Fantastic 2.35 home cinema pics

[dorgan]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=561280

Check the Star Wars shot!!!! Brill!

[Onyxia]

Some sweet setups there, any idea on how much a 2.35 lens would cost?

[Anim]

Is it just me that doesn't like 2.35 aspect?

[guido]

Think that Gary Lightfoot on this forum has Cinemascope screen setup and prismatic lens. Have a search for him and his signature link.

Think that if you go down this route you would be better off getting one of the screens that has the blinds built in from top and bottom to mask off a 16:9 to 2.35 aspect??? than a dedicated 2.35 screen. IMHO of course!

[stuart-f]

Maybe it's late, maybe I'm just thick but I've gotta ask. What do these lens's do? Surely a DVD aspect ratio is it's aspect ratio is it's aspect ratio.

I have a horrible feeling that I'm missing something blindingly obvious here, can someone please put me out of my misery.

[dorgan]

I was checking out the FAQ on the 2.35 thread on AVSForum today and the way I understood it was that the 2.35 image is stretched vertically by the projector and then unstretched horizontally by the lens. The upshot is that the full projector panels are used to display the 2.35 image which gives increased resolution to the picture and better light output. However, it seems that not all projectors can do this, but some DVD players can perform the required strectching (ooh-er missus!) Don't know any more technical details. The lens seem to start at around 750 euro.

EDIT: Everything smaller than 2.35 will have bars at the side. There was some mention of pass through which I didn't quite get. (???)

[stuart-f]

Thanks dorgan that makes sense.

[Gary Lightfoot]

I will mask the screen using ordinary curtain track (covered in velvet) and velvet curtains to go from cinemascope to 16:9. The area for a 16:9 screen masked down to 2.35:1 (bars at top and bottome) gives roughly the same area as a 2.35:1 screen masked sideways for 16:9, except that the 2.35:1 image goes wider just like in a cinema. My screen is a DIY job with Draper M1300 1.3 (closer to 1.25) gain material. Cost was around £100

Pass through is what the Prismasonic lenses have - they have two adjustable prisms to stretch the 16:9 image wider to make 2.35:1. You can readjust the lens so that the image passes straight through the lens untouched for 16:9 (or you can do it in software and not notice the difference with DVD/SD source material). The lenses can be bought here:

www.prismasonic.com.

They can be quite expensive, so ideally you need to see a set-up or be convinced it's the right way to go before you buy. Prismasonic do a 14 moneyback guarentee to I guess that's one way to try it. The lense works best with pjs that have 2:1 throw, and my Optoma H78 is just on the limit of being able to work with the lense. Having it's own lense recessed means the outer edges are slightly dimmer than the rest of the image, though you'd never notice it.

HTH

Gary.

[pez]

this looks interesting, but ive a bad feeling itll be redundant on the hi def formats coming soon, as they can be per pixel matched on hidef projectors, surely any scaling would affect pq?

cool pics!

makes me want to sort out this projector, screen and 7.1 setup here properly!

pez

[Gary Lightfoot]

Why would it be redundant? It works just the same with Hi Def content (I have some on my hard drive), and the image quality is obviously much better.

Gary.

[davisneil]

I work as a cinema projectionist and would be happy to answer the question about the need for the prism.

In the cinema, a frame of 35mm film is actually approx 4:3 ratio (or 1.33:1). To get a Cinemascope image the camera shoots the SCope image but squeezes the picture by 1/2 so that it occupies a full frame of film.Then, on the projector, a 2x Anamorphic lens 'unsqueezes' this 1.33 image to give a 2.66:1 image on the screen. With me so far? Good! Now when DTS came out, this occupied the side of the frame area, which meant that the final Scope aspect ratio had to be cut to 2.35:1, to mask out the DTS timecode track.

On an LCD projector, the simple solution for anamorphic dvd is to squish the picture to its aspect ratio, with black bars top and bottom, but this wastes about 40% of the LCD's resolution. So, these setups actually project the anamorphic image, but expand optically, preserving the LCD resolutuion and light output.

[Timbo21]

I think 2.35:1 screens look rubbish. I don't want one.

[LV426]

Disagree. The right film looks much better very w...i...d...e

[nwgarratt]

Have a look at the pic of Wolfgang's setup. Does that mean 1:85:1 films cannot be shown as there is clearly no room for the right height (unless it is zoomed smaller).

[Gary Lightfoot]

16:9 will be the same height as the 2.35:1 movie, but not as wide. It's done exactly the same way as in the cinema - when the feature comes on, the motorised curtains move sideways and the screen gets wider. 2.35:1 should be wider than 16:9, not smaller which is what happens with fixed width variable height set-ups (like widscreen tvs and 16:9 screens). For example, a 16:9 movie will be approx 6ft wide and 41ins tall, a 2.35:1 movie will be still be 41ins tall, but 8ft wide.

Timbo - do you really think a cinemascope movie ratio at the cinema looks rubbish and prefer the smaller less wide 16:9 ratio? Do you prefer the black bars top and bottom?

Gary.