Philips prices up 21:9 ratio 'cinema' TV Getting that true home cinema experience has been the dream of many a couch potato for years. But it will soon become a reality for some, because Philips’ Cinema telly will soon arrive in Blighty. philips_cinema_tv_02 Philips' 21:9 Cinema TV: does not come with popcorn The TV – which Philips claimed is the world’s first …
Since content is already in 4:3 and 16:9 format, using this TV is going to require scaling/cropping so you are just as well off simply getting a bigger HD TV. Which no doubt will also be cheaper than this waste of space.
You don't need to change the aspect of your TV, just don't look at the black bars!
Do Blu-Ray discs go to this ludicrous width? If not, how are you meant to get a true cinema picture without lopping the top off "widescreen" video?
And even if that works, everything else (and I mean EVERYTHING) is going to look ridiculous on it.
I smell a project that was started before the credit crunch when people still (thought they) had the money to spend on pointless goods.
We've only just got the hang of 16:9, along with the broadcasters. Any change of format is useless without content. If you've ever seen those cheap widescreen VHS versions of Minder, you'll know the top of everyone's head and chin is usually missing. Imagine cropping it to 7:3 and scaling it up to a huge screen.
I think too much effort has been put into 16:9 and HDTV to change now.
Post 1950ish movies will fit the screen with almost no black bands.
16.9 TV content *IS* scaled but in a weird way on this new set. The middle of the image is almost untouched with progressively more distortion towards the sides. Theory is, on a set of this side, the distortion goes almost unnoticed by the viewer - although I'm not sure it will work so well with stuff where action takes place towards the sides of the picture.
4.3 IIRC is not scaled in any way and sits in an ocean of blackness.
"You don't need to change the aspect of your TV, just don't look at the black bars!"
With that type of attitude we'd have never got 16:9 TV's to become mainstream, so the fact that some content is in 16:9 and some still in 4:3 isn't reason enough to hold this back.
At 52inches this is a set really designed for movies, and there's plenty of them that come in 21:9 ratio, leaving black bars on normal HDTV's.
I'm not saying I'm going to get one - I certainly haven't got £4500 to spare, but that's not to say the black bars on 21:9 movies don't annoy - and I'm sure they annoy some others a lot more than they do me.
Actually, most films today come in the (annoying) 2.35 format, despite tellies having standardised on 16:9. That's why you still get thin black bars, even on a 16:9 TV. So all this telly needs is a bit of technical wizardry to strip out the black lines from the top and bottom of the picture - hardly Nuclear Fussion.
Still, at that price, I'll stick with the black lines thanks.
Why can't we have to a single standard aspect ratio? Ideally 4:3.
Almost everything is transmitted 4:3 and it's a *good* ratio. You can view both tall objects and wide objects without them looking too small.
But nowadays it's almost impossible to buy a decent size TV in 4:3 and you have to get 16:9 which makes European people look as fat as Americans. Now they want to foist 21:9 on us despite the fact that if you make it tall enough to view vertical objects clearly, it will be too wide to fit in anyone's living room.
The same thing is happening with monitors too, Trying to produce A4 portrait documents on a widescreen monitor is really sub-optimal.
Not really useless - *if* you generally watch films in this ratio, as the screen size is measured by the diagonal you'd need a significantly bigger than 52" 16:9 TV to give you a similar picture size when displaying a 21:9 picture (and likewise this will give you a pretty small rendition of 4:3 TV with huge bars on either side). Horses for courses.
The "useless gimmick" critique have equally been used to describe the first 16:9 TVs released to the market before content was available for them....or indeed HDTVs which only recently have had more than a couple of channels taking advantage of their capability? The first telephones were comparatively useless too, until more people started buying them; but without the early adopters we wouldn't have most of the communication/entertainment tech which is around today.
At the very least a 21:9 screen would be brilliantly emmersive for racing sims and pretty handy for Picture in Picture; graphic design work, presentations, advertising, hotel lobbies... i.e. just because you can't envisage a use for it; doesn't mean there isn't one. All hail progress! Whilst this is a bulky object, tentative steps towards estabilishing a future cinema style format could be brilliant when combined with developing flexible "roll up" screen technology.
"We've only just got the hang of 16:9, along with the broadcasters."
I'm not so sure about that, I've got friends who have a widescreen tv and they'll happily sit there and watch 4:3 footage stretched to 16:9 - so it wouldn't suprise me that a significant amount of widescreen tv owners also watch 4:3 streched to 16:9, so just imagine what 4:3 would look like stretched to 21:9...
And the broadcasters still haven't gotten the hang of full widescreen, why do those tards persist on creating/broadcasting material of an aspect ratio (letterboxed on 4:3) that's part way between 4:3 & 16:9 so it doesn't properly fit on either aspect ratio of screen?
You're the idiot watching a TV in stretch mode. You should learn to ignore black bars on the side and watch the source in native mode the people won't look short and fat.
Also you say:
Trying to produce A4 portrait documents on a widescreen monitor is really sub-optimal.
Uh, the amount of pixels vertically is the same (or even more) then you had on your 4:3 monitor. It's your problem you feel the need to zoom the document to the width of the screen instead of to the height. Try editing two A4 documents side by side on your widescreen, maybe that will make you happier.
Lastly my widescreen monitor has a pivot mode where you can rotate it 90 degrees to have a 10:16 format (instead of 16:10) which of course is great for document viewing at your zoomed in view you like so much.
I don't mind that you posted. I don't mind that your ignorant. I mind that you ignorantly posted.
Problem is 2.35:1 films (which is the main reason for this set) are presented on Blu-Ray (and DVD) in 16:9 with hard matted black bars. The resolution available on the disc for the 2.35:1 film itself is less than a 21:9 TV will be capable of. The TV will have to scale the image and crop the black bars.
As many will know, the last thing you want is the image to be scaled in any way on a pixel based set (LCD, Plasma).
Blu-Ray should have been specified to store films and TV shows just in the actual ratio they are made, and let the player or TV fill gaps with black bars. Though tricky with the menus and subtitles which are often placed in black bar areas.
Anyway, whilst a 21:9 TV would be kind of nice for 2.35:1 films (which are impressive at that width in the cinema), there are too many films that are 1.85:1, 1.66:1, 1.33:1 and odd ratios between, and of course TV is a mix of 1.77:1 (16:9) and 1.33:1(4:3).
Solution to the black bar moans though is same as with 4:3 sets... get over it ;). Or just turn the lights off/down.
Alternatively, get a projector and then you don't have the obvious frame to make you fuss about the bars, or if you use a frame around your screen then just do like in the cinema and have it expand to super wide when showing 2.35:1 films. Ultimate cinema experience then :)
QUOTE:
Why can't we have to a single standard aspect ratio? Ideally 4:3.
Almost everything is transmitted 4:3 and it's a *good* ratio. You can view both tall
objects and wide objects without them looking too small. But nowadays it's
almost impossible to buy a decent size TV in 4:3 and you have to get 16:9
which makes European people look as fat as Americans ... etc ....
UNQUOTE
Someone needs to stop living in the past methinks. It's 2009 now, and most TV shows
are made in 16:9 widescreen format. 16:9 is the standard TV aspect ratio now, while
the old style 4:3 aspect ratio is becoming increasingly obsolete.
Firstly, I *hope* they're 1920x1080 (or 2520x1080, or - more usefully - 2560x1080). Unlike LG's ultra-widescreen displays (which were even wider):
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/304/1017304/lg-stretches-resources-max
If they've gone with non-square pixels or a sub-HD 1920x823(ish), there goes the quality again. Of course, they have to call it 21:9 because 16:7-ish sounds like it's inferior.
As Bod says, any kind of scaling screws up the image anyway - hence my hatred of 1366x768 panels and TVs that won't let you turn off the overscan; I can't understand why an entire industry is so happy to throw away image quality. The ironic thing is the fad for anamorphic lens attachments for projectors - first scale the 2.35:1 vertically (digitally) up to 16:9, then stuff an anamorphic lens on the front to make it wider; a spectacularly about-face way of getting an expensive blurry image...
Re. 16:9 monitors, I agree they're stupid. For fitting most documents on screen they're too non-square - fill vertically and you have big borders horizontally (not, as suggested, a stretched image). A 1920x1080 monitor is *not* better than a 1920x1200 one, and it's debatable when you come to a 2048x1152 monitor (which at least has more pixels than WUXGA). On a CRT the aspect ratio of the monitor is arbitrary, but nobody thought about the numbers which come out for doing computery stuff with such an odd-ball aspect ratio. 16:10, which is at least half the standard SXGA aspect ratio, is much better.
God forbid that anyone would think that sticking to some kind of standard might be important. I'm waiting for people to start producing adverts with black borders top and bottom on 16:9, in case they're viewed on one of these.
They chose 21:9 to make it comparable to 16:9 (same denominator), but the panel has 2560x1080 pixel, which makes it 64:27 (or 4:3 to the power of 3). Remember, 16:9 is 4:3 squared.
This TV is great for people who watch a lot of movies, but don't want to install a constant height projection system. Basically, it gives you "constant height" in LCD form, which we did not have before.
Give me the extra vertical height a 16:9 screen would give (or 16:10 for that matter) and then use black bars if needed. As said, a slightly larger 16:9 screen would show the same in addition to having the extra vertical space for normal widescreen resolutions.
I'd much rather 'suffer' black bars than the physical restriction such a ratio would give.
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