We are about to purchase a new home and I am planning to build a Dennis Erskine designed theater in the basement. I discussed screens with him briefly and he really got me thinking about putting in a 2.35:1 screen in a constant-height scenario. In other words, 2.35:1 movies will fill the entire screen and lesser aspect ratios (1.78 and 1.33 primarily) will fill the height of the screen and be masked appropriately on the sides using motorized drapes - just like a real commercial movie theater!
Actually implementing a constant-height 2.35:1 screen is pretty difficult for a fixed panel digital projector, and to make matters worse I had some very important constraints that had to be satisfied:
1) Switching between aspect ratios MUST be possible with the touch of a button on a remote.
2) I would like to use as much of the resolution of the projector as possible in each mode.
3) Zooming/refocusing the projector is not an option. DILARD does provide some mechanism for automating these features but I just don't think it is accurate enough for my purposes.
I was browsing the AVSForum boards and found a really interesting idea that William came up with. This is to use an ISCO II lens *only* for 2.35:1 movies and to "slide" it out of the way for all other aspect ratios. Let me summarize what this means below:
1) Set up the projector to use the middle 768 pixels of the panel (1365x768) and calibrate it to fill the center 16x9 area of the screen (filling the height, but not the width). The image must be centered horizontally in the middle of the screen.
2) Use the excellent aspect ratio capability of the TheaterTek DVD player to set up aspect ratios for 4x3, anamorphic 16x9 and letterboxed 16x9. These will all be projected as-is without the ISCO II lens in place.
3) Now, mount the ISCO II lens on some sort of an assembly that can be slid out of the way of the projector. I don't actually have an "automated" solution for moving the lens yet, but I'm sure this is doable. I hope Dennis will have some ideas on this.
4) With the ISCO II lens in front, the projected image is now stretched horizontally to fill the screen. Set up another two aspect ratios in the TheaterTek DVD player for dealing with letterboxed 2.35:1 and anamorphic 2.35:1 DVDs.
This completely solves my DVD problem. I'm only ever using 1365x768 pixels on my panel, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the relative ease of achieving what I have described.
By the way, everything I desribed above was William's idea and I'm not taking credit for any of it.
Ahh, but what about for HDTV? I would ideally like to do the exact same thing for input from my DTC100, HiPix, or JVC HM-DH30000U VCR. The problem is that I don't have the flexible aspect ratio control that I do with TheaterTek, so I need to make the projector do the work for me.
At first I was thinking that I would need to come up with a way of having two 1080i memories for each of the HD inputs (Computer 2 and Component). I don't believe there is any way to do this (I tried playing around with "overloading" the 720p input but that had strange consequences).
Then I realized that there was a *simple* solution to my problem already built in to the projector. It was so simple that I almost overlooked it entirely. It doesn't involve any projector mods whatsoever. Here it is:
1) For standard 16x9 HDTV, put the 1080i input on the projector in 16x9 mode. Keep the ISCO II lens out of the way (just as with DVDs). This projects a 16x9 HD image in the center of the screen filling the height.
2) For 2.35:1 HD movies, put the 1080i input on the projector in 4x3 mode (which stretches the black bars on the top and bottom of the image off the visible screen - which is the middle 768 pixels of the array). Also, slide the ISCO II lens in place which stretches the image out horizontally and fills the entire 2.35:1 screen - NO BLACK BARS!
That's it! If I can come up with some sort of motorized way of moving the ISCO II in and out of place I'll be set and have very little configuration to do.
I also thought of a really cool idea but I don't know if it would be possible or not. It would be great if you could have a script on the HTPC do the following when a DVD is inserted:
1) Look up the DVD on DVD Profiler (using the same mechanism DVD Profiler does) and read the aspect ratio of the movie from the database.
2) Use Girder to automate setting up the aspect ratio with no user intervention. It could make sure the projector/amp/preamp are on, move the drapes, slide the ISCO II lens into place if needed, and switch the aspect ratio inside TheaterTek.
Ah well, it sounds cool to me and would definitely improve the WAF of the new theater. It could be as simple as pop in a DVD and everything comes on and sets itself up properly.
Any comments/suggestions on the scheme above are welcome!
-Dave
Actually implementing a constant-height 2.35:1 screen is pretty difficult for a fixed panel digital projector, and to make matters worse I had some very important constraints that had to be satisfied:
1) Switching between aspect ratios MUST be possible with the touch of a button on a remote.
2) I would like to use as much of the resolution of the projector as possible in each mode.
3) Zooming/refocusing the projector is not an option. DILARD does provide some mechanism for automating these features but I just don't think it is accurate enough for my purposes.
I was browsing the AVSForum boards and found a really interesting idea that William came up with. This is to use an ISCO II lens *only* for 2.35:1 movies and to "slide" it out of the way for all other aspect ratios. Let me summarize what this means below:
1) Set up the projector to use the middle 768 pixels of the panel (1365x768) and calibrate it to fill the center 16x9 area of the screen (filling the height, but not the width). The image must be centered horizontally in the middle of the screen.
2) Use the excellent aspect ratio capability of the TheaterTek DVD player to set up aspect ratios for 4x3, anamorphic 16x9 and letterboxed 16x9. These will all be projected as-is without the ISCO II lens in place.
3) Now, mount the ISCO II lens on some sort of an assembly that can be slid out of the way of the projector. I don't actually have an "automated" solution for moving the lens yet, but I'm sure this is doable. I hope Dennis will have some ideas on this.
4) With the ISCO II lens in front, the projected image is now stretched horizontally to fill the screen. Set up another two aspect ratios in the TheaterTek DVD player for dealing with letterboxed 2.35:1 and anamorphic 2.35:1 DVDs.
This completely solves my DVD problem. I'm only ever using 1365x768 pixels on my panel, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the relative ease of achieving what I have described.
By the way, everything I desribed above was William's idea and I'm not taking credit for any of it.
Ahh, but what about for HDTV? I would ideally like to do the exact same thing for input from my DTC100, HiPix, or JVC HM-DH30000U VCR. The problem is that I don't have the flexible aspect ratio control that I do with TheaterTek, so I need to make the projector do the work for me.
At first I was thinking that I would need to come up with a way of having two 1080i memories for each of the HD inputs (Computer 2 and Component). I don't believe there is any way to do this (I tried playing around with "overloading" the 720p input but that had strange consequences).
Then I realized that there was a *simple* solution to my problem already built in to the projector. It was so simple that I almost overlooked it entirely. It doesn't involve any projector mods whatsoever. Here it is:
1) For standard 16x9 HDTV, put the 1080i input on the projector in 16x9 mode. Keep the ISCO II lens out of the way (just as with DVDs). This projects a 16x9 HD image in the center of the screen filling the height.
2) For 2.35:1 HD movies, put the 1080i input on the projector in 4x3 mode (which stretches the black bars on the top and bottom of the image off the visible screen - which is the middle 768 pixels of the array). Also, slide the ISCO II lens in place which stretches the image out horizontally and fills the entire 2.35:1 screen - NO BLACK BARS!
That's it! If I can come up with some sort of motorized way of moving the ISCO II in and out of place I'll be set and have very little configuration to do.
I also thought of a really cool idea but I don't know if it would be possible or not. It would be great if you could have a script on the HTPC do the following when a DVD is inserted:
1) Look up the DVD on DVD Profiler (using the same mechanism DVD Profiler does) and read the aspect ratio of the movie from the database.
2) Use Girder to automate setting up the aspect ratio with no user intervention. It could make sure the projector/amp/preamp are on, move the drapes, slide the ISCO II lens into place if needed, and switch the aspect ratio inside TheaterTek.
Ah well, it sounds cool to me and would definitely improve the WAF of the new theater. It could be as simple as pop in a DVD and everything comes on and sets itself up properly.
Any comments/suggestions on the scheme above are welcome!
-Dave