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Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
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TheHeartless
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
Is there anything that even supports that?
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TheHeartless was starred TheHeartless was unstarred

DarkCobra
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
If I recall correctly at the very beginning of the advent of HDTV standards there was an enormous argument among a number of the contributors as to what the correct aspect ratio should be. Some in fact wanted a much wider aspect ratio similar to this but they settled on the 16:9 format for practical reasons.

I also recall at least one other manufacturer who actually made a wider aspect ratio set for only a brief time. I doubt if this recent reincarnation will catch on but it sure would be kewl to have for Ben Hur even though that is even wider at 2.76:1.
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DarkCobra was starred DarkCobra was unstarred

kylenalepa
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
AWESOME. This is the coolest thing I have ever seen (this week). I WANT.
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kylenalepa was starred kylenalepa was unstarred

thedarkhorse
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
Well really the imax scenes in dark knight are 4:3, so you're not enjoying the "full beauty" on a 16:9 set anyways.
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thedarkhorse was starred thedarkhorse was unstarred

selianth
01/15/09

@thedarkhorse: The Blu-Ray version of Dark Knight has the majority of the movie in 2.35ish:1, and the imax scenes are in 16:9. Aren't they?
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Purple Dave
01/16/09

@selianth:
The non-IMAX scenes were filmed in 2.39:1 (2.35:1 hasn't been a valid aspect ratio since the 70's, but it's used interchangably with its successor aspect ratio - 2.39:1, or the rounded version of the latter - 2.40:1). The IMAX scenes were filmed with IMAX camera rigs, which only film in 1.44:1 (just a touch wider than standard TV screens), and they were apparently shaved down to 1.78:1 for the Blu-Ray release (meaning that no, you are _not_ watching the Blu-Ray version in the true original aspect ratio for those five scenes).

@thedarkhorse:
While I agree that the IMAX experience was amazing for this film (as compared to, say AOTC on IMAX, where Lucas had to carve up the plot to trim it down to the then-unbreakable-if-you-didn't-want-an-intermission 20-minute runtime limit), I was sitting close enough to the screen that I actually had to make a point of looking at the top of the screen to tell if I was watching an IMAX scene in 1.44:1 or a regular scene in 2.39:1. On the plus side, I was rarely conscious of the fact that I was watching a rectangular image.
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Purple Dave was starred Purple Dave was unstarred

tande04
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
One technical thing I just thought of. I thought that most current DVDs (not sure about BD) only put in "soft" letterbox bars on when putting the widescreen onto a 4:3 and the black bars that show up on your 16:9 TV for a 2.39:1 movie were actually part of the frame on the disc.

That is to say this can't be truly anamorphic like this claims because that data is hard coded in. Its going to be anamorphic part of the way then just zooming or something to get rid of the rest of the black bars.
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tande04 was starred tande04 was unstarred

KinOfCain
01/15/09

@tande04: Most recent DVDs use proper anamorphic wide-screen, which means they are stretched, on the disk, to fill the full resolution of the frame (whatever DVD's native aspect ratio is, 4:3 I believe), and then the disk has the adjustment factor encoded on it so the DVD player can stretch (un-stretch?) the movie to it's full size.

Blu-Ray has no such accommodations. There's no such thing as "anamorphic" blu-ray (regardless of what is labelled on the package). The signal is always 1920x1080p or less, and there's no anamorphic adjustment.

Unfortunately "anamorphic" has come to mean "widescreen" to a lot of people, including the people who make the package art and write the amazon descriptions. But true anamorphic means "putting a wide-screen film on regular-format frame and using a set distortion to fill the entire frame of the film", and it goes back to shooting wide-screen movies on regular 35mm 4:3 film.
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KinOfCain was starred KinOfCain was unstarred

Purple Dave
01/16/09

@KinOfCain:
"Unfortunately "anamorphic" has come to mean "widescreen" to a lot of people"

That's because "anamorphic" DVD encoding is only used for widescreen movies. And because a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD will be picture-framed on a widescreen TV, unless you zoom in (in which case the picture quality is shot to hell, and you'll probably lose the outer edges of the actual image).

And it actually goes back to WWI tanks that had an anamorphic viewfinder which could present someone inside the tank with a ~180 degree view.
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Purple Dave was starred Purple Dave was unstarred

KinOfCain
01/16/09

@Purple Dave: I don't think that's the source of the confusion. I think many people who were watching a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD would still call it "anamorphic".

Didn't know about the tanks though.
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KinOfCain was starred KinOfCain was unstarred

Purple Dave
01/16/09

@KinOfCain:
Ah, but there's also the opposite thing where people will call an anamorphic DVD "letterboxed", even when the black bars are not hard-encoded into the frame.

And yes, it's a freakishly weird little factoid, which I only found out after doing some moderately extensive research into what sort of aspect ratios have ever been used. Currently, there are only five widely-used ARs, which are 1.33:1 (standard TV), 1.44:1 (IMAX), 1.78:1 (widescreen TV), 1.85:1 (Academy Flat theatrical), and 2.39:1 (modern version of the old CinemaScope anamorphic theatrical, which was only revived due to Star Wars).
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Purple Dave was starred Purple Dave was unstarred

Eruanno
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
4:3 stuff is going to be such a waste of space on this... xD
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Hestika
01/15/09

@Eruanno: you can text in the other half...
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Hestika was starred Hestika was unstarred

ripfire
01/15/09

@Hestika: You mean like Star Trek 2.0 on G4TV? Gah, I hated that.
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ripfire was starred ripfire was unstarred

OMG! Bacon!
01/15/09

In reply to Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side
Mmmmmm, sexy. As the article suggests, this is most likely directed toward movie room type of setups. I like it (although not rich enough to have a HDTV dedicated just for movies....I would probably get taller & less wide standard 1080p set)
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OMG! Bacon! was starred OMG! Bacon! was unstarred

ripfire
01/15/09

@phoenix27: Or you can just get a bigger screen TV that will effectively have the same size as this in letterbox.
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ripfire was starred ripfire was unstarred

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