NOTE:  The opinions offered in these Blogs are mine and mine alone.  The purpose of these Blogs is to entertain you, inform you, and possibly give you a good reason to consider A-V Services as your audio and video provider!

  02/26/08 

            Back again!   While the end of the Great format War is not exactly earth-shaking news, it is certainly good news even for those of us who are “stuck” with HD-DVD players.  At least now there will be no confusion as to which format to purchase and no wondering why I can watch this movie on my new player, but not another one.

 

            For those of you who have not kept up, or are just peripherally aware of this whole mess, here’s a quick “down and dirty” on what went on and what has finally occurred.

 

            Essentially, Standard Definition DVDs (those which we have been watching and purchasing since about 1998) were mastered and produced in a format that gave us 480 lines of video resolution.  DVD was far superior to VCR tapes and to standard cable or satellite programs.  They were the “cat’s meow” in video pictures until High Definition Television landed on our planet.  HDTV gave us resolutions of 720 lines and/or 1080 lines.  As long as the program source was also shot and edited in one of these High Definition formats, the resulting picture was sharper, more detailed, and had richer color saturation. 

 

            Not to be outdone, various big electronics manufacturers began to develop High Definition technologies for the exploding DVD market.  High Definition DVD for the home would be the Next Big Thing.  However, the two major players—Sony and Toshiba—developed technologies that were incompatible with each other, but basically did the same things, and did them pretty much equally well.   With billions of dollars, ye, loonies, Euros, pesos, etc etc on the line, compromise made the most sense.   Of course, there was no compromise and thus HD-DVD (Toshiba) went to war with Blu-Ray(Sony). 

 

            Very much line the old VHS versus BETA battle, except that this time around the major studios picked sides.  Studios A,B, and C supported and put out material in one format while D,E, and F supported the other format.  A couple of studios put out their programs in both, but for the most part, if you bought one player and the movie you wanted to watch was only made in the other format, you were out of luck. 

 

            Neither side looked willing to give in, give up, or settle with the other.  BUT the scales were tipped when Warner Brothers, who had originally been releasing movies in both formats, decided to knock out HD-DVDs as of May and will now do Blu-Ray only.  That was the kick to the groin, a major surprise to Toshiba.  Then Wal-Mart announced that they would only sell Blu-Ray discs and would no longer offer the HD-DVD format.  That was the kick to the head.  Down, out, and darn near gone!

 

            The studios still in the HD-DVD camp (Universal, Paramount, and Dreamworks) claim that they will continue to offer titles in that format, but since the players will be phased out and no longer made, it is inevitable that these studios will phase out HD-DVD as well.

 

            Let’s be clear though.  If you did purchase an HD-DVD player, there are still plenty of titles available and pretty much exclusively, at least at this point.  AND, the units I’ve seen are excellent Standard Definition DVD players, so don’t throw them out in anger, but begin saving your bucks for a Blu-Ray player to become your primary DVD machine.

 

            I don’t carry the Sony line of products, but I do carry Samsung and Sharp, and both offer excellent Blu-Ray machines. These DO outperform the Sony Playstation so I would recommend avoiding the Playstation as your primary DVD player unless you are very much a video gamer.

 

            We currently have the HD-DVD version of the Digital Video Essentials, but I just ordered the Blu-Ray version, so we will be able to calibrate your theater systems for either or both formats.  Don’t be fooled.  Even with the increased resolution of the televisions and the players, calibration is still an essential if you want to get the most out of your system.

  

NO BLACK BARS

 

            Are you considering making the move into a dedicated projector/screen based home theater?  If so, then of course you should be calling me.  This is what we do and the part of the business that I truly love!

 

            You will be hearing (if you haven’t already) about various methods of stretching or manipulating an image so as to fill more of the screen, or even fill a wider screen.  This, along with High Definition, is one of the exciting developments that has come along, a legitimate development with legitimate benefits. 

 

            A quick explanation of shapes (aspect ratio).  Think of your old 19 inch televisions as screens with an almost squarish shape.  This shape had an exact ratio of 4 to 3.  Essentially a screen that was four inches wide would then be three inches high.  Twenty inches wide would be fifteen inches high.  Salesmen would refer to this as a 4:3 aspect ratio and the true mathematical term would be 1.33:1.  In the Old Days, TV shows were shot in this aspect ration and naturally filled the entire screen of your TV set.  Even movies which were shot in a wider aspect ratio filled your screen because the kind folks of the broadcast networks chopped up movies, eliminated the information on each side of the original picture and threw them out  for our enjoyment!

 

            Then came HD and widescreen displays.  These screens and widescreen televisions were made in a wider aspect ratio of 16:9 or technically, 1.78:1.  This as opposed to the old 1.33:1.

 

            Most High Definition programs are shot in this aspect ration and of course are made to fit this screen shape.  However, films are often shot in an even wider aspect ratio:  2.35:1 or wider.  This meant that when putting a 2.35:1 picture onto a 1.78:1 screen, if you were retain all of the picture and maintain the correct geometry (no too-skinny or too-fat shapes—circles should look like circles!), the width of th4 picture would fill the screen while the height would be less than that of the screen.  Thus, black bars on top and bottom of the picture.

 

            As a side note, when watching an old or non-HD program in 1.33:1 on a 1.78:1 screen, we would have the correct height filling the screen, but would have bars on each side!

 

            Now, one of the disadvantages of this technology is that when re-working a 2.35:1 movie to fit onto the 1.78:1 screen, the image is “processed” so that it fits onto the display device’s panel, but actually uses up only about two thirds of that panel’s available pixels.  The black bars on top and bottom are still part of the overall picture resolution.  They don’t take the 768 or 1080 lines of the display and scrunch them to get the bars.  They use the middle of the display for the movie and the top and bottom portions for the bars.  You are not only seeing black bars instead of picture, you are also not using up all of your display device’s performance capability.

 

            Now along comes Runco.  And yes, several other manufacturers have followed suit, but Runco did this first and seem to do it best—processing is their major forte.

 

            What Runco did was develop a three-pronged technology.  The first prong is internal processing.  They take the original incoming source—a 2.35:1 movie—and process that to fit onto a 1.78:1 DLP projector panel.  This uses all of the pixels on the panel for picture information.  Now, alone, this would appear on a screen as a narrow picture—everything there, but extremely squished on each side.  However, the second prong is a physical lens that attaches to the projector and spreads the image out to the correct geometry.  Of course, if this were shown on a 1.78:1 screen, the side information would be outside of the screen and displayed on your wall!

 

            So, the third prong is of course a 2.35:1 screen!  Now, we have a wide wide screen filled with picture, everything and everybody looking to be the right shape and NO BLACK BARS! 

 

            You have to see this technology in action to really appreciate what Runco has done and what they have done superbly.  And of course, we have to be dealing with a system that will be used primarily for movie-viewing.  When viewing a 1.78:1 program on this new 2.35:1 screen, we need to consider dark masking because we will have black sidebars for this shape of material.

            We are moving forward with our new in-house showroom and the projector/screen combo that we will be installing will utilize this new technology.  Soon as it is completed, invites for special screenings will go out in an upcoming newsletter!

 

            ‘nuff for today.  Sorry for the delay in blogging, but things have been hectic around here and well, I just didn’t have a whole lot to talk about!

 

Best,

Tim