Vizio Unveils Three Cinema Wide 21:9 TVs

[TheDickWard]

You'll be able to pick one up in 50", 58" or 71" sizes.

http://www.ecoustics.com/electronics...ew/701354.html

[skycracksopen]

I really would prefer one of these at some point, but only if I can find a good BD player that can reposition subtitles on the screen for those ridiculous movies that have the subtitles half on the picture, half in the black.

Does a player like that exist? I seem to remember hearing of one a few years ago, but I forget what it was called.

[skycracksopen]

I just found a post by Josh on another forum saying that the ability to move the subs must be encoded on the disc, so I guess it's still impossible for most movies.

I really wish companies like Sony had used their brains before deciding on a permanent subtitle location.

[Yakko_68]

... but there wouldn't be any content outside of a PC source to take advantage of that added resolution, would there? I thought Blu-ray had no allowance for any sort of anamorphic ability so wouldn't you have to zoom a roughly 1920x818 image to fill the screen?

[AV_Integrated]

Are these the same three 21:9 screens that the 'debuted' last year? Or are they somehow different?

[Lee Stewart]

Are these the same three 21:9 screens that the 'debuted' last year? Or are they somehow different?

LOL - same ones. They were first shown at CES 2010 and CES 2011 in a 58" model.

[Lee Stewart]

... but there wouldn't be any content outside of a PC source to take advantage of that added resolution, would there? I thought Blu-ray had no allowance for any sort of anamorphic ability so wouldn't you have to zoom a roughly 1920x818 image to fill the screen?

Correct. You zoom the 16x9 image to 21x9 which gets rid of the black bars and preserves the original 2.35/2.40 AR. The TV upscales the hort. res from 1920 to 2560 and the vertical res from 818 to 1080.

The problem (IMO) is dealing with 16x9 1920x1080 content. You either have to pillarbox it or zoom it to fit, changing the original aspect ratio, losing some of the image and changing the composition of the images. Same choices for watching 4x3 content on a 16x9 HDTV. And watching HD 4x3 content like the original Star Trek TV series on a 21x9 TV results in a tiny sized image.

[HD Whore]

BS

LOL - same ones. They were first shown at CES 2010 and CES 2011 in a 58" model.

Yep! ^^^

[CrazyEightyNine]

Dumbest product I've seen all day - Pro: Wider aspect ratio for select anamorphic widescreen films.
Cons: Due to not all subtitles being within the image (some fall below), those lower subtitles will be cut off. Only for movie fans - TV doesn't broadcast in that aspect ratio and some channels are still in 4:3. Wasted space - why do I need internet shit displayed while I am using my TV to watch a movie, play a game, or watch TV? The word FAIL sums up Vizio altogether and this proves it.

[Lee Stewart]

Dumbest product I've seen all day - Pro: Wider aspect ratio for select anamorphic widescreen films.
Cons: Due to not all subtitles being within the image (some fall below), those lower subtitles will be cut off. Only for movie fans - TV doesn't broadcast in that aspect ratio and some channels are still in 4:3. Wasted space - why do I need internet shit displayed while I am using my TV to watch a movie, play a game, or watch TV? The word FAIL sums up Vizio altogether and this proves it.

Viozio isn't the only TV CEM selling 21x9 TVs.

[Josh Z]

I just found a post by Josh on another forum saying that the ability to move the subs must be encoded on the disc, so I guess it's still impossible for most movies.

I really wish companies like Sony had used their brains before deciding on a permanent subtitle location.

Since July of 2010, Sony has changed their practice and now places all subtitles inside the movie image. It took a long time and a lot of pressure to get them to make this change, but they finally relented. I take credit for this.

The post you found must have been an old one. OPPO Blu-ray players cracked the protected video path and now have the ability to manually change subtitle position on Blu-rays. So do Philips models imported from overseas (not domestic models, which are actually made by Funai).

I have a spare (Region A) Philips player from Hong Kong that I don't use anymore, if you want it. Seriously, PM me.

[Yakko_68]

The problem (IMO) is dealing with 16x9 1920x1080 content. You either have to pillarbox it or zoom it to fit, changing the original aspect ratio, losing some of the image and changing the composition of the images. Same choices for watching 4x3 content on a 16x9 HDTV. And watching HD 4x3 content like the original Star Trek TV series on a 21x9 TV results in a tiny sized image.

See that's the part that DOESN'T bother me since I would only be interested in the 71" set anyway. That would give a pillarboxed 57" 16:9 image and a 46" 4:3 image. I much prefer original aspect ratio to filling the screen. That way scope movies would be the grandest and most panoramic images on my set which is what they're SUPPOSED to be. But the idea of upscaling and zooming is not appealing at all. Throw in the subtitle issue and the occasional films like "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" or "The Dark Knight" that have varying aspect ratios to accommodate IMAX footage and it does start to seem a little problematic.

[Josh Z]

See that's the part that DOESN'T bother me since I would only be interested in the 71" set anyway. That would give a pillarboxed 57" 16:9 image and a 46" 4:3 image. I much prefer original aspect ratio to filling the screen. That way scope movies would be the grandest and most panoramic images on my set which is what they're SUPPOSED to be. But the idea of upscaling and zooming is not appealing at all. Throw in the subtitle issue and the occasional films like "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" or "The Dark Knight" that have varying aspect ratios to accommodate IMAX footage and it does start to seem a little problematic.

As mentioned above, the subtitle issue can be rectified with the right Blu-ray player.

There are exactly five movies ever made that have variable aspect ratio for IMAX: The Dark Knight, Tron Legacy, Transformers 2 (only on the Walmart "Big Screen Edition" Blu-ray), and now M:I-4 and the upcoming Dark Knight Rises. All of these movies were composed to be "safe" for constant 2.35:1 projection in every theater in the world that isn't an IMAX screen.

Even the majority of IMAX screens these days are the digital type with a screen aspect ratio of 2:1. When I saw M:I-4 in a digital IMAX theater, the amount of screen that "opened up" during the IMAX scenes was so miniscule that it was virtually imperceptible unless you specifically looked for it.

[marchiocar]

See that's the part that DOESN'T bother me since I would only be interested in the 71" set anyway. That would give a pillarboxed 57" 16:9 image and a 46" 4:3 image. I much prefer original aspect ratio to filling the screen. That way scope movies would be the grandest and most panoramic images on my set which is what they're SUPPOSED to be. But the idea of upscaling and zooming is not appealing at all. Throw in the subtitle issue and the occasional films like "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" or "The Dark Knight" that have varying aspect ratios to accommodate IMAX footage and it does start to seem a little problematic.

Isn't it already a little problematic with 16:9 screens? With 16:9 screens, when the image switches, it gets taller; with 21:9, when the image switches, the image would get less wide. So, IMO, 21:9 is better because the vertical size of the image stays constant and only the horizontal size changes, which I think is less distracting than the former. With a 21:9 t.v., the only time you would get letterboxing is when the image is wider than 21:9, so you could watch a lot more movies without letterboxing than you would with a 16:9 t.v. Also, I think that this concept of having a constant vertical image size is more in line with what they do at the movies; though I'm not completely sure, so if someone who knows more about how movie theaters work, please enlighten us. Granted, you will still get pillarboxing with 21:9, but I think that having a wider image is better than having a taller image.

[Josh Z]

I've used this analogy before, and I'm going to continue to do so:

In the current 16:9 HDTV paradigm, your average episode of Two and a Half Men is larger and more immersive than Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Lawrence of Arabia, Blade Runner or 2001 - and that is just wrong. Those movies were meant to be projected larger and wider than movies with narrower ratios or TV fare.