Blu-Rays are not Anamorphic, so a CIHlens is useless.

The main difference is that you are using more vertical pixels of the display (you scale the source from around 817 to 1080), so the pixels are visibly smaller. If you do a comparison you can see the difference if you are sitting close enough, especially with DLP. For example, forum member Art Sonneborn sits at 2 x the screen height in a CIH set up and he occasionally sees pixels, but without the lens he has to move to his back row (4 x SH) before they become invisible again.

Unless you actually do the comparison, you can't appreciate the difference, but I think you'll agree that around 250,000 extra pixels should make a visible difference if you sit close enough.

As for CIH, scope was designed to be the same height as existing screens and wider (approx twice the width of 4:3 screens), and when implemented at home gives you a 77% larger image than viewing the same image on a 16:9 screen of the same height from the same seating distance. It's far more immersive and gives greater visual impact, just as designed.

HTH

Gary

Lets hope "folded space" changes that soon, then we will have 1080P anamorphic titles.

As Gary said, the pixels are physically smaller on screen and it is (IMO) the more watchable image.
Edited by CAVX - 9/17/12 at 3:30am

It's not just screen door, but larger pixels can make for a courser looking image when compared, even on non DLP displays.


As Mark said, we may have a solution in the form of Folded Space to give us anamorphic BD, but we'll have to wait and see.

Gary

Most movies are scanned at 2K or 2048 pixels. All they need to do is scan them in at 2560, then scale it for 1920 x 1080. They can then make both anamorphic and letter boxed version from the one scanning. .

Yes, people here like to think that SDE is the be all end all of resolution, but that's simply not the case. While it is one factor, and probably the most obvious, it's definitely not the only one. Remember that SDE is seeing the gaps between the pixels, if you can see that, it's pretty bad, that means you can see something much, much smaller than the pixels themselves. But even once you get past being able to see the gaps, there's still a great deal of room for improvement.

The best example I can think of right now is the new Macbook Pro Retina Display. My laptop is a 15" (Dell) with a 1440x900 display, and I would say that most of the time I can't see the gaps between the pixels (the SDE). But like our 1080p projectors, I'm probably right at the threshold, I don't have to move too much closer to the screen (or the screen too much closer to me) to be able to start seeing the black in between them. My friend brought over his new 15" MBP with Retina Display (2880x1800), and man, that's a nice looking screen, everything is so much smoother and you can get right up to it and not see any pixels.

Point is, even though on my laptop I use it past where "SDE" is visible, there's still great benefit to be had from higher resolutions. This is probably the biggest reason why a Lens is valuable, it increases the pixel density by 33% vs zooming. This is also why I'm excited by 4K, that will get us closer to having a "Retina" display in our HTs.

You've wrongly attributed Stangers comment to me. I think you've mixed up my quoted comment from post 5 to Stangers quote of mine within his comment in post 7.

Gary
Edited by Gary Lightfoot - 10/13/12 at 7:41am

Ok, those darn comments within comments....peace


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For almost 10 years, they do in 4K, 6K and even 8K.

BUT, they could provide us a 2560x1080 blu-ray, it would be almost the same price as normal BD today.

Blu-ray 4K (not upscaled of course) will probably emerge in Q3 (or Q4) 2013.

For PS4, I believe that toy will only be available at the end of 2015.

Been thinking about 2560x1080 allot recently. Projectors at 2560x1080 would be PERFECT. They could provide upscaling specifically tailored to Blu-ray and you could select the aspect ratio of the movie and the projector would know where to matte off. Also for movies with rotating aspect ratios the projector could apply its own hard matte...I think it would be great. Also the bit rates Blu-rays are at are usually way more than necessary which is good for upscaling. Anamorphic Blu-rays at 1920x1080 with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 blowing up to 2560x1080 should already be the a standard...with the way Blu-ray players are updated with firmware/software updates it could be easy to implement! Also most TV's offer you to squeeze and stretch images which could come in handy for Blu-ray players that might not be able to read the "flag" or whatever tells the player to properly display 1920x1080 at the proper aspect ratio depending on the display. I've ran my own tests and can say that 1920x1080 @ 2.35:1 looks pretty awesome on a 2.5K display like an iMac 27" or even a rMBP 15". My opinion is that 2.5K is the perfect resolution...I like 4K as a capture format but as a delivery end format?! Way overkill. 2.5K for me is a sweet spot! Its a shame 21:9 (2.35:1~) TV sets are doing so bad...would have liked to see these soar in popularity which IMO would lead to a push in anamorphic Blu-ray.

In theory yes. The unit I saw in 2010 was no better than a 16:9 with an A-Lens left in the light path and for the price they were asking, a good 16:9 + A-lens was more affordable as well.

The key point being that the unit had to scale the program fill the panel and until true 2560 x 1080 program comes available, no one will will really jump at this because there is no real reason for many to do so. .

I agree with you on the 4K. I don't think it is needed in the home. You can sit 2x quite comfortably with 1920 x 1080, yet many still sit 2 to 4x the image height back. 4K promises the viewer can sit as close as 0.8x, but with what I just said, who will anyway?

And again, unless there is native program to support this, no one will go there. I think it is best to change the AR than simply up the rez.

There's a large area between "as close as you can sit" and "pixels are smaller than can be perceived". Just because you "can" sit as close as 0.8x with 4k doesn't mean you have for it to be beneficial. NHK performed a study that shows 3.5 picture heights is about where 4k and 2k are viewed as equivalent in terms of "being there" and "realness". On a more practical level, I sit at somewhere about 3x height in my theater with a Planar 8150 and a Prismasonic HD5000R and while I can't "see" pixels, I can tell the image is made up of a grid of finite sized components. I think a lot of people think there's nothing to be gained by more pixels if you can't see the screen door. But they forget that the gap between the pixels is ~1/10 to 1/20th the the size of the pixels that means that you'll reach the point where that is too small to see very long before you reach the point where pixels themselves are too small to see.

I'm looking forward to 4K to get us past the point where we can tell the image is made up of pixels. Just look at cell phones/tablets/laptops. The new Droid DNA has a 5" 1080p display, there's no way you need 1080p on a screen that size if you use it like a typical display and show text as single pixels wide (you'd be unable to read anything) but that incredibly high resolution creates a very smooth images that is very pleasing. Or the new Macbook with it's Retina display, that's one of the smoothest, sharpest, best looking displays I've seen. I want that in my HT.

Even without native content, 4k will be very nice in a home theater. Especially with good scaling, for example something like the upcoming 4K Radiance will be killer tied to a good 4K projector, especially with an Anamorphic lens

And if you have doubts about if 4K is beneficial at "normal" HT seating distances, look no further than the reports from those with JVC projectors with e-shift. I think the vast majority find that it does make a difference and that difference is positive, and this is an apples to apples comparison, same content, same projector, only difference is "4K" vs 2K display.

From our interactions, it appears that most post houses are moving to 4K scans as their standard. This is good news on several fronts, since this means that most films will be archived with all of the resolution available from 35mm pretty much intact AND it also means that it is easy for us to extract a 2560 x 1080 master, as their is plenty of resolution from us to pull from vertically.

The problem with 2K scans is that for films shot on Super35, the 2.40:1 aspect ratio is created by matting the frame. When 2K scans are made, they simply pull in the whole 1.33 frame at 2048 x 1538 and extract the 2.40:1 image out of the middle. The 2.40:1 extraction, unfortunately, is at standard 2K DCI 2.40:1 resolution: 2048 x 858. This means we have very little additional vertical resolution to add to the image. For 2K scans of anamorphically shot films, though, we have the full 1538 vertical resolution to pull from.

The long and short of it is that we need either a 4K or 2K anamorphic master to get the full benefit of MFE. Fortunately for us, there are tons of anamorphic 2K scans already in the vaults, and 4K scans are on their way toward becoming the norm.

We love your sentiments and of course agree The problem is not so much how hard it would be to implement anamorphic or 2560 x 1080 technology into Blu-ray, it's that the studios / mastering houses need to change their post and blu-ray production work flows. Big machines like the Hollywood studios are a bit resistant to change. However, we see the Folded Space MFE process as the perfect bridge between HD and UHD 4K for many of the same reasons you outlined. We'd also like to see 4K anamorphic as a reality, and MFE is totally compatible with that.

We are making progress...