Very expensive high resolution dark pixels (1 Viewer)

Now that we've arrived and have the best of the best equipment I have very expensive high resolution dark pixels. At least with DVDs there was some anamorphic and 16X9 material. I know all of the arguments, but..... So what is the good of all of that resolution when most movies will very rarely take advantage of my 16X9 screen. I have a fantastic movie room that I built 15 years ago with an old Zenith 3 gun 270 line projector. I've been upgrading every few years since. I have a(9 ft by 5ft) screen Sony 1080P front projector and Blu-Ray player.....

Cheers,
Neil

if you do the math, a 2.35:1 movie will be 813 by 1911 pixels. That is 1080-813 = 267 dark horizontal lines. Seems like there were more 1.85:1 movies around in the DVD days.....

Fantastic, technology but......:frowning:

Well, when you consider a scope film (unless it's shot in HD video and matted) tends to have more resolution than one shot flat, you're looking at sharper source material from most scope films. See Spider-Man 1 vs Spider-Man 2.

I'd rather have good presentation of a pristine source than better presentation of a less than pristine source. So I'll take all the extra celluloid I can get. Though some films warrant the muddier appearance shooting lower-res film stock will get you.

Still, there were those clamoring for 20x9 encoding so those black bars wouldn't eat up any resolution. Sadly that didn't happen. With projectors advancing as fast as they are it would come in handy. Perhaps it could be added to the spec and we can re-buy all those scope films some day!

Thank you for the reply! I think the only way that this will change is if the customers (that would be us) start pushing or if there's some competition and those sales are measurably better. Is anyone voicing this issue in large numbers?

I do agree with your pristine comment... It is spectacular!

Thank you,
Neil

Has anyone taken advantage of the anamorphic mode using an anamorphic lense with the new Sony projectors?

Neilmot

Neil, I don't get what you're asking for: are you asking for directors to stop filming in 2.35:1 just so you can use all of your pixels on your 16x9 screen? (which, by the way there would still be some small amount of "wasted" black pixels since 16x9 = 1.77:1 vs. 1.85:1).

Carlo, 1st of all I've always questioned 16X9 1.777:1 because it was an average of all formats. 1.85:1 may have been a better choice. It would be nice to take advantage of all of the resolution available in our equipment more often. It will be interesting to see what happens when the movie industry migrates to HD digital cameras... I hope it moves more toward the 16X9 advantage.

You can see that this is recognized by the projector manufactures because they are offering anamorphic modes. This coupled with an anamorphic lense will give you 1080 line but you will have to put wider screens in and there is still up-scaling...

For example if you had a 5ft X 9 ft (approx 1.77:1) screen using an anamorphic lense the screen would become 5ft by 11.75ft (approx 2.35:1)


An other option could be to offer multiple formats like letterbox, full screen or anamorphic.....

Regards,
Neil

I believe the live action photography in Spiderman 2 was shot super 35, not anamorphic scope. This would mean that actually less real estate was used for that film than Spiderman 1. The fact that Spiderman 1 used a 2k Digital Intermediate and Spiderman 2 used a 4k Digital Intermediate might have more to do with the fact that part 2 seems to look sharper and less grainy.

Most 4k digital cinema cameras are going to a chip format that can do 2.40:1 with out cropping any of the pixels, so I wouldn't count on more films being shot 1.85:1 but rather the other way around. The CinemaScope or Panavision format seems to be the preferred aspect ratio for most filmmakers. I know I prefer it.

Doug

Neil - I guess I just don't get what you're after. By definition, there are different aspect ratios used in movies (1.33, 1.66, 1.85, 2.35 and several others that were less used over the years).

Seems to me you're always going to have "expensive dark pixels" because I can't think of a mathematical way to get one projector/screen combo to account for all of those possible aspect ratios without having some of the pixels account for the black areas. I think it's just an unavoidable product of having used so many aspect ratios over the years.

He wants what every black bar hater wants - to dictate how a director should film his vision before the fact or to dictate how we should see his vision by cropping and zooming it after the fact. The same old, same old that we got with SD DVD - and it is no more allowed in this forum now than it was then.

To the OP, the HTF's mission statement calls for the discussion of viewing filmed art in a home theater, striving for a presentation that gets as close to the theater experience as possible. "Eliminate the black bars!!" discussions have thus been judged to be contrary to the HTF's mission statement and given this, I would suggest taking your discussion of black bars and "unused pixels" elsewhere.

I don't think the OP is necessarily saying that, particularly if you read his subsequent comments. He just wants to make the most use of his FP's resolution. And in theory at least, I guess there are other ways than what you're inferring. For instance, the implementation/use of various "anamorphic" modes could probably do the trick. But it's probably all just a pipe dream.

_Man_

Which is exactly what I was thinking: using an anamorphic lens and scaling 2.35/2.40:1 up to full resolution. Not a perfect solution, but an improvement, until HD manufacturers start anamorphosing 2.35/2.40:1 films for conversion by anamorphic lenses. *cue pipe dream music*

I was hoping that that was not what he meant, I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

For what it's worth, there is only one potential, but completely unrealistic [given current technology and reasonable price constraints] solution:

A dynamically altering set of pixels in a projector that senses the aspect ratio of the movie and realigns itself to maximize to that ratio. So let's start with 1920x1080 (1.78:1) as the accepted default resolution, so that means you have 2,073,600 pixels to work with. Because the numbers don't divide completely evenly there will be some wasted pixels, but I'm trying to minimize them (and I am trying not to go over 2,073,600):

For a 2.35:1 movie, the pixels would realign to 2208x939 = 2,073,312
For a 1.85:1 movie, the pixels would realign to 1959x1058 = 2,072,622
For a 1.66:1 movie, the pixels would realign to 1856x1117 = 2,073,152
For a 1.33:1 movie, the pixels would realign to 1661x1248 = 2,072,928
etc.

As you can see above, there will be between 288 and 978 pixels "wasted" on black space but that's much less than what is currently is being done. Even at 978, that is less than 1% of the pixels not being used [~.0472%]

The other fly in the ointment: you'd have to have a dynamically readjusting screen (or adjustable mattes on all four sides) as well.

That said, if the projector that could do this was ever made, I'd invest in making an adjustable screen/matte setup.

EDIT - there's a second fly in the ointment for maximum picture quality: to avoid scaling, the discs would have to be authored in these pixel ratios as well. Otherwise you'd have to have a pretty powerful scaler/processor handle the 1920x1080 conversion to these various pixel ratios in order to exclude the black bars.

I find all these ideas a little silly. I appreciate anamorphic lens projecting for constant hight setups that are more aesthetically pleasing and theater-esq, not as tools to combat black bars. The other ideas mentioned, as was pointed out, are heresy 'round these parts.

Just remember your screen is there to cater to the films and materials you display on them, NOT the other way around.

^^^Wants modified aspect ratio releases.

Of course the answer is a CIH setup, but that's not what he was wishing for until it was explained.

WoW, Jeff must have been an abused child! The Sony VPL VW 60 and 100 projectors are offering an Anamorphic mode to be used with an Anamorphic Lenes. I noticed this after my first posting. I have the VPL VW50. Building a variable format screen is no problem for me (and many others). As far as the Pipe dream comment.... I wonder what Stephen would have said 20 years ago if someone told him that he could own what we do today in our home theaters.

What's so interesting about these forums is you never know who you're talking to. Jeff for example might be the director of engineering for a very large semiconductor corporation and could be looking for what's next for a billion transistor multicore DSP video processor now that the've solved 120 hz 1080p etc, etc, etc. I could be a mortal consumer who can almost figure out how to use a remote..... Or the other way around.....

So I assume that in a year or so from now a projector with multiple anamorphic modes and a few anamorphic lenses would not be of interest????


Enjoy your forum!

Thank you,

neil

The reason why I say it's a pipe dream is the same reason why HD media sales numbers are currently what they are: no company, based on current sales of HD media, is going to author discs meant to be projected with anamorphic lenses, because the demand is not going to justify the cost, not to mention the confusion it would create in the marketplace.

FWIW, I believe that as media storage methods become more compact, disc media will be replaced by memory card media. It's a belief that I've held for the better part of 20 years. From my point of view, HD has taken much longer than it should have, considering that the movement towards it has been going on since @ least 1984.

I assure you I wasn't an abused child. I did have a father who was a classically trained artist, so I hold the butchering of art for the sake of filling in "Very expensive high resolution dark pixels" in deep contempt. YMMV.

You will find, Neil, that most people who haunt the Home Theater Forum are staunch advocates of Original Aspect Ratio, despite the "little black bars." We also frown on unwarranted personal attacks.

Not to get too far off the subject, but I saw a 120 hz Sharp HDTV in the store a few days ago running the 3rd Pirates movie. All was fine until the camera started panning and suddenly it looked like crap. I mean really it looked like the nightly news, not like film projected in a theater at all. So I started looking at the 120 hz Sharp TVs to see what the deal was.

It turns out that Sharp isn't satisfied to just be doing true 24 frame display of 24 frame material. No the TV has a system that "extrapolates" frames inbetween each frame so you have the equivalant of 60 frames per second. The TV is actually creating frames that are not in the original material to "smooth out the action". Frankly it looks really bad. I don't know if this is something that can be turned off so you can just watch in 24fps mode or not, but if this is the way all 24fps TVs are going to be implemented, I'll pass.

Doug