OAR is again in danger for HiDef (1 Viewer)

[DeeF]

HeHe, in 10 years, I'll be 58 and blind. I want it now!

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Cees - maybe the answer to your question is that the studios don't care that much about increasing our viewing pleasure, but only care about securing their product.

After the thread about the student went up, I realized that the studios are not doing this for us at all. Why would any studio get into this if they knew that it was going to be a niche for the first couple of years?

If there isn't any hurry to get this out, then why even bother? Why didn't Fox or another studio just say - screw it, I'm not going get into either one of these until SD-DVD sales are down to 50% of what they are now - ?

Hell, in a few years, retooling a factory to make HD/BR disks will be a lot cheaper too.

Glenn

 

[Aaron_Brez]

Agreed. They've been very myopic on this issue. There are technical reasons why it might not have been done (anamorphic downconversion is yet another filter which would have had to be added to the processing chips, and perhaps they were afraid it wouldn't look as good on 16:9 TVs-- Fox made that sort of argument, back in the ancient days of putting out widescreen films in brand-spanking new letterbox 4:3 disks), but I think the state of anamorphic processing has improved significantly through the years.

I would assume they merely decided that the market was to niche at this point and didn't bother, but forward-thinking has never been the strong suit of these folks, IMO.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Even Super 35 or 1.85:1 films with any optical or digital effects are going to get the sides of the picture lopped off if you transfer at 16x9. S/FX are usually rendered in the theatrical OAR in order to save time and money.

I say OAR 100% of the time!

Dan

 

[Mark-P]

Very true. I just did a comparison of my widescreen DVD of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with a full frame version that was being shown on cable. It was completely pan-and-scan. Even thought the principal photography was in Super-35, every frame of the movie was digitally scanned into a computer for the purposes of digital grading. The final product of LOTR in 2.35:1 hard matte, which is why full frame versions are pan-and-scan.

I edited my earlier post in this thread to remove LOTR trilogy as an example of super-35 that could be safely reformated to HDTV.

 

[WillG]

I thought the frames were scanned at 1.78:1. I'm not sure about that. I have seen examples on www.widescreen.org and there is a lot of cropping employed, there is some extra info on the top and bottom of the frame. But still, I say OAR only

 

[Will_B]

From the Digital Bits:
Lionsgate seems to be embracing the new television ratio rather enthusiastically!

 

[TravisR]

If you're watching Saw II on an HD monitor doesn't that automatically mean you're watching it at 1.78 anyway? I've never noticed any letterboxing on an HD monitor while viewing a 1.85 movie.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

*edit*

Travis,

it's not a 1.85:1 movie. It's more like 2.35 or 2.4:1 OAR.

 

[WillG]

I'm not sure it's the end of the world if mattes on a 1.85:1 are slightly opened to get to 1.78:1. Doesn't this go on with SD-DVD in a lot of cases anyway? It should not happen for 2.35:1 though.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

A couple of questions, just sort of in the discussion vein: What would anamorphic 4:3 and 7:3 settings in a HD video medium be worth to you? In other words, would you be willing to give up anything to get them — per-side playing time, the 5" form factor, the $30 price point? Where would you draw the line between framing for aspect ratios? You could choose a maximum-height model, where everything wider than 1.33 is side-matted into a 16:9 frame and everything between 1.78 and 2.33 is side-matted into a 7:3 frame [with wider material being letterboxed into the 7:3 frame]; or a model intended to maximise the number of pixels actually encoded with picture information, minimising the size of the "black bars"; or a model recognizing that most viewers will be using a 16:9 screen, and minimising the number of subjects which will be matted on all 4 sides; or there are other possibilities. For instance, is it better to encode flat 70mm [2.2 AR] into a 7:3 frame, to maximise the picture resolution for wide-widescreen viewers, at the cost of having dead area on all four sides when downscaled to 16:9? If so, is the tradeoff still worthwhile when you're looking at 2.0 SuperScope? Just the sort of questions which occur to me…

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Oh...if I got that aspect ratio of Saw II wrong my appologies...if it really is just 1.85:1 then there is NO ISSUE with open-matting to 1.78:1. Cropping should not be tolerated because it would shave off a bit of visible L/R info...but open-matting to such a small degree should not affect composition or reveal boom mics etc.

Regarding a flexible aspect ratio for HD:

My personal position is still that a contant height (1080P) *variable horizontal resolution* would be the best way to accomodate any and all asepct ratios. One of HD's pluses is that it uses sqare pixels which might ease scaling demands a bit...and I'd like to keep them square. Just add more when you need them...2538 horizontal for 2.35:1 films.

Since 1.33:1 movies are "narrower" than 1.78:1 that lower horizontal resolution of a pillarboxed 1.33:1 movie in a 16x9 frame doesn't concern me...from the same seated distance the visible resolution would be the same since the 1.78:1 image, which had more used horizontal pixels, is also wider by the same degree.

IMO we should think of resolution as "pixel density" of a 1x1 unit of area...and if a movie is larger to your field of vision...it should have MORE pixels to maintain the same pixel density (my constant height/vary width approach) rather than just use the same 1920 x 1080 matrix to re-map to the 2.35:1 shape.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

If I thought it was feasible, I guess I'd be with you, but there are two things at work here. The first is that you're going to have to output it to some kind of display device, sooner or later, if you want to watch it. There are serious problems with buliding signal-processing filters and other components to work in a non-fixed pixel matrix environment, but the price of microcircuitry is dropping all the time, so we'll assume that it can be done on a $100 board. OK, now that you have your decompressed Ultra Panavision 70 Ben Hur in its 1080×2970 square-pixel matrix, what are you going to do with it? First, you're going to have the heck of a time just getting it out of the box. I'm not aware of any digital connexion protocol, SDI, DVI, HDMI, what have you, which would accomodate it, and I wouldn't lay bets on the availability of RGBhv output even if you wanted to feed your shiny digital projector with it. Even if you have a theatrical digital-cinema projector, your pixel matrix is only, what, 1080×2048 or something [essentially no difference from 1080×1920], so you're actually going to be downscaling the image in real-time to that horizontal resolution, and viewing it through an anamorphic lens. I'm not quite sure there's an advantage in doing that, rather than letting the disc producers scale it. You may say that we'll soon have new technologies which will sweep away present limitations, but I wonder. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I expect that the video industry is, for their own reasons related to ease and economics of production, going to settle on somethng resembling a standard production format, and that it's going to stay in place for decades, "convergence" and whatever else to the contrary notwithstanding, just as NTSC [a 1939 standard] has; and I rather expect the pixel matrix chosen to be 1080×1920. The other problem I see is just a general observation: it seems like, the more choices you give the video producers with a video format, the more likely they are to make the wrong one. Mono audio on 4-track Cinemascope films, or worse, fake stereo; AC-3 5.1 at bitrates less than 320kbps, the absolute minimum Dolby recommends in this application; film flagged as interlaced video; you name it, they'll do it. The hardware manufacturers seem to have their own quirks in this regard. The fewer the available choices, the easier it is to set rules — even de facto rules, in the absence of a body able and willing to arbitrate — which can maintain a consistent, interoperable, best-quality product. In this context, continuous variables are trouble.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Oh...just rain on my constant-height/variable-width parade why don't you...



And I suppose *your* suggestion was issue-free?



In all fairness, I'm not expecting the studios to adopt my solution...and if it were rather than *any* horizontal resolution being allowed it could even be pre-defined options ready-fit for for 2.35, and 2.40 films etc. (really no more complicated than offering several frame-shapes) with the odd-ball different film slightly pillarboxed or letterboxed to make life easier for the scaler.

In any case...it won't be tomorrow...but there *will* be 1080P displays with more horizontal resolution for the dedicated videophile in our not-too-distant-future. The fact that digital cinema is *already* there is a good indication.

Back when DVD was just coming to fruition and Joe Kane was blabbing on and on about "720P" as the holy-grail, I got ripped to shreds on AVS for suggesting that "in a few years 1080P displays will become available at affordable prices". I reasoned that when projectors went fixed-pixel/chip in design, that the old technological limitations of CRT would be lifted away and a new era of high-res home-cinema would begin to grow.

We're right on the verge of that prophesy coming to pass.

5-10 years from now, we'll have *higher* than 1920 x 1080P machines available for home-viewing. Remember then that I'm saying this now...and when that happens it would be cool if HD DVD/BD planners would have thought ahead just a little bit on that one. The lack of 60Hz option for 1080P disc-encoding is unforgivable as well!

-dave

p.s. what you say about the more options = the more ways to make a wrong choice by the disc producer are 100% on-the-mark!

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Definitely with you on this one! Dangit, where's my ShowScan?

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Christopher & David, you both point out some excellent problems, many of which still need to be resolved. As for being limited to 2048x1080 resolution for commercial projectors, it is important to point out that both JVC and Sony already have 4K LCoS panels:[c]
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Sony has been selling quite a few of their 4K SRX-R projectors, mostly to Mark Cuban for his Landmark Theater chain. While these are prohibitively expensive and a delivery system restricted to commercial venues, eventually 4K displays will find there way into consumer's hands, making it more feasible in the future to create a constant height standard - of course we are talking several years from now, but I could see the possibility, and HVD would be a perfect delivery device.

 

[MarkHastings]

I would agree with this, but because of another reason that seemed to happen with DVD.

The reason a lot of MAR DVD's exist is because the stuidos are too lazy (or don't care enough) to get hold of the original materials. They just take the (most likely) Beta (4x3) copy of the movie and dump it to DVD.

If HBO is broadcasting MAR HD shows, then what happens later on down the line when that MAR version is the only (easiliy available) HD version they can get hold of for the HD-DVD? Well, guess what? It'll problably be THAT version that gets dumped to HD DVD.

In order to stop MAR'd HD DVD, we need to stop MAR'd source material from being produced in the first place. It's just too dangerous a thing to have lying around the studios!!!



p.s. I see this happen all the time in my business. I'll ask the client for a D-Beta and they'll say "We had the D-Beta, but we don't know where it is, and since we're in a rush, use the Beta-SP" - or even worse - VHS!!!!

It's always a matter of whatever is lying around...THAT'S what they'll use. :frowning:

 

[DeeF]

Mark, I don't know if that's really true. The versions coming to HBO are modified specifically for HBO.

Gladiator is the best example. It's a 'scope movie which can be bought on DVD in the original ratio. But on HBO high-def, it's shown filling the 16:9 screen. As David has pointed out, some of this is simply opening up the mattes. But some is a careful pan-and-scan, and this version of the movie is only shown on HBO, and can be found nowhere else.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Well, many of you here know my hatred for open matting and panning and scanning, i've spilled as much blood and sweat on the OAR battlefield as many of you here so needless to say if they pull this "all 16x9" shit, I will find a new hobby and stop buying movies.

After i've ripped the offending studios a new ass that is.

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

Like what? The top of Wonka's hat? The top of the church steeple?

I think the composition looks much better on the open-matte version.