It wasn't that long ago you were telling us we didn't need high contrast displays and good black levels because we don't get those in commercial cinemas...
Nope, never said that.
What I
did say was that, once we get to the level of presentation you get in a good cinema, then better than that isn't needed to see what a director intended you to see (that much is self-evident). Also, that chasing ever-decreasing black levels is a costly business with which some were becoming obsessed, and there are other areas of picture quality to consider, as well as other demands on one's bank balance.
...but now you can see there are many advantages to be had with it....
Nope, I'm not saying that, either.
Whilst completely agreeing with what you've said about waiting and seeing, and just basing my current thinking on what I know and what some very knowledgeable people have said, I doubt very much that HDR is going to offer too much benefit with films from the pre-digital cinema age.
Where flatscreens will be more of a benefit is being able to maintain solid blacks in non-batcave rooms, and getting (and maintaining) comfortable brightness in the same. The ability to achieve HDR standards will doubtless help.
Going back to the black level debate, the projectors best at this are the JVCs. But because the JVCs are so good at blacks, you need a very well-controlled room (light-wise) to get the very best out of them. I'm talking about the exact opposite to that. I'm talking about getting rock solid blacks in a room with magnolia walls and maybe even a table light on.
What I'm saying is, if you have a JVC in the best batcave you can imagine, the blacks will not be as good as an OLED in a fairly average living room, albeit at night rather than on a summer's day.
Masking helps with projected displays and can also add to the presentation.
Right. Okay, yes. I'm not disagreeing with you. But Gary, since getting my OLED, I can tell you it's not an issue. With my older plasma and LCD TVs, I'd have liked to have masked them (for non-16:9 presentations) in the same way I mask my projector screen. But the OLED? Trust me, it's simply not an issue. At all. Not even a tiny one.
In my lounge, I stick a film on that's not 16:9, turn the lights off, and believe me, masking would make absolutely no difference.
I think we share the view that we'd like to wait and see what a 110"+ OLED display looks like, but based on what I can see now, I don't think masking will be an issue. And trust me, if you'd said that to me right up to the first time I watched a film on the OLED, I'd have been extremely dubious indeed.
We can do that now using scalers or HTPC, so when tvs get to the kind of sizes we're talking about, I wonder how many people will actually do that? It would certainly be a different solution to having a tv and a projector in the lounge. Having a dedicated room would still be a better solution I would think to make movies more of an event, but maybe going from a small scaled tv image to large full size 'movie image' on the same tv will have the same effect. I would think most people will always have the biggest image they can get for everything though.
I suspect you're right. And, I suppose, if someone wants to watch Ken Barlow on a 110" screen, then it's not for me to legislate how they get their jollies.
And sometimes a few actual facts will get thrown in, which is always useful.
Oh, go on then, you old traditionalist.
Wild speculation is still good fun, though.
Steve W