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Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
Philips Ultra-Widescreen 21:9 Cinema LCD Moves the Letterbox Bars To the Side

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ceilingFANBOY
01/31/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
It's bad enough a 32" 16:9 is pretty much like watching a 24" 4:3, now we have to get a 56" 21:9 TVs for it to be like watching a 32" 16:9.
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KLanD
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
I've said it before...

Useless, unless you actually have videos in that format.
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ceilingFANBOY
01/31/09

@KLanD: Especially since Blu-Ray doesn't have anamorphic widescreen, so even if the TV has a setting for eliminating the letterbox bars on a Blu-Ray designed for a 16x9 TV, the resolution is going to be dropped since some of the resolution is used in the black bars on a non anamorphic disc.
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lolgreg
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
I'm going to assume sticking with black bars will be worth the money saved.
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bucho54
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
I like the wider screen, and the primary reason for my home theater system is to watch movies so this is perfect. This is definitely a niche market which will lead to continued high prices. I wonder if people don't like it just because it's another format. It also feels a lot like when 16:9 TVs started showing up. Most people complained that it was only for movies and they would rather it work for TV instead.
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Kaiser-Machead
01/30/09

@bucho54: I think it's just a matter of how much range you need your set to be in terms of optimal viewing for the media you prefer. On a large 16:9 set, you can get large picture from both movies and television. On this, movies will fit, but TV will be much smaller, so I guess it's just a matter of weighing the caveats.
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The Lab
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
Different formats are the bane of the digital age. We need just ONE standard for movies. Like all movies should be filmed in 16:9, encoded in divx, play at 30 fps, last 90 minutes, ... be comedies ....starring Mos Def ...and include intermissions so you don't have to choose between missing a pivotal final scene and going to the bathroom.
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Kaiser-Machead
01/30/09

@The Lab:

Sic Semper Tyrannis you bastard!
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Kaiser-Machead
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
I really dislike this move to wider and wider screens. Horizontal letterbox is perfectly acceptable to me, and are a great deal better than the vertical letterbox that you'll get with just about any movie that doesn't fit this aspect ratio, and all most TV shows (if not all). I'd rather have a large display with a dimension that sort of provides the happy medium.
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N@tedog
01/30/09

@Kaiser-Machead: But if you gamed a lot with friends this would provide superior split-screening with a wider FOV. Split screen gaming on a 4:3 set was a joke. It's still cumbersome on a 16:9 set. 21:9 would pretty much squash any nay sayers.
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duroc
01/30/09

In reply to Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real
I don't really like the idea of us going further wide screen. Do we really see that much more width then height?
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Hintzyboy
01/30/09

@duroc: If TVs move to the same aspect ratio as what is being filmed, there will be no more "Formatted to fit your screen" messages. 4:3 cuts the sides off of the picture, so you miss a lot of the scene. 16:9 solves that problem, but still has letterboxing. For some reason, I actually like the black bars. For some reason, it makes it seem more theatre-y
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Cordfucious of Tech Clan
01/30/09

@Hintzyboy: I totally agree.. I love letterboxing. I only buy widescreen films...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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ripfire
01/15/09

@Hestika: You mean like Star Trek 2.0 on G4TV? Gah, I hated that.
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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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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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Video: Philips's Crazy 56-Inch Ultra-Widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD Is Real

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