What are the chances ?

Originally Posted by Art Sonneborn

I'd like input on what folks think are the chances that there will be a panel that is native 2.35:1 in the next two to three years ?

Art

Originally Posted by rdjam


Main question is - is there demand from digital cinemas for this? If not, it may really stack the odds against it happening, perhaps.

Originally Posted by Art Sonneborn

I see a very real possibility that these will be developed for digital cinema applications.

Originally Posted by CAVX

Custom made? How expensive would that be? Cheaper to buy a standard 1920 x 1080 displays and the ISCO III I would think...

And how many 4K "failure" units are we talking about here?

Mark

Originally Posted by usualsuspects

"Cheaper" - yes, but Art did not put an upper cap on the price range, and an Isco III is not cheap (5K) plus min 5K for a 1080p projector puts you into the 10K and above range - that is a very different market than the less than 5K world.

Another way to go about this is to dump the projectors primary lens. If your goal is anamorphic, why do you need two lenses in the projector? Or adaptive optics for the 1.78 and under crowd.

How many 4k rejects? I don't know, but there are bound to be 4k projectors on the used/scrap market at some point in the next 3 years.

Originally Posted by khellandros66

Art, I think that it will be very slow acceptance, you have other matters involved such as native 2.35:1 anamorphic content, which doesn't exist yet, and a widespread acceptance of the value and benefits.

Originally Posted by Art Sonneborn

I still have some lingering doubts including scaling to fill the panel ,need for curved screens which complicates masking and enlarging the lowest resolution AR to the largest screen size but it has it's advantages also.

Art

Originally Posted by CAVX

I've been hammered at another forum because the poster though that "scope" was too wide and therefore "unnatural" to watch...In his perfect world HDTV 16:9 is the ultimate way to watch any and all video...

Mark

Originally Posted by Gary Lightfoot

Then he must really hate going to a real cinema then

Gary

Originally Posted by Vern Dias

Obviously, whoever that was suffers from tunnel vision.

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Originally Posted by PLB
My questions are:

* Will 2.35:1 persist?
* Will Comcast broadcast it?
* Will Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support it?



Yes and the number of films shot and presented in cinema scope are on the increase. I do go to the cinema quite often, and in the last 12 months, there was just one film (War Of The Worlds) that was not cinema scope...

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Will 2.35:1 Persist?
2.35:1 is not some "natural" aspect ratio. TV followed the film standard of 4:3 so theaters wanted something different in the fifties to draw people back. Other gimmicks were tried:

* Cinerama (three projectors)
* 3-D
* Smell-O-Vision



It is a natural AR and is why it is generally the prefered format for film blockbusters...

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Hollywood is facing the same challenge again. 3-D is coming back. The best quality image is shown on IMax which is close to 4:3. The 2.35 image doesn't fit well in most home theaters nor is it a good match for the human visual field. It is too wide.


Clearly the opinon of someone who does not own a 2.35:1 set up. The cinema industry needs a draw card to get audiances back into cinemas, so they will re-introduce 3D and other sensory stimuli (gimmic or not) to raise revenue. That is why we home theatre enthusiasts have multi format digital sound. Both DD and DTS started as cinema sound formats, then came home with packaged media.

IMAX (70mm) is by the far the best film format, but it by far the most fatiguing to watch - noted that average IMAX is just 40 min. This is mostly due to the height of the image. Reseach has proven that our eyes prefer horizontal motion over vertical, and that vertcial motion of the eye is more fatiguing.

In the cinema, the sceen width is based on a "preferred viewing angle" of 36 degrees for the 2.39:1 cinema scope AR. When we set up a HT projection system , typically we use the same angle for 1.78:1. As a consequence, the screen height is too high and that in its self becomes a problem...

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TV is rapidly turning into HDTV - a native 16:9 format. Currently there are about 37,000 theaters in the nation and 20,000,000 Home Theaters. If those theater were full they would have about the same seating capacity - but the theaters are not full. DVD rentals are becoming more important. The last two Nicolas cage movies made twice as much from their DVD sales as they did when shown in the theater. In the forties TV adopted the aspect ratios of movies (4:3). The movies changed in the fifties. Today as Home Theater becomes the first medium perhaps movies will be released in 16:9.


I very much doubt that the director's choice is for a small image size if given the choice. For films to go BACK to 1.78:1 would be like not progressing to HD, but staying with SD, and that is not going to happen...

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Will Comcast broadcast it?
Currently Comcast crops its HD wide screen movies. I watch a lot of movies broadcast in 720p or 1080i. They are cropped to 16:9. If I want to see a 2.35 movie I can rent a DVD but the quality is less.


Thats only becuase right now the NTSC R1 DVD has only got 480 vertical pixels. Wait till it has 1080...

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As it happens the pan and scan techniques that are used for 4:3 displays to show widescreen material don't seem to be used when a native wide screen (16:9) shows a very wide screen (2.35:1) image. They appear to just crop the sides. Its not bad.


1.78:1 (16:9) is an OK width, but it is not W I D E...

Quote:
Will HD-DVD & Blu-Ray Support It?
Anamorphic expansion is a kind of kludge or a skiamorph. It was developed as an analog/optical way to compress a wide image onto fixed width 35mm film stock. Today there is no squezzed image stored physically on a digital disc like a DVD or an HD-DVD.


Well thats not entirely true. All anamorphic DVDs are horizontally squeezed to fit a 1.78:1 frame inside a 1.33:1 frame. The amount of squeeze is not as severe as the film method, but is based along the same methodology - to fit more width in...

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This technology seems to belong with LP turntables and tube amplifiers.


Yeah maybe, but ask any audiophile, and they still tell you that those "OLD" technologies are still the best around...

Mark

Quote:
Originally Posted by PLB
I don't mean to criticize your hobby. If someone likes to restore old cars or build sail boats, I have no quarrel. I was merely reacting to the thrust of this thread that somehow the very wide 2.35:1 displays are the wave of the future. One can get in trouble predicting the future but I sincerely believe that these overly wide displays are a relic of the past.


I don't think we will ever see 2.35:1 native displays, but 16:9 (1.78:1) displays have already been replaced (the 4K pro stuff and some 2K units for a start) with a slightly wider 1.85:1 native display. This means that the 35mm flat can also be projected digitally. Combine those with an anamorphic lens, and you have a digital 2.35:1 to replace film...

I guess you need to ask yourself - do want a really big TV or are you wanting to recreate the artform that is cinema?

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I used to be something of an audiophile. I built all my own speakers there for a while and I had a friend with a folded horn woofer that was bigger than I am (and I'm pretty big). I also have a taste for older technology. I used to play my Caruso 78s on a mechanical wind up player. Indeed until CDs that was the best way to hear early recordings. I am fond and nostalgic about old technology - but I'm not so sentimantal that I lose perspective and start to claim that tube amps were better. That's just silly.


I don't own tube amps either...

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Yes its true that I don't have an optimized 2.35:1 system but of course I see it everytime I go to the movies and I see it on DVDs like Kong. You are quite right a lot of movies are released in 2.35:1 and a lot of DVDs are therefore available for all of us to see how it looks. It looks bad. The problem is that it is too wide for home viewing. In the theater a 2,35:1 movie is perceived as bigger - at home it's perceived as smaller. All HDTVs have a 16:9 aspect ratio. All new front projectors have a 16:9 aspect ratio. When 2.35:1 material is shown on these new digital sets there are black bars top and bottom. For everyone with a rear projector, a plasma, or an LCD set such an image looks inefficient and wrong.


And hence why I am so keen on the lens. It allows me a recreate the cinema experience in my home, with no black bars and an image that is larger than the normal "widescreen" format...

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For those of us with a front projector based solution the situation is little better. My media room is 12' by 15' with the projector mounted in a closet on one of the short walls. I therefore have a 16' projection throw. With the IN76 I'm planning to buy I can have an image about ten and a half feet wide. An eight foot wide image gives me a subtended viewing angle of about 36 degrees. A ten foot screen is about as big as I can handle with the side speakers, my 14 foot viewing distance, my projector's brightness, and the physical walls. A 16:9 image on such a screen is nearly six feet tall. A 2.35:1 image is about 16' smaller. Sorry but that's just too small.


10 feet wide is a large screen. As for the height, that is something else. There must be some give and take. I wanted to optimise my system for 2.35:1, not 1.85:1 or 1.78:1, so for me, the most important aspect ratio is the larger format which is now larger...placement of loudspeakers is often a reason why "it can't be done". For me this is not an issue, as my three LCRs are small at just 16" high...Placement under the screen is easy...

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If my room were a couple feet larger in both direction I would be alright. A 14' by 18' room should be fine. I do have another bedroom downstairs that is about that size, but I have made my smallest bedroom my media room not my largest. Most people on this forum seem to have screens about eight feet wide - usually limited by room architecture. This is a good size for 16:9 but is too narrow for 2.35:1.


My 2.35:1 is only 8 feet wide and it is large in my room. The height (3.4') is what still makes my 1.78:1 screen (when my new side masking system is closed) still large. I could have gone larger, but that would only make the SDE really visible...

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I don't actually go very often to Imax theaters. I'll take your word for it that they are tiring to the eyes. I wasn't defending 4:3 screens. I was just pointing out that screens have come in lots of aspect ratios and you don't want to sucumb to the falacy of equating wider with higher quality. The Imax screen is chosen to be different from what you are used to seeing - both at home on TV or in the movie theater. Similarly wide screen movie blockbusters are shown in 2.35:1 because that is a format that you are not likely to see at home. 2.35:1 is not chosen because it is more "natural" for the human vision system, just the opposite. It is chosen to make an unatural impact. It is perceived in the theater as - wide -. That is to say there is the area in front where the action takes place, there is the surrounding area that sets the stage, and there is the peripheral vision area. And then with 2.35:1 the screen is even wider than that. It is impresssive in a movie like Lawrence of Arabia (the Mahler's Eighth of movies) but for most programmatic material - it is too wide.

There was a time when movies used the large image of a cinema for realy wide shots. In thesde modern times, that is rare because when veiwed on a TV would be like watching tiny dots for the main action. To me it seems that sometimes a film is made a round the video, not the other way around...

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I think 2.35:1 will die because it is a theater AR not a home AR - and home viewing will dominate. Right now all my HD material is 16:9. I can watch a DVD in 2.35:1 but if I watch one of the HD TV series like CSI (the most popular TV series on broadcast TV), or the George Mason basketball game semi-final (I was on the George Mason basketball team a while back), or on any Comcast HD movie (like Fifth Element or Lawrence of Arabia ) it will be in 16:9. That is not likely to change. TV will never be broadcast in 2.35:1. Comcast will continue to crop 2.35.1 material to 1.78:1. If HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support 2.35:1 perhaps it may hang on for a while but with FTTH and VOD I don't expect these formats to be anything but interim solutions.


Free to air does where possible broadcast in 2.35:1 for a film so filmed that way. The only time it does not happen here is when the video transfer has been modified...

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Approximately half of all new movies make more money from DVD and broadcast sales than they do from box office. Movie theaters are dying and with them the 2.35:1 AR.


Like video killed the radio star, video will kill the cinema as well in time, but remember that whilst there is still a thing called a cinema, there will be cinema scope, and cinema scope has an AR of 2.35:1. Yes directors and studio are very well aware that more people watch films at home than go to the movies, but that doen mean that cinema is dead. The truth is - if cinema dies, so do movies and with that, quality films that we love to watch in our HTs.

I don't watch much TV becuase of the lack of quality progamming. Reality TV sucks, and CSI is only a twice a week event...

Give me a 2.35:1 film any day of the week...

Mark