - 9/19/12 at 3:17pm

Not WB but anyway 'This is Scruborama':

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews57/this_is_cinerama_blu-ray.htm

Lots of dnr in these caps, would not know the source was three cameras by this output. The matting has blurring on it, even on the sides, no zooming in is needed to see it. Some of the distant shots look cartoonish and detail is poor. Compare it to 'How the West Was Won' which is crisp and has tons of detail even with it's low mbps VC encode.

^ Thanks for that link wuther. There's some pretty good info about the SmileBox process and how the 3-strip conversion was done on the HTWWW page as well, especially toward the end. A small excerpt...

 

 

I see what you mean about LOD in the screencaps as well (assuming the caps are accurate).

.
Edited by reanimator - 9/22/12 at 12:49pm

Another Flicker Alley smilebox:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Windjammer-The-Voyage-of-the-Christian-Radich-Blu-ray/43951/#Review

Lots of artifacts in these caps, most of the images are almost detail absent. Some might complain about the camera edges although I do not think it's a problem. The matting has quite the averaging on them.

The Arclight Dome in L.A. launches a 60th anniversary Cinerama festival tomorrow: https://www.arclightcinemas.com/news/promotion-cinerama?promo=spotlightD

It includes a digital presentation of Seven Wonders of the World, so I suspect that we might be in for a BD of that highly sought after feature.

I saw that announcement a little too late -- I checked for tickets and every Cinerama feature is sold out (or nearly sold out with no good seats left). Too bad, I wanted to see exactly how they were projecting, and from what source.