I've been poking around and the general idea among the TV industry is that home cinema will shortly be moving towards 2.21:1 ultra-widescreen in the near future.
The argument being that the home cinema crowd are mostly interested in getting their viewing as close to the cinema as possible, and that means utilising the full TV for the picture. To that end, I can see their point - if you watch most blu-ray films on a HDTV you actually end up watching it in significantly less than 1080 due to the familiar postboxing.
Some of the things I'm wondering, however:
Where will we put them? I find that a 16:9 tv fills up most wall spaces quite nicely. Where 4:3 would leave gaps either side, anything wider than 16:9 would mean sacrificing vertical screen space for the sake of aspect ratio - in which case the picture size is only the same as it would be on a 16:9 tv anyway.
In terms of aspect ratios, is 16:9 the sweet spot for most people? Other than the real enthusiasts who will, no doubt, be happy with a 2.21:1 tv in the home theatre room and a 16:9 for normal TV watching, who would actually want something that stretched? I daresay that 16:9 will scale okay to ultra-widescreen (testing it out in VLC player, it seems to be comparable to the jump from 4:3 to 16:9) but aren't the enthusiasts the people who will notice this most? And more importantly, a lot of older content (who doesn't love dad's army or friends?) and even some current content is filmed in 4:3, which would use perhaps 1/2 of the screen or stretch hideously.
Personally, I think I'd rather stick with 16:9 and chop off the extreme right and left edges of the picture, leaving a standard widescreen picture, or live the the pillarboxing, lowering the picture to approx 720 resolution, rather than have everything stretched and on a smaller viewing area.
Thoughts?
The argument being that the home cinema crowd are mostly interested in getting their viewing as close to the cinema as possible, and that means utilising the full TV for the picture. To that end, I can see their point - if you watch most blu-ray films on a HDTV you actually end up watching it in significantly less than 1080 due to the familiar postboxing.
Some of the things I'm wondering, however:
Where will we put them? I find that a 16:9 tv fills up most wall spaces quite nicely. Where 4:3 would leave gaps either side, anything wider than 16:9 would mean sacrificing vertical screen space for the sake of aspect ratio - in which case the picture size is only the same as it would be on a 16:9 tv anyway.
In terms of aspect ratios, is 16:9 the sweet spot for most people? Other than the real enthusiasts who will, no doubt, be happy with a 2.21:1 tv in the home theatre room and a 16:9 for normal TV watching, who would actually want something that stretched? I daresay that 16:9 will scale okay to ultra-widescreen (testing it out in VLC player, it seems to be comparable to the jump from 4:3 to 16:9) but aren't the enthusiasts the people who will notice this most? And more importantly, a lot of older content (who doesn't love dad's army or friends?) and even some current content is filmed in 4:3, which would use perhaps 1/2 of the screen or stretch hideously.
Personally, I think I'd rather stick with 16:9 and chop off the extreme right and left edges of the picture, leaving a standard widescreen picture, or live the the pillarboxing, lowering the picture to approx 720 resolution, rather than have everything stretched and on a smaller viewing area.
Thoughts?
