Ultra Wide TVs (21x9)

[David M]

As Geoff said above, the panel quality of the Philips 21:9 display was below that of competing displays. I could be wrong but seem to remember it was one of the Sharp ASV panels.

Edit: I found the review I wrote of it in 2009 for AVForums:
https://www.avforums.com/reviews/phi...d-tv-review.82

The LG rollable OLED solution is pretty neat - move the image to the very top of the panel, and don't unroll it all the way. Obviously, that doesn't make the screen bigger, and with OLED blacks you could get the same effect by just turning the lights off to make the letterboxing disappear.

There's also the issue that with displays getting bigger, is it practical to fit a really wide display into a lot of rooms?

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by CatBus

Yes, although they didn't feature that ability prominently enough in my opinion. They would take a scope film, which would be ~2.35:1 matted onto a 16:9 frame on disc, and zoom it, cropping the top and bottom (just the black bars for a scope film), so that it filled more or less the entire 21:9 frame. They wouldn't do it for every film, because obviously that would be bad -- you had to tell it to go into scope mode.

But then they also included many wackadoodle useless features trying to use that screen real estate.

Nobody has been able to tell me why Blu-rays had to be set at 16:9 and couldn't use any ratio. Probably some stupid, shortsighted design. Not like media players have issues with different aspect ratios.

[CatBus]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Nobody has been able to tell me why Blu-rays had to be set at 16:9 and couldn't use any ratio. Probably some stupid, shortsighted design. Not like media players have issues with different aspect ratios.

Ultimately it's laziness. But the list goes something like:

1) Inertia. Matting everything to 4:3 had a real technical reason for VHS. DVD, when launched, was not much better than a digital form of VHS, but someone at least had the foresight to allow an anamorphic 16:9 option. Blu-ray would have been the ideal time to re-evaluate this whole thing, but they were probably just happy to finally be dealing with square pixels.

2) Subtitles. Disc subtitles are graphics, not text. As such, their size and positioning are directly tied to the dimensions of the image behind it. Doing subtitles for an aspect-independent video system would involve redesigning subtitles to include relative positioning & anchor metadata at the very least, instead of just being a dumb image overlay that can assume the dimensions of the video frame. Certainly doable, but not trivial. Media players may have no problem with 2.35:1 videos, but you can't do speaker-positioned graphical subtitles, for example, without a heck of a lot of work. And a commercial disc format must use graphical subtitles -- text subtitles start to show their limits as a commercially distributable subtitle format once you venture very far outside Latin/Greek/Cyrillic text.

3) Mixed aspect ratio films. You could have each individual frame of the film have its own aspect ratio metadata, but the far easier solution is to letterbox the film to use a consistent AR. Filmmakers, fans, and studios, however, may all disagree which AR to use (purists tend to want CIH, other users and studios tend to favor biggest image). What about subtitles on mixed AR films?

4) Lack of a downside. As far as the people making these decisions are concerned, this much work to re-engineer a format requires some justification in terms of a big problem with the current approach. Making everything 16:9 doesn't really have that. All future TVs were going to be 16:9, the new HD broadcast ratio. Black bars take up next to no space at all, in terms of disc space for the encoded film. The number of people who would notice any problem at all would be tiny. Also keep in mind that when Blu-ray was born, the full-frame/pan-and-scan/letterbox/open-matte wars still had not yet been won (if you can even say they've been won today). Having media wider than 16:9 may have been considered a corner case at the time.

I'm afraid the question of why they made everything 16:9 follows much the same pattern as questions about why even today people don't produce discs that are CIH-friendly. It's a tiny market of people who even care. And when you're talking physical media, it's a tiny share of a shrinking market. They probably think we're lucky to get what we got, and I'm inclined to think they're probably right.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by David M

There's also the issue that with displays getting bigger, is it practical to fit a really wide display into a lot of rooms?

I don't know about a lot of rooms but in my room it fits better than a 16/9 set would.

In my home theater I have a 127" uitra wide screen. It's nearly the width of the room there's about 8 or so inches on each side of the screen.

A 127" 16:9 screen would not fit as it would be too big in the vertical direction. In 16:9 mode I have about a 100" screen.

Now, to add a little perspective... Many of my favorite movies are older and in 2.40:1 or cinescope ratio. Like Jaws. If I wanted a 16:9 direct view set that played Jaws at the size I have now that would be a 134" set which would not fit in my room at all.


Calculator here...
http://screen-size.info/

I was looking at some 85" direct view sets trying to encourage myself to move on from a projector to direct view but a 85" set would make a significantly smaller scope image so I'm glad I thought more about it instead of just going for it.

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by bhampton

I don't know about a lot of rooms but in my room it fits better than a 16/9 set would.

In my home theater I have a 127" uitra wide screen. It's nearly the width of the room there's about 8 or so inches on each side of the screen.

A 127" 16:9 screen would not fit as it would be too big in the vertical direction. In 16:9 mode I have about a 100" screen.

Now, to add a little perspective... Many of my favorite movies are older and in 2.40:1 or cinescope ratio. Like Jaws. If I wanted a 16:9 direct view set that played Jaws at the size I have now that would be a 134" set which would not fit in my room at all.


Calculator here...
http://screen-size.info/

I was looking at some 85" direct view sets trying to encourage myself to move on from a projector to direct view but a 85" set would make a significantly smaller scope image so I'm glad I thought more about it instead of just going for it.

According to that calculator, I can't switch from 65 inches 16:9 to the same height at 2.39:1 without losing my front speakers in this little bedroom. 81.6 inches is too wide. The stereo separation would probably be too wide anyway, with my ears only about 94 inches from the screen.

[avexhype]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

As I sit here watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, I can’t help but wonder why we have ultra-wide gaming monitors but we don’t have ultra-wide TVs. While admittedly they would be a niche item, I’m sure a lot of people would buy them. Am I the only one who wants a true scope presentation for my 2.20:1 and greater content?

You sure are not. I'd like most of my content, (whether DVD, VCR Captured, or VHS) to look full framed or 'native' to all edges of the screen.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Nobody has been able to tell me why Blu-rays had to be set at 16:9 and couldn't use any ratio. Probably some stupid, shortsighted design. Not like media players have issues with different aspect ratios.

That's the aspect ratio the BDA chose. Just like they chose 4:2:0 for the Chroma Subsampling rate. BTW - both are also part of the UHD-BD specs.

Why did they choose 16:9? Probably because 99.5% of all HDTVs (and now UHDTVs) are 16:9.

When the Grand Alliance was setting the specs for HDTV there was a group of people (film directors and engineers) that wanted 2.00 instead of 1.78. You know the outcome of that decision.

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

That's the aspect ratio the BDA chose. Just like they chose 4:2:0 for the Chroma Subsampling rate. BTW - both are also part of the UHD-BD specs.

Why did they choose 16:9? Probably because 99.5% of all HDTVs (and now UHDTVs) are 16:9.

When the Grand Alliance was setting the specs for HDTV there was a group of people (film directors and engineers) that wanted 2.00 instead of 1.78. You know the outcome of that decision.

The question was more what ass-backwards design prevented them from just maximizing any dimensions and any resolution up to Full HD onto the video signal of the player. As a media player would. bhampton got it.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

That's the aspect ratio the BDA chose. Just like they chose 4:2:0 for the Chroma Subsampling rate. BTW - both are also part of the UHD-BD specs.

Why did they choose 16:9? Probably because 99.5% of all HDTVs (and now UHDTVs) are 16:9.

When the Grand Alliance was setting the specs for HDTV there was a group of people (film directors and engineers) that wanted 2.00 instead of 1.78. You know the outcome of that decision.

16:9 was selected as the standard by the SMPTE Working Group long before Bu-rays existed and 16:9 televisions were designed. You have Dr. Kerns Powers to thank for this.

Here are some older, but interesting reads on the topic:

http://guruprasad.net/posts/why-16-9...chosen-for-hd/
https://www.tvtechnology.com/opinion...-wrongnow-what

http://www.sportsvideo.org/new/wp-co...pect-Ratio.pdf

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

The question was more what ass-backwards design prevented them from just maximizing any dimensions and any resolution up to Full HD onto the video signal of the player. As a media player would. bhampton got it.

There isn't enough of a CIH market to cater to. Only projectors can do that.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by David M

As Geoff said above, the panel quality of the Philips 21:9 display was below that of competing displays. I could be wrong but seem to remember it was one of the Sharp ASV panels.

Edit: I found the review I wrote of it in 2009 for AVForums:
https://www.avforums.com/reviews/phi...d-tv-review.82

The LG rollable OLED solution is pretty neat - move the image to the very top of the panel, and don't unroll it all the way. Obviously, that doesn't make the screen bigger, and with OLED blacks you could get the same effect by just turning the lights off to make the letterboxing disappear.

There's also the issue that with displays getting bigger, is it practical to fit a really wide display into a lot of rooms?

Yep, that was the one I had. The trailing/smearing was so bad. It got better once it’d warmed up, like LCDs tend to do, but while this was fine for summer it made the set unwatchable in the winter.

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yep, that was the one I had. The trailing/smearing was so bad. It got better once it’d warmed up, like LCDs tend to do, but while this was fine for summer it made the set unwatchable in the winter.

Just do what my friend did with his CRT 1080i projection TV when the solder joints on the convergence PCB started to go- turn it on two hours before he invited me over for a movie. Toasty and ready to go

Or if not get a fireplace just to warm up your 21x9 TV

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by singhcr

Just do what my friend did with his CRT 1080i projection TV when the solder joints on the convergence PCB started to go- turn it on two hours before he invited me over for a movie. Toasty and ready to go

Or if not get a fireplace just to warm up your 21x9 TV

That can help, joking aside, but it’s the ambient temp as much as anything that’s the difference.

[Scarabaeus]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

The previous super wide HDTVs were listed at 21:9 which comes out to 2.33. Just a hair below anamorphic widescreen (2.35/2.40)

Ultra Panavision 70/MGM Camera 65 has an aspect ratio of 2.76 so you would have black bars on the top and bottom (letterbox).

21:9 TVs were 64:27 (4^3 : 3^3), that's about 2.37:1. So right about in the middle between 2.35:1 and 2.39(2.40):1. The Philips and Vizio models that were sold had a 2560x1080 panel.