True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Whilst I know that this subject is not (as yet) "Vintage", I was very pleased and proud (being ex. Philips) when that Company launched a true 2.35:1 television about 8 years ago.

About time I thought and just like clever old Philips to do it! But it was very short lived and was not emulated.

Given the growth or Home Cinema, and that kind of immersive experience, I wonder just why did it fail?

Do Members have any experience of these or views?

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

You can still buy ultra wide TV's and monitors. 21:9 ratio instead of 16:9

John

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Looking around my local shopping mall, there are plenty of very wide screen LCD monitors mounted vertically to display apparel and brand image to catch the attention of shoppers.

I wonder what size room you would require to enjoy a domestic version before the "Intendo" tennis match games audience becomes the norm?

Chris

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

LG Display Co. pioneered the format, but it may very well be that Philips was their first customer. I think what Raditechman says is true, they're still marketing that aspect ratio to various manufacturers, but maybe not in 58" anymore.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

They look very wide (tall) because we a used to 16:9 so much, I wondered about this on a railway platform once and set about measuring the screen (using a tenner as reference), it turned out to be 16:9. I was challenged by a member of staff who didn't get it at all.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Little point really. No one broadcasts 2.35:1 after all.

Just accept black bars at the top and bottom for the odd film.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

The problem I can see is that we would have the same situation we have now when displaying 4:3 content, black bars either side or worse stretched to fit. Imagine 4:3 content on a 21:9 display.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Once you're engrossed in a programme you don't even see the screen, let alone any borders.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Most of my 4:3 programmes are zoomed into 16:9 (to fit the telly) only losing the top and bottom a little. In the end I have probably only cut off the "safe zone" as used in CRT TV days.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

I was watching an episode of 'Gideon's Way' last night on my modestly sized Goodman's widescreen TV, and what was very noticeable was that cars and other vehicles looked much wider than they are, especially in long shot. Gideon's Way dates from the early 1960s and, of course was shot in 4:3. Fairly obviously this would be the case since the length to width ratio of 16:9 is 1.78 to1, whilst that of 4:3 is 1.33333 to 1.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Didn't Philips and LG have a joint venture making displays some years back?

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

I remember Smith & Jones doing a sketch about increasing TV aspect ratios until most of the 4:3 screen was black bars with just a thin strip of actual motion picture.

They said the increase was to fit all of Robbie Contraine's width in.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Those "portrait" screens are quite common and are as far as I can see owned by some kind of advertising company.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

They don't broadcast in 16.9 either. What they do is broadcast in 4.3 with anamorphic. The picture when transmitted has a wide signal attached which stretches the image to fit your wide TV.
They could do that with 21.9 too. But the 16:9 TV would have to add black bars to fit the new picture.
If not in 16:9 A then they add the black bars to the TV signal, so they are part of the picture. One of the reasons the Philips set didn't catch on was due to the fact that the TV was zooming in on a 21.9 picture to get rid of the bands. Thus resulting in a loss of picture quality.

As I write this I am watching on a 21.9 monitor by LG and they are very good. Not just for games, which I don't use, but for other work too. Such as DTP. Where you can get two bits of text block side by side, which I couldn't on a 16:9 monitor. Not without scrolling!

The DVD's in 21:9 do have a lot of "grain" on them. A bit like watching SD TV on a big screen TV. Caused by the zoom effect.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Talking Pictures TV is very good at setting the appropriate AFD flag, your TV should switch to 16:9 for the adverts and back to 4:3 for program content like Gideons Way, it sounds like the setting of your TV is forcing everything to widescreen.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Here's a screen shot of the 21:9

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Some TV's don't have a option to go to the 4.3 picture on the auto wide setting. Some only have the stretch to fit for none wide shows. A lot of people still have it on the stretch, even when there is option as they don't like the bars on a 4.3.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

I watch all movies (DVD's Blu Ray etc) as in a cinema with the room lights off. Any "black bars" blend into the rest of the darkened room. No matter what the aspect ratio, only the movie is visible, as the makers of the movie intended.

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

Yes and no. We're talking about 4 different companies that happen to share part of their names but are (only the first one still exists) in different activities.

- LG Philips LCD or LPL for short, the joint venture now known as LG Display or LGD for short. This is the company manufacturing LCD panels.
- LG Philips Display or LPD for short, the joint venture for producing CRTs that was doomed to fail and indeed went bankrupt twice. In Dutch this was called a "sterfhuisconstructie", which is apparently a whole English sentence in a single word if you want to translate, but is basically an accusation that people knew or should have known it was doomed to fail and created it so that failure wouldn't affect other parts of the company (any activities on picture devices outside of CRT development were specifically forbidden by Seoul - which makes sense since they controlled LPL).
- Philips Consumer Electronics (BG TV)
- Philips Consumer Electronics (BG Monitors)

The latter two were sometimes customers of the former two, but I don't think they were specifically given the oppertunity to be the first to market if other customers would have also wanted to buy 21:9 panels at that time (I'm not entirely sure that they even were first to market).

Re: True "Cinemascope" TV.
 

I noticed when I set my Panasonic TV to Auto I notice some channels display 4:3 material the way it should be in my eyes, with the black bands either side. But on other channels (Vintage TV seems to be one) I have to manually select 4:3 mode or it will stretch the picture. That just looks completely wrong.

Other TV's I have behave differently. Some of the cheaper ones seem to stretch everything 4:3 unless the mode is manually selected after selecting a channel. The worst mode is the Panoramic setting where the middle of the screen is right but the edges get stretched.