# General "Why Should (or Shouldn't) I Do Constant Height?" Discussion



## Josh Z

I often find that other threads on this site get sidetracked with discussion (or arguments) about Constant Height. Rather than continue to derail those threads from their original intended topics, I thought it would be useful to create a more appropriate thread in the CIH forum to move the conversation here.

To start, here are some threads with useful information in the first few posts that is likely to come up here.









List of Variable Aspect Ratio Movies on Blu-ray


Most of this information has been discussed previously in this forum, but I felt it worthwhile to consolidate it into a dedicated thread because the question comes up frequently. The following is a list of movies presented on Blu-ray or Ultra HD with a variable aspect ratio - specifically those...




www.avsforum.com













List of TV Shows with Wider than 16:9 Aspect Ratios


This thread contains a running list of TV series with aspect ratios wider than 16:9. IMPORTANT UPDATE: The needs of maintaining this list, converting to PDF, and uploading to this thread has become an unwieldy burden. Effective Sept. 1, 2022, the list has been moved to a permanent...




www.avsforum.com


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## Josh Z

Moved from:








Official JVC RS3000/NX9 - JVC RS2000/NX7/N7 - JVC...


This new model seems like the previous NX5 except for the new HDMI 2.1 board and HD10+ . It seems to have the same lamp and other specifications along with the increased price and new JVC attitude. Am I missing something else. No that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. I added in bold...




www.avsforum.com







Philnick said:


> Of course, if you try to talk about other screen shapes in the 2.35:1 forum, you'll be told that (1) 16:9 images aren't being shrunken by being zoomed down or cropped to fit on a scope screen - they're _supposed_ to be tiny in comparison to 2.35:1,


If the 16:9 image is tiny, your screen is too small. The whole point of Constant Image Height is to start with a 16:9 image as large as you can possibly want it to be, and then add more width.



> (2) screens taller than 2.35:1 somehow shrink scope images (I've never understood how that bit of black magic is supposed to occur)


It really ought to be perfectly self-evident that the (nearly-identical) close-ups in these two movies are meant for Robert Downey Jr's face to be the same size as each other.










The only difference between them is that the close-up in scope has more picture to the sides of the face. The actor's eyes, nose, and mouth are all framed in the same planes within the picture height.








This is only achievable if watching the two movies with Constant Image Height.

When you watch on a 16:9 screen, the letterboxed scope image is much smaller in comparison









These two movies were directed by the same person, and the second one cost $145 million more to make ($220 million budget vs. $365 million). Is it your contention that the bigger, way more expensive sequel was intended to look _smaller_ than the previous movie?

And no, you cannot retort with the "Your screen is too small" comeback to this one. No matter how large a screen you install, if the aspect ratio is 16:9, that first close-up will always be much larger than the second. There is no 16:9 screen size that will equalize the size of these two close-ups. Only Constant Image Height can do that.


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## Josh Z

Moved from:








Official JVC RS3000/NX9 - JVC RS2000/NX7/N7 - JVC...


This new model seems like the previous NX5 except for the new HDMI 2.1 board and HD10+ . It seems to have the same lamp and other specifications along with the increased price and new JVC attitude. Am I missing something else. No that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. I added in bold...




www.avsforum.com







SirMaster said:


> But what if my personal perception of "too small" is caused by the fact that the 16:9 does not fill my horizontal FOV?
> 
> This is why I feel that 16:9 is too small when put in the middle of a scope screen with the sides blank.
> 
> If I then got a bigger screen so that the 16:9 fills my horizontal FOV so that it no longer feels "too small" (because remember you said if it feels too small it means the screen is too small), then 2.39:1 content now feels too big and too wide to comfortably view and track all the action in action movies.
> 
> This is just how my perception of screens and pictures works out. I don't know what else to do about it other than to use a CIW screen. Then it never feels too big or too small.


You should do what you want to do. All I'm trying to explain is how movies are actually made. Since CinemaScope was first introduced in the 1950s, no filmmaker has ever shot a movie in a "scope" widescreen ratio intending for it to be projected smaller than 1.85:1. That is not the purpose of the scope format. That is the opposite of its explicit design function.

Only IMAX - true, genuinie IMAX shot with real IMAX cameras - is meant to be larger than scope. (An ordinary movie that plays in IMAX theaters is not actually IMAX.) Those are pretty rare among feature films. Aside from the short nature documentaries that used to be IMAX's bread and butter, there have only been a couple dozen narrative features shot, or partially shot, with real IMAX cameras - compared to tens of thousands of movies shot in 2.35:1 formats.

As far as filling your field of view, you should perhaps take into consideration what types of movies are made in each aspect ratio. In recent years, over 70% of American feature films annually have been shot and composed for 2.35:1. Those include the vast majority of big-budget studio tentpole movies, which _almost_ exclusively use the format (with perhaps a rather small number of exceptions per year).

Is a low-budget indie rom-com worth filling your field of view while practically every action, sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero blockbuster is not? Depends on what kind of movies you like to watch, I guess.

I can't tell you what to do in your own home theater, and I'm not trying to. At the end of the day, you should watch movies in whatever way personally brings you enjoyment, rules be damned. But, personally, I find it helpful to understand the rules of photographic presentation and their purpose so that I can make an informed decision about whether and when I want to break them. YMMV.


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## clint357

I am new to projectors and have a temporary setup to get a feel for screen size. My room is 13ft wide by 18ft long with 9ft ceilings. I found that most of what I will watch on this screen is 2.35:1 and the image looks good at about 11ft wide from my MPL which is about 11ft from the screen. When I throw an image of 16:9 it honestly just looks too big from the MPL, so I think my specific situation is quite easy to solve. I was curious though about the framing of the picture with a non-reflective border. You could just frame your screen for 16:9 and have "black" bars on the top and bottom while viewing 2.35:1 content, but is one of the draws to have a non-reflective border that soaks up the extra light that occupies the space of the "black" bars? I know that these bars are not totally void of light, hence me putting "black" in quotations, so does that mean that a big draw to the 2.35:1 screen is to make those bars totally disappear and then just deal with the bars on the sides of the 16:9 content?


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## Dan in Canada

I agree with your points here, though perhaps you rely a little too much on strawman representations of the other point of view. 
(E.g., the sane argument argument against CIH isn't "16:9 looks too small on a scope screen," it's more accurately "I'm spending too much money on screen area/projection capability I only use once per week instead of every day.")


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## bud16415

I will offer an opinion.
I think CIH is a wonderful method of presentation of motion pictures produced between the late 1950s to current. It is a method of presentation far better than CIW when given movies filmed in Flat and Scope ARs.

As to home theaters along with showing flat movies every bit as tall as you would like them to be “Vertically Immersive” and then maintaining that height Scope becomes the master of the two by supplying greater horizontal immersive. Along with that there is a simplicity to this method as many home rooms used to convert to HT are somewhat height limited and if two rows of seating are required screen height and riser heights can be accomplished without risers becoming so high for the back row to see over the front row that people won’t be hitting the ceiling. Some may disagree but there is a cool factor to the longer screen shape and a non TV feel and more of a motion picture feel to the shape as well.

If doing the zoom method of CIH the concept is even better as there is no need for upper and lower masking beyond the fixed masking of the screen and as to side masking after zoom it really isn’t needed because any side black bars when zooming to flat are not a black produced by the projector but rather a black bar produced outside of the light path of the projector. If one still feels the need to mask it is a simple matter to have curtains draw from the sides, just like real scope theaters did back in the days when commercial theaters took presentation seriously.
There are basically two other formats of motion picture that could be of concern within a CIH presentation method. The first is Academy AR movies 1.37:1 that some people remember watching covering more immersive area than CIH allows for. These movies played originally in theaters made for that AR only and during the 30s-50s movie theaters were much different places where many of them held 2000 or more people in mid to large cities. This kind of seating had ranges of immersion on both ends of the scale past what we would call common today. The other type of motion pictures that buck CIH are of course the relatively new IMAX1.89 movies. No one knows the future of this format and to date they have been filmed in a method of both scope and IMAX at the same time for mixed venues so most are deemed (Scope Safe) meaning the directors have approved cropping the top and bottoms off making 1.89 into 2.39. So if you are not a fan of the IMAX concept all those movies are still fine to watch as scope and you won’t miss much in terms of content matter.

One of the major drawbacks to CIH is the equipment that is required to get it to work. Many new to front projection or on a budget buy entry-level projectors that ether have manual zoom that require manual image shift and manual focus to do the zoom method, along with many entry level projectors do not have all these features or the features don’t have the range to go between scope and flat. There is then the option of using an A-lens to accomplish some of this and with that comes a huge cost of the lens and possibly another expensive piece of equipment for scaling. When you add it all up it would be less expensive to buy a high end projector that had programmable features to make the three adjustments. Those projectors unfortunately are outside some peoples budgets or even if they have the budgets they are commonly set up for larger rooms with longer throw distances. There are a large number of people that want front projection in rooms where they will be seated against the back wall and the projector will hang directly overhead. The projector market isn’t even keeping up on entry level machines that do this all that good. They have UST options that can’t do CIH very easily and some short throw gaming machines designed to sit on a table in front of the viewer that are not optimized for CIH and just a few normal short throws with manual controls. Manual controlling CIH with a ceiling mounted projector gets old really fast.
It is a shame all people can’t enjoy CIH and other forms of adjusted presentations. It was part of the reason I invented a DIY low cost method of changing image size that just about anyone could build and use entry level projectors to do things like CIH. To the best of my knowledge no one other than myself has taken on the challenge. So that kind of tells me many people are happy enough with the simplicity of CIW and adjust the image once and done. Viewing like it was a giant TV. Or they just don’t know about the concept and likely won’t find this thread. The reason people often muddy up other threads when the topic of presentation comes up. 

That’s pretty much my opinion on CIH for motion pictures.


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## bud16415

clint357 said:


> I am new to projectors and have a temporary setup to get a feel for screen size. My room is 13ft wide by 18ft long with 9ft ceilings. I found that most of what I will watch on this screen is 2.35:1 and the image looks good at about 11ft wide from my MPL which is about 11ft from the screen. When I throw an image of 16:9 it honestly just looks too big from the MPL, so I think my specific situation is quite easy to solve. I was curious though about the framing of the picture with a non-reflective border. You could just frame your screen for 16:9 and have "black" bars on the top and bottom while viewing 2.35:1 content, but is one of the draws to have a non-reflective border that soaks up the extra light that occupies the space of the "black" bars? I know that these bars are not totally void of light, hence me putting "black" in quotations, so does that mean that a big draw to the 2.35:1 screen is to make those bars totally disappear and then just deal with the bars on the sides of the 16:9 content?


I may have answered some of your questions in the post I just made above. But you are correct the black bars above and below when projecting scope to a 16:9 screen are projected black and will look gray as projectors have a tough time stopping all light. When you zoom down and put a 16:9 image into a scope screen the black bars to the side are not projected black they are outside the image frame and when you project scope the black projected bars are off the screen. This is one reason many like their back wall to be covered in black velvet or painted black.
There is a method called CIH+IMAX where you start off with a tall 16:9 screen and make masking panels that stay in place most of the time giving you a scope screen. when you want for an IMAX movie or maybe watching the NFL or NBA where max immersion is something special you just take them down.


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## Josh Z

clint357 said:


> When I throw an image of 16:9 it honestly just looks too big from the MPL, so I think my specific situation is quite easy to solve. I was curious though about the framing of the picture with a non-reflective border. You could just frame your screen for 16:9 and have "black" bars on the top and bottom while viewing 2.35:1 content, but is one of the draws to have a non-reflective border that soaks up the extra light that occupies the space of the "black" bars?


If you find that 16:9 is uncomfortably large from your seating position, adding temporary masking only for 2.35:1 movies won't solve that problem. If you plan to take that masking off for 16:9, the 16:9 will still always be too large.

Unless you're saying that you would _permanently _mask the screen to 2.35:1, and reduce the zoom for 16:9 content. That would effectively make it a 2.35:1 screen.



> I know that these bars are not totally void of light, hence me putting "black" in quotations, so does that mean that a big draw to the 2.35:1 screen is to make those bars totally disappear and then just deal with the bars on the sides of the 16:9 content?


What color are your walls? Installing a 2.35:1 screen means that letterbox bars will spill over the screen onto the wall. If you have white walls, potentially reflection off the walls could be noticeable or distracting. With dark colored walls, that's less of an issue. You may also consider attaching some absorbtive fabric such as dark velvet to the walls above and below the screen. (If the ceiling is white, you could also put a piece of fabric that extends out a few feet to block reflections there and make a proscenium effect.)

How good your projector is with contrast will make a big difference as to how bothersome "black" bars on screen appear to you. JVC is the king of contrast, and I personally don't feel any need to mask my screen with one of those projectors. If you have an LCD model that isn't so great with contrast, though, screen masking can help.

Another area where masking is useful is so-called "CIH+IMAX" - in which you would install an oversized 16:9 screen and semi-permanently mask it down to 2.35:1. For the majority of content you watch, you'd treat it as a 2.35:1 screen, reducing zoom for 16:9 movies/TV. But for the rare instances a movie is shot with IMAX footage (The Dark Knight, etc.), you can remove the masking and let those IMAX scenes fill the whole screen. Then put the masking back on again afterwards.


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## Suntan

Thread title is silly.

You _should_ brush your teeth. You _shouldn't_ mix alcohol and cough medicine. 

You're free to do whatever you want with your TV screen.

I can't believe people spend so much energy arguing this topic.


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## Josh Z

Dan in Canada said:


> I agree with your points here, though perhaps you rely a little too much on strawman representations of the other point of view.
> (E.g., the sane argument argument against CIH isn't "16:9 looks too small on a scope screen," it's more accurately "I'm spending too much money on screen area/projection capability I only use once per week instead of every day.")


I will agree with you that this _would _be a sane argument. Every home theater has its compromises. Some people don't have enough wall space. Some people don't have enough budget. You have to work with what you've got and do the best you can.

That said, in my two decades as a home theater writer, I have never once had someone argue against the concept of CIH because they thought scope screens were too expensive. Not one single time. Invariably, the argument is, "_Why would I want to shrink 16:9? Sports! Video games! Game of Thrones! I need big 16:9!"
_
Lots of different manufacturers make screens in a wide range of price points. Surely you could find one that fits your budget somewhere.

Also: "screen area/projection capability I only use once per week instead of every day." What are you mostly watching in your home theater every day? Over 70% of American movies are photographed for 2.35:1 these days, and even TV shows are moving toward wider aspect ratios at a rapid rate.


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## Josh Z

Suntan said:


> Thread title is silly.
> 
> You _should_ brush your teeth. You _shouldn't_ mix alcohol and cough medicine.
> 
> You're free to do whatever you want with your TV screen.
> 
> I can't believe people spend so much energy arguing this topic.


You're posting on a web site devoted to discussion of home theater topics. This is the sort of thing we talk about here.

Where did you think you were?


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## umr

I love my CIH setup using an ISCO III lens and CineSlide. I also like my images sized per THX standards.

I find too large an image loses sharpness and magnifies artifacts. There is also a point that an image is so big that it is hard to see well.

The biggest challenge I have are with some sources is closed captioning. My Oppo and Panasonic player fix most of these, but not all. It is a rare problem, but annoying when it happens. I can usually work around it by changing the scaling ratio to 2.2 instead of 2.35 in my Sim2 projector.

Everyone else can like what they like.


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## Darko_85

I went back and forth on this a lot when designing my room. Ultimately both projectors and Blu rays are natively 16:9 formats. Sure you can get an animorphic lens or use lens memory to zoom but the right answer is build the biggest screen that covers your wall and build a 4 way masking solution  and then scratch your head when watching a Nolan movie where he switches aspect ratios. I view aspect ratio as a creative choice by directors to tell their stories, for example look at Jurassic Park, it's 16:9, Spielberg was going for height for the dinosaurs on screen. As long as both images are decent size, you'll be happy and don't let anyone else tell you differently.


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## EdgarQ

Darko_85 said:


> the right answer is build the biggest screen that covers your wall


Exactly. For me, my wall is Scope-shaped. The height is the limiting factor. Therefore a 2.35:1 screen is right for me. Having said that, I watch almost everything in its intended AR. Jurassic Park's tall dinosaurs get the 16:9 AR. If AR is variable in the film, it gets the 2.35:1 slice. Because I'm that kind of barbarian.


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## ahmedreda

This method actually works great.
I own 2 theater rooms, both 16:9.. The first one is 155" diagonal with a 58 degree viewing angle. The second is 138" diagonal with a 75 degree viewing angle.
In my first room, the CIH method was not convincing enough. I always felt that 16:9 content was good when done full screen and was too small when I had it within the scope frame. So that is exactly what I did with my second screen. I aimed for a 58 degree viewing angle when displaying 16:9 within the 2.4:1 frame. This resulted in a 74-75 degree viewing angle for scope. That was immersive for both 16:9 and scope. Zooming 16:9 any further would make it borderline unwatchable. I think the trick is to make 16:9 as big as you like it and go from there. If you feel like you need it bigger, then you obviously didn't make it as big as you like it to start with.

Links to both rooms in my signature:



Josh Z said:


> If the 16:9 image is tiny, your screen is too small. The whole point of Constant Image Height is to start with a 16:9 image as large as you can possibly want it to be, and then add more width.
> 
> 
> And no, you cannot retort with the "Your screen is too small" comeback to this one. No matter how large a screen you install, if the aspect ratio is 16:9, that first close-up will always be much larger than the second. There is no 16:9 screen size that will equalize the size of these two close-ups. Only Constant Image Height can do that.


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## Philnick

A scope screen is the best choice if, and only if, your room is height-limited or you only watch films that are framed exclusively for scope, which are mostly 2.39:1 - though scope films actually range widely in terms of actual aspect ratios, from Stanley Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey,_ which is 2.0:1, to films like _Ben-Hur_ that were shot and shown at 2.76:1.

The one-quarter to one-third of theatrical films that are framed taller, from 16x9 to 1.85:1 - which was the standard for many years - to 1.37:1 (also known as Academy) which was the standard for many more years before the introduction of scope, can be shown on a scope screen but only by reducing their height to fit the screen, which reduces their width as well.

That's what's known as Constant Image Height projection, or CIH, and is what the first post here is arguing for, on the argument that scope films expanded the width of movies beyond that of older Academy films, while the height of the screens in the theaters remained the same.

The burr under the saddle of the CIH system is the steadily-increasing number of films that are framed using a variable aspect ratio, that are designed to expand vertically in some scenes, usually to give a feeling of increased vertical immersion with a large sky (or, in an early scene in _Star Trek - Into Darkness_, with Spock seen inside a volcano, dwarfed by the leaping lava), and then contract vertically when indoors (like on the bridge of the Enterprise - or watch the subtle transition in height as the camera follows Scotty from the street into a nightclub).

Check out the VAR version of _Dr. Strange_ on the 3D disk (or streamed by Disney Plus as IMAX), for another good example at the beginning of the fim. It opens up in scope format in the underground library of a monastery in Katmandu and follows a group of evil sorcerors through a dimensional portal they open up to Manhattan, where it shifts to a taller format, showing their battle with the lead good sorceror in an M.C. Escher-like "mirror dimension" where up and down point in multiple dimensions.

VAR films force those with scope screens to either repeatedly reduce and increase the zoom of their setups, either manually or electronically, to keep everything the same height, or to keep the zoom constant and implement an electronic mask that blocks off anything above or below the scope screen's frame, on the belief that the cinematographer must have framed the scene to allow that sort of masking (they call that "framing a film to be scope safe").

The opposing point of view, which I advocate, is to use a screen tall enough and wide enough for anything you want to watch, as large as you want to watch it. I simply painted an entire 14' wide x 8' tall wall with a homebrew screen paint. My projector, at a 15'9" throw distance, can throw its 17x9 focusing grid 11'4" wide by 6' tall, allowing room on either side for loudspeakers and underneath for a center channel speaker. True 4K projectors tend to use imagers that are 17x9 (1.89:1) instead of 16x9 (1.78:1).

By default, my projector only uses a narrower 16x9 area, which I use for 16x9 images, but it can electronically enlarge the image by 6 2/3% to fill its entire 17x9 imaging area. That's great for anything 17x9 (1.89:1) or greater, since the only parts of the image that would be lost off the top and bottom of the projector's imaging panels would be black letterbox bars. Using that for 16x9 would shave off 3 1/3% of the image at the top and the same amount at the bottom, which cinematographers probably allow for, but I'd rather not do that. (I do use that electronic zoom for 1.85:1 films - which are very close to the 1.89:1 shape of the projector's imagers, costing me only a little over 1% at top and bottom.)

This system is great for showing variable aspect ratio films, since it allows the image to expand vertically with nothing masked off, and without shrinking the sections of the film that were supposed to be more - not less - immersive.

This is heresy to the CIH adherents, because they insist that nothing should be taller than scope unless it was shot on the very small number of IMAX-owned cameras (which are only rented, not sold, to filmmakers) and shown on 40' tall screens in "true" IMAX theaters.

The potential burr under the saddle of my system is if the screen material is "high gain" (very reflective), the black framing bars built into the image sent to the projector may not fully black but grey.

My solution was to go for a high contrast JVC projector and a low gain screen - between which those bars are not noticeable. Other folks use masking panels that they place over the screen when showing fixed aspect ratio films to hide the black bars. (Some folks even use motorized masking systems!)

If your room is height-limited, so that using a 16x9 or 17x9 screen wide enough for scope at its best won't fit, than go scope. But if you don't have that limitation, then go big _and_ go home.


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## Suntan

Josh Z said:


> You're posting on a web site devoted to discussion of home theater topics. This is the sort of thing we talk about here.
> 
> Where did you think you were?


I think I'm at the same website I've been posting in for years and years. And for years and years people continue to debate all the SAME EXACT points about CIH. It baffles me that all these same arguments still garner new posts with large numbers of paragraphs, edited screen clips, etc. But apparently you've educated me that this is what gets talked about around here, so by all means, continue on. Maybe I'll stop back in to see how all these same arguments are holding up in another 5 or 6 years...


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## Philnick

Suntan said:


> I think I'm at the same website I've been posting in for years and years. And for years and years people continue to debate all the SAME EXACT points about CIH. It baffles me that all these same arguments still garner new posts with large numbers of paragraphs, edited screen clips, etc. But apparently you've educated me that this is what gets talked about around here, so by all means, continue on. Maybe I'll stop back in to see how all these same arguments are holding up in another 5 or 6 years...


You're assuming that the only folks using projectors are the ones who have been using them since "years and years" ago. But in fact, people set up theaters, or upgrade older theaters, all the time, so this issue is what botanists call a "perennial."

No need to scold folks for going over what _to you_ is old ground. Just accept that this will always be a subject of discussion, even if the arguments don't change much except for the films that are referred to as examples.


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## mattsteg

Darko_85 said:


> Sure you can get an animorphic lens or use lens memory to zoom but the right answer is build the biggest screen that covers your wall and build a 4 way masking solution





EdgarQ said:


> Exactly. For me, my wall is Scope-shaped. The height is the limiting factor. Therefore a 2.35:1 screen is right for me. Having said that, I watch almost everything in its intended AR. Jurassic Park's tall dinosaurs get the 16:9 AR. If AR is variable in the film, it gets the 2.35:1 slice. Because I'm that kind of barbarian.


I'm not sure why people make this so complicated. Absent complete clean-sheet new-build construction most of us are working within some sort of space constraints. Whether that means a limited wall height or width, or seating distances that dictate a maximum comfortable viewing height or width.

I can fit about a 60 in tall screen in my space, and this gives me a picture size that I like for 16:9 from my seating location. There's only room for a 120in wide screen. So I have a 2.0:1. If I had a wider space I'd likely have gone scope.


Philnick said:


> f actual aspect ratios, from Stanley Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey,_ which is 2.0:1


Looks like it's time to rewatch 2001.


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Moved from:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Official JVC RS3000/NX9 - JVC RS2000/NX7/N7 - JVC...
> 
> 
> This new model seems like the previous NX5 except for the new HDMI 2.1 board and HD10+ . It seems to have the same lamp and other specifications along with the increased price and new JVC attitude. Am I missing something else. No that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. I added in bold...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.avsforum.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the 16:9 image is tiny, your screen is too small. The whole point of Constant Image Height is to start with a 16:9 image as large as you can possibly want it to be, and then add more width.
> 
> 
> 
> It really ought to be perfectly self-evident that the (nearly-identical) close-ups in these two movies are meant for Robert Downey Jr's face to be the same size as each other.
> 
> View attachment 3219305
> 
> 
> The only difference between them is that the close-up in scope has more picture to the sides of the face. The actor's eyes, nose, and mouth are all framed in the same planes within the picture height.
> View attachment 3219306
> 
> This is only achievable if watching the two movies with Constant Image Height.
> 
> When you watch on a 16:9 screen, the letterboxed scope image is much smaller in comparison
> View attachment 3219307
> 
> 
> These two movies were directed by the same person, and the second one cost $145 million more to make ($220 million budget vs. $365 million). Is it your contention that the bigger, way more expensive sequel was intended to look _smaller_ than the previous movie?
> 
> And no, you cannot retort with the "Your screen is too small" comeback to this one. No matter how large a screen you install, if the aspect ratio is 16:9, that first close-up will always be much larger than the second. There is no 16:9 screen size that will equalize the size of these two close-ups. Only Constant Image Height can do that.


The obvious fallacy in the above argument is that on a screen large enough to encompass both scope at the projector's full magnification _and_ 16x9 at full magnification, the scope image is somehow made smaller than it would be on a scope screen the same width.

There's no physical way that could happen, so please stop saying that 16x9 screens _shrink_ scope images. What controls the size of a scope image is the width of the screen - additional screen height makes no difference at all. At worst, it may make letterbox bars more visible, but the image stays the same size.

But it gets worse. I went to Blu-ray.com to find the 16x9 _Iron Man_ movie you show a frame-grab from. There's no such animal. Even the first _Iron Man_ film - from 2008 - is scope-framed, even on DVD! Were you using a VHS copy? (I guess we've found a "straw man" made of iron.)

I'll give you this - unless I have access to an IMAX or variable aspect ratio version of a film, and just the choice between a 16x9 and a scope version, I'll watch the scope version, just as you would. 

But I actually can't recall ever being faced with a choice between 16x9 and scope versions of a film. When TVs went to 16x9, pan-and-scan 4x3 "fullscreen" versions of films stopped being introduced.


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> to find the 16x9 _Iron Man_ movie you show a frame-grab from


LOL, it's from Avengers 1.


----------



## fatherom

Philnick said:


> Stanley Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey,_ which is 2.0:1


According to blu-ray.com, that film is 2.20:1.


----------



## Philnick

fatherom said:


> According to blu-ray.com, that film is 2.20:1.


My mistake.


----------



## Philnick

fatherom said:


> LOL, it's from Avengers 1.


Ah yes, I just looked. That's not 16x9 but 1.85:1 - and is an example of the grip of the scope mentality on the industry.

From what I recall, Joss Whedon had to overcome studio objections to be allowed to use the taller format for _The Avengers_ by arguing that he was showing an invasion of Manhattan from the sky.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been allowed to deviate from scope.

A similar argument against studio objections had to be made for the _Ant Man_ films - that the characters (and props) being shown repeatedly growing and shrinking was more compelling in a taller format.

I think it's time that filmmakers - and home theater owners - stopped being constrained by a 1950s-era aspect ratio introduced to help theaters compete with broadcast TV, and were allowed to let images breathe free.


----------



## fatherom

Philnick said:


> Joss Whedon had to overcome studio objections to be allowed to use the taller format


Do you have a source for this? I can find so such reference online.


----------



## Heath7

Unless I am missing something this seems like a simple argument. For most immersive visuals, if you are height restricted go 2.35:1, if you are width restricted go 16:9. I am width restricted (sloped ceiling on both sides) so 16:9 makes most sense. Like above, I have another reason to watch 2001 again.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> The one-quarter to one-third of theatrical films that are framed taller, from 16x9 to 1.85:1 -


The crux of the problem here, Phil, is your belief that 1.85:1 is framed "taller" than 2.35:1. It is not framed taller. It is framed narrower.



> The burr under the saddle of the CIH system is the steadily-increasing number of films that are framed using a variable aspect ratio,


Increasing number? We're talking 1-2 per year. While, yes, technically 1 new title is an increase to the overall number of such films, you neglect to consider that the number of 2.35:1 films also continues to increase every year, and at a much higher rate. We're now up to 70% of movies a year shot at 2.35:1, which surprised even me, as the last time I checked it was closer to 50%.



> Check out the VAR version of _Dr. Strange_ on the 3D disk (or streamed by Disney Plus as IMAX), for another good example at the beginning of the fim.


It's really funny that you would choose this as an example, as the director of that film was quite upset to learn that Disney+ started streaming the VAR version against his wishes. Quote: "_I never intended that aspect ratio to be used for home viewing."_



Philnick said:


> There's no physical way that could happen, so please stop saying that 16x9 screens _shrink_ scope images. What controls the size of a scope image is the width of the screen - additional screen height makes no difference at all. At worst, it may make letterbox bars more visible, but the image stays the same size.


This is completely false, as has been conclusively demonstrated in the images I posted. Our perception of an object's size is based on its height, not width. 

How can you look at those two near identical close-ups and tell me that the scope one _isn't _smaller on a 16:9 screen?



> But it gets worse. I went to Blu-ray.com to find the 16x9 _Iron Man_ movie you show a frame-grab from. There's no such animal. Even the first _Iron Man_ film - from 2008 - is scope-framed, even on DVD! Were you using a VHS copy? (I guess we've found a "straw man" made of iron.)


The two images are from The Avengers (1.85:1 theatrically, 16:9 on home video) and Age of Ultron (2.35:1).



Philnick said:


> Ah yes, I just looked. That's not 16x9 but 1.85:1


It was 1.85:1 in theaters. All home video editions are mildly open matte to 16:9.



> - and is an example of the grip of the scope mentality on the industry.
> 
> From what I recall, Joss Whedon had to overcome studio objections to be allowed to use the taller format for _The Avengers_ by arguing that he was showing an invasion of Manhattan from the sky.
> 
> Otherwise, he wouldn't have been allowed to deviate from scope.


Ah, so, it's a *conspiracy *then, is it? Those mean old movie studios aren't letting directors shoot movies in 1.85:1 like they want to. Do we need to start our own QAnon for this? 

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter why directors shoot their movies in scope, whether it's their own preference or whether the studio forced them. The end result is that they do shoot in scope. They compose for the 2.35:1 frame, not for a 16:9 screen.



> A similar argument against studio objections had to be made for the _Ant Man_ films - that the characters (and props) being shown repeatedly growing and shrinking was more compelling in a taller format.


And yet, here as well, the same director later went and made his sequel at 2.35:1. And it was fine.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> All home video editions are mildly open matte to 16:9.


The 4K disc of Avengers 1 is 1.85:1 proper. (just FYI)


----------



## mattsteg

Philnick said:


> The obvious fallacy in the above argument is that on a screen large enough to encompass both scope at the projector's full magnification _and_ 16x9 at full magnification, the scope image is somehow made smaller than it would be on a scope screen the same width.
> 
> There's no physical way that could happen, so please stop saying that 16x9 screens _shrink_ scope images. What controls the size of a scope image is the width of the screen - additional screen height makes no difference at all. At worst, it may make letterbox bars more visible, but the image stays the same size.


In case you'd forgotten how ratios work, if you fix the screen aspect ratio at 16:9 (matching the native aspect ratio of most every home projector I can think of - your "full magnification")...fitting a 2.35:1 image onto that same screen will reduce the height (and area) of the projected image relative to a 16:9 image.

In other words, it will make the content smaller.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Ah yes, I just looked. That's not 16x9 but 1.85:1 - and is an example of the grip of the scope mentality on the industry.
> 
> From what I recall, Joss Whedon had to overcome studio objections to be allowed to use the taller format for _The Avengers_ by arguing that he was showing an invasion of Manhattan from the sky.
> 
> Otherwise, he wouldn't have been allowed to deviate from scope.
> 
> A similar argument against studio objections had to be made for the _Ant Man_ films - that the characters (and props) being shown repeatedly growing and shrinking was more compelling in a taller format.
> 
> I think it's time that filmmakers - and home theater owners - stopped being constrained by a 1950s-era aspect ratio introduced to help theaters compete with broadcast TV, and were allowed to let images breathe free.


You're talking about non-IMAX theatrical ratios where height is the constant, so 1.85:1 is a narrower format. Not taller. 

I read that Whedon wanted the Hulk to take up more of the frame similar to why Spielberg choose to go narrower for Jurassic Park.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> The crux of the problem here, Phil, is your belief that 1.85:1 is framed "taller" than 2.35:1. It is not framed taller. It is framed narrower.


I'd quibble that it's framed "differently" which the vast majority of the time means wider, but occasionally (e.g. IMAX) means taller.

For most of us, increasing height is going to be what encounters a limit of what's comfortable to view - for sure for 4:3 content and almost certainly for 16:9 content. IMAX content may be slightly different as the bottom/top of the screen is more for immersion and less likely to require you to look at it )i.e. it's actually framed taller)

Less universally, but I think still most of the time height will also be the limiter of what's comfortable to watch at 2.35:1. Some people could reasonably prefer to not look so much left/right - which is fine. Others might not be able to fit a 2.35:1 screen of their preferred height into their theater space. That's fine too. Others may be lazy and not want to mess around with zooming or anamorphic. That's fine, although they'll be stuck with sad, small scope movies.


----------



## Vern Dias

mattsteg said:


> In case you'd forgotten how ratios work, if you fix the screen aspect ratio at 16:9 (matching the native aspect ratio of most every home projector I can think of - your "full magnification")...fitting a 2.35:1 image onto that same screen will reduce the height (and area) of the projected image relative to a 16:9 image.
> 
> In other words, it will make the content smaller.


Only if you were to ignore the other part of the equation. 

In commercial theatres, 35MM Scope projection required the use of an anamorphic lens that expanded the width of the image by a factor of 2. 

In home theatre, we have several ways to accomplish the same purpose:

1. A horizontal expansion anamorphic lens with vertical scaling to remove the black bars and no additional lens zoom.
2. A vertical compression anamorphic lens to remove the black bars and additional lens zoom to fill the full screen width.
3. No anamorphic lens used, variable zoom to make the actual image on the media fill the screen.

So, when we discuss CIH, we are talking about the final image on the screen, not the image on the media.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> The 4K disc of Avengers 1 is 1.85:1 proper. (just FYI)


I wasn't aware of that, thanks.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> A scope screen is the best choice if, and only if, your room is height-limited or you only watch films that are framed exclusively for scope, which are mostly 2.39:1 - though scope films actually range widely in terms of actual aspect ratios, from Stanley Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey,_ which is 2.0:1, to films like _Ben-Hur_ that were shot and shown at 2.76:1.


I feel a scope screen is the best choice if you can set your room up around it properly and wish to watch 99% of the film content out there as the filmmaker intended. IMAX continues to be a tiny niche and most don't view it any differently than 1.85:1.



Philnick said:


> The one-quarter to one-third of theatrical films that are framed taller, from 16x9 to 1.85:1 - which was the standard for many years - to 1.37:1 (also known as Academy) which was the standard for many more years before the introduction of scope, can be shown on a scope screen but only by reducing their height to fit the screen, which reduces their width as well.
> 
> That's what's known as Constant Image Height projection, or CIH, and is what the first post here is arguing for, on the argument that scope films expanded the width of movies beyond that of older Academy films, while the height of the screens in the theaters remained the same.


It's already been pointed out that theatrical ratios aside from IMAX are expressed with the height as the constant. Repeating misinformation about Academy or Flat being "taller" does not make it true or accurate. 

Your statement about reducing height and width of these formats assumes that setting up a screen for theatrical presentation revolves around the width. It doesn't. It is about setting up the proper height. My 1.85:1 or 1.37:1 picture lost no impact, but wider formats gained a lot of impact switching (as they should if theatrical presentation is what you're after). 



Philnick said:


> The burr under the saddle of the CIH system is the steadily-increasing number of films that are framed using a variable aspect ratio, that are designed to expand vertically in some scenes, usually to give a feeling of increased vertical immersion with a large sky (or, in an early scene in _Star Trek - Into Darkness_, with Spock seen inside a volcano, dwarfed by the leaping lava), and then contract vertically when indoors (like on the bridge of the Enterprise - or watch the subtle transition in height as the camera follows Scotty from the street into a nightclub).


Why is it a burr? I can watch a VAR presentation on my scope screen fine. It's the same size it would be on the 16:9 screen I had previously. If the presentation is just a few shots that are scope safe and I can mask that and watch it the same as it would be presented in a normal venue in most cases. My only complaint with VAR is that the variable part of the presentation is an ugly distraction (and I felt that way with a 16:9 screen). I'd rather have them stick with the IMAX ratio all the time if they want it in their presentation. Unless you are doing something special for IMAX vs any normal 16:9 content our viewing experience is the same.

As far as steadily increasing, I don't see a whole lot of them.



Philnick said:


> Check out the VAR version of _Dr. Strange_ on the 3D disk (or streamed by Disney Plus as IMAX), for another good example at the beginning of the fim. It opens up in scope format in the underground library of a monastery in Katmandu and follows a group of evil sorcerors through a dimensional portal they open up to Manhattan, where it shifts to a taller format, showing their battle with the lead good sorceror in an M.C. Escher-like "mirror dimension" where up and down point in multiple dimensions.
> 
> VAR films force those with scope screens to either repeatedly reduce and increase the zoom of their setups, either manually or electronically, to keep everything the same height, or to keep the zoom constant and implement an electronic mask that blocks off anything above or below the scope screen's frame, on the belief that the cinematographer must have framed the scene to allow that sort of masking (they call that "framing a film to be scope safe").


Or just watch it in the same setting you would for 16:9 content? 



Philnick said:


> The opposing point of view, which I advocate, is to use a screen tall enough and wide enough for anything you want to watch, as large as you want to watch it. I simply painted an entire 14' wide x 8' tall wall with a homebrew screen paint. My projector, at a 15'9" throw distance, can throw its 17x9 focusing grid 11'4" wide by 6' tall, allowing room on either side for loudspeakers and underneath for a center channel speaker. True 4K projectors tend to use imagers that are 17x9 (1.89:1) instead of 16x9 (1.78:1).


No problem with that. Everyone has different goals. Mine is film and theatrical presentation. I love the Breakfast Club. I love The Seven Samurai. Neither is intended to be viewed larger than The Return of the King. I wish to preserve that. 16:9 (or 17:9) always forces a wider AR to take much less of both your vertical and horizontal field of view than intended. 16:9 is a compromise ratio, that isn't what I'm after.



Philnick said:


> By default, my projector only uses a narrower 16x9 area, which I use for 16x9 images, but it can electronically enlarge the image by 6 2/3% to fill its entire 17x9 imaging area. That's great for anything 17x9 (1.89:1) or greater, since the only parts of the image that would be lost off the top and bottom of the projector's imaging panels would be black letterbox bars. Using that for 16x9 would shave off 3 1/3% of the image at the top and the same amount at the bottom, which cinematographers probably allow for, but I'd rather not do that. (I do use that electronic zoom for 1.85:1 films - which are very close to the 1.89:1 shape of the projector's imagers, costing me only a little over 1% at top and bottom.)
> 
> This system is great for showing variable aspect ratio films, since it allows the image to expand vertically with nothing masked off, and without shrinking the sections of the film that were supposed to be more - not less - immersive.


The resolution and AR of the projection device don't matter and never did. They don't in the theater and they don't in the home. You shouldn't be shrinking a 1.78:1 image with a properly setup scope screen.



Philnick said:


> This is heresy to the CIH adherents, because they insist that nothing should be taller than scope unless it was shot on the very small number of IMAX-owned cameras (which are only rented, not sold, to filmmakers) and shown on 40' tall screens in "true" IMAX theaters.


It's just theatrical presentation standards. You don't have to follow them, but they exist regardless of your opinion.



Philnick said:


> The potential burr under the saddle of my system is if the screen material is "high gain" (very reflective), the black framing bars built into the image sent to the projector may not fully black but grey.
> 
> My solution was to go for a high contrast JVC projector and a low gain screen - between which those bars are not noticeable. Other folks use masking panels that they place over the screen when showing fixed aspect ratio films to hide the black bars. (Some folks even use motorized masking systems!)
> 
> If your room is height-limited, so that using a 16x9 or 17x9 screen wide enough for scope at its best won't fit, than go scope. But if you don't have that limitation, then go big _and_ go home.


It all depends on what your goals are. Filling the wall because you can is not always the best answer.


----------



## mattsteg

Vern Dias said:


> Only if you were to ignore the other part of the equation.
> 
> In commercial theatres, 35MM Scope projection required the use of an anamorphic lens that expanded the width of the image by a factor of 2.
> 
> In home theatre, we have several ways to accomplish the same purpose:
> 
> 1. A horizontal expansion anamorphic lens with vertical scaling to remove the black bars and no additional lens zoom.
> 2. A vertical compression anamorphic lens to remove the black bars and additional lens zoom to fill the full screen width.
> 3. No anamorphic lens used, variable zoom to make the actual image on the media fill the screen.
> 
> So, when we discuss CIH, we are talking about the final image on the screen, not the image on the media.


Your response is incoherent and irrelevant. The post that I had replied to had specified a screen fixed at 16:9. Everything that you suggest would either expand the image off of that screen, or result in a smaller image for the scope material..


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Your response is incoherent and irrelevant. The post that I had replied to had specified a screen fixed at 16:9. Everything that you suggest would either expand the image off of that screen, or result in a smaller image for the scope material..


I think that Verne was trying to say that the native resolution and aspect ratio of the display device, be it a film projector or our home examples, doesn't dictate the screen aspect ratio. Clearly in your case you'd want to display things with your 16:9 screen in mind.


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## bud16415

Like @Philnick I’m one of the pioneers of the concept of a stealth screen. I have been talking about it here from 2006 and what a different world projection was then till now. @Suntan feels we are plowing the same ground over and over but the times they are a changing. Immersion has always been around but it was also an unattainable thing when resolution was sub 1080p for some and under 4k for many. The sources we receive media to watch is now coming from so many different directions I couldn’t list them all and media is no longer subject to film size and number of perforations and lens to distort and then other lens to correct. Digital media allows cinematography that used to be difficult and expensive to do now is as simple as selecting a digital filter. AR can be anything a director wants and transform to another just as easy. As of right now the only constant is the container it comes in is a 16:9 box. They can fit a 1.85 movie in there or a 1.89 movie in there and the assumption is most people would want to watch them at different immersion levels, based only on the venues they were planed on being viewed in. That doesn’t mean it is wrong to view them both as large as you can because you can do that if you want. IMO the experience will be different though.

Here is the enlightenment of a stealth screen. Mine like Phil’s is a wall mine is 9’ high and 14’ long. It has been skimmed and primed and finish sanded as smooth and flat as any commercial screen could be produced and then it has a perfect paint finish to a reduced lambertian reflectance of .5 gain gray. The walls and ceilings are treated to reduce cross reflectance to almost nothing and the room is lightproof of all outside light. I then have a projector with a fairly good CR and black level low enough that projected black bars is of little distraction. So for my purposes it is self masking and instantaneous for those pesky AR changing movies Nolan likes to throw at us.

Here is my point of enlightenment. When I look at my stealth screen wall I see no screen size, I see no AR and most important I feel no desire to fill something up with image. I don’t study the movie in advance. I just turn it on and say oh wow this is scope. At that moment I have a scope screen sometimes it is 2.35 and sometimes it is 2.39 or 2.40. I don’t even care. All I have to decide is how big or small I want it. Or what size feels right for myself or those I’m watching with on any given day. Really no different than what level I want the audio set at. People vary the audio all the time and no one questions that.
The fact that there is nothing to fill and more adjustment than I would ever want makes it perfect when The Hateful Eight or La La Land came out it was a special treat to watch knowing I was free to blow it out wider than I could if I had a scope screen. The next film might be Dunkirk and out we go the other way. Some old streaming Academy movies that look like they were transferred in some guys garage from a film that sat in a can for 80 years and were put on VHS then DVD then BD might still be something I want to watch but 4k level immersion doesn’t do it any good. I can reverse the process and zoom it smaller to maybe 70” and it looks pretty good.
The light comes on when you don’t have a screen to think about filling that it is the image we watch not the screen.


----------



## Josh Z

Vern Dias said:


> So, when we discuss CIH, we are talking about the final image on the screen, not the image on the media.


I think some people have trouble grasping the difference between these two things, and are stuck in a mentality of: "If it's encoded on the media that way, that's how it's supposed to be watched. End of story. Nothing else makes sense" 

The fact that home video media is only authored in a 16:9 container as a compromise (half way between 4:3 and 2.35:1), and was never intended to be some sort of ideal presentation method, never quite gets through to them.

I mean, did they also think 4:3 was the best way to watch movies back in the VHS days?


----------



## jeahrens

Josh Z said:


> I think some people have trouble grasping the difference between these two things, and are stuck in a mentality of: "If it's encoded on the media that way, that's how it's supposed to be watched. End of story. Nothing else makes sense"
> 
> The fact that home video media is only authored in a 16:9 container as a compromise (half way between 4:3 and 2.35:1), and was never intended to be some sort of ideal presentation method, never quite gets through to them.
> 
> I mean, did they also think 4:3 was the best way to watch movies back in the VHS days?


Exactly. Digital theatrical projectors are usually 17:9 AR display chips, but the screens they display on are 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 (obviously not talking about IMAX here).


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I feel a scope screen is the best choice if you can set your room up around it properly and wish to watch 99% of the film content out there as the filmmaker intended. IMAX continues to be a tiny niche and most don't view it any differently than 1.85:1.
> . . .
> The resolution and AR of the projection device don't matter and never did. They don't in the theater and they don't in the home. You shouldn't be shrinking a 1.78:1 image with a properly setup scope screen.
> 
> It's just theatrical presentation standards. You don't have to follow them, but they exist regardless of your opinion.
> 
> It all depends on what your goals are. Filling the wall because you can is not always the best answer.


My 2.39:1 scope films are shown 11'4" wide by 4'9"' tall - as large as my projector can manage, using its 6 2/3% digital zoom.
My 16x9 films are shown 10'8" wide by 6' tall - narrower than scope but taller.
My 1.85:1 films are shown (using the digital zoom) 11'4" wide by 6' tall - the largest images in my theater, my version of IMAX.

Since I'm not using a framed screen but as much as I can fill on the entire wall, the only limiting factor is how far back my projector is from the screen wall and the size of the image its lens can throw at that distance.

Scope films are only ever reduced in size (to 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall) when shown in 3D - since the projector can't do both 3D and its digital zoom at the same time - or when included in VAR films that expand to vertically to 16x9 (but not when they expand to 1.85:1).

Sitting 10' away, a scope image even 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall is pretty big - not a "sad, small scope image" (to quote @mattsteg) - and 11'4" x 4'9" is even larger.

The only reaction any guest has ever had to my theater has been "Wow - when can I come back?"


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> I think that Verne was trying to say that the native resolution and aspect ratio of the display device, be it a film projector or our home examples, doesn't dictate the screen aspect ratio. Clearly in your case you'd want to display things with your 16:9 screen in mind.


I don't have a 16:9 screen. I was replying to someone who was saying that a screen "that could fit both a 16:9 and 2.35:1 screen at full magnification" would not show scope smaller than 16:9. Since the term "magnification" was used...this does in fact refer back to display device format.


Josh Z said:


> I think some people have trouble grasping the difference between these two things, and are stuck in a mentality of: "If it's encoded on the media that way, that's how it's supposed to be watched. End of story. Nothing else makes sense"


While there may be some of that (but I *really doubt *that people are really that enamored of *viewing black bars as whoever intended*), there are also a ton of people who are absolutely terrible at communicating and neither read what others post nor present coherent descriptions of their position. You could just as easily say that people are "stuck in the mentality" of duplicating the "constant" height (also driven by technical factors) of theaters (which have a range of seating locations which might vary viewing angles by 2-3x+).


Josh Z said:


> The fact that home video media is only authored in a 16:9 container as a compromise (half way between 4:3 and 2.35:1), and was never intended to be some sort of ideal presentation method, never quite gets through to them.


4:3 and 2.35:1 were never intended to be ideal either. They're *all* compromises - and so is *any *screen/projector/theater setup. There's way too much absolutism here.


Josh Z said:


> I mean, did they also think 4:3 was the best way to watch movies back in the VHS days?


If those movies were academy ratio...

CIH is fine. Generally better overall than locking-in to 16:9...but it's a compromise too. Everything is. There's no ideal. For most material viewing height/angle is the limiting factor for comfort and "wider" formats are indeed framed "wider"... However this is not always the case. Examples of exceptions include:

IMAX-type usage where the extra height is generally intended for peripheral vision.
Room width restrictions don't allow a scope screen of the preferred height.
In some cases 16:9 material may be viewed from a longer distance (for example, watching sports with a group in the back of a multipurpose theater adjacent to an entertainment area).
I guess you maybe could argue for films like Jurassic Park

The compromise that I chose for my theater (based primarily on room geometry limitations) is a 2.0:1 screen. A scope screen that fits gives me too small of a 16:9 image, and a 16:9 screen that isn't too tall for comfort provides a very lacking experience with scope content.


----------



## mattsteg

Philnick said:


> My 2.39:1 scope films are shown 11'4" wide by 4'9"' tall - as large as my projector can manage, using its 6 2/3% digital *zoom*.
> My 16x9 films are shown 10'8" wide by 6' tall - narrower than scope but taller.
> My 1.85:1 films are shown (using the digital *zoom*) 11'4" wide by 6' tall - the largest images in my theater, my version of IMAX.
> 
> Since I'm not using a framed screen but as much as I can fill on the entire wall, the only limiting factor is how far back my projector is from the screen wall and the size of the image its lens can throw at that distance.
> 
> Scope films are only ever reduced in size (to 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall) when shown in 3D - since the projector can't do both 3D and its digital zoom at the same time - or when included in VAR films that expand to vertically to 16x9 (but not when they expand to 1.85:1).
> 
> Sitting 10' away, a scope image even 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall is pretty big - not a "sad, small scope image" (to quote @mattsteg) - and 11'4" x 4'9" is even larger.


You might want to revisit how you describe your setup...the setup you describe here....does not meet the description that you had used previously. Also, in addition to your projector and throw distance...you are omitting one *important limiting factor*: viewer comfort. I'm sure that *CIH zealots* might claim that your "screen" isn't wide enough, but it's what fits in your space. For whatever it's worth I have a 2:1 screen 120 in wide and sit 8-9 ft away so pretty close to the exact same viewing experience as you and enjoy it.


Philnick said:


> The obvious fallacy in the above argument is that on a screen large enough to encompass both scope at the projector's full magnification _and_ 16x9 at full magnification, the scope image is somehow made smaller than it would be on a scope screen the same width.


If you're adjusting different zoom levels between formats, one, the other, or both aren't at "full magnification". By definition zoom changes magnification. You might get a better response if you described your setup accurately.


----------



## bud16415

Well we have reached the point where 97.5% of AVS readers that discover this thread will read the first post and if they find it interesting will go to the last post. The fact that only about 1% of the members ever come to this forum is also a factor although about 15% of members that are projector owners have viewed this forum.

So it has as it always does become a case of preaching to the choir.
It is good to have seen a couple new faces here that I don’t regularly see posting here. @mattsteg @flyers10 and others with 2.0:1 screens describe a logic that has lead many to CIA constant image area presentation. Like my variable PIA personal image area presentation there is really no place here on AVS to talk positively about what works best for us. As always anyone that would like to talk about their presentation without having to defend their presentation all are welcome to contribute in the PIA thread. 99.99% of what has been brought up today in this thread has been rehashed many times in that thread as well in the first 20 some pages. We kind of use it now for getting excited by new movies that break the rules and talk about equipment that lets us project out of the box.


----------



## Philnick

mattsteg said:


> You might want to revisit how you describe your setup...the setup you describe here....does not meet the description that you had used previously. Also, in addition to your projector and throw distance...you are omitting one *important limiting factor*: viewer comfort. I'm sure that *CIH zealots* might claim that your "screen" isn't wide enough, but it's what fits in your space. For whatever it's worth I have a 2:1 screen 120 in wide and sit 8-9 ft away so pretty close to the exact same viewing experience as you and enjoy it.
> 
> If you're adjusting different zoom levels between formats, one, the other, or both aren't at "full magnification". By definition zoom changes magnification. You might get a better response if you described your setup accurately.


Everything is at full lens magnification and as large as I can show it. 

My only adjustment is I don't use the projector's digital 6 2/3% zoom for 16x9 images, as the digital zoom would shave off 6 2/3% of the image, half at the top and half at the bottom, by making the images taller than the projector's imaging panels.

For images wider than the 17x9 imagers' 1.89:1, the projector's digital zoom trims off portions of the black letterbox bars - not a problem. For images at 1.85:1, the digital zoom trims off 2.16%, 1.08% at each of the top and bottom, still not much of a problem, since cinematographers probably frame their scenes allowing for much more than that to be lost along the line.

I believe that I've explained that every time.


----------



## mattsteg

bud16415 said:


> Like my variable PIA personal image area presentation there is really no place here on AVS to talk positively about what works best for us.


It feels to me like it would be much more reasonable for this forum (rather than just your thread...) to be dedicated to screens with aspect ratio different from projector as we all share a lot of the same concerns in doing this. CIH presentation on scope screens should be seen as just the most basic variation rather than some ideal of its own, with the main benefit being simplicity. Even if you 100% subscribe to the idea that a true constant height is the best (at a minimum it is a *very good *starting point) there are odd corner cases like subtitles presented in letterbox regions that a taller screen, possibly with 4-way masking, can often handle more gracefully.

The step of breaking away from locking-in to the aspect-ratio of the projector is an important one...However it's just as freeing to break away from the idea of locking-in to any particular source material's aspect and instead consider the range of enjoyable vertical and horizontal angles directly along with anticipated viewing scenarios and any room geometry constraints.


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## bryantc

Josh Z said:


> The whole point of Constant Image Height is to start with a 16:9 image as large as you can possibly want it to be, and then add more width.


The largest I want my 16:9 image is the full width of my wall. How can I possibly add more width?


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## hms17B

If one's room is small, read no more, just go with a 16x9 screen. I can only fit a 100" 16x9 screen due to width limitations. At that width a scope screen wouldn't be tall enough to make 4x3 and 16x9 much larger than a TV. CIH needs width in the room. Wish I had the space because it's a great idea if you can fit it.


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## mattsteg

hms17B said:


> If one's room is small, read no more, just go with a 16x9 screen. I can only fit a 100" 16x9 screen due to width limitations. At that width a scope screen wouldn't be tall enough to make 4x3 and 16x9 much larger than a TV. CIH needs width in the room. Wish I had the space because it's a great idea if you can fit it.


Your room is 7.25 feet wide? That sounds like a closet.


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## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> 4:3 and 2.35:1 were never intended to be ideal either. They're *all* compromises - and so is *any *screen/projector/theater setup. There's way too much absolutism here.
> 
> The compromise that I chose for my theater (based primarily on room geometry limitations) is a 2.0:1 screen. A scope screen that fits gives me too small of a 16:9 image, and a 16:9 screen that isn't too tall for comfort provides a very lacking experience with scope content.


I have no problem with compromises. Every home theater owner makes them. I have a terrible bass null in my room that drives me crazy and I can't quite get rid of. I have two more-than-capable subwoofers that are not producing the bass response they should due to the acoustics of the room. I've worked around it the best I can, but it's been a big pain in the butt. That's my compromise.

You have acknowledged that your 2:1 screen is a compromise. It's the best you could do on your wall, but virtually no theatrical movies fit it quite right. That's a compromise you could live with and have made peace with. I would never begrudge you that.

But what would you do if you didn't have to make that compromise? If you move into another house with a much larger wall space, what type of screen will you put in there? Will it be 2:1 again, even though you're no longer forced into that compromise? Will it be 16:9, and if so why?

The reason I care so much about Constant Image Height is because that is the way movies are actually photographed. 2.35:1 is meant to be a wider format than 1.85:1. There's no argument otherwise. That's how movies are made. The whole point of the 2.35:1 format is to be wider than 1.85:1. That is its explicit purpose. 

If you look at the way movie photography is composed, objects in a 1.85:1 movie and a 2.35:1 movie are the same scale only when displayed in Constant Height. A close-up of a human face in a 1.85:1 movie is the same size as a similar close-up of a human face in a 2.35:1 movie in Constant Height. A medium shot in a 1.85:1 movie is the same size as a similar medium shot in a 2.35:1 movie in Constant Height. The difference between them is that the 2.35:1 image will have more width. 

A 16:9 screen throws those scales completely out of balance. The close-ups in a 1.85:1 movie are now much larger than the comparable close-ups in a 2.35:1 movie. That is not how they are supposed to be displayed.

The only format that is actually intended to be larger than scope is IMAX. And I mean real IMAX, shot with IMAX cameras and actively composed for the format, not that "Play an episode of Game of Thrones on an IMAX screen and call it IMAX" nonsense. 

This is how IMAX is composed:










Look at all that empty space above the character's head. That's how you shoot a medium shot of a human being for IMAX, because an IMAX screen should exceed your field of vision and be so tall that you can't see all the way to the top of it without craning your neck way up. 

This is not how you compose a medium shot in 1.85:1, or any other format. IMAX is its own thing with its own rules. A shot composed like this would look terrible on normal screen sizes, which is why all home video editions of this movie (yes, even the VAR Blu-ray and UHD) are significantly cropped to reframe them for television.










I don't mean to pick on Phil here, but he is stuck in a rut of continually repeating the false statement that 1.85:1 is "taller" than scope. 1.85:1 is not taller than scope. Only IMAX is taller than scope. 1.85:1 is not IMAX.

And I really don't want to hear anybody chime in, "But The Avengers is 1.85:1 and I saw that in an IMAX theater so it must be an IMAX movie!" The Avengers was not shot for IMAX. The Avengers was shot with absolutely standard 1.85:1 composition and is filled start to finish with tons of close-ups and medium shots that have no headroom at all.




























That's not how you photograph for IMAX. Quite frankly, shots like these work much better on a TV screen than they did on an IMAX screen.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> You have acknowledged that your 2:1 screen is a compromise. It's the best you could do on your wall, but virtually no theatrical movies fit it quite right. That's a compromise you could live with and have made peace with. I would never begrudge you that.
> 
> But what would you do if you didn't have to make that compromise? If you move into another house with a much larger wall space, what type of screen will you put in there? Will it be 2:1 again, even though you're no longer forced into that compromise? Will it be 16:9, and if so why?
> 
> The reason I care so much about Constant Image Height is because that is the way movies are actually photographed. 2.35:1 is meant to be a wider format than 1.85:1. There's no argument otherwise. That's how movies are made. The whole point of the 2.35:1 format is to be wider than 1.85:1. That is its explicit purpose.


Honestly...there's a good chance that it'd end up around 2.0:1. The only way I'd consider 16:9 would be if I designed the room as a mixed-use with a back bar area for watching sports..or if I just had the space to spare for viewing IMAX-framed content. I'd consider CIH...but the advantages of ~2.0:1 are meaningful. You still get the visual impact of 2.35 being noticeably wider than 1.85. You get generally rational presentation of IMAX-composed content with just a touch of cropping. You have a clean fallback if you have 2.35 material with subtitles in the black bars. Academy content isn't tiny. Modern projector black levels are good enough that I'm not militant about masking.

I'd play around with viewing distance/angles in my current theater a bunch before committing, and log my content habits to sanity check my conclusions.


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## hms17B

mattsteg said:


> Your room is 7.25 feet wide? That sounds like a closet.


Not that small, but not deep enough to have speakers behind the screen. I also don't want the fronts to be against the side walls either since I listen to music in there too. I laid it out and to try CIH would have just made 4x3 and 16x9 too small. For those in spare bedrooms, CIH often simply won't satisfy unless one is OK with small 4x3 and 16x9. So this is a reason "why shouldn't".


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## niterida

Josh Z said:


> 2.35:1 is meant to be a wider format than 1.85:1. There's no argument otherwise.


This to me sums it up and should be the end of the argument and is why I have a scope screen.
But I do something completely different and just leave my projector zoomed out and display 16:9 content over the full width of the scope screen. 
Sure I lose the top and bottom of the image but there's not usually that much important stuff in there anyway - except subtitles and menu info


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> I don't have a 16:9 screen. I was replying to someone who was saying that a screen "that could fit both a 16:9 and 2.35:1 screen at full magnification" would not show scope smaller than 16:9. Since the term "magnification" was used...this does in fact refer back to display device format.


Apologies it read like you did



mattsteg said:


> While there may be some of that (but I *really doubt *that people are really that enamored of *viewing black bars as whoever intended*), there are also a ton of people who are absolutely terrible at communicating and neither read what others post nor present coherent descriptions of their position. You could just as easily say that people are "stuck in the mentality" of duplicating the "constant" height (also driven by technical factors) of theaters (which have a range of seating locations which might vary viewing angles by 2-3x+).
> 
> 4:3 and 2.35:1 were never intended to be ideal either. They're *all* compromises - and so is *any *screen/projector/theater setup. There's way too much absolutism here.
> 
> If those movies were academy ratio...
> 
> CIH is fine. Generally better overall than locking-in to 16:9...but it's a compromise too. Everything is. There's no ideal. For most material viewing height/angle is the limiting factor for comfort and "wider" formats are indeed framed "wider"... However this is not always the case. Examples of exceptions include:
> 
> IMAX-type usage where the extra height is generally intended for peripheral vision.
> Room width restrictions don't allow a scope screen of the preferred height.
> In some cases 16:9 material may be viewed from a longer distance (for example, watching sports with a group in the back of a multipurpose theater adjacent to an entertainment area).
> I guess you maybe could argue for films like Jurassic Park
> 
> The compromise that I chose for my theater (based primarily on room geometry limitations) is a 2.0:1 screen. A scope screen that fits gives me too small of a 16:9 image, and a 16:9 screen that isn't too tall for comfort provides a very lacking experience with scope content.


2.00:1 is a very good compromise with the content out there today. Just to comment on Jurassic Park, Spielberg choose 1.85:1 so the dinosaur would take up more of the frame and give a greater impression of size. Saving Private Ryan he choose 1.85:1 because it would be a closer approximation to the old war time news footage shown in theaters. 

I don't know that I agree with the choice being about absolutism as much as it as about what your goal is. People that game or primarily watch TV, I'm not going to steer them to a wider AR screen. For me the goal was the best presentation of film I can manage. Scope is that solution for me.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> My 2.39:1 scope films are shown 11'4" wide by 4'9"' tall - as large as my projector can manage, using its 6 2/3% digital zoom.
> My 16x9 films are shown 10'8" wide by 6' tall - narrower than scope but taller.
> My 1.85:1 films are shown (using the digital zoom) 11'4" wide by 6' tall - the largest images in my theater, my version of IMAX.


If that's what you want, that's great.



Philnick said:


> Since I'm not using a framed screen but as much as I can fill on the entire wall, the only limiting factor is how far back my projector is from the screen wall and the size of the image its lens can throw at that distance.


In most rooms the seating distance is something you can work with in conjunction with the physical size of the screen to get the desired perceived image size. I don't advocate someone simply throw as big of a picture they can. There are considerations of sound setup, image viewing angle, image brightness and goals of the room. Having or not having a frame is an aesthetic choice. There is still a finite boundary at play in either case. Personally I have no issues with a borderless screen. But I don't see any advantage to either approach.



Philnick said:


> Scope films are only ever reduced in size (to 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall) when shown in 3D - since the projector can't do both 3D and its digital zoom at the same time - or when included in VAR films that expand to vertically to 16x9 (but not when they expand to 1.85:1).


Scope films are taking up 20+% les of your vertical field of view (the equivalent of sitting several rows back in a commercial theater) and being constrained horizontally if you care about how the filmmaker intends the format to be viewed. You don't have to care about this if you don't want to.



Philnick said:


> Sitting 10' away, a scope image even 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall is pretty big - not a "sad, small scope image" (to quote @mattsteg) - and 11'4" x 4'9" is even larger.
> 
> The only reaction any guest has ever had to my theater has been "Wow - when can I come back?"


Well let's be honest, with the quality of the average movie theater where it is your setup is an order of magnitude better. The average person isn't aware of aspect ratios or how or why a filmmaker uses one vs. the other. The beauty of a home theater is you don't have to cater your setup to please anyone but you. If you are happy with what you have in your room then I don't see any reason why you would entertain changing anything.


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## jeahrens

bryantc said:


> The largest I want my 16:9 image is the full width of my wall. How can I possibly add more width?


Image size is the product of the physical dimensions and your distance from it. If you are constrained in the physical dimension of the screen in many cases you can adjust seating to compensate.

When we go into commercial theaters we have no idea what the screen dimensions are, yet we generally pick a seat that ends up with the picture being a pleasing size to us. That's the same principle at work. 

For me I don't want The Return of the King to have significantly less impact than The Breakfast Club, so a scope screen is the obvious answer. The key is to engineer your seating to where the height of the narrower film is still perceived as large as you want while being able to accommodate the width limitation in this scenario. Then The Breakfast Club is as pleasing as it was before, but The Return of the King is now a whole lot more immersive as both filmmakers intended.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Just to comment on Jurassic Park, Spielberg choose 1.85:1 so the dinosaur would take up more of the frame and give a greater impression of size. Saving Private Ryan he choose 1.85:1 because it would be a closer approximation to the old war time news footage shown in theaters.
> 
> I don't know that I agree with the choice being about absolutism as much as it as about what your goal is. People that game or primarily watch TV, I'm not going to steer them to a wider AR screen. For me the goal was the best presentation of film I can manage. Scope is that solution for me.


For Jurassic Park - to me "greater impression of size" reads "bigger, taller screen". But the choice of 1.85 for that reason is an uncommon one - usually it's more for the reasons that you cite for SPR, or to have a less expansive feel, etc. Or just because it's convenient.

When I talk about "absolutism" - it's mostly about the rigid adherence to all 3 major format-classes being best presented at the same height. Yes, viewing comfort is primarily dictated by vertical viewing angles, but there's some wiggle room there - especially when we're talking about relatively minor differences (e.g. a 2.0:1 screen is 'only' 17% taller than a 2.35:1 - so an increase of <9% in upward and downward viewing angle). To me, this better preserves the impact of films like Jurassic Park and multiaspect/iimax/etc. while still letting scope movies impress with their expansiveness. It also leaves room for e.g. subs and other various technical bits, and height is normally not an issue to fit in the room.

A scope screen's biggest benefit is the impression that it makes before you turn out the lights. You can come pretty close to that (assuming a fixed screen) with vertical masking on a taller screen *with the same scope size viewing area that you'd choose for CIH*. You can even use the screen 95% of the time as a CIH screen if you believe that you've sized the CIH perfectly, and leave the extra height as a corner-case safety net.

Remove the masking only for e.g. the occasional multiaspect that's worthwhile, or if you want a towering presentation of Jurassic Park. Or maybe you find that you like 1.85 content just a touch taller than 2.35 content and you use the full height more often. That's fine too.


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## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> Honestly...there's a good chance that it'd end up around 2.0:1. The only way I'd consider 16:9 would be if I designed the room as a mixed-use with a back bar area for watching sports..or if I just had the space to spare for viewing IMAX-framed content. I'd consider CIH...but the advantages of ~2.0:1 are meaningful. You still get the visual impact of 2.35 being noticeably wider than 1.85. You get generally rational presentation of IMAX-composed content with just a touch of cropping. You have a clean fallback if you have 2.35 material with subtitles in the black bars. Academy content isn't tiny. Modern projector black levels are good enough that I'm not militant about masking.


Fair enough. You have obviously put thought into this and come to a conclusion about what works best for you. 

As I said at the start of this thread: I find it helpful to understand the rules of photographic presentation and their purpose so that I can make an informed decision about whether and when I want to break them. You have done so, which puts you far ahead of the "DON'T SHRINK MY PRECIOUS 16:9!!!" crowd. 

The subtitle issue is admittedly a pain in the neck, especially with streaming sources that don't let you adjust the position of the text.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> In most rooms the seating distance is something you can work with in conjunction with the physical size of the screen to get the desired perceived image size. I don't advocate someone simply throw as big of a picture they can.


This depends heavily on your preferred seating distance and amount of seating you need. If you prefer to sit at 1.5x to maybe 2x the image height with good seating for a few people you rapidly converge on a pretty large screen.



jeahrens said:


> For me I don't want The Return of the King to have significantly less impact than The Breakfast Club, so* a scope screen is the obvious answer*. The key is to engineer your seating to where the height of the narrower film is still perceived as large as you want while being able to accommodate the width limitation in this scenario.


I wouldn't say that the obvious answer is choosing between scope or 1.85. That's a false choice, and a big part of what I mean when I talk about absolutism. It's your theater - you can do whatever you want and aren't locked into choosing between those 2 compromises. To me the "obvious" answer is choosing a screen configuration that gives the RoTK greater visual impact and best suits any other goals for the theater.


Josh Z said:


> The subtitle issue is admittedly a pain in the neck, especially with streaming sources that don't let you adjust the position of the text.


A pain in the neck that's easily resolved with a bit of extra screen height - even if you don't otherwise use it.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> For Jurassic Park - to me "greater impression of size" reads "bigger, taller screen". But the choice of 1.85 for that reason is an uncommon one - usually it's more for the reasons that you cite for SPR, or to have a less expansive feel, etc. Or just because it's convenient.


Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant the dinosaurs would have the same height on either screen. But by choosing the narrower framing, the dinosaur is now taking up a greater percentage of the frame.



mattsteg said:


> When I talk about "absolutism" - it's mostly about the rigid adherence to all 3 major format-classes being best presented at the same height. Yes, viewing comfort is primarily dictated by vertical viewing angles, but there's some wiggle room there - especially when we're talking about relatively minor differences (e.g. a 2.0:1 screen is 'only' 17% taller than a 2.35:1 - so an increase of <9% in upward and downward viewing angle). To me, this better preserves the impact of films like Jurassic Park and multiaspect/iimax/etc. while still letting scope movies impress with their expansiveness. It also leaves room for e.g. subs and other various technical bits, and height is normally not an issue to fit in the room.


Again it depends on what you want. I'm certainly a fan of 2.00:1 screens. But film standards do define how the non-IMAX ratios are presented with regards to one another. Scope is the closest to adhering to that I can practically implement (outliers that are 2.76:1 being the exceptions). I think 2.00:1 is a very smart choice in today's world.



mattsteg said:


> A scope screen's biggest benefit is the impression that it makes before you turn out the lights. You can come pretty close to that (assuming a fixed screen) with vertical masking on a taller screen *with the same scope size viewing area that you'd choose for CIH*. You can even use the screen 95% of the time as a CIH screen if you believe that you've sized the CIH perfectly, and leave the extra height as a corner-case safety net.
> 
> Remove the masking only for e.g. the occasional multiaspect that's worthwhile, or if you want a towering presentation of Jurassic Park. Or maybe you find that you like 1.85 content just a touch taller than 2.35 content and you use the full height more often. That's fine too.


I don't agree with the benefit being how it looks with the lights on. And no vertical masking doesn't solve anything. If your vertical immersion is setup around a narrower screen AR, then wider material will take less and less of your field of view. 2.00:1 goes a long way to bridge the two though. The attached image shows what I'm saying. The height of both screens is the same and represents 100% of your desired vertical immersion. As you can see the wider the material, the smaller it gets on the 16:9 screen. The exact opposite of the filmmakers intent.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> This depends heavily on your preferred seating distance and amount of seating you need. If you prefer to sit at 1.5x to maybe 2x the image height with good seating for a few people you rapidly converge on a pretty large screen.


I agree the room and goals can make one choice make more sense than another. That's why I said most rooms. I've been on several theater crawls in the Midwest and have visited around 20 rooms. About half were scope and half were 16:9. Some of the 16:9 rooms could have gone scope (but didn't choose to) while some were constrained to where that screen made the most sense.




mattsteg said:


> I wouldn't say that the obvious answer is choosing between scope or 1.85. That's a false choice, and a big part of what I mean when I talk about absolutism. It's your theater - you can do whatever you want and aren't locked into choosing between those 2 compromises. To me the "obvious" answer is choosing a screen configuration that gives the RoTK greater visual impact and best suits any other goals for the theater.
> 
> A pain in the neck that's easily resolved with a bit of extra screen height - even if you don't otherwise use it.


You absolutely should choose what makes you happy. I wish screen vendors would make more 2.00:1 options as I think it would be a pretty popular compromise.

As far as subtitles if it isn't something the Panasonic player can fix, the 2.20:1 lens memory preset generally works to fit them in. I've only run into this as an issue a handful of times.


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## Philnick

I generally don't turn subtitles on, but I do when a friend asks for them, and if I'm playing a disk I really appreciate my Oppo's ability to move them down. I did that a few days ago showing some friends _The Greatest Showman_, a scope film, so I was able to move them mostly off the image into the bottom letterbox bar. (I say "mostly" because some of the subtitles were several lines long!)

Couldn't have done that with a framed screen, but it was no problem on my borderless screen wall.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I generally don't turn subtitles on, but I do when a friend asks for them, and if I'm playing a disk I really appreciate my Oppo's ability to move them down. I did that a few days ago showing some friends _The Greatest Showman_, a scope film, so I was able to move them mostly off the image into the bottom letterbox bar. (I say "mostly" because some of the subtitles were several lines long!)
> 
> Couldn't have done that with a framed screen, but it was no problem on my borderless screen wall.


Would you do the same if it were a foreign film and you actually needed to read the subtitles? Moving subtitles outside the image means that you have to direct your gaze completely away from the movie to read them. That's why, whatever aspect ratio screen you have, it's better to keep subtitles inside the image on foreign movies.

The situation you describe, the subtitles are an inconvenience for you and you don't want to read them.


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## Philnick

What I was annoyed by was that the subtitles blocked important image details on _The Greatest Showman_, which is a visual feast (as well as a musical one, with brilliant visual transitions from one setting to another and a wonderful story - and a great message).

I might feel differently if a film's subtitles are smaller and subtle, but these weren't, but insisted on reporting background sounds as well the actual dialog.

By contrast, the short poetic subtitles on the UHD (and DVD) disks of _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ are a master class on how to write subtitles.


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## bud16415

Some like to view flat and scope only as where scope is an expanded width version of the size a close up of a head would look or the body shot cut off at the waist line or then an IMAX image with tons of head room. Why wouldn’t you when you know you have to crop a scope version out of the finished IMAX version. Are directors also in these Rom-Coms shooting in scope knowing their films profits will come later on TV shooting TV safe. Many of them seem to be the case as the sides are as much a waste as the ceiling above the Joker.

It is like no one remembers the vast panoramic shots used in Academy AR films and equates framing as an AR is an AR old TV 4:3 old movies 1.375:1 were the same thing. I can post a 1000 Academy screen shots that were more IMAX than anything else. Think about the original Wizard of Oz and the yellow brick road winding off to the emerald city and they are in the distance skipping down the road, or the thousand of westerns where the Indians appeared along the ridge of the canyon with the big sky and wide panorama.
AR is a frame as much as it is a relative size. I looked for some counter examples of the face shot we always see and instead of old Academy movies I picked some from modern Academy movies. I could have selected shots from modern prestige TV as well. Cameras can be placed anywhere and they can have lens attached to fill the image with as much as the director likes regardless of the AR. They don’t have to be “IMAX” to do this.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant the dinosaurs would have the same height on either screen. But by choosing the narrower framing, the dinosaur is now taking up a greater percentage of the frame.


This reads like circular logic, to be honest. And your position continues to circle back to circular-logic dogmatism.

You are choosing to render the dinosaurs smaller. That's fine and definitely your choice.

Theater designers and standards groups control screen orientations and sizes. They're pretty well fixed at this point.

Directors control film aspect ratio. They know that theaters are CIH, and they also know that many (most?) will watch their work on 16:9 screens. They may choose a scope aspect to give a sense of vastness. Or because they want to compose on a 1:2.35 canvas. They might choose a narrow aspect ratio to give a sense of confinement, or emphasize height, or any other reason. Their intent is not locked into height being constant. *You are insisting on defining the artistic intent of others. *That feels backwards to me. Who's to say that a director doesn't choose a different seat in the theater to watch his scope films than he does for his 1:1.85 ones? The reasons that commercial theaters are CIH are more technical than artistic.


jeahrens said:


> But film standards do define how the non-IMAX ratios are presented with regards to one another.


This is based more on technical feasibility and historical progression than on artistic intent or best possible viewing experience.


jeahrens said:


> I don't agree with the benefit being how it looks with the lights on


Then what is the benefit?


jeahrens said:


> And no vertical masking doesn't solve anything. If your vertical immersion is setup around a narrower screen AR, then wider material will take less and less of your field of view. 2.00:1 goes a long way to bridge the two though. The attached image shows what I'm saying. The height of both screens is the same and represents 100% of your desired vertical immersion. As you can see the wider the material, the smaller it gets on the 16:9 screen. The exact opposite of the filmmakers intent.


To clarify, by "vertical masking" I meant masking off some portion of the screen from above and below - i.e. masking from 2.0 to 2.35...with the height *at 2.35* equal to your desired vertical immersion. Use it as CIH if you want, but you still have a bit extra in reserve to handle IMAX, subtitles rendered in black bars, etc.

You seem stuck in the idea that all screens are either 1.85 or 2.35, and no epic panoramic content is framed at taller aspect ratios.


jeahrens said:


> As far as subtitles if it isn't something the Panasonic player can fix, the 2.20:1 lens memory preset generally works to fit them in. I've only run into this as an issue a handful of times.


Whatever happened to your desire to preserve vertical immersion?


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## bud16415

Philnick said:


> What I was annoyed by was that the subtitles blocked important image details on _The Greatest Showman_, which is a visual feast (as well as a musical one, with brilliant visual transitions from one setting to another and a wonderful story - and a great message).
> 
> I might feel differently if a film's subtitles are smaller and subtle, but these weren't, but insisted on reporting background sounds as well the actual dialog.
> 
> By contrast, the short poetic subtitles on the UHD (and DVD) disks of _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ are a master class on how to write subtitles.


As it is no surprise I’m a fan of variable immersion along with Phil’s taste for high immersion.
As this pertains to subtitles I will add this as of late I have been watching some Korean dramas K-Dramas as they call them. Many of these have the visual quality to be watched in my theater and great sound tracks. Sometimes I have been watching them on our 55” TV less immersive and find reading the subs easier. The font and text and placement is geared around TV level immersion. Like Phil I hate them messing with the visual and like Josh I find them harder to read off the screen with theater level immersion. I have been tempering that with my variable and it makes for a good compromise. Running at about 75% my cinema immersion the visual of watching and reading is made easier. Still way more immersive than the TV and having the great sound system and better seating makes it the way to go. I will say these K-Dramas are dialog intensive and fast passed and they often exceed my reading speed. Many years ago I took a semester of speed reading classes and over the years I drifted away from the teachings. I find some of that is coming back now because of watching these shows.


----------



## mattsteg

Or maybe to put things more simply:
CIH is an artistic *limitation* that directors work within for works intended for commercial projection.

Their intent may well be related much more to the aspect ratio and resulting compositions than it is to the dogmatic pursuit of constant image height. CIH is a starting point, not a final objective.


----------



## bud16415

mattsteg said:


> This reads like circular logic, to be honest. And your position continues to circle back to circular-logic dogmatism.
> 
> You are choosing to render the dinosaurs smaller. That's fine and definitely your choice.
> 
> Theater designers and standards groups control screen orientations and sizes. They're pretty well fixed at this point.
> 
> Directors control film aspect ratio. They know that theaters are CIH, and they also know that many (most?) will watch their work on 16:9 screens. They may choose a scope aspect to give a sense of vastness. Or because they want to compose on a 1:2.35 canvas. They might choose a narrow aspect ratio to give a sense of confinement, or emphasize height, or any other reason. Their intent is not locked into height being constant. *You are insisting on defining the artistic intent of others. *That feels backwards to me. Who's to say that a director doesn't choose a different seat in the theater to watch his scope films than he does for his 1:1.85 ones? The reasons that commercial theaters are CIH are more technical than artistic.
> 
> This is based more on technical feasibility and historical progression than on artistic intent or best possible viewing experience.
> 
> Then what is the benefit?
> 
> To clarify, by "vertical masking" I meant masking off some portion of the screen from above and below - i.e. masking from 2.0 to 2.35...with the height *at 2.35* equal to your desired vertical immersion. Use it as CIH if you want, but you still have a bit extra in reserve to handle IMAX, subtitles rendered in black bars, etc.
> 
> You seem stuck in the idea that all screens are either 1.85 or 2.35, and no epic panoramic content is framed at taller aspect ratios.
> 
> Whatever happened to your desire to preserve vertical immersion?


Well said !


----------



## bud16415

mattsteg said:


> Or maybe to put things more simply:
> CIH is an artistic *limitation* that directors work within for works intended for commercial projection.
> 
> Their intent may well be related much more to the aspect ratio and resulting compositions than it is to the dogmatic pursuit of constant image height. CIH is a starting point, not a final objective.


I agree it is a frame just as the Last Supper is composed wide screen and the Mona Lisa a tall format. The artist had no intention of where the viewer will stand viewing one painting to the other or where one viewer may want to stand one day to the next viewing ether painting.
I have said almost everyone viewing CIW will feel cheated watching a scope movie from the same viewpoint. I hear TV people complain all the time about not buying a large TV to get a small picture. On the same token when scope TVs made a brief appearance people didn’t get why they needed black bars on the sides when watching football. Informed people watching CIH in a proper home theater will be fairly happy with a few wishing 1.85 content be just a smidge higher. I believe this is true because some people will limit out on comfortable width of 2.39 before height. I know our vision is to infinity to the sides I have done the finger test. But that infinite FOV is not semi critical FOV. I kind of learned this when projecting The Hateful Eight as tall as I like my scope and it was fun but a bit of a three ring circus as well. Next comes peoples reaction to watching a great Academy Classic like Wizard of Oz or Citizen Kane on CIH and not all but a lot of people feel these are too small and benefit from more immersion. I know I’m such a person. The standard answer from CIH folks is that Academy looks just fine within CIH and there is cinema history of during the crossover many were shown that way. I’m old enough to remember a short Academy movie playing before the scope feature sometimes B&W and with the curtains drawn to frame the 1.37 movie. It was in big part showmanship as the short finished the screen would turn to color and the curtains slowly opened and opened and opened until you were saying wow this scope thing is something else. That was much different than watching a full length Academy feature in a proper Academy movie palace.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I looked for some counter examples of the face shot we always see and instead of old Academy movies I picked some from modern Academy movies. I could have selected shots from modern prestige TV as well. Cameras can be placed anywhere and they can have lens attached to fill the image with as much as the director likes regardless of the AR. They don’t have to be “IMAX” to do this.


As I said earlier, Bud, you have to understand the rules of photographic composition in order to decide when you want to break them. All of the examples you posted are cases of filmmakers intentionally breaking the rules of composition in order to create a specific effect.

The first one you posted was Wes Anderson. Anderson shoots all of his movies with really weird framing in order to throw viewers off balance. That is his signature style. 

I'm not familiar with all of the movies you posted shots from, but in most of them it's clear that the negative space above the characters is intended to call attention to itself in order to provoke a response from the viewer. In the Grand Budapest Hotel shot, it's to show the distance the character might fall. In the shot from Ida, it's to show the characters being dwarfed by their oppressive environment.



> Think about the original Wizard of Oz and the yellow brick road winding off to the emerald city and they are in the distance skipping down the road


Does The Wizard of Oz have wide shots with a lot of space around the characters? Sure. Most movies do.










But what do its medium shots and close-ups look like?




























Rules of Thirds, to the letter. Eyes 1/3 down from the top of the frame. A manageable amount of headroom that doesn't call attention to itself above the tallest actor in the shot.

If this movie had been shot in scope, you'd find the faces in the exact same positions, but with more width to the sides of the frame, perhaps to show more characters around them.

Back to Ida again for a second. First, for a movie made in 2013, the director's decision to shoot in Academy AR at a time when no theaters (or TVs) have screens at that ratio was, in itself, meant to be provocative. 

In some scene, this movie has very classical, Rule of Thirds composition.











In others, it's chock full of strangely-composed shots designed, by intent, to alienate the viewer.










In this one, the subtitles are way up high in the middle of the screen. You're supposed to think that's weird.










Not to mention shots like this which barely show the character's face at all.










This is not "good" composition. But the director is deliberately using "bad" composition to make an artistic point. In shots like these, the character is meant to be small in the frame, because she feels small. She feels boxed in and pushed down, and the director visualizes that in a literal sense.

Watching these scenes at IMAX size defeats the whole point of the thing. This is not an "immersive" movie. 

You can't argue that this was meant to play on huge Golden Age movie palace screens, because those were long extinct by 2013. It's a small, cramped movie, meant to be watched smaller than other contemporary films.


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## Josh Z

A lot of you guys making the "Viewers can choose where they want to sit in a theater" argument forget that, for big blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park, most viewers don't get an ideal choice of where to sit. They sit where there's an open seat, and for a lot of them that will be far too close to the screen.

That doesn't mean the movie was made expressly to be watched from the front row craning your neck up. The director has no control over where you sit, or how big the theater's screen is. What he does have control over is how his images are composed within the frame, and the choice of aspect ratio has to be based on a standard relationship of this film to other films. That standard is the image height, not the image width.

When Spielberg made Jurassic Park in 1993, there was no option for his movie to play in IMAX theaters. IMAX didn't start showing Hollywood feature films for another decade. At the time, most of the premium theatrical venues had 2.35:1 Constant Height screens. He knew that Jurassic Park would be projected smaller on those screens than other competing blockbuster movies such as Cliffhanger or (its most immediate challenger, released one week later) Last Action Hero. He took that risk after weighing his options and deciding how he was most comfortable shooting the movie based on his goals for it.


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## ahmedreda

I had the same exact screen size/seating distance in my old setup as yours. In my new setup, I switched to the same viewing angle for 16:9 and 1.85" within the scope frame and let the scope content be wider. In my opinion, if you like your 16x9 content full screen, then your scope content is probably undersized for your taste (at least that was my experience). My 16:9 content now is as big as my old theater (and yours) at 58 degrees and scope is much more immersive at 74 degrees.



Philnick said:


> My 2.39:1 scope films are shown 11'4" wide by 4'9"' tall - as large as my projector can manage, using its 6 2/3% digital zoom.
> My 16x9 films are shown 10'8" wide by 6' tall - narrower than scope but taller.
> My 1.85:1 films are shown (using the digital zoom) 11'4" wide by 6' tall - the largest images in my theater, my version of IMAX.
> 
> Since I'm not using a framed screen but as much as I can fill on the entire wall, the only limiting factor is how far back my projector is from the screen wall and the size of the image its lens can throw at that distance.
> 
> Scope films are only ever reduced in size (to 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall) when shown in 3D - since the projector can't do both 3D and its digital zoom at the same time - or when included in VAR films that expand to vertically to 16x9 (but not when they expand to 1.85:1).
> 
> Sitting 10' away, a scope image even 10'8" wide by 4'5" tall is pretty big - not a "sad, small scope image" (to quote @mattsteg) - and 11'4" x 4'9" is even larger.
> 
> The only reaction any guest has ever had to my theater has been "Wow - when can I come back?"


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> This reads like circular logic, to be honest. And your position continues to circle back to circular-logic dogmatism.
> 
> You are choosing to render the dinosaurs smaller. That's fine and definitely your choice.


I'm sorry I don't get what is circular logic? I'm relaying what Spielberg commented about his choice to use 1.85:1 for the movie. If a dinosaur is occupying say 50% of a scope frame, reducing the frame size horizontally (this is assuming the dinosaur is not being cropped) will mean that the dinosaur is taking up more of the 1.85:1 frame (same object size in less frame area). That was his reasoning.



mattsteg said:


> Theater designers and standards groups control screen orientations and sizes. They're pretty well fixed at this point.
> 
> Directors control film aspect ratio. They know that theaters are CIH, and they also know that many (most?) will watch their work on 16:9 screens. They may choose a scope aspect to give a sense of vastness. Or because they want to compose on a 1:2.35 canvas. They might choose a narrow aspect ratio to give a sense of confinement, or emphasize height, or any other reason. Their intent is not locked into height being constant. *You are insisting on defining the artistic intent of others. *That feels backwards to me. Who's to say that a director doesn't choose a different seat in the theater to watch his scope films than he does for his 1:1.85 ones? The reasons that commercial theaters are CIH are more technical than artistic.
> 
> This is based more on technical feasibility and historical progression than on artistic intent or best possible viewing experience.
> 
> Then what is the benefit?
> 
> To clarify, by "vertical masking" I meant masking off some portion of the screen from above and below - i.e. masking from 2.0 to 2.35...with the height *at 2.35* equal to your desired vertical immersion. Use it as CIH if you want, but you still have a bit extra in reserve to handle IMAX, subtitles rendered in black bars, etc.
> 
> You seem stuck in the idea that all screens are either 1.85 or 2.35, and no epic panoramic content is framed at taller aspect ratios.
> 
> Whatever happened to your desire to preserve vertical immersion?


I'm not insisting anything. Non-IMAX theatrical ratios are expressed with the height being constant to each other. That's not my rule, it's a standard. Your home is your home and you can choose whether to follow this or not.

I did preserve vertical immersion. And I've have always stressed that a 1.85:1 film (or Academy for that matter) should not lose any impact on a scope screen. A 1.85:1 film is the same size on my scope screen as it was on my 16:9 screen.

Taller than scope presentation is where IMAX comes in. However it's ends up being a bit an issue with home presentation. IMAX is framed with a taller presentation in mind which is different than the framing used for 1.85:1. The problem in a home environment is the two are usually shown at the same size and same seating distance. Which has the effect of diminishing IMAX. If you are concerned with IMAX you can setup your room with 4 way masking that pillarboxes and letterboxes 1.85:1, and then you remove the pillarbox masking for scope and finally remove the letterbox masking for IMAX. In my personal opinion IMAX in the home remains so much of a niche format that I don't feel it's worth trying to build around. But respect that other may feel it is.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> A lot of you guys making the "Viewers can choose where they want to sit in a theater" argument forget that, for big blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park, most viewers don't get an ideal choice of where to sit. They sit where there's an open seat, and for a lot of them that will be far too close to the screen.
> films. That standard is the image height, not the image width.


Commercial standards are worth consulting, but not slavishly adhering to, in a home theater. In my theater I never need to worry about the place selling out and leaving me without a good seat (unless I'm entertaining some sort of VIP). I have free control over screen size and seating location, just as I would in an empty theater (or arriving/reserving such that I get first choice of seats)


Josh Z said:


> That doesn't mean the movie was made expressly to be watched from the front row craning your neck up. The director has no control over where you sit, or how big the theater's screen is.


So I guess the "director's intent" is for the work to be enjoyed across a range of screen heights and widths? Or maybe the director is more of an 'artiste' and is going to shoot for his preferred seat/presentation and let the rest fall where it will? And that seat may well be different for different formats.


Josh Z said:


> What he does have control over is how his images are composed within the frame, and the choice of aspect ratio has to be based on a standard relationship of this film to other films. That standard is the image height, not the image width.


The director has a choice of screen shape, and knowledge of how that shape is likely to present in commercial theaters (as well as in home viewing). That does not imply that the director's intent is for a fixed-height presentation. The director is choosing a shape to compose within.

It's been decades since studios/theaters would roll out a new projection format for a new movie. For films that released on something like Cinerama - the director's intent is unambiguous. This isn't the case when choosing an existing format that simultaneously locks in several parameters.

Constant height is much more sensible than constant width, but there's no firm connection between constant-anything and artistic intent.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> As I said earlier, Bud, you have to understand the rules of photographic composition in order to decide when you want to break them. All of the examples you posted are cases of filmmakers intentionally breaking the rules of composition in order to create a specific effect.
> 
> The first one you posted was Wes Anderson. Anderson shoots all of his movies with really weird framing in order to throw viewers off balance. That is his signature style.
> 
> I'm not familiar with all of the movies you posted shots from, but in most of them it's clear that the negative space above the characters is intended to call attention to itself in order to provoke a response from the viewer. In the Grand Budapest Hotel shot, it's to show the distance the character might fall. In the shot from Ida, it's to show the characters being dwarfed by their oppressive environment.
> 
> 
> 
> Does The Wizard of Oz have wide shots with a lot of space around the characters? Sure. Most movies do.
> 
> View attachment 3219918
> 
> 
> But what do its medium shots and close-ups look like?
> 
> View attachment 3219924
> 
> 
> View attachment 3219925
> 
> 
> View attachment 3219926
> 
> 
> Rules of Thirds, to the letter. Eyes 1/3 down from the top of the frame. A manageable amount of headroom that doesn't call attention to itself above the tallest actor in the shot.
> 
> If this movie had been shot in scope, you'd find the faces in the exact same positions, but with more width to the sides of the frame, perhaps to show more characters around them.
> 
> Back to Ida again for a second. First, for a movie made in 2013, the director's decision to shoot in Academy AR at a time when no theaters (or TVs) have screens at that ratio was, in itself, meant to be provocative.
> 
> In some scene, this movie has very classical, Rule of Thirds composition.
> 
> View attachment 3219940
> 
> 
> 
> In others, it's chock full of strangely-composed shots designed, by intent, to alienate the viewer.
> 
> View attachment 3219935
> 
> 
> In this one, the subtitles are way up high in the middle of the screen. You're supposed to think that's weird.
> 
> View attachment 3219938
> 
> 
> Not to mention shots like this which barely show the character's face at all.
> 
> View attachment 3219939
> 
> 
> This is not "good" composition. But the director is deliberately using "bad" composition to make an artistic point. In shots like these, the character is meant to be small in the frame, because she feels small. She feels boxed in and pushed down, and the director visualizes that in a literal sense.
> 
> Watching these scenes at IMAX size defeats the whole point of the thing. This is not an "immersive" movie.
> 
> You can't argue that this was meant to play on huge Golden Age movie palace screens, because those were long extinct by 2013. It's a small, cramped movie, meant to be watched smaller than other contemporary films.



I totally agree with the mix of composition in all the movies. Lets take the Wizard of Oz examples you posted. First off these were intended to be shown in movie palaces as that in 1939 was just about the only option the director could have ever in his wildest dreams seen it playing in. The shot of the emerald city is framed and could be enjoyed as IMAX today. Some central focus of our vision and let our eyes wander around the screen at the rest wondering how many more miles do they have to walk to get there.

Now the mid shot of Dorothy talking to the Lion. How much of the screen is required of our critical FOV their heads are about 1/6 of the screen high and about 1/6 of the screen apart. the rest of the image is there for us to look at and enjoy but the action our eyes scan to is the faces and the interaction over a relatively small part of the image the rest becomes peripheral as does our vision every waking minute. As I have said before stare at one word of this text and without changing your gaze try and read a word 4 lines above. We are scanning creatures by nature.

Lets now look at Dorothy’s close up. We are drawn to her face and her expression and the area occupying our critical FOV is about 1/3 of the image height and the director wants us to focus there as he has all the background out of focus. He gives us the close up to amplify the image resolution and give us the chance to study her face in detail. It is not the whole frame at most her face is maybe 1/5 of the screen area.

It is a common misconception where people say I like to sit far enough back to see the whole movie without moving my eyes.

I know where people sat 50 years ago in our Warner Movie Palace and how high and wide the screen was. It is still there today to see. I wasn’t around in 1939 for the first run of The Wizard of Oz but records show there were well over 2000 people in attendance some sat in the back and the balcony and I’m sure some sat closer than IMAX immersion if they got there late. The money seats were about 1/3 back and the immersion of Academy was amazing.
Sure anyone today making an Academy movie is going to be fringe and quirky and they don’t really have a theater to showcase them. It isn’t much different than someone making a Prestige TV series in an AR other than 16:9. The venue is TV and the AR of TV is 16:9 so they have to know they will be smaller than TV.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> I'm not insisting anything. Non-IMAX theatrical ratios are expressed with the height being constant to each other. That's not my rule, it's a standard. Your home is your home and you can choose whether to follow this or not.


*They're ratios.* It's a matter of convenience to express them with a common denominator, and it makes it easy to see the differences in shape at a glance.


jeahrens said:


> I did preserve vertical immersion.


By shrinking the film vertically?


jeahrens said:


> And I've have always stressed that a 1.85:1 film (or Academy for that matter) should not lose any impact on a scope screen. A 1.85:1 film is the same size on my scope screen as it was on my 16:9 screen.


All that means is that you chose a scope screen the same height as your previous screen. This is just circular logic - If you compare to your own baseline that you copied...of course you will find "equivalence". All that you've done is said _"I'll hold the impact of 1.85 films constant, but put in a wider screen to make scope movies more engaging"_. By definition you haven't lost impact...but that does not mean that the engagement of *both* formats is optimized. Maybe your previous screen was actually a bit shorter than ideal for 16:9 content?

Your entire position is based on dogmatic insistence that image height should always be constant, without ever actually addressing that conceit. I agree that it's far better to hold height constant than width if you need to choose between those 2 options...but that's a false dilemma.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I'm sorry I don't get what is circular logic? I'm relaying what Spielberg commented about his choice to use 1.85:1 for the movie. If a dinosaur is occupying say 50% of a scope frame, reducing the frame size horizontally (this is assuming the dinosaur is not being cropped) will mean that the dinosaur is taking up more of the 1.85:1 frame (same object size in less frame area). That was his reasoning.
> . . .


The "circular logic" you don't see as such is "Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant "

This justifies shrinking a 1.85:1 film or a 16x9 film to the height of a scope film by saying that's not shrinking them: "Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant"

Your conclusion is included in your starting premise. That's the very definition of circular logic.

Historically, scope was introduced to lure owners of those new-fangled 4:3 TVs - that were getting broadcasts of movies for free - back into the theaters by offering spectacle.

Since it was easier to widen the screens than to raise the ceilings of theaters, that's what they did, keeping the height the same.

It was an easy stunt to pull back the curtains and shout "THIS is Cinerama!"

But that was nearly seventy years ago. Get over it.

There's no artistic or provable physiological justification for CIH, just a historical one.

Stop saying that nothing is supposed to be taller than scope other than the limited subset of taller aspect ratio films that were made with equipment rented from IMAX (pretty soon I expect to hear a CIH adherent say that not even films made with their digital equipment qualifies).


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## bud16415

mattsteg said:


> It feels to me like it would be much more reasonable for this forum (rather than just your thread...) to be dedicated to screens with aspect ratio different from projector as we all share a lot of the same concerns in doing this. CIH presentation on scope screens should be seen as just the most basic variation rather than some ideal of its own, with the main benefit being simplicity. Even if you 100% subscribe to the idea that a true constant height is the best (at a minimum it is a *very good *starting point) there are odd corner cases like subtitles presented in letterbox regions that a taller screen, possibly with 4-way masking, can often handle more gracefully.
> 
> The step of breaking away from locking-in to the aspect-ratio of the projector is an important one...However it's just as freeing to break away from the idea of locking-in to any particular source material's aspect and instead consider the range of enjoyable vertical and horizontal angles directly along with anticipated viewing scenarios and any room geometry constraints.


I think you may be getting the feel for why some of us want just a thread to talk about thinking outside the 2.35:1 box in a positive manner. I would love a forum just about presentation in general without party lines. But that is not likely to happen.

I was not around here in the beginning but what I understand is there were a number of people doing CIH and it was a uphill battle to gain a forum where they could focus on their love of that method of presentation. So I can see their desire to keep it pure to the reason it was formed.

I was looking for a place to address alternate forms of presentation and including CIH as one of them along with variable and thought this the likely best place for open conversation. I saw some here doing CIH+IMAX and they were welcome and I saw Josh was documenting movies and TV that had ether changing ARs or AR not TV. The idea was how to deal with them in the world of CIH. I was surprised movies that expanded outside of scope to say IMAX the trend was to crop them, but TV less tall than 16:9 was called wider than TV and blown up in the world of CIH.

So I started a thread thinking if you are doing something else or if you want to know what I’m doing lets talk about it. I was never trying to degrade anyone doing CIH and was ok with those that didn’t like what I was doing just tune us out.

Even though I was often told it is your house you are free to enjoy it as you like. The same people would argue that what I liked was wrong and this forum was not the place to talk about it.

Until Josh started this thread there was just my one option in the current threads to talk about this and I’m not sure why he wanted a second rerun of my thread seeing as how he didn’t want my thread in the first place but now there are two on the front page. I gave my honest opinion of CIH early on in post #6 and there was no comment.
I have this feeling this thread motive is to not be fair and balanced in this discussion and the chance of changing anyone’s mind that is setup to do CIH will ever change. That’s just IMHO.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> *They're ratios.* It's a matter of convenience to express them with a common denominator, and it makes it easy to see the differences in shape at a glance.


Ratios with height as the constant when talking about non-IMAX films.



mattsteg said:


> By shrinking the film vertically?


No, it was not shrunk vertically. 



mattsteg said:


> All that means is that you chose a scope screen the same height as your previous screen. This is just circular logic - If you compare to your own baseline that you copied...of course you will find "equivalence". All that you've done is said _"I'll hold the impact of 1.85 films constant, but put in a wider screen to make scope movies more engaging"_. By definition you haven't lost impact...but that does not mean that the engagement of *both* formats is optimized. Maybe your previous screen was actually a bit shorter than ideal for 16:9 content?
> 
> Your entire position is based on dogmatic insistence that image height should always be constant, without ever actually addressing that conceit. I agree that it's far better to hold height constant than width if you need to choose between those 2 options...but that's a false dilemma.


I setup my 16:9 screen based on the maximum vertical immersion I wanted. Since this did not change with the scope screen, yes I kept the optimal engagement.

You keep positing this idea that height being a constant is my idea and not a theatrical presentation standard. There's nothing dogmatic about this and no false dilemma. When a director chooses 1.85:1 they do so knowing how it's intended to be displayed vs. 2.35:1. Nothing says you have to follow this or even think it's the right approach. But that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Myself I wanted to do the best I could at preserving the intent of the filmmaker for the most content I could, which was a scope screen. Your goal can be different and there's nothing wrong with that.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> The "circular logic" you don't see as such is "Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant "
> 
> This justifies shrinking a 1.85:1 film or a 16x9 film to the height of a scope film by saying that's not shrinking them: "Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant"
> 
> Your conclusion is included in your starting premise. That's the very definition of circular logic.


Ignore how ratios are intended to be presented theatrically all you want, but it doesn't change it. There's nothing circular about knowing that 1.37:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios are intended by the people creating films to be shown with the height being constant and accepting it. Nothing says you have to agree with this.



Philnick said:


> Historically, scope was introduced to lure owners of those new-fangled 4:3 TVs - that were getting broadcasts of movies for free - back into the theaters by offering spectacle.
> 
> Since it was easier to widen the screens than to raise the ceilings of theaters, that's what they did, keeping the height the same.
> 
> It was an easy stunt to pull back the curtains and shout "THIS is Cinerama!"
> 
> But that was nearly seventy years ago. Get over it.
> 
> There's no artistic or provable physiological justification for CIH, just a historical one.
> 
> Stop saying that nothing is supposed to be taller than scope other than the limited subset of taller aspect ratio films that were made with equipment rented from IMAX (pretty soon I expect to hear a CIH adherent say that not even films made with their digital equipment qualifies).


So by your reasoning, Peter Jackson wanted Return of the King to have less impact in a theater than The Breakfast Club and Hughes expected his film to have more impact than Star Wars. That simply is not the case. These aspect ratios are expressed with height as a constant and filmmakers do intend them to be viewed in accordance to this. That you don't agree with it doesn't change it. However nothing says you can't ignore it and be happy with what you have.


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## Red3

To the OP - whether you _'should'_ or _'should not'_ is up to you.

Here's some of my reasoning for going CIH with my current setup. Maybe it will help you make up your mind?

#1 - Height constraint in my theater room. Doesn't make sense for me to have a screen much taller than 48" in my room. If I had 10ft ceilings I might reconsider... what goes for me may not go for you.
#2 - Upgrading from a 48" high 16:9 (just under 8ft wide) to 48" 2.35:1 (10ft wide) just makes sense in my situation. The wall is much wider than it is tall.
*#3 - Memorized lens positions on my 4K projector is a game changer and awesome with a CIH setup. *I would never do an anamorphic lens, but with 4K and programmable lens positions I lose no quality when zooming a cinemascope movie to full width.
#4 - I prefer black bars on the sides than on the top and bottom.
#5 - Curtains - I plan to add curtains which will hide the black bars on the sides of the screen. Just try doing this to hide bars on the top and bottom!
#6 - I want my Home Theater to be more like a movie theater than a media room - I go there to watch movies not sports and TV shows. Movie theaters have curtains to frame the image and I want to to it this way too. (I have a TV to watch TV shows and sports on - you probably do too.)
#7 - With various aspect ratios coming at us all the time now and memorized lens positions, CIH makes the most sense because I'm only concerned about black bars on the side. TV shows come in 2:1. Imax Enhanced (being pushed by Disney+) is 1.9:1
#8 - Most movies are still 2.35:1 and when you're height constrained, it just looks way better wider. Bigger, bolder, more immersive and more theater-like. (And you have two eyes placed horizontally on your head. You're going to feel more immersed with a wider image.)

*And one 'pet peeve'* I feel I must mention while I'm on the subject - streaming services are designed for TV viewing and they seem to forget that some of us have cinematic setups - it completely sucks that they keep putting captions out of frame in the 'black bar area' on 2.35:1 movies!!! Stop It!


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Ratios with height as the constant when talking about non-IMAX films.


If height is defined as constant than they are not "ratios" but rather "widths". Yet they are indeed ratios (not that these semantics matter)


jeahrens said:


> No, it was not shrunk vertically.


I'd love to hear how you fit subtitles rendered below 2.35:1 content onto a 2.35:1 screen while still filling that same 2:35 screen with the 2:35 content.

The math just doesn't add up.


jeahrens said:


> You keep positing this idea that height being a constant is my idea and not a theatrical presentation standard. There's nothing dogmatic about this and no false dilemma.


Blindly applying a standard based on the economics of owning, operating, and marking commercial theaters with dozens to hundreds of seats (and how those economics evolved over the past century+) *is dogmatic*, and choosing between 1.78:1 and 2.35:1 as your only choices is in fact a false dilemma.

CIH is a theatrical presentation standard because it's economical to implement, acceptable to most people, and aligns with a century of legacy development of theatrical standards. Out of those, "acceptable to most people" is the most relevant, but in a personal theater that shouldn't be a driver either.


jeahrens said:


> When a director chooses 1.85:1 they do so knowing how it's intended to be displayed vs. 2.35:1. Nothing says you have to follow this or even think it's the right approach. But that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Myself I wanted to do the best I could at preserving the intent of the filmmaker for the most content I could, which was a scope screen. Your goal can be different and there's nothing wrong with that.


You're reading an awful lot into someone else's intention. The director chooses a shape. He or she knows the baggage that goes with it. He or she knows that there are dozens or hundreds of seats in that theater that are supposed to be "OK". He or she knows where he or she would choose to sit. This might well be a different seat for every film. He or she knows that, absent extraordinarily rare circumstances, his or her work will be presented alone (other than some previews) and not as part of a double feature, so that choosing the preferred seat for this single film is possible.

Or maybe the directory just chose that shape for framing purposes.

Until we start having films released in VR formats, where the *exact* viewing format and angles are prescribed by the director...there is not one clear artistic intent.


jeahrens said:


> Ignore how ratios are intended to be presented theatrically all you want, but it doesn't change it. There's nothing circular about knowing that 1.37:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios are intended by the people creating films to be shown with the height being constant and accepting it. Nothing says you have to agree with this.


How many people creating films today were even *alive* in the days where 1.37:1 was common? And those that produced films when the academy ratio ruled...were they composing with the futuristic knowledge that 50 years hence people would be making films at ~double the aspect ratio, but *definitely* the same height? Of course not.


jeahrens said:


> So by your reasoning, Peter Jackson wanted Return of the King to have less impact in a theater than The Breakfast Club and Hughes expected his film to have more impact than Star Wars


What reasoning is this that you're inventing? To the best of my knowledge everyone participating in this discussion projects 2.35:1 wider than 1.85:1.


jeahrens said:


> That simply is not the case. These aspect ratios are expressed with height as a constant and filmmakers do intend them to be viewed in accordance to this. That you don't agree with it doesn't change it. However nothing says you can't ignore it and be happy with what you have.


You keep talking about "*filmmakers"* as some homogeneous group of people all with the exact same opinions as you. What support do you have for this assertion?


----------



## bryantc

jeahrens said:


> Image size is the product of the physical dimensions and your distance from it. If you are constrained in the physical dimension of the screen in many cases you can adjust seating to compensate.
> 
> When we go into commercial theaters we have no idea what the screen dimensions are, yet we generally pick a seat that ends up with the picture being a pleasing size to us. That's the same principle at work.
> 
> For me I don't want The Return of the King to have significantly less impact than The Breakfast Club, so a scope screen is the obvious answer. The key is to engineer your seating to where the height of the narrower film is still perceived as large as you want while being able to accommodate the width limitation in this scenario. Then The Breakfast Club is as pleasing as it was before, but The Return of the King is now a whole lot more immersive as both filmmakers intended.


Why would I want to needlessly shrink my screen just because YOU think scope MUST be bigger?

My theater wall is much closer to being 16:9 than it is to 2.35:1. As are most theaters.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> If height is defined as constant than they are not "ratios" but rather "widths". Yet they are indeed ratios (not that these semantics matter)


Theatrical ratios are X units wide per 1 unit of height with height being a shared constant.



mattsteg said:


> I'd love to hear how you fit subtitles rendered below 2.35:1 content onto a 2.35:1 screen while still filling that same 2:35 screen with the 2:35 content.


Most of the time the subs are in the content and not the black bar. The Panasonic UHD player I have can move the subs on a disc. If I run into a streaming program with them in the black bars I usually can use the 2.20:1 ratio preset and shrink the picture slightly.



mattsteg said:


> The math just doesn't add up.
> 
> Blindly applying a standard based on the economics of owning, operating, and marking commercial theaters with dozens to hundreds of seats (and how those economics evolved over the past century+) *is dogmatic*, and choosing between 1.78:1 and 2.35:1 as your only choices is in fact a false dilemma.
> 
> CIH is a theatrical presentation standard because it's economical to implement, acceptable to most people, and aligns with a century of legacy development of theatrical standards. Out of those, "acceptable to most people" is the most relevant, but in a personal theater that shouldn't be a driver either.
> 
> You're reading an awful lot into someone else's intention. The director chooses a shape. He or she knows the baggage that goes with it. He or she knows that there are dozens or hundreds of seats in that theater that are supposed to be "OK". He or she knows where he or she would choose to sit. This might well be a different seat for every film. He or she knows that, absent extraordinarily rare circumstances, his or her work will be presented alone (other than some previews) and not as part of a double feature, so that choosing the preferred seat for this single film is possible.
> 
> Or maybe the directory just chose that shape for framing purposes.
> 
> Until we start having films released in VR formats, where the *exact* viewing format and angles are prescribed by the director...there is not one clear artistic intent.
> 
> How many people creating films today were even *alive* in the days where 1.37:1 was common? And those that produced films when the academy ratio ruled...were they composing with the futuristic knowledge that 50 years hence people would be making films at ~double the aspect ratio, but *definitely* the same height? Of course not.
> 
> What reasoning is this that you're inventing? To the best of my knowledge everyone participating in this discussion projects 2.35:1 wider than 1.85:1.
> 
> You keep talking about "*filmmakers"* as some homogeneous group of people all with the exact same opinions as you. What support do you have for this assertion?


I've only said that my goal is to best present film with the intended impact for as many formats as possible and scope achieves that for me. I'm not sure what reasoning you mean and I'm not sure why choosing to try to follow a theatrical presentation standard is dogmatic. Why would I not talk about filmmakers as a group? Do you think Spielberg and Villeneuve see ratios differently?

I'm not trying to give the impression that everyone should adhere to theatrical presentation regardless of their preferences. Quite the contrary, if a person is happy with a 16:9 screen (or 17:9) then by all means enjoy.


----------



## jeahrens

bryantc said:


> Why would I want to needlessly shrink my screen just because YOU think scope MUST be bigger?
> 
> My theater wall is much closer to being 16:9 than it is to 2.35:1. As are most theaters.


If you have no intention or desire of setting up your room with this in mind, then don't. If you want 16:9 bigger, make it bigger.

You asked a question and I was simply trying to illustrate that there is more than one way to look at a room. I don't know any of the specifics of your room other than what you posted, but in a lot of cases people aren't so much constrained by the dimensions as not seeing the room as a system.

A lot of commodity cinemas are 1.85:1 (which is not 16:9, but close) because it allows them to fit more screens in the building. Not because people making films see that as a larger format than 2.35:1.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Ignore how ratios are intended to be presented theatrically all you want, but it doesn't change it. There's nothing circular about knowing that 1.37:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios are intended by the people creating films to be shown with the height being constant and accepting it. Nothing says you have to agree with this.
> 
> 
> 
> So by your reasoning, Peter Jackson wanted Return of the King to have less impact in a theater than The Breakfast Club and Hughes expected his film to have more impact than Star Wars. That simply is not the case. These aspect ratios are expressed with height as a constant and filmmakers do intend them to be viewed in accordance to this. That you don't agree with it doesn't change it. However nothing says you can't ignore it and be happy with what you have.


Aha - There it is: the comparison of films that will never be combined on a double-bill!

The last resort of those who've lost an argument on the merits.

To quote Spock in _Into Darkness_ "Reverting to name-calling suggests that you are defensive and therefore find my opinion valid."


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Aha - There it is: a comparison to films that will never be combined on a double-bill!
> 
> The last resort of those who've lost an argument on the merits.
> 
> To quote Spock in _Into Darkness_ "Reverting to name-calling suggests that you are defensive and therefore find my opinion valid."


Sorry I don't follow. What difference does it make if they'd share a billing? If I make up a billing with the aspect ratios discussed that works for you does that somehow make the example more meaningful?

Who called anyone a name?


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Theatrical ratios are X units wide per 1 unit of height with height being a shared constant.


By your dictatorial authority?


jeahrens said:


> Most of the time the subs are in the content and not the black bar. The Panasonic UHD player I have can move the subs on a disc. If I run into a streaming program with them in the black bars I usually can use the 2.20:1 ratio preset and shrink the picture slightly.


So you agree that with your 2.35 screen you actually do not maintain a constant image height.


jeahrens said:


> I've only said that my goal is to best present film with the intended impact for as many formats as possible and scope achieves that for me. I'm not sure what reasoning you mean and I'm not sure why choosing to try to follow a theatrical presentation standard is dogmatic.


Indented impact as defined by who?


jeahrens said:


> Why would I not talk about filmmakers as a group? Do you think Spielberg and Villeneuve see ratios differently?


Do Spielberg and Vileneuve both choose the exact same seat to screen a movie, and do they choose that same seat for every film that they view?

Image ratios are shapes. A ratio does not define an exact height x width. Just a shape.

I would imagine that both directors compose according to the shape that they choose to work with, and choose that shape based on a combination of factors for each project.


jeahrens said:


> I'm not trying to give the impression that everyone should adhere to theatrical presentation regardless of their preferences. Quite the contrary, if a person is happy with a 16:9 screen (or 17:9) then by all means enjoy.


What exactly is a "theatrical presentation"? Apparently it doesn't have anything to do with what commercial theaters do:


jeahrens said:


> A lot of commodity cinemas are 1.85:1





jeahrens said:


> You asked a question and I was simply trying to illustrate that there is more than one way to look at a room.


 There's also more than one way to look at a ratio.


jeahrens said:


> Sorry I don't follow. What difference does it make if they'd share a billing? If I make up a billing with the aspect ratios discussed that works for you does that somehow make the example more meaningful?


A double feature is the only presentation where you would reasonably assume that the viewer would remain fixed in the same seat for both movies, and the same screen constraints assumed to apply. If films are presented separately, there's every reason to optimize the experience for each independently.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Sorry I don't follow. What difference does it make if they'd share a billing? If I make up a billing with the aspect ratios discussed that works for you does that somehow make the example more meaningful?


If they'll never share a bill, the relative immersion of the two films will never be an issue. Each will be enjoyed on its own merits.


jeahrens said:


> Who called anyone a name?


You did, right here:


jeahrens said:


> . . .
> So by your reasoning, Peter Jackson wanted Return of the King to have less impact in a theater than The Breakfast Club and Hughes expected his film to have more impact than Star Wars. . . .


The clear implication of making that comparison is to say that anyone who shows _The Breakfast Club_ taller than _Star Wars_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ isn't playing with a full deck, and likes "chick flicks" more than macho action movies.

Your choice of non-scope film for the comparison is a dead giveaway. It's actually a two-fer when it comes to insults.


----------



## fatherom

Holy crap @Philnick, you are REACHING when it comes to interpreting what people are saying as insults...


----------



## bud16415

This common denominator thing is crazy. From now on I’m going to call the new IMAX 1.89 (3.78:2) and that will show it is bigger than flat 1.85. What about TV it can’t be 1.78:1 because no one makes TV sets that big so lets call it (.89:.5).
A ratio is just a ratio 16:9 is no different than 1.777777777…:1


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> By your dictatorial authority?


Nope.



mattsteg said:


> So you agree that with your 2.35 screen you actually do not maintain a constant image height.
> Indented impact as defined by who?


I don't have a 2.76:1 screen for those handful of films in that ratio and I can't make streaming services provide subtitle options. I'm simply trying to get as close as I can to presenting the most material as intended by the filmmaker. I don't always make it, but I get there most of the time. I'm also not doing anything special for IMAX.

Intended impact by the people making the films.



mattsteg said:


> Do Spielberg and Vileneuve both choose the exact same seat to screen a movie, and do they choose that same seat for every film that they view?


I don't know, but from reading up on them I'm certain they understand and agree with theatrical presentation standards.



mattsteg said:


> Image ratios are shapes.  A ratio does not define an exact height x width. Just a shape.


Theatrical ratios (non-IMAX) are used in relation to each other.



mattsteg said:


> I would imagine that both directors compose according to the shape that they choose to work with, and choose that shape based on a combination of factors for each project.
> 
> What exactly is a "theatrical presentation"? Apparently it doesn't have anything to do with what commercial theaters do:


Filmmakers have never controlled how a theater chooses to show what they make. The best they can do is choose the format and hope the viewer attends a venue that presents it as they hope it will be.

When I watched Spectre at the local Cinemark, the largest most impactful thing was the Ford Truck commercial preceding the film. I doubt Mendes had that in mind.

Generally I choose to watch scope and 1.85:1 films at the local Flix Brewhouse which has all scope screens. For IMAX I go to our local IMAX.



mattsteg said:


> There's also more than one way to look at a ratio.
> 
> A double feature is the only presentation where you would reasonably assume that the viewer would remain fixed in the same seat for both movies, and the same screen constraints assumed to apply. If films are presented separately, there's every reason to optimize the experience for each independently.


The main issue you would run into with adjusting seating to make up for a lack of vertical immersion when viewing scope on a 1.85:1 screen would be moving out of the sound sweet spot. But most theaters it would probably be fine.

You can look at theatrical ratios any way you want. You can ignore them. Present them as intended. Or end up somewhere in between. The main point being get what YOU want out of your room.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> If they'll never share a bill, the relative immersion of the two films will never be an issue. Each will be enjoyed on its own merits.


Then simply find films that would be double billed and fit the ARs discussed in my example and substitute those. The Exorcist and The Thing?



Philnick said:


> You did, right here:
> 
> The clear implication of making that comparison is to say that anyone who shows _The Breakfast Club_ taller than _Star Wars_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ isn't playing with a full deck, and likes "chick flicks" more than macho action movies.
> 
> Your choice of non-scope film for the comparison is a dead giveaway. It's actually a two-fer when it comes to insults.


Substitute Aliens instead of The Breakfast Club then. I happen to like The Breakfast Club and it was just the first 1.85:1 film that popped into my head. That's hardly name calling.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Intended impact by the people making the films.


Have you asked them and confirmed that they approve of (and indeed prescribe) your screen dimensions and seating position?


jeahrens said:


> I don't know, but from reading up on them I'm certain they understand and agree with theatrical presentation standards.


2 different questions. Commercial theater standards are about providing a uniform acceptable product to a range of customers. The seat that they would choose is more directly related to their 'intent' for how each of their films would be best viewed. Whether they "agree with" commercial standards is not directly related to their artistic intent.


jeahrens said:


> Theatrical ratios are used in relation to each other.
> A ratio is a ratio. Comparing ratios to each other doesn't add anything. The ratio 1.85:1 is a taller aspect than 2.35:1. 2.35:1 is a wider aspect than 1.85:1. Both of these are true, but it adds no new information.
> 
> 
> jeahrens said:
> 
> 
> 
> Filmmakers have never controlled how a theater chooses to show what they make. The best they can do is choose the format and hope the viewer attends a venue that presents it as they hope it will be.
> 
> 
> 
> But just a few sentences ago you had Spielberg and Vileneuve endorsing your theatrical standards!
> 
> The format is the shape.
> 
> 
> jeahrens said:
> 
> 
> 
> When I watched Spectre at the local Cinemark, the largest most impactful thing was the Ford Truck commercial preceding the film. I doubt Mendes had that in mind.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I'm sure the director of the Ford truck commercial's artistic intent was fully realized.
> 
> 
> jeahrens said:
> 
> 
> 
> You can look at theatrical ratios any way you want. You can ignore them. Present them as intended. Or end up somewhere in between. The main point being get what YOU want out of your room.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The people that I most often see advocating *ignoring* film ratios (which again - are at their most fundamental shapes...) and not presenting films as intended are guys with scope screens cropping out and discarding material from multiaspect films.
Click to expand...


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> By your dictatorial authority?


I mean, are you unfamiliar with math?

If the width were intended to be the constant, we would not have 1.85:1 (expressed as width x height) and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. We would have 0.54:1 (height x width) and 0.42:1.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> I mean, are you unfamiliar with math?
> 
> If the width were intended to be the constant, we would not have 1.85:1 (expressed as width x height) and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. We would have 0.54:1 (height x width) and 0.43:1.


Why are we assuming that *either* is "intended" to be held constant? Would you prefer 47:20 and 16:9 or some other pair of difficult to compare at-a-glance equivalents?


jeahrens said:


> You can look at theatrical ratios any way you want. You can ignore them. Present them as intended. Or end up somewhere in between. The main point being get what YOU want out of your room.


It's hilarious how this forum pontificates about (assumed) "intent"...and then has an *entire thread devoted to films that break your assumptions* and don't present properly on your screens, what material you can get away with cropping, etc. Clearly there's some amount of *misalignment *between CIH presentation and creator intent. Sometimes it's what's intended...sometimes it's not.









List of Variable Aspect Ratio Movies on Blu-ray


Most of this information has been discussed previously in this forum, but I felt it worthwhile to consolidate it into a dedicated thread because the question comes up frequently. The following is a list of movies presented on Blu-ray or Ultra HD with a variable aspect ratio - specifically those...




www.avsforum.com


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> I mean, are you unfamiliar with math?
> 
> If the width were intended to be the constant, we would not have 1.85:1 (expressed as width x height) and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. We would have 0.54:1 (height x width) and 0.42:1.


Oh no! Then folks might say "I'm going with the .54 screen, not the puny .42!" (Cue the Hulk's epic beatdown of Loki at the end of _The Avengers_: "Puny god!")

I stand by my overarching point:

Don't compare films on the basis of their shapes. Enjoy each film on its own merits, presented as well as you can.


----------



## bud16415

I’m always amused how an Academy AR film made in the 1930’s the director had intent as to how it should be shown in 2022 onto a 2.35:1 scope CIH format when there was no such thing as CIH or scope at the time the film was made.


----------



## mattsteg

bud16415 said:


> I’m always amused how an Academy AR film made in the 1930’s the director had intent as to how it should be shown in 2022 onto a 2.35:1 scope CIH format when there was no such thing as CIH or scope at the time the film was made.


Directors know.


----------



## bud16415

I had a wild idea today. Why don’t they make the new IMAX movies Flat-Safe. Just let me know and I will gladly move up 8-10 rows.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I’m always amused how an Academy AR film made in the 1930’s the director had intent as to how it should be shown in 2022 onto a 2.35:1 scope CIH format when there was no such thing as CIH or scope at the time the film was made.


It's almost like there's this thing called "progress," where technology and tools get more sophisticated over time. But nah, that's crazy talk.

Clearly, the first guy who first coined the term "widescreen" must have been forced to use that word by a cabal of wicked screen manufacturers who wanted to charge more for unnecessary added material. Everybody knows it's really supposed to be called "shortscreen."


----------



## dschulz

FWIW here's my take:

CIH provides the best presentation for north of 90% of the content I watch. If a home theatre is designed properly, so that the 16:9 image is as large as is comfortable, wider content, at the same seating distance and the same screen height, will be equally comfortable. This arrangement works for everything from 1.37 Academy ratio material through 16:9 television, 1.85 Flat features, 2.00:1 Netflix material, 2.20:1 Super Panavision to 2.39 Scope. As the images get wider they get more impactful, and nothing is ever smaller than it ought to be.

This leaves around a dozen or so features that are _wider_ than Scope that are compromised, and another dozen or so titles (primarily Nolan IMAX films) that _should_ be sized so that the Scope extraction fits my CIH screen but has additional image area above and below. I am not inclined to spend lots of extra $$ to accommodate those features when there are thousands of movies that are best projected in a CIH paradigm.

That said: if cost was really, truly no object and I was designing a theatre from scratch, yes, I'd go with a giant screen with 4-way masking, sized such that the Flat/Scope image area would be identical to what I would've had with a simple 2.39 CIH screen.


----------



## hms17B

What you want is for everything you watch to have a satisfying impact. Wide (Cinemascope, Cinerama, etc) is intended to look bigger than narrow (Academy, 16x9, TV, etc). Tall (IMAX) is intended to look bigger than short (non-IMAX). But nothing was ever intended to look tiny. So getting back to the original question of
*"Why Should (or Shouldn't) I Do Constant Height?"*
there are good reasons not to do it. If it would make some ratio(s) look tiny in your room, then don't do it. Just providing some healthy negativity.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> This justifies shrinking a 1.85:1 film or a 16x9 film to the height of a scope film by saying that's not shrinking them: "Since the height between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is intended to be constant"


I will ask you again. Please, look at these two nearly identical close-ups and explain to me how the first one from The Avengers is supposed to be 25% taller than the second one from Avengers 2. 










What rationalization can you possibly use to justify that?












> Historically, scope was introduced to lure owners of those new-fangled 4:3 TVs - that were getting broadcasts of movies for free - back into the theaters by offering spectacle.


Ah yes, the "Scope is a gimmick!" argument.

Yes, you are correct. Widescreen was a gimmick designed to lure audiences back to theaters. Some other things that were gimmicks to lure audiences to theaters:

*Motion pictures* - Paintings can move?!?! This is just a ploy to get people away from museums!
*Sound *- Who needs these newfangled Talkies? Movies were better silent!
*Color *- Well la dee dah, aren't you so special now with all your fancy colors that aren't just gray?
*Dolby Stereo/Surround/DTS/Atmos* - Who needs sound coming from every direction? You can hear just fine with one speaker in the front!
And the biggest damn gimmick of all: *IMAX *- A screen so big you can't even see the whole thing. 

Every last one of these is a total gimmick designed for no other purpose than to con people into buying a movie ticket. And now they are all tools for filmmakers to use or not use as they see fit. I know for a fact that you have spent a lot of money to reproduce every one of them as best as you can in your home theater.

But widescreen, oh no, that one's a big cheat. Clearly you're not actually supposed to take that one seriously.  



> Stop saying that nothing is supposed to be taller than scope other than the limited subset of taller aspect ratio films that were made with equipment rented from IMAX (pretty soon I expect to hear a CIH adherent say that not even films made with their digital equipment qualifies).


Stop saying that 1.85:1 is "taller" than 2.35:1 when it is demonstrably not. By displaying them at Constant Height, objects in both are literally the exact same size.










1.85:1 is only taller than 2.35:1 when you decide that you like 1.85:1 better and want to make it artificially larger.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> I will ask you again. Please, look at these two nearly identical close-ups and explain to me how the first one from The Avengers is supposed to be 25% taller than the second one from Avengers 2.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What rationalization can you possibly use to justify that?


Maybe I'm crazy, but your example here isn't really a great one to use to support your claims. * The scope image is actually framed noticeably tighter vertically* - cropping the majority of RDJ's chin. Putting numbers on it...in the 1.85 image his face from top of eye to bottom of lip is 200 pixels. In the Scope image that distance is 250 pixels. In other words, his face is ~20% taller in the bottom image.

If we accept your conceit that the intent is to show both faces similarly, the 1.85 image should be taller. Perhaps not 25% taller, but 10-20% taller.


Josh Z said:


> 1.85:1 is only taller than 2.35:1 when you decide that you like 1.85:1 better and want to make it artificially larger.


Or if you go to a theater with a 1.85:1 (or any aspect 'narrower' than scope'). Or just sit in a different row.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> Maybe I'm crazy, but your example here isn't really a great one to use to support your claims. * The scope image is actually framed noticeably tighter vertically*


It's not actually. It's just that in that particular frame, RDJ's head was tilted back slightly. You can see more of his chin below the lip, but less of his forehead above the eyebrows. Remember, these are _motion _pictures, and the things in them move around a little bit. It's also an action movie, so the camera sometimes jiggles around.

Also, that first screenshot was taken from the Blu-ray, which was slightly open matte to 16:9. I've made a new comparison from the 4K transfer, which is in the theatrical 1.85:1.










I'm not saying that these two frames are 100% pixel-for-pixel identical. That's obviously not possible. They're two different shots from two different movies, filmed a couple years apart. But you can clearly tell that the camera is the same distance from his face. And his eyes, nose, and mouth all line up very nicely in the same planes as each other. These two close-ups are certainly meant to be the same size.










But when watched on a 16:9 screen, Downey's face in Ultron is significantly smaller. This isn't a few pixels. It's an unmistakable 25% reduction in size. His facial features no longer line up. His eyes are closer together. His nose is shorter. There's no way you look at these two frames and think, "Yeah, they look the same size to me."











Do you believe that the Ultron close-up, filmed with the camera the same distance from the actor's face, is _supposed to_ be smaller? And if so, what could possibly lead you to that conclusion?


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> It's hilarious how this forum pontificates about (assumed) "intent"...and then has an *entire thread devoted to films that break your assumptions* and don't present properly on your screens, what material you can get away with cropping, etc. Clearly there's some amount of *misalignment *between CIH presentation and creator intent. Sometimes it's what's intended...sometimes it's not.


Brad Bird, director of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: 

_"I didn't want it to be the definitive one for home [viewing]," he says. "What it does is it makes the Panavision look small to me, rather than making the full-frame stuff look large. There's also the problem of the aspect ratio itself; do you put black bars on the left and right of the screen? It starts to become this kaleidoscope thing ... unless you're seeing it on a screen that's five stories high and you're forced to sit close. That's the IMAX experience." 

He explains: "When you're sitting watching IMAX, the Panavision part fills your point of view. And then suddenly you see above that point of view and below it drop away. And most people, when they watch at home, sit across the room, and they're watching a little box. And if that's the case, I would rather have them see the Panavision thing, because it's not drawing attention to itself. In retrospect, I probably should have [made] both versions available, but there has been this tendency to say that that version is the definitive version, and the Panavision version is not. *To me, if you're going to watch it at home, I would rather have a consistent aspect ratio* - we even filmed the IMAX sequences so they would look good in Panavision."_

Scott Derrickson, director of Doctor Strange:

_"Apparently @disneyplus has elected to stream at least some Marvel movies (including Doctor Strange) in the 1.9 IMAX aspect ratio instead of 2:39. I can only speak for myself, but *I never intended that aspect ratio to be used for home viewing.*"

"I selected specific scenes for 1.9 in IMAX and framed those scenes for BOTH 1.9 and 2.39 — that is what 
@disneyplus is using, so it toggles aspect ratios during the film. But I never imagined that the 1.9 IMAX version for steaming."

"This is important — apparently @disneyplus provides the 1.9 as an option, and I’ve also been told that option exists on the Blue-ray. This certainly makes this less problematic, but I* still maintain that I never intended anyone to see the 1.9 version on tv."*_


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> It's almost like there's this thing called "progress," where technology and tools get more sophisticated over time. But nah, that's crazy talk.
> 
> Clearly, the first guy who first coined the term "widescreen" must have been forced to use that word by a cabal of wicked screen manufacturers who wanted to charge more for unnecessary added material. Everybody knows it's really supposed to be called "shortscreen."
> 
> View attachment 3220146


Not sure how your reply in anyway relates to my post.

Sure there is progress in today’s cinema in many ways from 1930 to today, and on the other hand I rarely see 2500 people filling a movie house to see the latest movie. I don’t know if there were some kind of enjoyment meter you could connect to viewers in 1930 till today if the days of silver screen pictures might not measure higher.

You may be posting to the wrong person as I have zero aversion to wide-screen formats and regularly enjoy them without any issues. All the wide-screen ARs are a really lovely way to tell a story when done correctly.

I sometimes object to a wide format when I have the feeling it was only used to lend prestige to a movie that didn’t need it and I find myself being more distracted by the excess area filled with whatever. I know you feel the same about the scope safe area in IMAX movies and I do agree when poorly done it can be distracting.

I am now of the belief if IMAX goes down it will be in part caused by this dictate that these films need a scope safe cropping lines. Nolan’s Tenet movie was the first of his that quite a bit of the IMAX content may have been that way for me.

I’m just a viewer and I accept what they give me.
To my post you quoted maybe you can answer me directly. How did Victor Fleming in 1939 know how immersive/tall The Wizard of Oz should be viewed compared to Star Wars? Is it all about measuring heads and comparing?


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Brad Bird, director of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol:
> 
> _". . . *And most people, when they watch at home, sit across the room, and they're watching a little box. And if that's the case, I would rather have them see the Panavision thing*, . . ." *[bold added by Philnick]*_
> *S*cott Derrickson, director of Doctor Strange:
> _". . ._
> . . ._I* still maintain that I never intended anyone to see the 1.9 version on tv."*_


_Who in this forum is talking about the best way to watch films on a TV? _

However, your quotes provide significant enlightenment on one point: When directors talk about "home viewing" they're visualizing folks watching on a TV - they're not thinking of people using home projection systems that approximate theatrical viewing. So all such quotes are irrelevant to our situations.

Find me a director saying that people using projectors at home to approximate the theater experience shouldn't be viewing the 1.9 versions of their films.

I'll wait.


----------



## mattsteg

This is absolutely insane.


Josh Z said:


> It's not actually. It's just that in that particular frame, RDJ's head was tilted back slightly.


So he isn't framed tighter in the *image you provided*, but is in the *frame*? That's complete nonsense. Image and frame are synonymous.


Josh Z said:


> You can see more of his chin below the lip, but less of his forehead above the eyebrows. Remember, these are _motion _pictures, and the things in them move around a little bit. It's also an action movie, so the camera sometimes jiggles around.


Yes, and unlike you I *measured the size of his face in the images...*and when presented constant height his face was bigger in the scope example.

But like you say these are moving pictures and all of this peeking and poking and hand-wringing isn't particularly important. What is important is that d*espite claiming that the absolute size of RDJ's face is somehow important to preserving intended impact, you didn't even notice a 10-20% different in its size when selecting your example. *That right there suggests that militant CIH thinking is wrongheaded.* Every argument you make* is either attacking a screen format that no one in this discussion is advocating, or relying on dissecting the composition of individual static frames on a failed premise of rigid compositional uniformity that does not even exist in your chosen examples.


Josh Z said:


> I'm not saying that these two frames are 100% pixel-for-pixel identical. That's obviously not possible. They're two different shots from two different movies, filmed a couple years apart. But you can clearly tell that the camera is the same distance from his face. And his eyes, nose, and mouth all line up very nicely in the same planes as each other. These two close-ups are certainly meant to be the same size.


They're meant to take up the *same portion of the vertical space available*. That only implies that they are meant to be the "same size" if you *start* from the assumption that all screens must be CIH. And we've already established that you don't notice 10-20% differences in vertical composition.


Josh Z said:


> But when watched on a 16:9 screen


Who is participating in this discussion that is advocating for selecting a 16:9 screen by preference? Why do you insist on attacking a strawman rather than coherently advocating for your preferred screen format?


Josh Z said:


> Do you believe that the Ultron close-up, filmed with the camera the same distance from the actor's face, is _supposed to_ be smaller? And if so, what could possibly lead you to that conclusion?


I believe that directors are much more concerned about the composition and arrangement of the objects within the frame than with whether someone views the film from e.g. row 5 or row 20. Directors aren't composing to fill exactly 26.5 degrees of the viewer's field of view. They're composing to fill some proportion of a box that they know will be viewed at many different sizes.


Josh Z said:


> Brad Bird, director of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol:
> 
> _"I didn't want it to be the definitive one for home [viewing]," he says. "What it does is it makes the Panavision look small to me, rather than making the full-frame stuff look large. There's also the problem of the aspect ratio itself; *do you put black bars on the left and right of the screen?*_


So you're saying that he's against black bars on the side of his films? No one tell the CIH police!


Josh Z said:


> _It starts to become this kaleidoscope thing ... unless you're seeing it on a screen that's five stories high and you're forced to sit close. That's the IMAX experience."
> 
> He explains: "When you're sitting watching IMAX, the Panavision part fills your point of view. And then suddenly you see above that point of view and below it drop away. _


So far he's describing exactly the experience that people with taller screens are working to emulate!


Josh Z said:


> _And most people, when they watch at home, sit across the room, and they're *watching a little box*. And *if that's the case*, I would rather have them see the Panavision thing, because it's not drawing attention to itself. In retrospect, I probably should have [made] both versions available, but there has been this tendency to say that that version is the definitive version, and the Panavision version is not. *To me, if you're going to watch it at home, I would rather have a consistent aspect ratio* - we even filmed the IMAX sequences so they would look good in Panavision."
> _



So there we have it - Brad Bird's intent is that we watch Ghost Protocol at home on a 'little box' in Panavision. That settles it. Let's throw out our projectors.
Or wait a minute, maybe his actual intent is more like:
_If you're watching on a little box, just watch the Panavision._

It's pretty clear that his intent is *exactly* what those of us with maximally wide, higher-aspect ratio screens are aiming for - complete immersion in the Panavision portions with the addition of EVEN MORE in the IMAX portions. He just doesn't have faith in home viewers to be equipped to do that.


Josh Z said:


> Scott Derrickson, director of Doctor Strange:
> 
> _"Apparently @disneyplus has elected to stream at least some Marvel movies (including Doctor Strange) in the 1.9 IMAX aspect ratio instead of 2:39. I can only speak for myself, but *I never intended that aspect ratio to be used for home viewing.*"
> 
> "I selected specific scenes for 1.9 in IMAX and framed those scenes for BOTH 1.9 and 2.39 — that is what
> @disneyplus is using, so it toggles aspect ratios during the film. But I never imagined that the 1.9 IMAX version for steaming."
> 
> "This is important — apparently @disneyplus provides the 1.9 as an option, and I’ve also been told that option exists on the Blue-ray. This certainly makes this less problematic, but I* still maintain that I never intended anyone to see the 1.9 version on tv."*_


It's a good thing that none of us are talking about viewing these movies on TVs.

Some of us are implementing equipment to be able to view these films at home as close to the director's intent as possible (thanks for these quotes). Others are posting screenshots of Robert Downey Junior's face and watching 'made for TV' versions of these films.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> To my post you quoted maybe you can answer me directly. How did Victor Fleming in 1939 know how immersive/tall The Wizard of Oz should be viewed compared to Star Wars? Is it all about measuring heads and comparing?


Your logic is completely warped. The question isn't how Fleming knew how his movie would compare to something else in the future. The question is did George Lucas know how his movie would be viewed compared to Wizard of Oz. And he most certainly did.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> _Who in this forum is talking about the best way to watch films on a TV? _
> 
> However, your quotes provide significant enlightenment on one point: When directors talk about "home viewing" they're visualizing folks watching on a TV - they're not thinking of people using home projection systems that approximate theatrical viewing. So all such quotes are irrelevant to our situations.
> 
> Find me a director saying that people using projectors at home to approximate the theater experience shouldn't be viewing the 1.9 versions of their films.
> 
> I'll wait.


Phil, you do not have an IMAX screen in your home. You may like to pretend that you do, but you don't. The rules of IMAX apply only in an IMAX threater with a 50-foot tall screen, and nowhere else. Your home theater screen, no matter how big it is by home theater standards, is much closer to being a TV than it is to being IMAX.

IMAX height should exceed your field of vision. You cannot do that in your home theater without literally pressing your nose against the screen material.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Have you asked them and confirmed that they approve of (and indeed prescribe) your screen dimensions and seating position?
> 2 different questions. Commercial theater standards are about providing a uniform acceptable product to a range of customers. The seat that they would choose is more directly related to their 'intent' for how each of their films would be best viewed. Whether they "agree with" commercial standards is not directly related to their artistic intent.
> 
> But just a few sentences ago you had Spielberg and Vileneuve endorsing your theatrical standards!


No, outside of Hollywood elite I doubt anyone has a director visiting their homes. Theaters have standards they should be following in construction and design. Directors use professional screening rooms. That they may choose slightly different seating doesn't negate that standards exist.

I'm not sure why keep implying I have anything to do setting established standards. It's not really productive.



mattsteg said:


> I'm sure the director of the Ford truck commercial's artistic intent was fully realized.
> 
> The people that I most often see advocating *ignoring* film ratios (which again - are at their most fundamental shapes...) and not presenting films as intended are guys with scope screens cropping out and discarding material from multiaspect films.


I'm hoping that first part is a joke (it did get a chuckle). 

Many IMAX films fall into the category of select scenes that simply have more information in the top/bottom not crucial to framing. This allows the frame to be cropped to display on a scope screen in theaters that are not IMAX. Cropping these films at home in the same manner isn't killing the composition. Films that use IMAX that aren't shot this way should be viewed the same as 16:9 material.


----------



## bud16415

Philnick said:


> _Who in this forum is talking about the best way to watch films on a TV? _
> 
> However, your quotes provide significant enlightenment on one point: When directors talk about "home viewing" they're visualizing folks watching on a TV - they're not thinking of people using home projection systems that approximate theatrical viewing. So all such quotes are irrelevant to our situations.
> 
> Find me a director saying that people using projectors at home to approximate the theater experience shouldn't be viewing the 1.9 versions of their films.
> 
> I'll wait.


This is correct The directors mentioned have this idea of what home presentation is and we know they are thinking TV sets but are they thinking 85” TVs sitting 6’ away or are they thinking 32” TVs sitting 10’ away. They could be thinking home front projection on a 120” screen from 8’ away. What do they know? They know we are buying their product on 4k UHD HDR BD media with the latest theatrical sound tracks suitable for theater sound reproduction. Why are they not saying I never expected people viewing at home to hear theater sounds quality I only ever wanted a mono sound track provided on the media suitable for TV.

The directors can express their desires as they see fit but would be wise to ask their fans that pay big bucks for their product what they like. You don’t have to dig too deep to see that the average Joe out there likes to remove black bars when they are there to cover image that fans know should be there. Ford once made cars any color you want as long as it was black. They quickly figured out it didn’t cost more to offer color and they sold more cars when they did.
It is such a simple matter with BD technology or even streaming to offer media cropped or un-cropped on the same media for no additional cost. How hard is it to figure out you will sell more when you offer a choice. I wouldn’t even care if the selection window popped up and noted that Director Brad Bird recommends this version for little box viewing from across the room.
Like Ford all it will take is a few directors offering both cuts and the others will see sales increase and fans applaud and it will become the norm just like buying a red or blue car,and still being able to buy a black one.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> _Who in this forum is talking about the best way to watch films on a TV? _
> 
> However, your quotes provide significant enlightenment on one point: When directors talk about "home viewing" they're visualizing folks watching on a TV - they're not thinking of people using home projection systems that approximate theatrical viewing. So all such quotes are irrelevant to our situations.
> 
> Find me a director saying that people using projectors at home to approximate the theater experience shouldn't be viewing the 1.9 versions of their films.
> 
> I'll wait.


I think that would be an interesting question to ask. Most of these directors have home theaters so I'm not sure if they consider home viewing to encompass home projection or not. 

We could make assumptions based on how they choose to release content, but reading too much into that probably wouldn't end up being a productive discussion.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> This is absolutely insane.
> So he isn't framed tighter in the *image you provided*, but is in the *frame*? That's complete nonsense. Image and frame are synonymous.
> 
> Yes, and unlike you I *measured the size of his face in the images...*and when presented constant height his face was bigger in the scope example.


I am acknowledging that the first screencap I grabbed was not an exact apples-to-apples comparison. Downey's face was tilted backward in the first Avengers shot, while it was not in the Ultron shot. This was my error for not waiting another two seconds for him to tilt his head down again.

Contrary to what you keep saying, this does not make his face larger in the first shot. It just means that it's at a different angle. You can see a little more of his chin, but you also see less of his forehead. Neverthelss, even then, it should've been pretty freaking obvious that those two images were much more comparable in size to each other in Constant Height than when the Ultron shot is letterboxed.

The new comparison I've made is closer to his head being in the same position in both shots. I am trying to make this comparison as fair as possible.










You, meanwhile, are acting like you believe these two images are so wildly different in scale...










... that you might as well just watch them like this, because it's all the same to you if there's even one pixel of difference between the two images.










And you accuse me of being disingenuous?


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> This is correct The directors mentioned have this idea of what home presentation is and we know they are thinking TV sets but are they thinking 85” TVs sitting 6’ away or are they thinking 32” TVs sitting 10’ away. They could be thinking home front projection on a 120” screen from 8’ away.


It's funny how the Variable Ratio versions of these movies didn't play on other cinema screens beyond IMAX. If a 120" home theater screen is equivalent to IMAX, then surely a 30-foot tall cinema screen would work even better?

And yet, huh, these VAR versions only played on actual IMAX screens. Other cinemas, which still have screens significantly larger than any home theater in the world, got 2.35:1 versions. 

So weird...

It's almost like the VAR versions of those movies were made specifically *for IMAX screens and IMAX screens alone, *where they'd be projected so large you couldn't see the whole image in your field of view. Which, again, you manifestly *do not* have in your home theater.

120" may be larger than a TV, but it's nowhere near comparable to IMAX.


----------



## bud16415

Comic Relief.

I think the Ford Truck commercial before the feature film being projected more immersive than the film is pretty funny. Last night I was watching a 16:9 TV show and a Ford commercial came on in Scope AR. Maybe they do that to average out the mental anguish they cause.

I also think it is pretty funny Phil was advised as I often have been that I don’t have an IMAX theater at home because I do not have 60’ ceilings. That’s why I call mine BudMAX and Phil should adopt PhilMAX as his standard. I have always been impressed how Josh has a 45’ high media room at home as he has a proper scope theater. Not many can accomplish a 1250” scope screen at home and a projector bright enough to light it up.

What I really find amusing is if a movie is made by a director that for whatever reason decides to make part of the movie in scope and part of the movie in IMAX1.89 and it expands and contracts a few times it is then ok to release it to the public for TVs and projectors and even iPhones with the IMAX image. If the movie is fully IMAX then the proper way to watch it at home on TVs and projectors and even iPhones is in scope, unless the movie is called Avatar. I have been waiting for Nolan or one or the other expander guys to make a movie where the first 5 seconds of the movie is scope and then expands to IMAX for the next 2 hours.


----------



## dschulz

Josh Z said:


> It's funny how the Variable Ratio versions of these movies didn't play on other cinema screens beyond IMAX. If a 120" home theater screen is equivalent to IMAX, then surely a 30-foot tall cinema screen would work even better?
> 
> And yet, huh, these VAR versions only played on actual IMAX screens. Other cinemas, which still have screens significantly larger than any home theater in the world, got 2.35:1 versions.
> 
> So weird...
> 
> It's almost like the VAR versions of those movies were made specifically *for IMAX screens and IMAX screens alone, *where they'd be projected so large you couldn't see the whole image in your field of view. Which, again, you manifestly *do not* have in your home theater.
> 
> 120" may be larger than a TV, but it's nowhere near comparable to IMAX.


This to me is the clincher to the argument. Any of these VAR films, or the ones that were constant AR but 1.90 in IMAX and 2.39 everywhere else _could_ have been released Flat, which, by the logic of the most enthusiastic CIW enthusiasts, is _even larger_ than 1.90. And yet they always release Scope DCPs for 99% of cinemas and then a Scope version for home video. It's almost as if they prefer the Scope composition, but take advantage of the unique-to-IMAX properties of IMAX cinemas to provide a good experience in them as well.


----------



## fatherom

dschulz said:


> And yet they always release Scope DCPs for 99% of cinemas *and then a Scope version for home video*.


If that were the case, then the Nolan films, on 4K disc, wouldn't have VAR (as an example).


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> Your logic is completely warped. The question isn't how Fleming knew how his movie would compare to something else in the future. The question is did George Lucas know how his movie would be viewed compared to Wizard of Oz. And he most certainly did.


It's a 2-way street. I'm sure every egomaniacal director would love their epic material screened in a more impressive fashion than that of others. That doesn't mean that it respects the artistic intent of the other directors.











jeahrens said:


> No, outside of Hollywood elite I doubt anyone has a director visiting their homes. Theaters have standards they should be following in construction and design. Directors use professional screening rooms. That they may choose slightly different seating doesn't negate that standards exist.
> 
> I'm not sure why keep implying I have anything to do setting established standards. It's not really productive.


What are these standards anyway? And what is their *purpose? *We've already established that there are theaters with scope screens, theaters with 16/17:9 screens, IMAX theaters with giant screens...

And their purpose is generally something along the lines of making money and marketing...and establishing a baseline *range* of experiences available in a quality theater while maintain reasonable operating cost and complexity. Any home setup that lies within the specified range for content being presented is acceptable.

Directors choosing slightly different seats is no different than choosing slightly different heights. It's a perfectly reasonable choice that respects the artistic intent.

It's primarily a cost/complexity issu that has lead to theaters tending to keep either height or width constant - not some militant one true way to present material while respecting artistic intent. With modern home projectors this isn't really a valid consideration for dedicated home theater enthusiasts (unless you want to argue for 16:9 screens as the best presentation, and I don't see anyone in that camp here), and screen aspect should be selected based on the desired experience.


It's pretty clear that commercial standards cover a range of solutions, while *you *have converged on what *you *have decided is the *one true way*. That's why I've been "implying that you have anything to do with setting standards" - not because you set actual standards, but because you've decided on a very specific interpretation of what you believe commercial standards (which you never *cite*) say as the one true path.

You're not following standards. You're inventing them.



jeahrens said:


> I'm hoping that first part is a joke (it did get a chuckle).
> 
> Many IMAX films fall into the category of select scenes that simply have more information in the top/bottom not crucial to framing. This allows the frame to be cropped to display on a scope screen in theaters that are not IMAX. Cropping these films at home in the same manner isn't killing the composition. Films that use IMAX that aren't shot this way should be viewed the same as 16:9 material.


I love how in your world cropping movies respects the directors intent, but showing them 10% larger than your preference somehow doesn't.



Josh Z said:


> I am acknowledging that the first screencap I grabbed was not an apples-to-apples comparison. Downey's face was tilted backward in the first Avengers shot, while it was not in the Ultron shot. This was my error for not waiting another two seconds for him to tilt his head down again.
> 
> Contrary to what you keep saying, this does not make his face larger in the first shot. It just means that it's at a different angle. You can see a little more of his chin, but you also see less of his forehead. Neverthelss, even then, it should've been pretty freaking obvious that those two images were much more comparable in size to each other in Constant Height than when the Ultron shot is letterboxed.


(I also measured the interpupil distance which was about 10% different. It's not just the angle.)

And why do you keep insisting on comparing to a projection format that no one participating in this discussion is advocating?


Josh Z said:


> The new comparison I've made is closer to his head being in the same position in both shots. I am trying to make this comparison as fair as possible.


How is a comparison between your preferred format and a format that no one here is advocating "as fair as possible"?


Josh Z said:


> You, meanwhile, are acting like you believe these two images are so wildly different in size...


I don't believe that they're wildly different in size or framing. They're 10-20% different.


Josh Z said:


> ... that you might as well just watch them like this, because it looks the same to you.


Why would I make getting tight crops of RDJ's face to be identical in size my life goal? That's just bizarre. You might be different, but I do more in my theater than just loop RDJ's face. It's not even in my top-1000 list of priorities.


Josh Z said:


> And you accuse me of being disingenuous?


Yes. Because you are! There's no guidance that "close up face size" needs to be held constant, yet you present it as a given. And then use as your example photos of faces that are framed 10-20% differently. And then fixate on a false choice between scope and hdtv ratio screens when no one that is actively participating in this discussion uses an HDTV-ratio screen.


Josh Z said:


> It's funny how the Variable Ratio versions of these movies didn't play on other cinema screens beyond IMAX. If a 120" home theater screen is equivalent to IMAX, then surely a 30-foot tall cinema screen would work even better?


It might be a shocker to you, but seating distance matters and we control this in our home theater designs. The range of seating distances in a commercial theater is fixed at time of construction. IMAX content is composed so that the vertical angle of view of the image is within a prescribed range. The back row of a non-IMAX theater will never provide an IMAX type experience. A home theater with a big screen and close-in seating can.

Those of us pushing for large screens with close seating in home theaters are much more likely to have a vertical viewing angle within the range of what IMAX considers acceptable than a non-IMAX commercial theater.

For example, consider this IMAX screen. 85ft wide (if we consider 1.9 aspect material, the image height is about 45ft - scope material would be more like 36 ft.).
Seating ranges from 35ft to 68ft ftom the screen. The back row is 1.5x image height (or about 2x scope image height). This is very much achievable in a home environment, but not something I'd expect to see in a non-IMAX commercial theater designed within THX/SMPTE standards.











https://www.giantscreencinema.com/Portals/0/Austin%202014/AUSTIN_IMAX%20Theater%20Booth%20specs%20and%20pics%20updated.pdf






__





Giant Screen Specifications






www.giantscreencinema.com




(apologies for a curved vs flat screen - it's the only one I could easily find seating distances for)



Josh Z said:


> And yet, huh, these VAR versions only played on actual IMAX screens. Other cinemas, which still have screens significantly larger than any home theater in the world, got 2.35:1 versions.
> 
> So weird...


The seating locations for IMAX and "normal" cinema are much different. The back row of a THX-compliant theater might be over twice as far from the screen as allowable in a giant screen theater. That will clearly break the immersion.


Josh Z said:


> It's almost like the VAR versions of those movies were made specifically *for IMAX screens and IMAX screens alone, *where they'd be projected so large you couldn't see the whole image in your field of view.


They're made for screens that fill a specific range of viewing angles.


Josh Z said:


> Which, again, you manifestly *do not* have in your home theater
> 
> 120" may be larger than a TV, but it's nowhere near comparable to IMAX.


Just sit closer. A seating arrangement that puts at ~2x screen height or closer to scope material (102 inches on a 120in wide screen) combined with a screen that's tall enough provides an experience that is within what IMAX deems acceptable, and just barely within SMPTE guidelines as well. This happens to match the size of my screen and location of my seating. YMMV.



bud16415 said:


> I think the Ford Truck commercial before the feature film being projected more immersive than the film is pretty funny.


Honestly it's no difference saying Lucas wanted his material to be grander than the Wizard of Oz. Of course the later work wants to be more prominent.


dschulz said:


> This to me is the clincher to the argument. Any of these VAR films, or the ones that were constant AR but 1.90 in IMAX and 2.39 everywhere else _could_ have been released Flat, which, by the logic of the most enthusiastic *CIW enthusiasts*, is _even larger_ than 1.90.


Who are these CIW enthusiasts? What are they claiming?


dschulz said:


> And yet they always release Scope DCPs for 99% of cinemas and then a Scope version for home video. It's almost as if they prefer the Scope composition, but take advantage of the unique-to-IMAX properties of IMAX cinemas to provide a good experience in them as well.


No, it's that the IMAX experience is built around sitting closer to the screen than possible in most seats of non-IMAX theaters. That sort of visual immersion is only possible in IMAX theaters, or at home - and is outside of the standards of typical commercial theaters.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> It's funny how the Variable Ratio versions of these movies didn't play on other cinema screens beyond IMAX. If a 120" home theater screen is equivalent to IMAX, then surely a 30-foot tall cinema screen would work even better?
> 
> And yet, huh, these VAR versions only played on actual IMAX screens. Other cinemas, which still have screens significantly larger than any home theater in the world, got 2.35:1 versions.
> 
> So weird...
> 
> It's almost like the VAR versions of those movies were made specifically *for IMAX screens and IMAX screens alone, *where they'd be projected so large you couldn't see the whole image in your field of view. Which, again, you manifestly *do not* have in your home theater.
> 
> 120" may be larger than a TV, but it's nowhere near comparable to IMAX.


Why in the world would they then put them on BD as variable? Oh I know it was because they are LieMAX.

I have seen directors of IMAX action movies suggest they want every theater it plays in be a cut as large as the theater can handle.

It is insane to think Immersion IMAX or other wise is only a function of screen size. By definition visual immersion is a combination of screen size and seating distance. IMAX hardly mentions screen size anymore they are branded more with sound quality, picture quality, and immersive viewing. Many of the new IMAX1.89 theaters are retrofits of old conventional theaters. If you have a million bucks burning a hole in your pocket IMAX will come to your home and build you a certified IMAX at home theater. So it looks like IMAX doesn’t say you need a 60’ tall screen.

Phil isn’t claming to have an IMAX theater at home just as I’m not claiming that. What we are saying is with that media on a good size screen sitting 1-1.5 times the height of the screen away the movie fills our FOV in a way similar to how a modern IMAX1.89 theater would. Even IMAX has a variety of seating options for distance. I happen to like 1.5 x SH and that is well within the seating available in these theaters. Is this the same experence as a true IMAX venue? The answer is no. The reason being the distance between my eyes didn’t change nor the focal distance of my eyes. Is it somewhat close to IMAX? The answer is yes. If I had to take a guess it might be 60-80% of the real thing depending on the rest of the theater. Can it be done on a budget? Yes. Is your scope theater a true representation of a commercial scope theater? The answer is No. Is it somewhat close maybe 60-80%? The answer is Yes.
In ways other than immersion accuracy HT can and is a much better overall experence than a commercial theater. When you add it all together it is a subjective judgment but if you are a fan of motion pictures one worth making.


----------



## Ricoflashback

Wow, this is a heavy, heavy thread. There should be a disclaimer that you need to smoke two doobies before you read it. Rules of composition, artistic intent, intent of the filmmaker and the sacrosanct CIH arguments all on display. Interesting, somewhat confusing and very passionate arguments presented. For me, I don't have the right projector nor the space for a CIH setup. And in our new house, I won't even have a dedicated theater room (boo.) It was a trade off in a warmer weather climate and having a big enough, separate room (no basements where we're going - or very few) or a pool & a hot tub. The latter won out.

Add to the fact that I stream, exclusively, or watch cable and need subtitles. (For some reason, I never need subtitles for news coverage.) And, I'll be relegated to a UST projector and locked into a 16 x 9 screen. But I read, with great interest, the wall concept. I don't know how I could treat my living room, multipurpose room wall to optimize it for a UST Projector without it sticking out like a sore thumb. But there has to be a way to improve the wall I'll have without the aforementioned issue. I do know if I could solve this problem, I could just set my PJ down and move it forward or backward to maximize the picture size. And when we're not watching anything - the room doesn't have a large screen overtaking everything. I already have designs on a stealth cabinet that will hide all the electronics but open up in the middle for my large center speaker.

Lastly - - has anybody made a TV or projector screen to properly show "The Last Supper?" Best argument for the wall concept I've heard. Peace to the thread.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Why in the world would they then put them on BD as variable?


Well, in the case of Doctor Strange, the studio put the VAR version on Blu-ray (3D edition) and streaming against the express wishes of the film's director.

So, you tell me, why in the world did they do that?


----------



## mattsteg

Ricoflashback said:


> Lastly - - has anybody made a TV or projector screen to properly show "The Last Supper?


These guys, actually.




__





"L'Ultima Cena" Interactive






mercurio.srv.di.unimi.it


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> What are these standards anyway? And what is their *purpose? *We've already established that there are theaters with scope screens, theaters with 16/17:9 screens, IMAX theaters with giant screens...
> 
> And their purpose is generally something along the lines of making money and marketing...and establishing a baseline *range* of experiences available in a quality theater while maintain reasonable operating cost and complexity. Any home setup that lies within the specified range for content being presented is acceptable.
> 
> Directors choosing slightly different seats is no different than choosing slightly different heights. It's a perfectly reasonable choice that respects the artistic intent.
> 
> It's primarily a cost/complexity issu that has lead to theaters tending to keep either height or width constant - not some militant one true way to present material while respecting artistic intent. With modern home projectors this isn't really a valid consideration for dedicated home theater enthusiasts (unless you want to argue for 16:9 screens as the best presentation, and I don't see anyone in that camp here), and screen aspect should be selected based on the desired experience.
> 
> 
> It's pretty clear that commercial standards cover a range of solutions, while *you *have converged on what *you *have decided is the *one true way*. That's why I've been "implying that you have anything to do with setting standards" - not because you set actual standards, but because you've decided on a very specific interpretation of what you believe commercial standards (which you never *cite*) say as the one true path.
> 
> You're not following standards. You're inventing them.
> 
> 
> I love how in your world cropping movies respects the directors intent, but showing them 10% larger than your preference somehow doesn't.
> 
> 
> (I also measured the interpupil distance which was about 10% different. It's not just the angle.)
> 
> And why do you keep insisting on comparing to a projection format that no one participating in this discussion is advocating?
> How is a comparison between your preferred format and a format that no one here is advocating "as fair as possible"?
> 
> I don't believe that they're wildly different in size or framing. They're 10-20% different.
> 
> Why would I make getting tight crops of RDJ's face to be identical in size my life goal? That's just bizarre. You might be different, but I do more in my theater than just loop RDJ's face. It's not even in my top-1000 list of priorities.
> 
> Yes. Because you are! There's no guidance that "close up face size" needs to be held constant, yet you present it as a given. And then use as your example photos of faces that are framed 10-20% differently. And then fixate on a false choice between scope and hdtv ratio screens when no one that is actively participating in this discussion uses an HDTV-ratio screen.
> 
> It might be a shocker to you, but seating distance matters and we control this in our home theater designs. The range of seating distances in a commercial theater is fixed at time of construction. IMAX content is composed so that the vertical angle of view of the image is within a prescribed range. The back row of a non-IMAX theater will never provide an IMAX type experience. A home theater with a big screen and close-in seating can.
> 
> Those of us pushing for large screens with close seating in home theaters are much more likely to have a vertical viewing angle within the range of what IMAX considers acceptable than a non-IMAX commercial theater.
> 
> For example, consider this IMAX screen. 85ft wide (if we consider 1.9 aspect material, the image height is about 45ft - scope material would be more like 36 ft.).
> Seating ranges from 35ft to 68ft ftom the screen. The back row is 1.5x image height (or about 2x scope image height). This is very much achievable in a home environment, but not something I'd expect to see in a non-IMAX commercial theater designed within THX/SMPTE standards.
> View attachment 3220358
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.giantscreencinema.com/Portals/0/Austin%202014/AUSTIN_IMAX%20Theater%20Booth%20specs%20and%20pics%20updated.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Giant Screen Specifications
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.giantscreencinema.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (apologies for a curved vs flat screen - it's the only one I could easily find seating distances for)
> 
> 
> The seating locations for IMAX and "normal" cinema are much different. The back row of a THX-compliant theater might be over twice as far from the screen as allowable in a giant screen theater. That will clearly break the immersion.
> 
> They're made for screens that fill a specific range of viewing angles.
> 
> Just sit closer. A seating arrangement that puts at ~2x screen height or closer to scope material (102 inches on a 120in wide screen) combined with a screen that's tall enough provides an experience that is within what IMAX deems acceptable, and just barely within SMPTE guidelines as well. This happens to match the size of my screen and location of my seating. YMMV.
> 
> 
> Honestly it's no difference saying Lucas wanted his material to be grander than the Wizard of Oz. Of course the later work wants to be more prominent.
> 
> Who are these CIW enthusiasts? What are they claiming?
> 
> No, it's that the IMAX experience is built around sitting closer to the screen than possible in most seats of non-IMAX theaters. That sort of visual immersion is only possible in IMAX theaters, or at home - and is outside of the standards of typical commercial theaters.


No, I haven't invented any standards. Simply educated myself over the years on the why and how of aspect ratios.

You seem to reading a lot into what I said about IMAX on a scope screen in the home. All I said was for IMAX content where the director has framed the IMAX footage to be center cropped to scope would not ruin the composition. It's up to the owner to decide if they prefer this or 16:9 with shifting aspect ratios. Both choices were available in the cinema, so both reflect how the film was intended to be seen (depending on venue). For IMAX films that aren't designed like this, I would say you should watch them in 16:9.


----------



## Josh Z

The "Just sit closer to your screen" argument is such a canard. What do you do, sit on the floor in front of your chair for some movies and stand in the back of the room for others?

Yes, cinemas have a wide range of seating. Most people, when given the choice (which they don't always have if the screening is crowded) have a preference for how close they sit that remains constant regardless of the aspect ratio of the picture. They don't sit in a closer row for 1.85:1 movies and move to the back for 2.35:1 movies. They walk into the theater, look at the size of the screen, and pick a seat the suits the angular view they prefer. And even if it's a totally unconscious calculation in their heads, that angular view is based on height, not width. We judge something as being "big" or "small" on how tall it is. It's easier and more comfortable to turn our eyes or our head side to side than it is to crane our necks up to see something too tall.

In home theater, there can be significant disavantages to moving your seat closer to the screen for some content and not others. As you get closer, the pixel structure of the image is more evident. The audio from your speakers and subwoofer also has a sweet-spot. Moving away from that sweet-spot, in either direction, means that the audio may not converge on your ears as well and bass could totally disappear into a null. That's why Audyssey recommends that its calibration microphone positions all be within a two-foot radius of the prime listening position.

For all practical purposes, home theater owners do not change seat from movie to movie. They have one seat that is their prime seat, and that's where they sit. Every time.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Your logic is completely warped. The question isn't how Fleming knew how his movie would compare to something else in the future. The question is did George Lucas know how his movie would be viewed compared to Wizard of Oz. And he most certainly did.


I am willing to bet George Lucas or any other director ever gave 2 seconds of thought as to how Immersive an Academy AR movie made before they were born would have been viewed. If you know George personally please have him stop in and explain.

Here is what I do know. Rob Hahn is a member here, he is an A-list cinematographer and has built a home theater that AVS awarded the Home Theater of the Decade award to. I have had occasion to chat about his theater in the thread he started detailing the build of his theater. Every detail of his HT was painstakingly thought out and he selected a screen AR taller than CIH 2.35:1. If memory serves me he selected something close to 2.0:1. Trust me his theater was not in any way height or width constrained in any way as it started with earth moving equipment digging foundations set to finished plans.

I asked him why the odd AR and was it an eye towards future IMAX1.89 or anything else? He went as far as putting in a front row of seats that are super immersive and would work out perfect for IMAX immersion with the 2.0:1 screen. His answer amazed me. He said no the front row of seats was not there to be sat in they were to create the feeling of not sitting in the front row of a theater so he wanted the visual of space in front of him. He said he had little desire to design for the new and few IMAX movies released. He said he had an appreciation for older Academy movies and felt a 2.35:1 screen didn’t give them their due, so he felt it necessary to go taller and implement a state of the art automatic 4way masking system.
Of course this is just one mans opinion and George Lucas may agree or disagree. For me Rob’s logic resonated and then in doing more research on my own I discovered seating to validate his opinion was certainly an option in the 1930s.


----------



## mattsteg

Ricoflashback said:


> Rules of composition, artistic intent, intent of the filmmaker and the sacrosanct CIH arguments all on display. Interesting, somewhat confusing and very passionate arguments presented.


The primary value of "CIH" is getting people to think about screen aspect outside of a 16:9 box and moving away from just blindly matching their projector. The biggest downside is that it seems to attract zealots who once they've broken outside of that box, decide that their new box is the one clear way. This is quite unfortunate - especially when they present no real insight pertaining to fact-based arguments to in favor of CIH and its benefits. Instead they resort to fabricating standards and attacking practices that no participants in the discussion are promoting.

The benefits of CIH are that it's "simple" to implement (easy masking, simplistic operation) and provides a showy presentation of most 'scope films. The downsides are that it breaks some content, pushes you toward cropping other comment that's otherwise composed for a more immersive experience, leaves a lot of empty space where a screen could be, and may leave some 1.78/1.85 and especially academy material looking a bit sad and small.

Most of the downsides are resolvable by running a taller screen (and if you're a masking fan, doing 4-way masking). It's even quite possible (if you buy in to CIH) to operate that screen just like a CIH screen 90% of the time, and only use the extra height for the occasional films that break the CIH mental model.

*Choosing screen height and screen width are 2 independent choices. *We don't need to tie them together.



Josh Z said:


> The "Just sit closer to your screen" argument is such a canard. What do you do, sit on the floor in front of your chair for some movies and stand in the back of the room for others?


It's not a canard at all. "Just sit closer" only means that the experience is achievable at home, provided one gives proper consideration to screen sizing and seating layout. The size of the image may be adjusted to adapt to the desired experience.

My preferred seating location happens to be at a distance that's a reasonable compromise for both. It's also at a location where IMAX and SMPTE theater standards/recommendations overlap, if we want to get into *standards*.


Josh Z said:


> Yes, cinemas have a wide range of seating. Most people, when given the choice (which they don't always have if the screening is crowded) have a preference for how close they sit that remains constant regardless of the aspect ratio of the picture. They don't sit in a closer row for 1.85:1 movies and move to the back for 2.35:1 movies. They walk into the theater, look at the size of the screen, and pick a seat the suits the angular view they prefer. And even if it's a totally unconscious calculation in their heads, that angular view is based on height, not width. We judge something as being "big" or "small" on how tall it is. It's easier and more comfortable to turn our eyes or our head side to side than it is to crane our necks up to see something too tall.


Yes, there's a tendency to select seats in a theater based on viewing angle. From a practical perspective for me this is based on neck-angle to the top of the screen which is something I have a bit more control over in a home theater. In practice, I'll comfortably run most 1.85 material a tad taller than 2.35 material - but nothing is locking me into doing so.


Josh Z said:


> In home theater, there can be significant disavantages to moving your seat closer to the screen for some content and not others.


No one is advocating for that. We're advocating for taller-than-scope screen. My personal preference is a screen sized so that scope images, when presented at full width, achieve my optimum vertical viewing angle, but also with added height to accomodate my preference for viewing 1.85 images a tad taller (which is comfortable because I have better control over seating orientation and sightlines than in a commercial theater), and for viewing the occasional content DESIGNED to fill a "larger than normal" portion of my vertical field of vision with peripheral imagery.

Nothing precludes me from projecting and viewing 1.85/2.35 content as CIH if I want to. There's no rule that I use every available inch of my screen. I wouldn't make other use of the vertical wall space that my screen occupies - it'd just be an empty wall. If it's "too big" for 1.85 material I can just view it smaller.


Josh Z said:


> As you get closer, the pixel structure of the image is more evident.


This applies to commercial theaters as well...and more to the point it applies when viewing at the same viewing angles regardless of seating distance. If pixel structure is restricting your viewing distance...you are choosing to sit further away from the image than you would prefer and viewing a smaller image than your preference.

*If you're choosing your image size to prevent pixel structure...CIH isn't "preserving" the presentation of 1.85:1 content...it's intentionally making it worse* in order to not outshine 2.35 content (which has a larger and more visible pixel-structure than 1.85 when projected CIH). *Do you really want to go down this discussion path?*


Josh Z said:


> The audio from your speakers and subwoofer also has a sweet-spot. Moving away from that sweet-spot, in either direction, means that the audio may not converge on your ears as well and bass could totally disappear into a null. That's why Audyssey recommends that its calibration microphone positions all be within a two-foot radius of the prime listening position.
> 
> For all practical purposes, home theater owners do not change seat from movie to movie. They have one seat that is their prime seat, and that's where they sit. Every time.


Anyone considering CIH has the means to adjust the size of their projected image without changing their seating location. None of what you are discussing is relevant. With a properly sized screen you are able to adjust your viewing experience by changing the size of the projected image rather than by changing the seating location.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> The "Just sit closer to your screen" argument is such a canard. What do you do, sit on the floor in front of your chair for some movies and stand in the back of the room for others?
> 
> Yes, cinemas have a wide range of seating. Most people, when given the choice (which they don't always have if the screening is crowded) have a preference for how close they sit that remains constant regardless of the aspect ratio of the picture. They don't sit in a closer row for 1.85:1 movies and move to the back for 2.35:1 movies. They walk into the theater, look at the size of the screen, and pick a seat the suits the angular view they prefer. And even if it's a totally unconscious calculation in their heads, that angular view is based on height, not width. We judge something as being "big" or "small" on how tall it is. It's easier and more comfortable to turn our eyes or our head side to side than it is to crane our necks up to see something too tall.
> 
> In home theater, there can be significant disavantages to moving your seat closer to the screen for some content and not others. As you get closer, the pixel structure of the image is more evident. The audio from your speakers and subwoofer also has a sweet-spot. Moving away from that sweet-spot, in either direction, means that the audio may not converge on your ears as well and bass could totally disappear into a null. That's why Audyssey recommends that its calibration microphone positions all be within a two-foot radius of the prime listening position.
> 
> For all practical purposes, home theater owners do not change seat from movie to movie. They have one seat that is their prime seat, and that's where they sit. Every time.


Yes I sit on the floor and cram in behind my seat to vary immersion because it would be way to simple to just adjust my zoom and stay in my seat. I’m beginning to think you never read what others say and explain. So I will make it simple.

When you change from scope to flat you pick up your remote control and push a button. The projector then zooms. This zooming keeps you from watching as CIW. I know this next part is tricky but someone doing CIH+IMAX or CIA or variable like me can do the same thing. Now comes the really far out part it will blow your mind. If you keep your height constant it is like your seat didn’t move but you transported from a scope theater to a flat theater. OMG this is almost better than watching movies this transporting stuff. Hang on one more step. If I press my zoom when watching a scope movie and it gets larger I transported from the seat I was in to another seat closer to the screen. You have to be careful here because if someone happens to be in that seat your body will merge with them. It is a molecular thing and has happened to Spock a few times. 
Another really cool part of doing zoom transporting is your speakers transport in the opposite direction that you travel in and end up being perfect.


----------



## Philnick

bud16415 said:


> Comic Relief.
> . . .
> I also think it is pretty funny Phil was advised as I often have been that I don’t have an IMAX theater at home because I do not have 60’ ceilings. That’s why I call mine BudMAX and Phil should adopt PhilMAX as his standard. I have always been impressed how Josh has a 45’ high media room at home as he has a proper scope theater. Not many can accomplish a 1250” scope screen at home and a projector bright enough to light it up. . . .


Considering that both Josh and I live in the area around Boston, Massachusetts, I'm astounded at how rich he must be to have a room big enough to hold a true scope theater.


----------



## Dan in Canada

mattsteg said:


> ...
> The benefits of CIH are that it's "simple" to implement (easy masking, simplistic operation) and provides a showy presentation of most 'scope films. The downsides are that it breaks some content, pushes you toward cropping other comment that's otherwise composed for a more immersive experience, leaves a lot of empty space where a screen could be, and may leave some 1.78/1.85 and especially academy material looking a bit sad and small.
> ...


CIH is also much closer to the way large cinema screens are run, with the exception of Imax screens. Where I have seen movies, 1.85 is mostly used for smaller screens that are built with less-expensive films in mind and occasional overflow of scope material screenings. Just look at the THX specs, they assume a scope screen format.

CIH is not a moral imperative, it's just a way of thinking about screen size and image format.

As with most aesthetic standards, exceptions prove the rule. Yes, IMAX breaks CIH. There are ways of dealing with that, just as there have been ways for studios to deal with shot-on-IMAX film finishing and distribution. Just as there have been hard questions about how to present giant frescoes or landscape paintings in photographic reproductions.



> *Choosing screen height and screen width are 2 independent choices. *We don't need to tie them together.
> 
> It's not a canard at all. "Just sit closer" only means that the experience is achievable at home, provided one gives proper consideration to screen sizing and seating layout. The size of the image may be adjusted to adapt to the desired experience.
> 
> My preferred seating location happens to be at a distance that's a reasonable compromise for both. It's also at a location where IMAX and SMPTE theater standards/recommendations overlap, if we want to get into *standards*.


I get what you're saying about compromise (something we all live with if we pay attention to details), but suggesting that a "reference" seat could be shifted by *double* the screen distance in a well-designed home theater is frankly absurd. Nobody has a sound system that's calibrated that way, certainly. You're making a compromise either way.

CIH is just a recommendation about how to choose image size when setting up a projector. If you want the close-up shots in Jurassic Park to be as tall in your FOV as the IMAX landscape shots in Dune, more power to you. If you've got room for an IMAX-aspect screen and you're happy not filling it with most of what you watch, great!



> Anyone considering CIH has the means to adjust the size of their projected image without changing their seating location. None of what you are discussing is relevant. With a properly sized screen you are able to adjust your viewing experience by changing the size of the projected image rather than by changing the seating location.


You're begging the question: "What is a properly sized screen?" You're also assuming a lot that doesn't match how the majority of screens are installed.
CIH is one way to define that. There are others. Any approach to projection that isn't addressing the letterboxes baked into blu-ray/streaming releases is not answering the whole question.
.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> The primary value of "CIH" is getting people to think about screen aspect outside of a 16:9 box and moving away from just blindly matching their projector. The biggest downside is that it seems to attract zealots who once they've broken outside of that box, decide that their new box is the one clear way. This is quite unfortunate - especially when they present no real insight pertaining to fact-based arguments to in favor of CIH and its benefits. Instead they resort to fabricating standards and attacking practices that no participants in the discussion are promoting.


You can express your viewpoint without using terms like "zealot". I don't find using hyperbole like that to strengthen a position. No one is fabricating anything. The insight you seek is easily researched. Theatrical aspect ratios don't exist in a vacuum with relation to each other.



mattsteg said:


> The benefits of CIH are that it's "simple" to implement (easy masking, simplistic operation) and provides a showy presentation of most 'scope films. The downsides are that it breaks some content, pushes you toward cropping other comment that's otherwise composed for a more immersive experience, leaves a lot of empty space where a screen could be, and may leave some 1.78/1.85 and especially academy material looking a bit sad and small.


Nothing pushes anyone to crop content on a scope screen. You can do it if you choose. It doesn't break any content either. I haven't found a single thing I couldn't comfortably watch.



mattsteg said:


> Most of the downsides are resolvable by running a taller screen (and if you're a masking fan, doing 4-way masking). It's even quite possible (if you buy in to CIH) to operate that screen just like a CIH screen 90% of the time, and only use the extra height for the occasional films that break the CIH mental model.


Yes, you can use what is usually termed CIH+IMAX. Unfortunately most don't and treat IMAX the same as 1.85:1, which is no better or worse of an experience to be had on a scope screen. I think it's unfortunate what little new IMAX we do get is cropped to 1.78:1. I'd prefer it uncropped.

*


mattsteg said:



Choosing screen height and screen width are 2 independent choices.

Click to expand...

*


mattsteg said:


> We don't need to tie them together.


It's about whatever goals you want. You will have to choose a height and width which will end up giving the end product an aspect ratio. If that meets your goal, then you have chosen well.



mattsteg said:


> It's not a canard at all. "Just sit closer" only means that the experience is achievable at home, provided one gives proper consideration to screen sizing and seating layout. The size of the image may be adjusted to adapt to the desired experience.
> 
> My preferred seating location happens to be at a distance that's a reasonable compromise for both. It's also at a location where IMAX and SMPTE theater standards/recommendations overlap, if we want to get into *standards*.
> 
> Yes, there's a tendency to select seats in a theater based on viewing angle. From a practical perspective for me this is based on neck-angle to the top of the screen which is something I have a bit more control over in a home theater. In practice, I'll comfortably run most 1.85 material a tad taller than 2.35 material - but nothing is locking me into doing so.
> 
> No one is advocating for that. We're advocating for taller-than-scope screen. My personal preference is a screen sized so that scope images, when presented at full width, achieve my optimum vertical viewing angle, but also with added height to accomodate my preference for viewing 1.85 images a tad taller (which is comfortable because I have better control over seating orientation and sightlines than in a commercial theater), and for viewing the occasional content DESIGNED to fill a "larger than normal" portion of my vertical field of vision with peripheral imagery.
> 
> Nothing precludes me from projecting and viewing 1.85/2.35 content as CIH if I want to. There's no rule that I use every available inch of my screen. I wouldn't make other use of the vertical wall space that my screen occupies - it'd just be an empty wall. If it's "too big" for 1.85 material I can just view it smaller.
> 
> This applies to commercial theaters as well...and more to the point it applies when viewing at the same viewing angles regardless of seating distance. If pixel structure is restricting your viewing distance...you are choosing to sit further away from the image than you would prefer and viewing a smaller image than your preference.
> 
> *If you're choosing your image size to prevent pixel structure...CIH isn't "preserving" the presentation of 1.85:1 content...it's intentionally making it worse* in order to not outshine 2.35 content (which has a larger and more visible pixel-structure than 1.85 when projected CIH). *Do you really want to go down this discussion path?*
> 
> Anyone considering CIH has the means to adjust the size of their projected image without changing their seating location. None of what you are discussing is relevant. With a properly sized screen you are able to adjust your viewing experience by changing the size of the projected image rather than by changing the seating location.


It has been discussed that people could move their chairs based on the aspect ratio displayed to correct for the deficit in vertical immersion a narrow screen will introduce in wider AR material. I think Josh was pointing out the issues and impracticalities here.

If you want a "taller" screen that's certainly your choice. At the end of the day it's you that needs to be happy with it.


----------



## mattsteg

Dan in Canada said:


> CIH is also much closer to the way large cinema screens are run, with the exception of Imax screens.


Of course it is, for a combination of reasons technical, economic, historic, and artistic. From an historical perspective, scope evolved as an explicitly wider format and money was pumped into equipping theaters with wide screens to handle that and provide a spectacle to attract people away from their TVs. And from a technical perspective theaters aren't likely to invest in something like 4-way masking - CIH or CIW are the easy choices, and of those 2 CIH is better.


Dan in Canada said:


> *CIH is not a moral imperative, *it's just a way of thinking about screen size and image format.


It seems like others here do not share your opinion there.


Dan in Canada said:


> I get what you're saying about compromise (something we all live with if we pay attention to details), but suggesting that a "reference" seat could be shifted by *double* the screen distance in a well-designed home theater is frankly absurd. Nobody has a sound system that's calibrated that way, certainly. You're making a compromise either way.


Who's talking about moving reference seats in a home theater?  My seating location is at ~2x scope height, which is 1.5x 1.9 IMAX height. This is within what IMAX deems acceptable, and also within what SMPTE deems acceptable (it's at their minimum recommended viewing distance.).

If I preferred a smaller scope image (for example, SMPTE reference 3x screen height) I'd just zoom my projector. No one's shifting their seat around.


jeahrens said:


> You can express your viewpoint without using terms like "zealot". I don't find using hyperbole like that to strengthen a position. No one is fabricating anything. The insight you seek is easily researched. Theatrical aspect ratios don't exist in a vacuum with relation to each other.


One of us has *posted actual standards *in this thread. It isn't you. Standards that dictate the *range *of acceptable theater experiences. By all means if you have a relevant standard which explicitly spells out CIH theater operation purely for presentation reasons, share it. If this is "easily researched" this shouldn't be a problem.


jeahrens said:


> Nothing pushes anyone to crop content on a scope screen. You can do it if you choose. It doesn't break any content either. I haven't found a single thing I couldn't comfortably watch.


You have the choice between cropping or zooming out and (dramatically) breaking your sacrosanct CIH. Scope Content with e.g. subs rendered outside of the image area is one example of content that breaks if you try to render it as CIH.


jeahrens said:


> It has been discussed that people could move their chairs based on the aspect ratio displayed to correct for the deficit in vertical immersion a narrow screen will introduce in wider AR material. I think Josh was pointing out the issues and impracticalities here.


Actually that hadn't been discussed at all. What *had* been mentioned is that seating distance and screen size *in combination* control visual immersion, and by selecting an appropriate seating distance this is achievable on a home-sized screen. Josh brought up the topic of moving seats around, since he's apparently never heard of projectors with power zoom (even though he's hanging out in a CIH thread and most people these days implement CIH via zooming)


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Of course it is, for a combination of reasons technical, economic, historic, and artistic. From an historical perspective, scope evolved as an explicitly wider format and money was pumped into equipping theaters with wide screens to handle that and provide a spectacle to attract people away from their TVs. And from a technical perspective theaters aren't likely to invest in something like 4-way masking - CIH or CIW are the easy choices, and of those 2 CIH is better.
> 
> It seems like others here do not share your opinion there.
> 
> Who's talking about moving reference seats in a home theater? My seating location is at ~2x scope height, which is 1.5x 1.9 IMAX height. This is within what IMAX deems acceptable, and also within what SMPTE deems acceptable (it's at their minimum recommended viewing distance).
> 
> If I preferred a smaller scope image (for example, SMPTE reference 3x screen height) I'd just zoom my projector. No one's shifting their seat around.


It's come up in other discussions where people have suggested moving their seating. I don't think I've seen it in this particular thread.



mattsteg said:


> One of us has *posted actual standards *in this thread. It isn't you. Standards that dictate the *range *of acceptable theater experiences. By all means if you have a relevant standard which explicitly spells out CIH theater operation purely for presentation reasons, share it. If this is "easily researched" this shouldn't be a problem.


Well Googling Theatical Aspect Ratio ends up with the first hit at Wikipedia. Where all the theatrical ratios are illustrated and expressed with the height being constant.





Aspect ratio (image) - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org







https://www.masterclass.com/articles/guide-to-aspect-ratios#8-aspect-ratios-to-use-for-films-and-tv



*1.85:1*_. One of the two standard aspect ratios in modern cinema, 1.85:1 is regarded as the normal widescreen format and is actually quite similar in size to 16:9.* It is slightly wider than 16:9*_

*2.39:1*_. Known as anamorphic widescreen format,* 2.39:1 is the widest aspect ratio common in modern cinema.*_

I was around when DVD was being introduced and there was a real fight to get distribution of films in OAR. Several directors had very good discussions about aspect ratios, why they choose them and how they related to other films they'd done. The Spielberg article on Jurassic Park I mentioned earlier was from around that time. No idea if you can find it on the Net as all of this was in print. But the fact that aspect ratios (outside of IMAX) are expressed with height as the constant in relation to each other is not my idea and not new.



mattsteg said:


> You have the choice between cropping or zooming out and (dramatically) breaking your sacrosanct CIH. Scope Content with e.g. subs rendered outside of the image area is one example of content that breaks if you try to render it as CIH.


Again with the hyperbole. I've already discussed how I, and others, can handle those scenarios. They don't come up often and don't change that scope is still the best at displaying 99% of my content as intended by the filmmaker in my opinion. Again I'm not saying you have to care about that or even prefer it.



mattsteg said:


> Actually that hadn't been discussed at all. What *had* been mentioned is that seating distance and screen size *in combination* control visual immersion, and by selecting an appropriate seating distance this is achievable on a home-sized screen. Josh brought up the topic of moving seats around, since he's apparently never heard of projectors with power zoom (even though he's hanging out in a CIH thread and most people these days implement CIH via zooming)


I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you are saying here, but there are discussions where people suggested literally moving the seat to change/compensate for immersion. I think there is some confusion about 2 different things (or I'm reading what Josh said wrong)


----------



## bud16415

Hi @Dan in Canada.
Thanks for taking the time to post.

I have for a long time viewed my HT or maybe better Home Media Room as a bit more than any clone of commercial theater practices and at the same time a good amount of its usage is watching motion pictures as one would in a HT.

I often read new members saying something like I want a projector for 50% movies 30% TV 10% sports and 10%games or some combination. I think a lot of us actually do this. I have a collection of over 3000 DVDs I finally tossed out the stacks of VHS. I have maybe 300 BDs and over the last two years buying hard media has even slowed way down. I must have over 100 options for streaming content. I have a HTPC tied to my media equipment and projector. I stream my iPhone into the system and have people bringing me flash drives and you name it wanting to watch something off the projector. Photo shows are even a big user and photos come landscape and portrait. Even within motion pictures frame breaking and AR changing is happening along with all the cleaver things prestige TV is throwing at us. I watched a 30 second commercial the other day that switched AR 4 times and had 2 frame breaks.

For all the above I figured I have a 16:9 projector I should have a 16:9 screen area. I then thought what is the smallest and largest I would ever want to view that 16:9 area because I have the ability to zoom. Then I made my entire wall a screen area and that solved my third problem where do I want to position the smallest and largest 16:9 screen areas.

I wish my 3000 plus DVDs were 1080p or better but they are good enough I wont replace them. They look better PQ wise smaller than I would like or smaller than I would watch them if 1080p or 4k. They are still way larger than any TV I might buy and the sound is much better in the theater. So I size them down and enjoy them from time to time.

I enjoy finding vintage music video on line and some of it the audio is quite good even thought the PQ has 1980 handheld camcorder written all over it. Again smaller is better on the video end.

Then there is sports and how that might appeal to me.
A lot of people use HT for a lot of reasons and CIW isn’t the answer ether. Give a kid a 100 dollar projector and see what they do with it. It wont take them long to figure out the ceiling over their bed is white and they can lay down and watch crazy videos.


----------



## Josh Z

jeahrens said:


> It's come up in other discussions where people have suggested moving their seating. I don't think I've seen it in this particular thread.
> 
> I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you are saying here, but there are discussions where people suggested literally moving the seat to change/compensate for immersion. I think there is some confusion about 2 different things (or I'm reading what Josh said wrong)


Yes, the "Just change your seats for different aspect ratios - Move closer for 1.85:1" argument has come up in other threads. I'll be honest, when I dashed off my response earlier, I had only skimmed through a couple of the long-winded replies from certain people and thought that argument was being trotted out again. If it wasn't, mea cupla.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> It's come up in other discussions where people have suggested moving their seating. I don't think I've seen it in this particular thread.


I'm sure it's come up somewhere from someone...but not here (except from people making odd claims that others are suggesting it)


jeahrens said:


> Well Googling Theatical Aspect Ratio ends up with the first hit at Wikipedia.


I ask for a *standard*...and the best you can do is *Wikipedia*? Are you serious?


jeahrens said:


> Where all the theatrical ratios are illustrated and expressed with the height being constant.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Aspect ratio (image) - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.masterclass.com/articles/guide-to-aspect-ratios#8-aspect-ratios-to-use-for-films-and-tv
> 
> 
> 
> *1.85:1*_. One of the two standard aspect ratios in modern cinema, 1.85:1 is regarded as the normal widescreen format and is actually quite similar in size to 16:9.* It is slightly wider than 16:9*_
> 
> *2.39:1*_. Known as anamorphic widescreen format,* 2.39:1 is the widest aspect ratio common in modern cinema.
> *_



Again this is not a standard and does not refer to presentation at all. It's an just introduction to basic cinematography.
It also says:

*2.76:1 (70mm)*_. Today, auteur directors like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson have propelled the reemergence of the 70mm film format, which has a humongous aspect ratio of 2.76:1 (and is often projected on gigantic IMAX screens). 70mm initially rose to prominence in the late 1950s, partially due to its use in the Best Picture-winning film Ben-Hur, but the format gradually faded out of use. Now, just like in the 1950s, Hollywood is using 70mm to lure audiences back to the theater by providing them with a unique experience that can't be duplicated at home on TV.

_Are any of these films shot in the "*humongous*" aspect ratio of 2.76:1 commonly being presented *physically larger* than scope material? Or is the author just using "wide" and "humongous" as compositional terms rather than suggesting/specifying a particular presentation size?

And once again: *You claim "standards". I posted standards. I requested you post standards. You posted a Wikipedia article.*


jeahrens said:


> I was around when DVD was being introduced and there was a real fight to get distribution of films in OAR. Several directors had very good discussions about aspect ratios, why they choose then and how they related to other films. The Spielberg article on Jurassic Park I mentioned earlier was from around that time. No idea if you can find it on the Net as all of this was in print. But the fact that aspect ratios (outside of IMAX) are expressed with height as the constant in relation to each other is not my idea and not new.


 Expressing ratios with a common denominator does not imply anything other than that it is convenient to do so. It says nothing about projection height standards.


jeahrens said:


> I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you are saying here, but there are discussions where people suggested literally moving the seat to change/compensate for immersion. I think there is some confusion about 2 different things (or I'm reading what Josh said wrong)


But why did Josh even bring it up in the first place? No one in this thread is suggesting moving seats around. People are suggesting using a short viewing distance combined with a large screen to achieve IMAX-type engagement - but that does not require moving seats. Why reply saying that something no one is suggesting is a stupid idea?

( I would suggest it to people in a "try it to see if you like it" sort of way...but not as a long-term solution)


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> I'm sure it's come up somewhere from someone...but not here (except from people making odd claims that others are suggesting it)
> I ask for a *standard*...and the best you can do is *Wikipedia*? Are you serious?
> 
> Again this is not a standard and does not refer to presentation at all. It's an just introduction to basic cinematography.
> It also says:
> 
> *2.76:1 (70mm)*_. Today, auteur directors like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson have propelled the reemergence of the 70mm film format, which has a humongous aspect ratio of 2.76:1 (and is often projected on gigantic IMAX screens). 70mm initially rose to prominence in the late 1950s, partially due to its use in the Best Picture-winning film Ben-Hur, but the format gradually faded out of use. Now, just like in the 1950s, Hollywood is using 70mm to lure audiences back to the theater by providing them with a unique experience that can't be duplicated at home on TV._
> 
> Are any of these films shot in the "*humongous*" aspect ratio of 2.76:1 commonly being presented *physically larger* than scope material? Or is the author just using "wide" and "humongous" as compositional terms rather than suggesting/specifying a particular presentation size?
> 
> And once again: *You claim "standards". I posted standards. I requested you post standards. You posted a Wikipedia article.*
> Expressing ratios with a common denominator does not imply anything other than that it is convenient to do so. It says nothing about projection height standards.
> 
> But why did Josh even bring it up in the first place? No one in this thread is suggesting moving seats around. People are suggesting using a short viewing distance combined with a large screen to achieve IMAX-type engagement - but that does not require moving seats. Why reply saying that something no one is suggesting is a stupid idea?
> 
> ( I would suggest it to people in a "try it to see if you like it" sort of way...but not as a long-term solution)


Sigh, well sorry the first few Google hits don't measure up for you. By all means help yourself. This really isn't anything new.


----------



## dschulz

A few points:

I think this discussion is germane only if you care about properly masked off screens. If you’re happy with a screen wall, or an oversized screen with no masking, then sure, adjusting projected image in all dimensions makes some sense.

But if you want a great home theatre experience then IMHO masking is required. So the question is, a giant screen with 4-way masking, a Scope screen with side masking or a Flat screen with top/bottom masking. And I continue to believe that option B is the best solution, as it displays Flat and 16:9 content at the largest comfortable size, while enabling Scope content to be even larger while still being comfortable.

If you have a Scope screen and your Flat content feels too small, that means your screen is too small! But if you have a Flat screen your Scope content will always be too small.

Rob Hahns’s theatre is a great example of the exception that prove the rule: if I had that kind of budget I, too, would go with an oversized screen and 4-way masking. But here in the real world, without unlimited budgets, I believe a CIH system with a Scope screen is the least-compromising approach.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> The primary value of "CIH" is getting people to think about screen aspect outside of a 16:9 box and moving away from just blindly matching their projector. The biggest downside is that it seems to attract zealots who once they've broken outside of that box, decide that their new box is the one clear way. This is quite unfortunate - especially when they present no real insight pertaining to fact-based arguments to in favor of CIH and its benefits. Instead they resort to fabricating standards and attacking practices that no participants in the discussion are promoting.


Let's both take a moment here, you and I.

We started this thread without so much animosity, but have both moved into defensive postures because each of us (and I will cop to my part in this) feels that his opinions are under attack. That wasn't my intention in starting this thread, and I apologize if I've come across too aggressively.

I said this before, but I'll repeat it. I have no problem with you choosing a 2.0:1 screen in your home theater. You clearly put thought into why you selected that option. If that is what works best for you, then you should enjoy it.

However, I would hope that you are able to acknowledge that 2.0:1 is a compromise screen ratio. It is neither 1.85:1 nor 2.35:1, and doesn't fit either format quite right. You chose it because it is the compromise that makes the most sense to you, based on your feelings and preferences. That's fair enough. We all make compromises in our home theaters.

But just because you have chosen something different does not invalidate Constant Image Height as a concept or a practice. That's where we're at loggerheads. Because the attitude you've been taking recently is that 2.0:1 is a _better_ solution (and it may be, for you), if not the perfect solution – and that Constant Image Height is dumb and anyone who does it is a mindless zealot.

What I have always tried to do in this forum is to explain the purpose and rationale behind Constant Image Height. Not to force anyone into doing it, but to give them the proper information to make an informed decision. If, after taking in all the information, they still make a different decision, I'm fine with that.

Most people do not make an informed decision about screen aspect ratio. They instinctively go for 16:9 because that is the only thing they've ever known and any other option seems baffling to them. TVs are 16:9, so of course projection screens should also be 16:9. The screen is basically just a big TV, isn't it?

I'm not saying *you* think that way, but most people do.

Whether you want to believe it or not, Constant Image Height is the standard by which motion pictures are photographed. 1.85:1 is not "taller" than 2.35:1. It is narrower. Photographic composition of a human face is based on the height of the frame, not the width.

Yes, Constant Image Height requires its own compromises. Dealing with IMAX content is a big one. Subtitles that have been stupidly authored in the letterbox bars is another. There are ways to work around those, but maybe those aren't the compromises you're personally willing to make. So be it.

What frustrates me is when certain people (not just you, but definitely a couple others who post in this Constant Image Height forum nearly every day) work tirelessly to undermine any discussion of CIH – either because they have their own idiosyncratic ideas for how home theater projection should work, or because they simply hate the idea of CIH and think it's moronic - and gleefully pile on whenever a new person expresses any doubts about it. That's what this thread quickly turned into, and I'm sorry if it feels like I've taken that out on you.


----------



## flyers10

@mattsteg I assume you don't do any masking on your 2.0 screen. Do you get used to the image not filling it (aside from 2.0 programs). Trying to picture it in my head if would bother me or not. I assume you don't need lens memory on a projector for a 2.0 as well. Or is that incorrect?


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Sigh, well sorry the first few Google hits don't measure up for you. By all means help yourself. This really isn't anything new.


Is this a creative way of saying that *you can't find the standards* that you've been claiming to be an advocate of?

If this is the case it's OK to admit it. If this is really such old-news and so well-supported than it shouldn't be so difficult for you to find and link the standards *that you claim exist. *It's not up to me to dig up standards that I'm not convinced exist.


dschulz said:


> But if you want a great home theatre experience then IMHO masking is required.


With the contrast ratio of today's projectors I'm less sold on the criticality of masking, but I can certainly at least appreciate how others might feel differently.


dschulz said:


> So the question is, a giant screen with 4-way masking, a Scope screen with side masking or a Flat screen with top/bottom masking. And I continue to believe that option B is the best solution, as it displays Flat and 16:9 content at the largest comfortable size, while enabling Scope content to be even larger while still being comfortable. If you have a Scope screen and your Flat content feels too small, that means your screen it too small! But if you have a Flat screen your Scope content will always be too small.
> Rob Hahns’s theatre is a great example of the exception that prove the rule: *if I had that kind of budget I, too, would go with an oversized screen and 4-way masking*. But here in the real world, without unlimited budgets, I believe a CIH system with a Scope screen is the least-compromising approach.


How much expense do you think 4-way masking adds relative to side-masking only? And what's the dollar-value that would be "worth it" to you to go with the configuration you clearly prefer as the "cost no object" ideal?


Josh Z said:


> Let's both take a moment here, you and I.
> 
> We started this thread without so much animosity, but have both moved into defensive postures because each of us (and I will cop to my part in this) feels that his opinions are under attack. That wasn't my intention in starting this thread, and I apologize if I've come across too aggressively.


My issue has been that you have repeatedly positioned the choice as between CIH and CIW, and consistently responded in seeming bad-faith to misrepresented or outright made up positions that I have never advocated instead of communicating the benefits of your preferred presentation format. I don't feel that my opinions are under attack - because you have consistently not responded to them. I feel that *I* have been under attack *personally *from repeated attempts by you to *put words in my mouth* that do not represent what I've communicated or what I believe.


Josh Z said:


> I said this before, but I'll repeat it. I have no problem with you choosing a 2.0:1 screen in your home theater. You clearly put thought into why you selected that option. If that is what works best for you, then you should enjoy it.
> 
> However, I would hope that you are able to acknowledge that 2.0:1 is a compromise screen ratio. It is neither 1.85:1 nor 2.35:1, and doesn't fit either format quite right.


*All* screen ratios are compromises - including 2.35:1 and 1.85:1. 2.0:1, 1.9:1, 2.73:1, 1.37:1, 1.66:1 - any screen size is a compromise. There are more than 2 ratios, which for some reason I cannot understand you do not seem to comprehend.

CIH is a useful simplification that most of the time a similar screen height is going to be appropriate for most films in 'widescreen' aspect ratios. It simplifies masking and handles most content OK, but falls down a bit for "real" IMAX content.
It kinda breaks down for academy ratio stuff for some people, and others are either comfortable with a bit of extra height for 1.85 material or space-constrained horizontally. It's occasionally broken by various decisions made in e.g. media mastering (subtitle placement, open mat framing, etc.). It's shorter than an "oversize" screen which can help with center-channel placement if not using an AT screen.

It's no less of a compromise than e.g. 2.0 - for my priorities a more onerous one, for yours maybe less so...but both (all) choices are compromises. If 2.35 wasn't a compromise there wouldn't be thread after thread either checking for movies that break it or discussing how to handle them.

You don't give the impression of admitting that at all - instead posting page after page of screenshots insisting that a 10-20% difference is the difference between "right" and "wrong". Anything that falls within the recommended ranges of SMPTE, THX, IMAX, etc. is arguably "right" (to the extent that any standardization body has the authority to declare "right" and "wrong" in a personal theater not seeking certification) Differences in presentation within the range that someone might choose by choosing to sit in different locations within a good commercial theater are all "right" and in accordance with standards and accepted practices.

You chose it because it is the compromise that makes the most sense to you, based on your feelings and preferences. That's fair enough. We all make compromises in our home theaters.


Josh Z said:


> But just because you have chosen something different does not invalidate Constant Image Height as a concept or a practice. That's where we're at loggerheads. Because the attitude you've been taking recently is that 2.0:1 is a _better_ solution (and it may be, for you), if not the perfect solution – and that Constant Image Height is dumb and anyone who does it is a mindless zealot.


You're the person who titled this thread:
_*General "Why Should (or Shouldn't) I Do Constant Height?" Discussion*_

To me that suggests that the discussion was intended to discuss *both* the benefits and drawbacks of CIH presentation. That's been my intention and my focus. I've only mentioned the aspect of my personal screen a handful of times, to illustrate specific reasons why you might choose to not run CIH.

On the other hand, you keep fixating on reasons to not run CIW/16:9. This is neither what you titled the thread, nor a counter to what any active participants in the discussion are advocating as an alternative. You keep circling back to "counter" points that no one is making.

That, and repeated references to "*standards"* that people are claiming to use to drive their presentation decisions (but no one can produce these "standards") are where the "zealotry" comes in - along with the circular logic that says (paraphrasing) "you should run CIH because it produces a constant image height which conforms to uncited standard for constant image height". No actual "why" - just an appeal to anonymous standard authority and refusal to cite it.


Josh Z said:


> What I have always tried to do in this forum is to explain the purpose and rationale behind Constant Image Height. Not to force anyone into doing it, but to give them the proper information to make an informed decision. If, after taking in all the information, they still make a different decision, I'm fine with that.


I guess I would ask why not do that? I've seen very little discussion in this thread of the benefits of CIH, but rather straw-man comparisons to 16:9 screens that don't really address why to *affirmatively choose *CIH over any other option than 16:9. The "faces should be the same size" argument isn't convincing - every movie includes a wide variety of framings. The more important consideration is comfort with viewing angles, impact, etc...but this barely merits a mention deep into the thread.


Josh Z said:


> Most people do not make an informed decision about screen aspect ratio. They instinctively go for 16:9 because that is the only thing they've ever known and any other option seems baffling to them. TVs are 16:9, so of course projection screens should also be 16:9. The screen is basically just a big TV, isn't it?
> 
> I'm not saying *you* think that way, but most people do.


"Most people" may...but *not* most people who have been participating in this discussion.


Josh Z said:


> Whether you want to believe it or not, Constant Image Height is the standard by which motion pictures are photographed. 1.85:1 is not "taller" than 2.35:1. It is narrower. Photographic composition of a human face is based on the height of the frame, not the width.


*There you go again with an uncited "standard*" that proclaims your preference to be "best" with an appeal to uncited, anonymous authority. I'd also suggest that photography/cinematography and presentation "standards" are not necessarily the same. Yes, how most movies are composed and framed naturally follows (for the most part - there are limits to this and there is some tendency to frame just a bit more aggrressively tight at the top/bottom of wider frames.) a quasi-constant frame height. There's not an immediate connection that a presentation should present e.g. faces at the exact same magnification. Presentation is about comfort (e.g. neck craning) and ability to follow the material on-screen without going crazy like a deranged tennis spectator. CIH is a far better starting point to achieve similar comfort levels across a range of aspect ratios, but still an imperfect model to a phenomena that is still personal. *People making their own choices would be better served with a discussion of WHY CIH is a reasonable choice and the factors that go into making it* (i.e. comfort and impact), a reminder of the most important factor (the screen height MUST be maximized if you want to fulfill the premise of CIH...if not you're just making flat movies worse so that they don't tread on scope movies.), and why you might consider other choices (i.e. a taller screen if IMAX is important, or if you can't fit a tall enough scope screen to hit your true optimal screen height).

In other worse, what your thread topic promised, but did not deliver.



Josh Z said:


> Yes, Constant Image Height requires its own compromises. Dealing with IMAX content is a big one. Subtitles that have been stupidly authored in the letterbox bars is another. There are ways to work around those, but maybe those aren't the compromises you're personally willing to make. So be it.
> 
> What bothers me is when certain people (not just you, but definitely a couple others who post in this Constant Image Height forum nearly every day) work tirelessly to undermine any discussion of CIH – either because they have their own idiosyncratic ideas for how projection should work, or because they simply hate the idea of CIH and think it's moronic - and gleefully pile on whenever a new person expresses any doubts about it. That's what this thread quickly turned into, and I'm sorry if it feels like I've taken that out on you.


I feel like a lot of the parties in this discussion aren't hearing each other, and that what you perceive as "anti-CIH" is really *anti-dogmatic CIH.* Appealing to unnamed "standards" to support your favored projection format is not helpful. If they exist...name and cite them. If they don't...quit referring to them. Constantly referring to standards that you can't cite or reference and only comparing between 16:9 and scope just sets up conflict. So does repeatedly trying to pull bad-faith "gotchas" that have nothing to do with what's been posted in the thread.

We should all be on the same side on this! *Everyone *who has been active for more than a post or 2 in this thread is very clearly pro-*taking control of your presentation aspect ratio and making an affirmative choice of how to present things. *The equipment needed to run other non-16:9 aspects has 90% overlap with that for CIH (other than anamorphic lenses and 4-way masking it's largely the same stuff). Why is your focus so heavily on reasons to not use a 16:9 screen (which no one seems to be in favor of except as a last resort) and less on why to affirmatively choose CIH (as well as why you might choose to NOT do CIH)? Fixating on 16:9 is not what your thread title is about, and it's not what's of interest to any of the active participants here.


----------



## mattsteg

flyers10 said:


> @mattsteg I assume you don't do any masking on your 2.0 screen. Do you get used to the image not filling it (aside from 2.0 programs). Trying to picture it in my head if would bother me or not. I assume you don't need lens memory on a projector for a 2.0 as well. Or is that incorrect?


How good is your light control and how are your projector black levels? In a dark room I don't find it noticeable. If there are some lights on I notice it but don't care. It would be quite easy to add masking if I want, especially manual masking. Full automated/motorized 4-way masking is more of an investment. In way of disclosure I've always considered masking a bit overrated so don't bother. If you have a projector already you can always just try for yourself - even just zooming in on your existing screen and presenting something leterboxed would give an idea how noticeable unmasked black areas would be. You would definitely want lens memory - you are still zooming the image to adjust the frame for different aspects.

If I had unlimited space, I'd look strongly at something like a 2:1 (or 1.9:1 imax) screen with magnetic masking panels to scope, and size it so that the height of the masked-off scope screen was a TRUE optimum height for CIH (it's critical to maximize that height). I'd run that as CIH most of the time for simplicity, and occasionally pop off a panel or 2 to present things like IMAX or deal with oddly positioned subtitles.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> A few points:
> 
> I think this discussion is germane only if you care about properly masked off screens. If you’re happy with a screen wall, or an oversized screen with no masking, then sure, adjusting projected image in all dimensions makes some sense.
> 
> But if you want a great home theatre experience then IMHO masking is required. So the question is, a giant screen with 4-way masking, a Scope screen with side masking or a Flat screen with top/bottom masking. And I continue to believe that option B is the best solution, as it displays Flat and 16:9 content at the largest comfortable size, while enabling Scope content to be even larger while still being comfortable.
> 
> If you have a Scope screen and your Flat content feels too small, that means your screen is too small! But if you have a Flat screen your Scope content will always be too small.
> 
> Rob Hahns’s theatre is a great example of the exception that prove the rule: if I had that kind of budget I, too, would go with an oversized screen and 4-way masking. But here in the real world, without unlimited budgets, I believe a CIH system with a Scope screen is the least-compromising approach.


I totally agree 4way automatic masking unless you are quite handy and have a machine shop at your disposal is going to be very expensive. 4way manual masking is something a person can DIY and wont break the budget, but will wear you out if you jump from AR to AR as I seem to do. I did it for 3 years and started out masking everything and slowly evolved to masking for special shows. I would get a long awaited BD and plan a movie night invite some friends over and in advance I would get everything set and perfect. Family members that watched some masked some not masked thought I was the crazy projectionist and wasting my time with this hobby, but the guests always left telling how perfectly beautiful the show was and such.
Then we got Dunkirk and had a couple friends that were wanting to see it for the first time and I went thru my crazy projectionist routine knowing I could only mask for IMAX and scope was what you get. We watched the movie and when it was over we sat talking about the movie and they told me how great it looked. I asked them if they were bothered by the black/gray bars? They said “What.” And I said during the changes in AR. again I got “What.” So I explained more how Nolan films with both IMAX and scope and the height of the movie changes many times during the movie. The one guy tells me it did not. To prove to him it did I put it back on and paused it before and after a change. He said well who would ever notice that in a great movie like that I’m watching the movie not the room around the movie. I took that as a no it didn’t bother him.
The next day I played it without masking and my screen is a darker neutral gray for what that is worth and it even improved more as I now lost the reference black of the boarder within the little ambient in the room. I thought back to all the times I was lazy and didn’t set the masking and just tossed the idea of masking in favor of self masking. Others doing this have projectors with far better black levels than mine and also tell me within a couple weeks don’t miss masking one bit.
Some call my method sloppy/lazy presentation and I guess they are right. It for me is not perfect but clearly good enough and it was a compromise I made like all things FP. It was a easy one to make as with giving up masking and having a stealth screen area allowed so much else to happen easily. It is not the Hahn Theater by a far shot, but it allows for features like what he has to work for me with a $million or so less in the budget.
Masking is pure simplicity with a CIH setup as really most don’t even feel the need for side masking as those black bars are outside the light path. The only downside to CIH is you need a projector that has automatic presets for zoom, shift and focus with a throw distance to fit your needs. In general these projectors are not entry level projectors and they come with a higher price tag.


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## flyers10

mattsteg said:


> How good is your light control and how are your projector black levels? In a dark room I don't find it noticeable. If there are some lights on I notice it but don't care. It would be quite easy to add masking if I want, especially manual masking. Full automated/motorized 4-way masking is more of an investment. In way of disclosure I've always considered masking a bit overrated so don't bother. If you have a projector already you can always just try for yourself - even just zooming in on your existing screen and presenting something leterboxed would give an idea how noticeable unmasked black areas would be. You would definitely want lens memory - you are still zooming the image to adjust the frame for different aspects.
> 
> If I had unlimited space, I'd look strongly at something like a 2:1 (or 1.9:1 imax) screen with magnetic masking panels to scope, and size it so that the height of the masked-off scope screen was a TRUE optimum height for CIH (it's critical to maximize that height). I'd run that as CIH most of the time for simplicity, and occasionally pop off a panel or 2 to present things like IMAX or deal with oddly positioned subtitles.


My room will be total light control. Projector is up in air but probably a JVC NX5/7 or NP5.
My room is 123" wide and 108" high. Screen size is more limited by where my seats will be for ideal audio. That puts the seats at about 7.5 to 8 ft from screen. (Exact depends on speakers chosen and depth needed). If put L and R outside screen will probably do 16x9 as more width limited. If put them behind my audio angle dips down to about 49 degrees but a 2.4 or a 2.0 might work well. Think a 16x9 at the wider width would be bit too big to handle viewing.


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## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> My issue has been that you have repeatedly positioned the choice as between CIH and CIW, and consistently responded in seeming bad-faith to misrepresented or outright made up positions that I have never advocated instead of communicating the benefits of your preferred presentation format.


Because I'm trying not to make this debate personal, and I'm also not trying to attack your choice of a 2.0:1 screen (which, again, is a compromise I don't have a problem with, so long as it's made as an informed decision). This is a public forum, and these posts can be read by anyone. My responses are not only addressed to you, but to anyone interested in the topic.

For *most *people, 2.0:1 isn't a practical option. For most people, the choice is between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Well, I suppose that's not entirely right, as most people have no choice at all. However, for home theater projection users, if they have a choice in the matter, it will almost always be between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Those are the two aspect ratios sold by most of the major screen manufacturers. If you want to do something non-standard, that becomes a custom job.

That being the case, the decision on aspect ratio will come down to whether they buy into the concept of Constant Image Height or not. If yes, buy a 2.35:1 screen. If not, stick with 16:9.

And because Constant Image Height is not a widely understood topic, most people's instinctive reaction to a 2.35:1 screen will be, _"That's weird. Why would I want to do that?"_ My goal here is simply to provide information on what Constant Image Height is, and what purpose it serves.

Yet that conversation is invariably undermined by certain people continually sticking their noses in with BS about "What about this one movie that doesn't work?" Or "What about this incredibly rare problem?" Or "Why have a screen at all? Just project onto an empty wall and zoom up and down whenever you feel like it!" As if they're somehow proving that CIH doesn't work and is a terrible idea.

It's all nonsense, and it's all off the point, and it's just exhausting to have to deal with it over and over.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Because I'm trying not to make this debate personal, and I'm also not trying to attack your choice of a 2.0:1 screen (which, again, is a compromise I don't have a problem with, so long as it's made as an informed decision). This is a public forum, and these posts can be read by anyone. My responses are not only addressed to you, but to anyone interested in the topic.
> 
> For *most *people, 2.0:1 isn't a practical option. For most people, the choice is between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Well, I suppose that's not entirely right, as most people have no choice at all. However, for home theater projection users, if they have a choice in the matter, it will almost always be between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Those are the two aspect ratios sold by most of the major screen manufacturers. If you want to do something non-standard, that becomes a custom job.
> 
> That being the case, the decision on aspect ratio will come down to whether they buy into the concept of Constant Image Height or not. If yes, buy a 2.35:1 screen. If not, stick with 16:9.
> 
> And because Constant Image Height is not a widely understood topic, most people's instinctive reaction to a 2.35:1 screen will be, _"That's weird. Why would I want to do that?"_ My goal here is simply to provide information on what Constant Image Height is, and what purpose it serves.
> 
> Yet that conversation is invariably undermined by certain people continually sticking their noses in with BS about "What about this one movie that doesn't work?" Or "What about this incredibly rare problem?" Or "Why have a screen at all? Just project onto an empty wall and zoom up and down whenever you feel like it!" As if they're somehow proving that CIH doesn't work and is a terrible idea.
> 
> It's all nonsense, and it's all off the point, and it's just exhausting to have to deal with it over and over.


Of your two options is the 16:9 option a 16:9 IMAX screen or a 16:9 CIW screen.
If you want to narrow it down to off the shelf screens there is 3 to select from.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> Because I'm trying not to make this debate personal


I'll be bluntly honest and say that you've failed in that regard. "Replying" to people and grossly misrepresenting their position in apparent bad-faith *is* insulting on a personal level. Putting words in other peoples mouths that do not represent their position is likewise personally insulting.


Josh Z said:


> and I'm also not trying to attack your choice of a 2.0:1 screen (which, again, is a compromise I don't have a problem with, so long as it's made as an informed decision). This is a public forum, and these posts can be read by anyone. My responses are not only addressed to you, but to anyone interested in the topic.


If you're quoting someone and replying to them...it's common courtesy to read what they've written and respond to that, rather than quoting it, ignoring it, and evangelizing on some other topic. Repeatedly "countering" positions that no one else is representing is just treating this thread as your own personal soapbox and insulting anyone who attempts to engage in good faith.


Josh Z said:


> For *most *people, 2.0:1 isn't a practical option. For most people, the choice is between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Well, I suppose that's not entirely right, as most people have no choice at all. However, for home theater projection users, if they have a choice in the matter, it will almost always be between 16:9 or 2.35:1. Those are the two aspect ratios sold by most of the major screen manufacturers. If you want to do something non-standard, that becomes a custom job.


Why is it not practical for "most" people? It's easy to order a screen, or if you prefer DIY easy to make one as well. And the day to day operation is equivalent to 2.35 if you don't care about masking, slightly more involved if you do.

Seymour will provide a custom-sized screen with no upcharge. Stewart does custom screens. Draper does. XY out of china direct does. Plenty of others do as well. I can't imagine just walking in to a store and buying a screen off the shelf. I can't imagine any integrator worth working with not having options for custom screens. It's easy to buy a custom screen, and DIY screens are easy too. Some people even just paint and project on their wall.

There's a whole range of options ranging from inexpensive to the highest-end that are all readily available.


Josh Z said:


> That being the case, the decision on aspect ratio will come down to whether they buy into the concept of Constant Image Height or not. If yes, buy a 2.35:1 screen. If not, stick with 16:9.


Again, you're making this into a false choice. Any ratio screen is just a phone call, email, or visit to your custom integrator away.

Heck you could just buy a *too-big 16:9 and use it as a CIH+Imax.*


Josh Z said:


> And because Constant Image Height is not a widely understood topic, most people's instinctive reaction to a 2.35:1 screen will be, _"That's weird. Why would I want to do that?"_ My goal here is simply to provide information on what Constant Image Height is, and what purpose it serves.


It seems like you mislabeled your own thread and then got bent out of shape when people came and participated with on-topic discussion.


Josh Z said:


> Yet that conversation is invariably undermined by certain people continually sticking their noses in with BS about "What about this one movie that doesn't work?" Or "What about this incredibly rare problem?" Or "Why have a screen at all? Just project onto an empty wall and zoom up and down whenever you feel like it!"


What made you the determiner of what's "BS"? There are multiple threads that I believe you've started with lists of movies that have concerns running CIH! It's clearly a relevant concern. Zooming up down and all over is an unorthodox solution, but if the wall is properly prepped and painted can be a viable option. And we all know that people have different preferences in a movie theater, so maybe that works out well for someone who often hosts guests with different viewing preferences.


Josh Z said:


> It's all nonsense, and it's all off the point, and it's just exhausting to have to deal with it over and over.


Why are you the arbiter of nonsense? Why is picking up a phone and ordering a custom screen "not a practical option" for most people, but referencing a bunch of documentation about what content views properly on their screen and what doesn't is routine?


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## mattsteg

flyers10 said:


> My room will be total light control. Projector is up in air but probably a JVC NX5/7 or NP5.
> My room is 123" wide and 108" high. Screen size is more limited by where my seats will be for ideal audio. That puts the seats at about 7.5 to 8 ft from screen. (Exact depends on speakers chosen and depth needed). If put L and R outside screen will probably do 16x9 as more width limited. If put them behind my audio angle dips down to about 49 degrees but a 2.4 or a 2.0 might work well. Think a 16x9 at the wider width would be bit too big to handle viewing.


With a JVC I really don't think you'll actively notice a lack of masking in terms of image presentation. A 16:9 that you use like a CIH+Imax would be one option (in that case I would consider to mask the top/bottom to define the CIH area). If you go super wide be especially diligent about treating walls to minimize reflections.


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## dschulz

mattsteg said:


> How much expense do you think 4-way masking adds relative to side-masking only? And what's the dollar-value that would be "worth it" to you to go with the configuration you clearly prefer as the "cost no object" ideal?


It's not just the 4-way masking, though. To go to a CIH+IMAX system I would need:

a) a larger screen than I really need, except for those instances where I'd use the extra area
b) the 4-way masking system
c) a higher lumen projector to be able to illuminate that larger screen
d) forego using an anamorphic projection lens with its attendant benefits of having consistent pixel density and brightness across all aspect ratios
e) potentially a larger room if ceiling height is not enough to accomodate an appropriately taller screen

Since the number of movies that actually need a taller-than-CIH area is countable on two hands, I find that a tough sell. But I'd do it if I already had a satisfying system in terms of picture and sound quality. I'm not saying I would never go CIH+IMAX, just that it is pretty far down the priority list given the number of films that call for it.



> All screen ratios are compromises - including 2.35:1 and 1.85:1. 2.0:1, 1.9:1, 2.73:1, 1.37:1, 1.66:1 - any screen size is a compromise. There are more than 2 ratios, which for some reason I cannot understand you do not seem to comprehend.


None of those ratios are compromised in a CIH system though! If you have properly sized your screen, every ratio between Academy and Scope is sized exactly correctly. The only things compromised are images _wider_ than Scope (ie Ultra Panavision at 2.76:1, which will be letterboxed) and 1.90 or 1.43 IMAX films that were composed to have a pleasing Scope-sized image but with additional material above and below that image area.



> CIH is a useful simplification that most of the time a similar screen height is going to be appropriate for most films in 'widescreen' aspect ratios. It simplifies masking and handles most content OK, but falls down a bit for "real" IMAX content.
> It kinda breaks down for academy ratio stuff for some people, and others are either comfortable with a bit of extra height for 1.85 material or space-constrained horizontally. It's occasionally broken by various decisions made in e.g. media mastering (subtitle placement, open mat framing, etc.). It's shorter than an "oversize" screen which can help with center-channel placement if not using an AT screen.


Now we're getting somewhere. I don't find Academy too small on a CIH system that is sized appropriately, but if you do (as does Mr. Hahn) then that's a good reason not to design around a Scope screen. But you have made the case perfectly: a CIH screen is an extremely useful simplification that ensures that the content I am watching 99% of the time, movies and TV that vary in AR between 1.78 - 1.85 - 2.00 - 2.39, are all as large as is comfortable, and fill my screen with no visible letterbox bars.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Of your two options is the 16:9 option a 16:9 IMAX screen or a 16:9 CIW screen.
> If you want to narrow it down to off the shelf screens there is 3 to select from.


What is a "16:9 IMAX screen" for home theater? It's just an oversized 16:9 screen. If they have a 16:9 screen, most people are going to watch all 16:9 content filling that screen, with nothing distinguishing TV game shows from genuine IMAX.

We have discussed the "CIH+IMAX" option earlier in this thread, and yes that is a totally valid solution to the problem. But realistically, how many people actually do it? Even here, on AVSForum, I'd bet you can count the number of CIH+IMAX users on your fingers. dschulz just did a very good job one post up explaining why CIH+IMAX isn't a particularly practical option most of the time.

CIH+IMAX is more expensive to buy a larger screen surface when you won't use the whole screen area hardly ever. It's more complicated with the addition of masking. And it requires more manual effort to add and remove that masking. Even more than the money issue, plain old apathy is going to result in many users just leaving the masking off most of the time, which will then spur them to zoom all 16:9 content larger, no matter what that 16:9 content is.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> What is a "16:9 IMAX screen" for home theater? It's just an oversized 16:9 screen. If they have a 16:9 screen, most people are going to watch all 16:9 content filling that screen, with nothing distinguishing TV game shows from genuine IMAX.
> 
> We have discussed the "CIH+IMAX" option earlier in this thread, and yes that is a totally valid solution to the problem. But realistically, how many people actually do it? Even here, on AVSForum, I'd bet you can count the number of CIH+IMAX users on your fingers. dschulz just did a very good job one post up explaining why CIH+IMAX isn't a particularly practical option most of the time.
> 
> CIH+IMAX is more expensive to buy a larger screen surface when you won't use the whole screen area hardly ever. It's more complicated with the addition of masking. And it requires more manual effort to add and remove that masking. Even more than the money issue, plain old apathy is going to result in many users just leaving the masking off most of the time, which will then spur them to zoom all 16:9 content larger, no matter what that 16:9 content is.


Wow you don’t have much faith in people that have dug this deep into the topic of presentation.

I agree most people that run out and buy a 16:9 as big as their wall can hold and a projector that has no programmable abilities and their only goal is to be as big as possible like size is the only thing that matters might do that. They are not the people concerned with presentation and frequenting the CIH forum on a AVS website.

I think saying the extra area on a CIH+IMAX screen area not being used that much is not true for everyone. You may never have occasion to use that area but I delve into that area in part or in whole more than 50% of the time.

I know you don’t read long posts so you likely have stopped reading at this point so I will add the rest for others that may be interested in what I have to say about when I use the other area. You can assume I’m just talking about moving chairs and zooming up and down wildly because I like the fun house feel of doing that.

1) A place for subtitles to be displayed.

2) Some people like greater or lesser immersion and with having only one row I can virtually give them that.

3) OK the one in the name IMAX movies I count on my hands and sometimes my feet. Check your list for the number including 3D that I do.

4) TV shows, YouTube and other streaming content that is not motion pictures. Call me strange but I was watching some 8k content that was many hours long traveling thru the rain forest. It looked amazing totally immersive, as do roller coaster videos and hang gliding videos. We live in a world where all things are possible. Regardless of face sizes Game of Thrones looks awesome as IMAX, Wheel of Fortune not so much.

5) Still photo shows. People now carry around iPhones that take motion picture quality images and movies. Half of them don’t turn the phone sideways. My still DSLR is used in landscape as well as portrait and height in a photo show balances the two better.

6) Sports. Watch a NBA or NFL or tennis or NASCAR or dozens of other sporting events and you will find the action is framed like scope or IMAX1.89 and the players are spread out across the screen and graphics are overlaid on fans above and non action below. There is no motion picture cinematography going on except for a panel of broadcasters sometime mixed in. The commercials are not much problem as half of them are in scope these days and who watches them anyway except for the Super Bowl.

7) Music concerts. Yes I also enjoy these and they are not motion pictures but are great immersive along with playing thru the best sound in the house.

8) Planet Earth series and all the other similar science and nature stuff, some is amazing more immersive some not as much

9) Academy Movies say what you want and I agree they look great in CIH everything I mentioned above looks great in CIH. They for me just look even more amazing given greater immersion. Within the condition of them being transferred and re-mastered the way IMAX enhanced is doing things or the way say 4k Wizard of Oz was done.

10) Split screens. This is something I’m just getting into. 4 screens at once.

I could keep going all day with the list. I gave my opinion on what an excellent method of presentation CIH is in post #6 of this thread. It offers the best presentation given the simplicity it has. If masking is a concern or it fits the room best it is way better than 16:9 CIW.
My personal opinion and what I hope for if I live long enough and projection stays around is all scaling approach to projection. Blow a huge 4k or 8k or 16k field on a stealth surface and then scale out a window or windows just like you do on a computer. I have been playing with the concept and it is pretty nice. Just need to get it all built into a projector.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> I agree most people that run out and buy a 16:9 as big as their wall can hold and a projector that has no programmable abilities and their only goal is to be as big as possible like size is the only thing that matters might do that. They are not the people concerned with presentation and frequenting the CIH forum on a AVS website.


No, but this subforum does get a number of people coming in and asking if they should get a 16:9 or a Scope screen. One reason for this subforum to exist is to make the case to those people why they should consider a CIH setup with a Scope screen.



> I think saying the extra area on a CIH+IMAX screen area not being used that much is not true for everyone. You may never have occasion to use that area but I delve into that area in part or in whole more than 50% of the time.


I really like your list of use cases for something more like an oversized 16:9 screen or a simple screen wall. It explains why you like it, and I think it would work for a lot of people. But for someone coming here asking which way to go, I would still say that in my opinion CIH with a Scope screen is the best way to go if your are primarily watching films and television, because it ensures that nothing is smaller than it should be, and Scope films get the epic presentation they deserve. But as I mentioned upthread, I am starting from a position that seeing letterbox bars is to be avoided, and that aversion is informing much of my thinking. If you don't care about seeing letterbox or pillarbox bars, then matching screen shape to the content AR doesn't really matter and a big 16:9 (or perhaps 2.00:1) screen definitely could make sense.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> 4) TV shows, YouTube and other streaming content that is not motion pictures. Call me strange but I was watching some 8k content that was many hours long traveling thru the rain forest. It looked amazing totally immersive, as do roller coaster videos and hang gliding videos. We live in a world where all things are possible. Regardless of face sizes Game of Thrones looks awesome as IMAX, Wheel of Fortune not so much.
> 
> 5) Still photo shows. People now carry around iPhones that take motion picture quality images and movies. Half of them don’t turn the phone sideways. My still DSLR is used in landscape as well as portrait and height in a photo show balances the two better.
> 
> 6) Sports. Watch a NBA or NFL or tennis or NASCAR or dozens of other sporting events and you will find the action is framed like scope or IMAX1.89 and the players are spread out across the screen and graphics are overlaid on fans above and non action below. There is no motion picture cinematography going on except for a panel of broadcasters sometime mixed in. The commercials are not much problem as half of them are in scope these days and who watches them anyway except for the Super Bowl.
> 
> 7) Music concerts. Yes I also enjoy these and they are not motion pictures but are great immersive along with playing thru the best sound in the house.
> 
> 8) Planet Earth series and all the other similar science and nature stuff, some is amazing more immersive some not as much
> 
> 9) Academy Movies say what you want and I agree they look great in CIH everything I mentioned above looks great in CIH. They for me just look even more amazing given greater immersion. Within the condition of them being transferred and re-mastered the way IMAX enhanced is doing things or the way say 4k Wizard of Oz was done.
> 
> 10) Split screens. This is something I’m just getting into. 4 screens at once.


And now we're back to the "I just like watching random things super large sometimes" argument.

That is 100% your prerogative and is perfectly fine if that's what you want to do. If that's how you get your enjoyment, you should absolutely install an oversized screen or use no screen at all, and zoom up anything you feel like to maximum size no matter what it is or how it was photographed. You have some camcorder footage of your adorable niece's fifth birthday party and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to blow it up to 250", go for it.

But you have to know that your preferences in that regard are about you and you alone. They have nothing to do with the greater conversation about the purpose of Constant Image Height.

Sports and music concerts and YouTube videos are not IMAX. You may personally enjoy pretending that they're IMAX, but that doesn't actually make them IMAX.

Bud, you clearly do not give a crap about the reasons why images are photographed or composed the way they are. And because you don't, then Constant Image Height is definitely not for you. So be it. I'm obviously not going to change your mind.

But some of us do care about those things, and that's where the argument in favor of Constant Image Height comes into play. It's incredibly frustrating trying to have a conversation on that subject with you continually interjecting about how you think it's fun to super-magnify YouTube travel videos that were made to be watched on a phone.


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## bud16415

Next time you are feeling the Covid 19 lockdown blues and have 12 hours to kill and feel like taking a scenic trip to Germany without a facemask, Give something like this the IMAX challenge in your home theater.

I know its not IMAX.

If you feel like winter has you down there are plenty of tropical locations too.


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## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> zoom up anything you feel like to maximum size no matter what it is or how it was photographed. You have some camcorder footage of your adorable niece's fifth birthday party and it *makes you feel warm and fuzzy* to blow it up to 250", go for it.





Josh Z said:


> _*how you think it's fun*_ to super-magnify YouTube travel videos that were made to be watched on a phone.





Josh Z said:


> *you clearly do not give a crap*





Josh Z said:


> *You may personally enjoy* pretending that they're IMAX


You had said earlier that you were trying to take a step back and not be rude, but these quotes just come across as soooo judge-y. Why do you care how others view things? Just let it go.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> You had said earlier that you were trying to take a step back and not be rude, but these quotes just come across as soooo judge-y. Why do you care how others view things? Just let it go.


I don't care how Bud views content. But I do care about his incessant need to sidetrack and undermine any discussion of Constant Image Height with irrelevancies.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> I don't care how Bud views content. But I do care about his incessant need to sidetrack and undermine any discussion of Constant Image Height with irrelevancies.


I've followed you since the HighDefDigest days and generally respect your opinion. I understand you care about the undermining of the discussion. But maybe be the better person and keep the snippy remarks out of it...you'll look better. All of this IMHO.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> No, but this subforum does get a number of people coming in and asking if they should get a 16:9 or a Scope screen. *One reason for this subforum to exist is to make the case to those people why they should consider a CIH setup with a Scope screen. [emphasis added]*
> 
> I really like your list of use cases for something more like an oversized 16:9 screen or a simple screen wall. It explains why you like it, and I think it would work for a lot of people. But for someone coming here asking which way to go, I would still say that in my opinion CIH with a Scope screen is the best way to go if your are primarily watching films and television, because it ensures that nothing is smaller than it should be, and Scope films get the epic presentation they deserve. But as I mentioned upthread, I am starting from a position that seeing letterbox bars is to be avoided, and that aversion is informing much of my thinking. If you don't care about seeing letterbox or pillarbox bars, then matching screen shape to the content AR doesn't really matter and a big 16:9 (or perhaps 2.00:1) screen definitely could make sense.


Actually, this subforum was created by JoshZ in direct response to me, when he said that a discussion of screen shapes did not belong in the subforum for true 4K JVC lamp-based projectors - which are native 1.89:1 projectors that can easily toggle between using just an inner 16x9 frame and the entire 17x9 (1.89:1) sensor shape, and are projectors that have dark enough blacks to make the use of masking less necessary than with other brands.

I was advising a user about my borderless screen approach (what @bud16415 calls a "stealth screen") and Josh said to take this discussion to the CIH forum, to which I said (in essence) "sure, if he wants to be jumped on for discussing non-scope screens."

Josh then responded by setting this up thread - ostensibly _not_ as a soapbox for browbeating folks to use CIH but as a place to discuss choices dispassionately. It hasn't worked out that way, but has been more like what I predicted, except that some CIH advocates have found folks here ready, willing, and able to expose the fallacies in their absolutist and less than dispassionate arguments.

We don't object to folks choosing CIH if that's their preference. What we object to is it being treated as an absolutist matter, with dogmatic assertions like having to zoom down the size of 1.85:1 and 1.78:1 images to fit on a 2.35:1 screen _isn't_ reducing their size but just making them what they "should" be - to which we have no choice but to respond, "Says who?"

Similarly, being told that a screen taller than scope ratio shrinks scope images, even when they are being projected as large as the room and projector can manage, is nonsense that I have never seen any CIH adherent disavow.

Quoting directors who were explicitly talking about not wanting the tall versions of their films to be viewed on TV sets - to justify saying we shouldn't _project_ them large is their latest bit of disingenuous argumentation.

And attacking the installation of a taller screen area on the basis that it exalts "chick flicks" over action adventures, when all other arguments have been knocked down, shows how bankrupt it is to treat this as an absolutist matter.

There's an old observation from Rufus Miles, chief of the labor and welfare branch of the Bureau of the Budget in the late 1940s, "Where you stand depends on where you sit," pointing out that one's investments bear heavily on one's point of view.

His statement's relevance here is that those who have invested heavily in setups that use anamorphic lenses, 2.35:1 framed screens, and even post-processors like those from Lumagen or MadVR (sometimes spending several times as much as their projectors cost), appear to be so afraid that they may have gone down the wrong path that they insist on saying that anyone who chooses another method of display is wrong.

Or, as Al Gore might have said, we who're presenting alternatives to CIH are voicing "an inconvenient truth."


----------



## fatherom

Philnick said:


> that it exalts "chick flicks" over action adventures


You're WAY too sensitive, and interpreting things as insults that aren't. The ONLY person saying "chick flicks" is you. No one was deriding Breakfast Club. It was just an example.


----------



## Ricoflashback

RE: "My personal opinion and what I hope for if I live long enough and projection stays around is all scaling approach to projection. Blow a huge 4k or 8k or 16k field on a stealth surface and then scale out a window or windows just like you do on a computer. I have been playing with the concept and it is pretty nice. Just need to get it all built into a projector."

Isn't that what the madVR Envy video processor does now, albeit at a very expensive price? Not multiple windows, per se, but one window/screen output where the processor handles all content, on the fly, customized to your screen size? And, with multiple "settings" that you can call back depending on your preference?


----------



## Philnick

fatherom said:


> You're WAY too sensitive, and interpreting things as insults that aren't. The ONLY person saying "chick flicks" is you. No one was deriding Breakfast Club. It was just an example.


In _this_ thread you used _The Breakfast Club_. (Correction: it was jeahrens, not you)

In his VAR thread, Josh's chosen counter-example was _Sleepless In Seattle_.

I guess whether or not you see a common theme there depends on your experiences.

But I don't expect to see it argued anytime soon that "You don't seriously mean that _The Lord of the Rings_ or _Star Wars _are supposed to have less impact than (or be less immersive than) _The Avengers_?"


----------



## fatherom

Philnick said:


> In _this_ thread you used _The Breakfast Club_.


Excuse me?!?

I was NOT the person who cited Breakfast Club...please do your research and re-read posts before saying inaccurate things.

And to correct another mistake of yours, the person who DID cite Breakfast Club conceded and chose another film that refutes your current argument ("don't expect to see it argued anytime soon").



jeahrens said:


> *Substitute Aliens *instead of The Breakfast Club then.* I happen to like The Breakfast Club and it was just the first 1.85:1 film that popped into my head. *That's hardly name calling.


----------



## Philnick

fatherom said:


> Excuse me?!?
> 
> I was NOT the person who cited Breakfast Club...please do your research and re-read posts before saying inaccurate things.
> 
> And to correct another mistake of yours, the person who DID cite Breakfast Club conceded and chose another film that refutes your current argument ("don't expect to see it argued anytime soon").


Sorry - my mistake in attributing that to you.

And clearly _Aliens_ does break that pattern - but was that substitution made because I had just called it out?

Let's see what happens a few weeks from now when this discussion has faded from memory.


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> Sorry - my mistake in attributing that to you.
> 
> And clearly _Aliens_ does break that pattern - but was that substitution made because I had just called it out?
> 
> Let's see what happens a few weeks from now when this discussion has faded from memory.


Now you're anticipating people slighting you at some future date...sigh.

Why don't you GO BACK and read jeahrens reponse to you when you complained about Breakfast Club. He quickly corrected the situation at the time. I have a feeling you're missing responses, even some where people are quoting you.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> And now we're back to the "I just like watching random things super large sometimes" argument.
> 
> That is 100% your prerogative and is perfectly fine if that's what you want to do. If that's how you get your enjoyment, you should absolutely install an oversized screen or use no screen at all, and zoom up anything you feel like to maximum size no matter what it is or how it was photographed. You have some camcorder footage of your adorable niece's fifth birthday party and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to blow it up to 250", go for it.
> 
> But you have to know that your preferences in that regard are about you and you alone. They have nothing to do with the greater conversation about the purpose of Constant Image Height.
> 
> Sports and music concerts and YouTube videos are not IMAX. You may personally enjoy pretending that they're IMAX, but that doesn't actually make them IMAX.
> 
> Bud, you clearly do not give a crap about the reasons why images are photographed or composed the way they are. And because you don't, then Constant Image Height is definitely not for you. So be it. I'm obviously not going to change your mind.
> 
> But some of us do care about those things, and that's where the argument in favor of Constant Image Height comes into play. It's incredibly frustrating trying to have a conversation on that subject with you continually interjecting about how you think it's fun to super-magnify YouTube travel videos that were made to be watched on a phone.


I will ask you to show me a post I have ever made disparaging CIH. I never have to the best of my knowledge and if I did I would gladly remove it.

This is about people coming here seeking information, and none of us know what their desires for a home theater are. Do we simply give them two options if they say I watch 60% sports 20% TV and 20% movies we send them out the door saying CIW is your path, Next.

Or am I not part of the forum and not allowed to try and find the best fit for those coming here?

I tried to start a thread that allowed people a pathway to figuring out for themselves along with getting advice from as many people as will help them what is best for them. A test presentation if you will to allow them to try all the methods and find one or a combination as I did that works.

I guess I never saw an issue with someone having the discipline to watch all cinema content as CIH+IMAX if they want and then host a super bowl party where people gathered around the bar and pool table on the other end of the basement get to see it IMAX sized. This is how a lot of people use a HT/media room.

It is clear a few of you do not want me on AVS and really don’t want me to participate in the CIH forum. I agree with the above posts that your method is to be rude and condescending must allow you to push your way around in your normal life. To the best of my knowledge in my 9,500 posts here at AVS I haven’t called out another member as being rude to other members this is a first. I guess what bothers me the most is you have been posting about taking steps back and returning the conversation to pro and cons of CIH. What the heck I didn’t start the thread you did. Why ask for input on why someone might not want to do CIH and then be abusive when your question is answered.
Please if you feel you are in charge here and want me to move on just ask. Now I’m going back to moving seats in my theater.


----------



## dschulz

Philnick said:


> Actually, this subforum was created by JoshZ in direct response to me, when he said that a discussion of screen shapes did not belong in the subforum for true 4K JVC lamp-based projectors - which are native 1.89:1 projectors that can easily toggle between using just an inner 16x9 frame and the entire 17x9 (1.89:1) sensor shape, and are projectors that have dark enough blacks to make the use of masking less necessary than with other brands.


I was referring to the entire CIH subforum, but I take your point about this thread in particular.



> We don't object to folks choosing CIH if that's their preference. What we object to is it being treated as an absolutist matter, with dogmatic assertions like having to zoom down the size of 1.85:1 and 1.78:1 images to fit on a 2.35:1 screen _isn't_ reducing their size but just making them what they "should" be - to which we have no choice but to respond, "Says who?"


If you have sized your Scope screen appropriately, that is to say, choosing the largest comfortable 16:9 image area and then choosing a Scope screen with that same height, then zooming down the 1.85/1.78 images to fit is not reducing their size beyond what they would have been had you selected a 16:9 screen.



> Similarly, being told that a screen taller than scope ratio shrinks scope images, even when they are being projected as large as the room and projector can manage, is nonsense that I have never seen any CIH adherent disavow.


If you have a Scope image being projected letterboxed as large as the room and projector can manage, I would submit that your 16:9 screen is too large. I think this is the crux of the matter. If you _like_ having that overwhelming screen size, whether for IMAX purposes or to have some wiggle room for subtitles in the letterbox area, or to have the flexibility to project Academy ratio material at slightly taller than a CIH setup - more power to you. But I don't think it's nonsense to observe that the CIH paradigm is a deeply pleasing experience and is, IMO, dismissed too quickly by people who default to 16:9.



> Quoting directors who were explicitly talking about not wanting the tall versions of their films to be viewed on TV sets - to justify saying we shouldn't _project_ them large is their latest bit of disingenuous argumentation.


Those same directors who talked about not wanting the tall versions of their films viewed on TV sets also released those very same films as Scope in the 99% of cinemas that are not IMAX. That tells us something about their preferred aspect ratio, and the way they composed the films. I bring this up because one of the arguments against CIH is the growing popularity of 1.90 IMAX releases (or VAR IMAX releases). And that's a good argument against CIH! But it loses some of its oomph if the directors themselves indicate that the Scope version of their movie is preferred, in which case a CIH installation is fine.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I tried to start a thread that allowed people a pathway to figuring out for themselves along with getting advice from as many people as will help them what is best for them. A test presentation if you will to allow them to try all the methods and find one or a combination as I did that works.


And you will note that I do not intrude into your thread trying to get a rise out of you or drag your conversation off-topic.



> To the best of my knowledge in my 9,500 posts here at AVS I haven’t called out another member as being rude to other members this is a first. I guess what bothers me the most is you have been posting about taking steps back and returning the conversation to pro and cons of CIH. What the heck I didn’t start the thread you did. Why ask for input on why someone might not want to do CIH and then be abusive when your question is answered.
> Please if you feel you are in charge here and want me to move on just ask.


_You read the Bible?... There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you." 

Now... I been sayin' that s**t for years. And if you ever heard it, that meant your a$$. You'd be dead right now. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherf***er before I popped a cap in his a$$. But I saw some s**t this mornin' made me think twice. See, now I'm thinking: maybe it means you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here... he's the shepherd protecting my righteous a$$ in the valley of darkness. Or it could mean you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. And I'd like that. 

But that s**t ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd._

- Pulp Fiction (1995)
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1


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## bud16415

Ricoflashback said:


> RE: "My personal opinion and what I hope for if I live long enough and projection stays around is all scaling approach to projection. Blow a huge 4k or 8k or 16k field on a stealth surface and then scale out a window or windows just like you do on a computer. I have been playing with the concept and it is pretty nice. Just need to get it all built into a projector."
> 
> Isn't that what the madVR Envy video processor does now, albeit at a very expensive price? Not multiple windows, per se, but one window/screen output where the processor handles all content, on the fly, customized to your screen size? And, with multiple "settings" that you can call back depending on your preference?


Yes you are correct and I’m doing similar with a HTPC setup. With 4k resolution the immersion question is settled for 99% of the people IMO. Go as large as you like and resolution shouldn’t be an issue any longer. If 4k isn’t enough 8k should finish off most debate. So at that point you are projecting say an image of fine enough resolution and bright enough in FL lumens per sq ft for the largest you will ever watch call it fake at home IMAX. Now you can clip any area out of that smaller and it has resolution and brightness covered. There are a million ways to do that and I had a projector 20 years ago that did scaling for type of CIH+IMAX when IMAX was 1.44. So projectors that scale and do split inputs and PiP have been done and could be done again. It isn’t technology needing to be invented. It just needs someone to think it would be an idea to try. I bought a WXGA projector once brand new for $365 and it came with A-lens compression scaling. I doubt anyone ever spent the big bucks for an A-lens for a 365 buck projector, but it was there and took a few lines of code to do it is all. Another simple thing that was done years ago on DVD was letting you select between the full movie and the version to fit your screen. Now with 4k UHD BD we can’t have an option for IMAX or Scope safe version.
Who knows if a projector came with a CIH button people might push it.


----------



## bud16415

@dschulz
I get the size the CIH screen as tall as you would like flat content to be and then extrapolate the width of scope from that. That’s what I have always been told and that’s the method all scope theaters have been built to over the years. The tall as you like part in commercial theaters is in the assumption the viewer finds a row in the theater that gives him his height.

I think we are on the same page so far.

Now comes the part of science I would ask you to think about.
Where is it that in the science of vision where the ratio of 1.85 and 2.35 works out that when the above is done the width of the scope is not too wide or not too short? I will tell you the answer I’m commonly told to that question. I’m told that our side to side vision exceeds 180 degrees and I can prove it to myself by moving fingers around until I first know they are there. This is true so then I’m told because I can see 180 side to side the width of scope could well be to infinity the width doesn’t matter.

So then I dig down into the science of vision and eye movement and find there is vision and there is acuity of vision and then there is eye movement and comfortable eye movement and then stressful eye movement. These have been measured and plotted and studied and they can be placed on a grid both vertically and horizontally and curves plotted where similar levels cross. Of course our most acute vision is small circles that follow along with our eye movement.

No place in the science do any of the comfort curves overlay as long a rectangle as 2.35:1. So I can make a case if someone says to me CIW is awful CIH is so much better and was great until 4k came along and I moved my seating from 2.5 SH to 2.0 SH and I love that height I would have had it all along but my old 720 or 1080 resolution held me back. Now I’m fine with the height and maybe I lowered my screen an inch or two in the process but now scope is a little uncomfortably wide. What am I doing wrong? I tell them well unfortunately you are a human and your comfortable vision isn’t exactly 2.35. you might try a composite compromise screen AR of 2.0:1 and see what you think or back off your immersion to 2.25 SH.

Now I understand scope shouldn’t require the same degree of critical acuteness at the sides as in the center and the sides of scope are like the top and bottom of IMAX and the new IMAX AR is very close to the Flat AR. But the science was in part studied by IMAX back in the 60s and that science shows Image-Maximum where the name came from to be a 1.44:1 rectangle roughly the width of comfortable scope and then some. They pushed immersion to the point where people couldn’t stand more than an hour at a time and the action pace had to be slowed down and central. It is geared to loads of peripheral around a central acute vision subject.

I also know no two humans are alike and desired movie immersion / comfort zones are all different. I have a sister that finds any movie immersion greater than 3.0-3.5 SH pushing her comfort zone. I tell her I don’t get it you have walked around your whole life with greater than IMAX immersion looking out your eyes and she said ya I know but I don’t ride in high speed fighter jets all day.
So I ask you is it possible that just like CIW doesn’t meet our needs for both scope and flat that CIH also could miss the mark by a lesser amount in making scope to wide or flat not tall enough?


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## bud16415

@dschulz

I’m as perplexed as anyone with this director preference thing. I actually only find one logical reason for them making an IMAX1.89 movie and insisting the scope version go out to all venues after that. Ok it is logical if a theater is set up for scope they send them the scope cut. It is not all that logical if they send it to a flat theater to not send the IMAX1.89 version except if people caught on they would sit closer and not pay the premium for an IMAX showing. Then the home releases streaming and worse hard media that people pay hard cash for going scope, especially when a lot of fans are clamoring for the taller movie and hardly anyone is saying please, please send me those black bars. If they wanted them that bad a couple strips of black paper taped to the TV screen would do the trick, no one would do that.

Home as scope or IMAX will likely be under-immersive and if it is a problem then movies maybe shouldn’t be watched at home ever because the directors motion picture vision wont be fulfilled.

So my one answer is the directors like the scope version better in their heart of heart. I’m 100% fine with that except they convinced us of a lie in letting us pay extra and telling us the IMAX version was the better version. Just like the director doesn’t care what seat we sit in he shouldn’t assume what size TV we own or how close we sit to it.
Just make a scope movie if you want a scope movie. IMAX show scope movies just fine and they can show your scope movie larger and clearer and with better seats and sound and taster popcorn etc. If you want to make an IMAX movie don’t be afraid it will be called a flat movie and stop this scope safe stuff. I know it won’t happen. The most I can ask for is if you make it IMAX believe in yourself enough to make the IMAX version the one you think is best. Just like James Cameron did with Avatar. Then give it to the public that way.


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## Philnick

fatherom said:


> Now you're anticipating people slighting you at some future date...sigh.
> 
> Why don't you GO BACK and read jeahrens reponse to you when you complained about Breakfast Club. He quickly corrected the situation at the time. I have a feeling you're missing responses, even some where people are quoting you.


I consider you one of the fairest folks here, willing to call out obnoxious posts.

I've quickly apologized whenever I've made a mistake, but I'm still waiting for an admission from Josh that the other arguments I rebutted in the post you responded to are wrong-headed:

His frequent insistence that using a scope screen shrinks scope content, but zooming down 1.85, 1.78 or Academy films to fit the height of a scope screen doesn't shrink those since they're _supposed_ to be that height - the circular logic that @mattsteg pointed out.

Quoting directors explicitly bemoaning showing 1.9 versions of their films on TVs (even calling them "small boxes") to say that no one should show those versions of the films at through projectors.

I haven't heard any retraction of those discredited arguments. I've apologised - why can't they?


dschulz said:


> I was referring to the entire CIH subforum, but I take your point about this thread in particular.
> 
> If you have sized your Scope screen appropriately, that is to say, choosing the largest comfortable 16:9 image area and then choosing a Scope screen with that same height, then zooming down the 1.85/1.78 images to fit is not reducing their size beyond what they would have been had you selected a 16:9 screen.


Most folks don't find their projector's maximum 16x9 image size in their room uncomfortably tall, so the only way to do what you're recommending is to use an anamorphic lens, which requires a long minimum throw and probably requires a much wider room than most folks have. Since you've agreed that one should use a screen as tall as you are comfortable with for 16x9, this rules out the subset of anamorphic lenses that keep the width constant while shrinking the image vertically - what's needed is the type of anamorphic lens that expands it horizontally instead.

I'm willing to bet that such a lens would cost at least as much as the projector.

Thus, unless you have a very large room and limitless funds, what you're recommending is not what most folks choosing the CIH path will do. They'll buy a scope screen that fits their room but is 25% shorter than if they had bought a 16x9 screen.


dschulz said:


> If you have a Scope image being projected letterboxed as large as the room and projector can manage, I would submit that your 16:9 screen is too large. I think this is the crux of the matter. If you _like_ having that overwhelming screen size, whether for IMAX purposes or to have some wiggle room for subtitles in the letterbox area, or to have the flexibility to project Academy ratio material at slightly taller than a CIH setup - more power to you. But I don't think it's nonsense to observe that the CIH paradigm is a deeply pleasing experience and is, IMO, dismissed too quickly by people who default to 16:9.


The above is entirely a matter of taste.


dschulz said:


> Those same directors who talked about not wanting the tall versions of their films viewed on TV sets also released those very same films as Scope in the 99% of cinemas that are not IMAX. That tells us something about their preferred aspect ratio, and the way they composed the films. I bring this up because one of the arguments against CIH is the growing popularity of 1.90 IMAX releases (or VAR IMAX releases). And that's a good argument against CIH! But it loses some of its oomph if the directors themselves indicate that the Scope version of their movie is preferred, in which case a CIH installation is fine.


So the directors who can't control which format is made available for streaming do control which format gets sent to movie houses?

I suspect that except in the case of a very few, very powerful directors, those decisions are made by other people than the directors.


----------



## dschulz

Philnick said:


> Most folks don't find their projector's maximum 16x9 image size in their room uncomfortably tall, so the only way to do what you're recommending is to use an anamorphic lens, which requires a long minimum throw and probably requires a much wider room than most folks have. Since you've agreed that one should use a screen as tall as you are comfortable with for 16x9, this rules out the subset of anamorphic lenses that keep the width constant while shrinking the image vertically - what's needed is the type of anamorphic lens that expands it horizontally instead.


I don't think it's the case that most people would find their projector's maximum 16:9 image comfortable. This definitely comes down to particular projector models and their brightness, throw distance requirements and so on, but I don't think I've visited many home theatres in which the screen size was anywhere near the maximum theoretical size the projector could throw. 

As far as anamorphics go, my favorite home theatre that I've visited here in Southern California does use one, but it's a vertical compression lens, not a horizontal expansion, and the room would work just fine without one and just using zoom + lens memory. Most CIH home theatres nowadays are foregoing anamorphics. I like them for other reasons, but as projectors have improved the argument in favor of using them has become less compelling.



> Thus, unless you have a very large room and limitless funds, what you're recommending is not what most folks choosing the CIH path will do. They'll buy a scope screen that fits their room but is 25% shorter than if they had bought a 16x9 screen.


I would never advocate that someone choose a Scope screen based on what would be an appropriate Flat screen size and then getting a smaller Scope screen! If that's what you think is happening then I understand your opposition to the idea! The whole point of CIH is to make Scope movies more impactful, not to make everything smaller just to fulfill a fanatic desire to show Scope without letterbox bars.


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## Josh Z

For anyone who somehow thought the object size issue only affected close-ups. 




























This is a universal problem that impacts any two comparable shots photographed with the camera the same distance from the subjects. All objects in a 2.35:1 image will always be smaller than those in an equivalent 1.85:1 image when displayed on a 16:9 screen.

Only Constant Image Height will equalize the object scale in both aspect ratios.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> For anyone who somehow thought the object size issue only affected close-ups.
> 
> View attachment 3221005
> 
> 
> View attachment 3221006
> 
> 
> View attachment 3221007
> 
> 
> This is a universal problem that impacts any two comparable shots photographed with the camera the same distance from the subjects. All objects in a 2.35:1 image will always be smaller than those in an equivalent 1.85:1 image when displayed on a 16:9 screen.
> 
> Only Constant Image Height will equalize the object scale in both aspect ratios.


I just measured head size and arm length and something is off a little.
The Avengers heads to the top line up perfect to the heads of the Age of Ultron. If you want to check use a window like Microsoft Word as a straight edge.
The chins on The Avengers are 33% lower than the Age of Ultron heads. Another way you could say it is the Avengers are 33% larger/immersive than the Age of Ultrons. I didn’t see any tilted heads to throw it off. This kind of gives scope a lesser impact than flat.
Are you sure you didn’t take these from a CIA setup?


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> I just measured head size and arm length and something is off a little.
> The Avengers heads to the top line up perfect to the heads of the Age of Ultron. If you want to check use a window like Microsoft Word as a straight edge.
> The chins on The Avengers are 33% lower than the Age of Ultron heads. Another way you could say it is the Avengers are 33% larger/immersive than the Age of Ultrons. I didn’t see any tilted heads to throw it off. This kind of gives scope a lesser impact than flat.
> Are you sure you didn’t take these from a CIA setup?


Genuinely can't tell if you're trolling or being serious. They're two different movies, not pixel-accurate reproductions of the same frame. But I hope you'll agree that in the CIH setup the actors, framed in a medium shot, are more-or-less the same size, whereas in the CIW setup they are greatly shrunk in letterboxed Scope? Can we get agreement just on that one small point? Without snark? Because this is the crux of the pro-CIH case.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> Genuinely can't tell if you're trolling or being serious. They're two different movies, not pixel-accurate reproductions of the same frame. But I hope you'll agree that in the CIH setup the actors, framed in a medium shot, are more-or-less the same size, whereas in the CIW setup they are greatly shrunk in letterboxed Scope? Can we get agreement just on that one small point? Without snark? Because this is the crux of the pro-CIH case.


Oh without a doubt the comparison between CIW and CIH is radical and not anything anyone should want if they are concerned about relative presentations.

My point is to show perhaps the difference between the two images from two movies that may be off by 33% is hardly detected by eye even when shown side by side in a thread being critical about presentation. Picture watching the two movies a day apart and trying to remember the previous presentation. It might be the difference of 3 or 4 rows of seats when in a commercial theater. Really well within the margin of error for most of us selecting seats.

That is really what CIA causes in problems compared to CIH.

What does CIA provide for some is a more engaging image with a larger image area leveling the impact for flat. Those that like a 2.0:1 screen to bump the lesser content a smidgen are not even going as far as CIA.
I know the wisdom here is to give scope the greatest impact. With great movies like Saving Private Ryan being flat maybe giving each equal impact could be an option. 

The point to a lot of this as we have been talking about width limited rooms that don’t do well with CIH and for that reason people revert to CIW could well do something like the 2.0:1 compromise and have a lot of scope-like benefit when CIH isn’t in the cards.
We have a few well regarded members here who have two screens and they do something like CIA outcome. The benefit they have with two roll down screens is each screen has its own masking so no need for 2way or 4way masking.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> I don't think it's the case that most people would find their projector's maximum 16:9 image comfortable. This definitely comes down to particular projector models and their brightness, throw distance requirements and so on, but I don't think I've visited many home theatres in which the screen size was anywhere near the maximum theoretical size the projector could throw.


So to operationalize this, the first question someone setting up a theater should ask themself is whether the projector's maximum image height in 16x9 in their room is too tall for their taste or not.

(A) If it's not too tall for your taste, create a screen big enough to capture the largest image the projector can throw in your room. If your room - and your finances - can accommodate a "horizontal expansion" lens and scope screen that tall, then go for it. Otherwise, just show scope films on your 16x9 or 17x9 screen, masked if letterbox bars bother you, since that's as large as you'll be able to show scope films without a "horizontal expansion" lens.

(B) If is too tall for your taste, then establish how tall an image you want for 16x9 and for the taller sections of variable aspect ratio films, and set up a screen that height but scope width



dschulz said:


> . . .
> I would never advocate that someone choose a Scope screen based on what would be an appropriate Flat screen size and then getting a smaller Scope screen! If that's what you think is happening then I understand your opposition to the idea! The whole point of CIH is to make Scope movies more impactful, not to make everything smaller just to fulfill a fanatic desire to show Scope without letterbox bars.


I think we've come to a point of agreement. Without doing a survey, it's just a decision for each owner to make on their own.

I found it most convenient - and economical - to simply have my screenwall skimcoated with a layer of plaster extremely uniform and smooth, and paint the whole wall with screen paint.

This gave me a borderless "stealth" screen that can accommodate whatever I show on it.


----------



## Josh Z

Furthermore:










When you throw IMAX versions into the mix, then CIH+IMAX is the only way to maintain proper scale across all formats. What this gains you (versus watching the 2.35:1 edition of the movie on a CIH screen) is some more empty space above the characters' heads. Object size of actual relevant picture content is identical between CIH and CIH+IMAX.











A 16:9 screen remains the worst way to watch if you care about proper image scale, as it artificially magnifies plain 1.85:1 movies (plus sitcoms and game shows and TV commercials) larger than everything, even IMAX.


----------



## Ricoflashback

I think the CIH debate is really an esoteric discussion among very few TV and Movie watchers. Heck, how many folks even own a projector? My answer is to go as big as you can with a 16 x 9 screen and call it a day. Problem solved for subtitles. Sports, cable TV, most streaming fit naturally on a 16 x 9 screen. If anyone has a UST Projector, you’re locked in to a 16 x 9 aspect ratio to begin with. Unless, of course, you spend a ton of money on a scope screen and processor like the madVR to handle all your content. Use masking if you like. Personally, I don’t mind black or gray bars. I love the idea of a blank wall for those who are pursuing CIH or other display options. I’ve been told that this is hard to do unless you really get the surface right versus a quality screen. Yes, a personal decision and preference. Those chasing and believing in CIH - go for it. As one can see on this thread - there are many approaches to achieving CIH and my hat is off to those passionately pursuing this objective. It’s all about enjoyment and I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. If it works for you then do it.


----------



## bud16415

Ricoflashback said:


> I think the CIH debate is really an esoteric discussion among very few TV and Movie watchers. Heck, how many folks even own a projector? My answer is to go as big as you can with a 16 x 9 screen and call it a day. Problem solved for subtitles. Sports, cable TV, most streaming fit naturally on a 16 x 9 screen. If anyone has a UST Projector, you’re locked in to a 16 x 9 aspect ratio to begin with. Unless, of course, you spend a ton of money on a scope screen and processor like the madVR to handle all your content. Use masking if you like. Personally, I don’t mind black or gray bars. I love the idea of a blank wall for those who are pursuing CIH or other display options. I’ve been told that this is hard to do unless you really get the surface right versus a quality screen. Yes, a personal decision and preference. Those chasing and believing in CIH - go for it. As one can see on this thread - there are many approaches to achieving CIH and my hat is off to those passionately pursuing this objective. It’s all about enjoyment and I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. If it works for you then do it.


In almost every hobby I can think of different people delve into the hobby to different degrees. At the heart of it home theater is a hobby in today’s world we like to convince ourselves it is a necessity. We mostly all own a car some buy a sports car or truck they don’t really need but want and drive around and some people buy one and keep it locked up and polish it and take it to shows others take them out and drive them on a track or thru the woods just for the pleasure of doing it. HT for me is kind of like that. I look at the pleasure of the end result others want a perfect reproduction of standards like the person that would never alter their car with an aftermarket part. Even though I drive a dirty 5 year old Kia I can enjoy watching car shows on TV where people preserve cars to original and also shows where they modify them into something they feel is better than original.

So in HT we are all over the place as a hobby and all enjoying the outcome in many ways.

For many years the hobby of HT going past buying a 4:3 tube TV and some speakers was out of the reach of almost anyone to do. That slowly changed over the last 40 years and now has become something people 40 years ago wouldn’t believe possible. The media has evolved along with it and the really great part is the prices have come down to a point anyone interested in the hobby with an extra room or a unfinished basement can give it a try if they like. It is important that the history is remembered even if people decide to deviate from it with the new wave of likes. There was a time when Academy movies were king and the idea of wide screen was a wild deviation from the norm. 16:9 is a deviation from norm we went thru not that long ago. All we can do is move ahead and talk about what and why what we find pleasing in this hobby means to us and let others learn and take away from it what they want.

There is surely no reason to send people anger emoji. LOL


As to DIY stealth screen walls. It is not a real difficult project unless you are trying to duplicate high gain or ALR properties in your screen surface. If you have a flat uninterrupted wall and want a 1.0-1.2 gain white screen or a neutral density lower gain gray screen it is something you can do over a weekend with simple tools and rolling on paints.


----------



## Philnick

Here's how I created a "blank wall" screen in a windowless basement room:

1) Put up new drywall.

2) Have it plastered by someone who knows how to finish it with a "skimcoat" - which just means that the final coat of plaster is smoothed with a straightedge. The side walls and ceiling can be rough-surfaced, which is both less work and less reflective.

3) Primer-coat the screen wall, the ceiling, and the side walls back to the seating area, with Kilz Ultra Premium primer.

4) Tape off the side and top edges of the screen wall with painters' tape to protect the screen wall from the next step.

5) Paint the the ceiling and the side walls back to the seating area with matte black paint. I used a paint from Rustoleum designed to simulate a classroom blackboard surface. Some folks use triple black velvet but an in-between approach served me well: Black enough to reduce most of the splashback of light from the screen to prevent that from harming contrast, but not so black as make the letterbox bars stand out and require masking.

6) Peel off the painter's tape and paint the screen wall - all of it if you've mixed up enough screen paint, or at least a bit more of the wall than your projector can light up - with a mixture called Cream&Sugar Ultra, the recipe for which can be found at home theater shack dot com. It's half and half Valspar white latex wall paint and Basics Acryilic Silver paint, thinned for application with a roller by a bit of distilled water from your local CVS, Walmart, Rexall, or equivalent. (A few paint manufacturers - including Valspar - have adopted the Cream and Sugar name for tan wall paint - which is totally wrong for a screen. The recipe I'm describing is a basically white _very_ light grey.)

7) Carpet the room _afterwards_ with dark grey carpet so you don't ruin the carpet by getting paint on it - a mistake I made, requiring new carpet!

The Cream&Sugar Ultra recipe was devised and published by a few hobbyists at that forum who would test their creations with color reflectometers to get good color balance and contrast without hot-spotting of the projector lens. C&S was designed for bat-caves and claims a gain of 0.92 (though mine measured closer to 0.55), while their other formulations were designed for optimum blacks in rooms with large windows, "Black Widow," and for in-between situations, "Elektra." C&S is basically white but the silver in the mixture makes it very slightly grey compared to white wall paint. It definitely improved definition in my prior Panasonic PT-AE2000's blacks, so I used that formula again when creating my current theater, which had been destroyed to repair the basement ceiling's support beam. They have stopped maintaining that recipe to account for subtle changes in the commercial paints, but Autocal (JVC's free calibration software for their projectors) took care of that. (For other brands of projectors, there are threads here on calibration.)

This was a lot less expensive than buying a brand-name screen: a few hundred dollars for supplies and workers for a few days, instead of the multiple thousands of dollars a brand name screen would have cost.


----------



## Ricoflashback

Philnick said:


> Here's how I created a "blank wall" screen in a windowless basement room:
> 
> 1) Put up new drywall.
> 
> 2) Have it plastered by someone who knows how to finish it with a "skimcoat" - which just means that the final coat of plaster is smoothed with a straightedge. The side walls and ceiling can be rough-surfaced, which is both less work and less reflective.
> 
> 3) Primer-coat the screen wall, the ceiling, and the side walls back to the seating area, with Kilz Ultra Premium primer.
> 
> 4) Tape off the side and top edges of the screen wall with painters' tape to protect the screen wall from the next step.
> 
> 5) Paint the the ceiling and the side walls back to the seating area with matte black paint. I used a paint from Rustoleum designed to simulate a classroom blackboard surface. Some folks use triple black velvet but an in-between approach served me well: Black enough to reduce most of the splashback of light from the screen to prevent that from harming contrast, but not so black as make the letterbox bars stand out and require masking.
> 
> 6) Peel off the painter's tape and paint the screen wall - all of it if you've mixed up enough screen paint, or at least a bit more of the wall than your projector can light up - with a mixture called Cream&Sugar Ultra, the recipe for which can be found at home theater shack dot com. It's half and half Valspar white latex wall paint and Basics Acryilic Silver paint, thinned for application with a roller with a bit of distilled water from your local CVS, Walmart, Rexall, or equivalent. (A few paint manufacturers - including Valspar - have adopted the Cream and Sugar name for tan wall paint - which is totally wrong for a screen. The recipe I'm describing is a basically white _very_ light grey.)
> 
> 7) Carpet the room afterwards (so you don't ruin the carpet by getting paint on it) with dark grey carpet.
> 
> Cream&Sugar Ultra was devised and published by a few hobbyists at that forum who would test their creations with color reflectometers to get good color balance and contrast without hot-spotting of the projector lens. C&S was designed for bat-caves and claims a gain of 0.92 (though mine measured closer to 0.55), while their other formulations were designed for optimum blacks in rooms with large windows, "Black Widow," and for in-between situations, "Elektra." C&S is basically white but the silver in the mixture makes it very slightly grey compared to white wall paint. It definitely improved definition in my prior Panasonic PT-AE2000's blacks, so I used that formula again when creating my current theater, which had been destroyed to repair the basement ceiling's support beam. They have stopped maintaining that recipe to account for subtle changes in the commercial paints, but Autocal (JVC's free calibration software for their projectors) took care of that. (For other brands of projectors, there are threads here on calibration.)
> 
> This was a lot less expensive than buying a brand-name screen: a few hundred dollars for supplies and workers for a few days, instead of the multiple thousands of dollars a brand name screen would have cost.


Much thanks!


----------



## Ricoflashback

bud16415 said:


> In almost every hobby I can think of different people delve into the hobby to different degrees. At the heart of it home theater is a hobby in today’s world we like to convince ourselves it is a necessity. We mostly all own a car some buy a sports car or truck they don’t really need but want and drive around and some people buy one and keep it locked up and polish it and take it to shows others take them out and drive them on a track or thru the woods just for the pleasure of doing it. HT for me is kind of like that. I look at the pleasure of the end result others want a perfect reproduction of standards like the person that would never alter their car with an aftermarket part. Even though I drive a dirty 5 year old Kia I can enjoy watching car shows on TV where people preserve cars to original and also shows where they modify them into something they feel is better than original.
> 
> So in HT we are all over the place as a hobby and all enjoying the outcome in many ways.
> 
> For many years the hobby of HT going past buying a 4:3 tube TV and some speakers was out of the reach of almost anyone to do. That slowly changed over the last 40 years and now has become something people 40 years ago wouldn’t believe possible. The media has evolved along with it and the really great part is the prices have come down to a point anyone interested in the hobby with an extra room or a unfinished basement can give it a try if they like. It is important that the history is remembered even if people decide to deviate from it with the new wave of likes. There was a time when Academy movies were king and the idea of wide screen was a wild deviation from the norm. 16:9 is a deviation from norm we went thru not that long ago. All we can do is move ahead and talk about what and why what we find pleasing in this hobby means to us and let others learn and take away from it what they want.
> 
> There is surely no reason to send people anger emoji. LOL
> 
> 
> As to DIY stealth screen walls. It is not a real difficult project unless you are trying to duplicate high gain or ALR properties in your screen surface. If you have a flat uninterrupted wall and want a 1.0-1.2 gain white screen or a neutral density lower gain gray screen it is something you can do over a weekend with simple tools and rolling on paints.


Thanks. I have a very humble man cave with a 100” screen. But I tell you what - the first time I watched a movie, I was thrilled. I still am as I don’t think anything can equal your own big screen experience. That might be relative to some who believe a 120” screen is the minimum you need for that cinema feeling. And I’ve seen some gorgeous theaters and setups on various forums. It’s all good and reading about CIH educates folks on different approaches to this wonderful hobby.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> In almost every hobby I can think of different people delve into the hobby to different degrees. At the heart of it home theater is a hobby in today’s world we like to convince ourselves it is a necessity. We mostly all own a car some buy a sports car or truck they don’t really need but want and drive around and some people buy one and keep it locked up and polish it and take it to shows others take them out and drive them on a track or thru the woods just for the pleasure of doing it. HT for me is kind of like that.


I don't believe that home theater is a "necessity." Obviously, not everyone needs a home theater.

However, if you're going to the effort of building a home theater, my feeling is the goal should be to actually make it like a theater (a good one) to whatever degree you can, not just an oversized TV.

Obviously, some people disagree, and just want to watch 720p football broadcasts or play video games at 150", with maybe the occasional movie or two thrown in. So be it. That's their prerogative.

IMO, that's less a "home theater" than a rec room. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making a rec room if that's what you're into. Put a bar and a pool table in the back, and leave the lights on when the game is playing. I understand the appeal of that experience, but that is not the goal I'm trying to achieve in my home theater.

To that end, Constant Image Height will not be for everyone. I get that. The problem we face, even here in the Constant Image Height Forum, is the continued intrusion of certain people who believe that Constant Image Height is stupid and shouldn't be for _anyone -_ and who go out of their way to actively dissuade interested home theater owners from even considering it.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> Obviously, some people disagree, and just want to watch 720p football broadcasts or play video games at 150". So be it. That's their prerogative.
> 
> IMO, that's less a "home theater" than a rec room. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making a rec room if that's what you're into. Put a bar and a pool table in the back, and leave the lights on when the game is playing. I understand the appeal of that experience, but that is not the goal I'm trying to achieve in my home theater.


I have a 16:9 screen, I don't watch football, I have a 7.2.4 speaker setup. My home theater is a home theater. It is not a rec room. I have a 4K laser projector, I have a nice setup. No one would call it a "rec room".

Please stop being so judge-y and pompous and looking down at mere mortals who don't strive for what you strive for.

Talk about CIH all you want, but stop disparaging other people's setups.


----------



## mattsteg

Philnick said:


> His statement's relevance here is that those who have invested heavily in setups that use anamorphic lenses, 2.35:1 framed screens, and even post-processors like those from Lumagen or MadVR (sometimes spending several times as much as their projectors cost), appear to be so afraid that they may have gone down the wrong path that they insist on saying that anyone who chooses another method of display is wrong.


It's also interesting that all level of cost and complexity is fine for scope, but simply calling up e.g. SeymourAV and ordering a taller screen for ~$100 more is completely outside of the realm of feasibility.


Philnick said:


> used _The Breakfast Club_.
> 
> In his VAR thread, Josh's chosen counter-example was _Sleepless In Seattle_.


Are these being posed as "chick flicks" or as films with a less expansive, more intimate scope? Let's not get too carried away.


dschulz said:


> If you have sized your Scope screen appropriately, that is to say, choosing the largest comfortable 16:9 image area and then choosing a Scope screen with that same height, then zooming down the 1.85/1.78 images to fit is not reducing their size beyond what they would have been had you selected a 16:9 screen.


Out of curiousity, *what percentage of installed CIH screens do you feel are sized appropriately?* How many people either undersize based on room constraints or changing preferences for immersion? I doubt that this is rare.


dschulz said:


> But I don't think it's nonsense to observe that the CIH paradigm is a deeply pleasing experience and is, IMO, dismissed too quickly by people who default to 16:9.


Who are these people that are defaulting to 16:9? I know that they exist, but they're not posting in this thread.


dschulz said:


> Those same directors who talked about not wanting the tall versions of their films viewed on TV sets also released those very same films as Scope in the 99% of cinemas that are not IMAX. That tells us something about their preferred aspect ratio


No, it tells us something about *their preferred vertical angle of view for IMAX content.* It should be larger than a scope image, and presented within the viewing angles of an IMAX theater (e.g. <1.5 screen height). Non-imax theaters can't provide that, while home theaters can.


bud16415 said:


> No place in the science do any of the comfort curves overlay as long a rectangle as 2.35:1. So I can make a case if someone says to me CIW is awful CIH is so much better and was great until 4k came along and I moved my seating from 2.5 SH to 2.0 SH and I love that height I would have had it all along but my old 720 or 1080 resolution held me back. Now I’m fine with the height and maybe I lowered my screen an inch or two in the process but now scope is a little uncomfortably wide. What am I doing wrong? I tell them well unfortunately you are a human and your comfortable vision isn’t exactly 2.35. you might try a composite compromise screen AR of 2.0:1 and see what you think or back off your immersion to 2.25 SH.


It's good to remember that we're all individuals. The "science" does not exactly match our viewing situations, nor does one answer fully represent everyone's preference. People have a threshold of vertical comfort, and a threshold of how much they are comfortable observing in their peripheral vision vs. viewing a film like a tennis match. The widest edges of scope films are NOT composed to lie in the periphery like the top and bottom of IMAX films - they often contain material that demands critical attention.

People have personal comfort ranges for vertical and horizontal viewing angles - both for the area paid close attention and for the area that falls into the peripheral. CIH is an excellent first approximation...but once you've invested the time, thought, and slight expense to get the capability to shift your projection device's projection area (as needed for CIH) - most of the time other choices are equivalently easy to adapt and are worth exploring.


Josh Z said:


> For anyone who somehow thought the object size issue only affected close-up


Why do you keep assuming that this is an "issue" in the first place? Most of us view movies for entertainment purposes - not to put rulers up on the screen and measure the size of people on the screen. As long as the projected image size is within the range of comfortable and enjoyable viewing angles for the size image presented, and for a theatrical experience within the standards of the appropriate commercial theater standards, the viewing experience is appropriate and in line with the creator's intent.

*People don't generally care* if Samuel Jackson's image is projected 5ft tall or 6 ft tall. They care that the image they viewing is sized to be both engaging and comfortable. CIH is a fine first approximation of that - better than CIW - but it's not perfect.



Josh Z said:


> This is a universal problem that impacts any two comparable shots photographed with the camera the same distance from the subjects. All objects in a 2.35:1 image will always be smaller than those in an equivalent 1.85:1 image when displayed on a 16:9 screen.


Are we sure that this is a "problem"? It's not like we're setting up an enlarger to make duplicate photographic prints. Comfort and immersion are the objective, not matching torso sizes. And the choice is not between CIH and 16:9 projection.


Josh Z said:


> Only Constant Image Height will equalize the object scale in both aspect ratios.


Within this artificially designed constuct...sure. But how about making a case why this matters in the first place? We don't view movies to measure heads.


Josh Z said:


> To that end, Constant Image Height will not be for everyone. I get that. The problem we face, even here in the Constant Image Height Forum, is the continued intrusion of *certain people who believe that Constant Image Height is stupid* and shouldn't be for _anyone -_ and who go out of their way to actively dissuade interested home theater owners from even considering it.


Who are these people? I don't see anyone making that position. *CIH *is fine to great as a *starting* point that gets a HT enthusiast thinking about aspect ratios and presentations. The compelling reasons to consider it have *nothing* to do with measuring actors' projected faces. The reasons to consider CIH are the strong (but not universal) influence of vertical viewing angle on comfort and immersion, the simplicity of implementation, the theatrical impact of a wide screen with the lights on, etc. Those are all compelling reasons to consider it. 

It's *acceptable to OK *as an ending point - it comes with a lot of compromises (as all screen sizes do). The drawbacks are generally minor and mostly related to media produced under the assumption it will be viewed on a 16:9 screen (menus, interface subtitle positioning, etc.). The more significant issues are things like properly presenting the handful of content that really benefits from a taller screen (primarily IMAX-derived, but Academy ratio and maybe some flat films can fit this as well). Other pragmatic concerns are based on room dimension, seating location, etc. - i.e. are you truly achieving your maximal comfortable image height, or are you constrained by room width/seating distance in some way? And individual viewer comfort comes into play as well. Some people just get overwhelmed by wide images, even at comfortable vertical angles. The dogmatic rigidity with which CIH proponents advocate for it is a big turnoff. *Why not embrace people making the affirmative choice to escape the native aspect ratio of their projection device*? That's the real step away from display devices making scope smaller. Dogmatically insisting that height must be constant is just a giant buzzkill.

*If anyone is considering CIH* - especially CIH implemented via lens zooming, they should *also* consider other formats of screen. You've cited cost of an oversize 16:9 or custom-ratio screen as a concern...so I checked pricing with SeymourAV and the cost difference was *about a hundred bucks. *I doubt that's a real roadblock to anyone. For DIY the cost difference can be 0. If you feel strongly about needing masking, the cost and complexity is a bit higher and it should absolutely be part of the discussion whether to mask and if automated masking is needed.

In most rooms, there's a bit of extra vertical room that allows a taller-than-scope screen to fit identically to a scope screen. We all agree that there are cases that scope does not handle gracefully. Fixed masking is pretty inexpensive. If I'm putting together the most optimized theater experience built around movies...I'm not ending up at CIH. I'm using the idea of CIH as a starting point to confirm the screen width/seating distance combination and then going with a taller, larger screen for a more satisfying, flexible cinematic experience that better handles corner-cases at minimal extra expense.

And if physical installation considerations limit screen dimensions in any way (which is relatively common and maybe even near-universal), I'm sizing height and width independently and getting the most satisfying experience from all aspect ratios independently. In general a 16:9 sized for comfortable height would be my LAST choice, but a scope CIH would also not be my first.

If someone is investing in what they need to do CIH - they *should be *encouraged to consider other options that that same equipment enables, in case that it can give them an even better experience.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> Are these being posed as "chick flicks" or as films with a less expansive, more intimate scope? Let's not get too carried away.


Is it your contention that The Breakfast Club or Sleepless in Seattle were directed with the intention of being big immersive visual spectacle movies on equal par with Star Wars or Jaws or (to pick something of the era that was less blockbuster-y) Gandhi or The Last Emperor?

If you think this is just me being sexist (and first, I wouldn't categorize The Breakfast Club as a "chick flick" - it seems to appeal to both genders as far as I can tell), then pick some male-focused character drama or comedy of your choosing: Rain Man, Good Will Hunting, Fargo. Whatever.



> Why do you keep assuming that this is an "issue" in the first place? Most of us view movies for entertainment purposes - not to put rulers up on the screen and measure the size of people on the screen. As long as the projected image size is within the range of comfortable and enjoyable viewing angles for the size image presented, and for a theatrical experience within the standards of the appropriate commercial theater standards, the viewing experience is appropriate and in line with the creator's intent.


That it isn't a problem *for you* doesn't mean that it isn't a legitimate concern for others - including the people who actually make these movies. It just means that you personally don't care about it.

I personally don't care much about cars, beyond their ability to get me to the grocery store and back. You don't see me hanging around Automotive Forums to tell people that horsepower is a bunch of BS that should have no bearing on their decision of what car to buy.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> I have a 16:9 screen, I don't watch football, I have a 7.2.4 speaker setup. My home theater is a home theater. It is not a rec room. I have a 4K laser projector, I have a nice setup. No one would call it a "rec room".


Fair enough.



> Talk about CIH all you want, but stop disparaging other people's setups.


But it is OK for them to disparage my investment in the topic?

Cool cool cool. Double standard. Got it...


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> But it is OK for them to disparage my investment in the topic?
> 
> Cool cool cool. Double standard. Got it...


Josh, I was under the impression that you set up this thread in response to my having said, in the thread for the JVC true 4K lamp-based projectors, that discussion about belonged there, not - as you had just proposed, moved to the CIH forum - because the CIH forum was actively hostile to discussion of non-CIH display methods.

Within a day or two, you had set up this thread, apparently to provide a non-judgmental place for for discussion of varying display approaches.

But you've instead proven the correctness of what I had said would been the result of attempting to discuss other approaches here, relentlessly asserting the inferiority to CIH of all other methods of display.

No one here has disparaged CIH theaters, just the attitude of CIH proselytizers in denigrating everyone elses' approaches.

At least I've met a few new friends here who like what I've described about my method of display.

And I can point to how this thread has gone (nearly two hundred posts in a flame war in its first five days) whenever someone in my projector forum says, "Discussion of screen types doesn't belong here - take it to the CIH forum!"


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> Fair enough.


Thank you.



Josh Z said:


> But it is OK for them to disparage my investment in the topic?


I'll admit I haven't read every post, but I don't see the people that disagree with you as disparaging anything that you're passionate about. I may have missed it.


----------



## bud16415

Ricoflashback said:


> Thanks. I have a very humble man cave with a 100” screen. But I tell you what - the first time I watched a movie, I was thrilled. I still am as I don’t think anything can equal your own big screen experience. That might be relative to some who believe a 120” screen is the minimum you need for that cinema feeling. And I’ve seen some gorgeous theaters and setups on various forums. It’s all good and reading about CIH educates folks on different approaches to this wonderful hobby.


I would never call 100” screen too small for anything. I remember a time when 100 was the goal line and I wanted to get tee shirts printed saying Life begins at 100….inches and have the text inside a 16:9 rectangle. I never had them printed but still might.

My first projector many moons ago was an XGA man cave model I spent my tax return on along with a king size white bed sheet for a screen. I had a friend that had built a projector from a kit where you invert the image on a 19” TV and send the image thru some huge lens and off a first surface mirror and up to a parabolic screen made from Styrofoam and coated in some silver coating. This screen was about 60” 4:3 but with big round corners and for both of us to watch it at once we had to be in the dark and have our heads ear to ear. When I lit my 120” 4:3 DLP light cannon off the first time I was on the phone in 5 minutes calling everyone I knew to come see this thing. Going from what I had upstairs a 36” Sony TV that weighed a ton to this was like nothing I will ever forget.
Like you it was my man cave and also my theater. I think we ate a 1000 pounds of popcorn down there.


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## dschulz

Let me simplify this.

If I go to a commercial cinema, without knowing the aspect ratio of the movie, and see a Flat screen, I choose my seating position. If, between the preshow and the feature the side masking opens up to reveal a Scope screen, I think to myself "cool."

If I walk in to a Scope screen, and, after having chosen my seat, top and bottom masking opens up to reveal a Flat screen, I get up and move back two or three rows. I have a chosen comfort level that is almost solely based on screen height. Josh's screen grabs illustrate why that may be, inasmuch as shot compositions for close-up, medium close, medium are largely dependent on how much vertical space the actors are taking up. Upthread Saving Private Ryan was mentioned: I would submit that Saving Private Ryan is _not_ less immersive than it ought to be in a CIH setup, as Tom Hanks is taking up the same amount of real estate in a given shot as he would be in a similar shot in Cloud Atlas.


----------



## dschulz

mattsteg said:


> It's also interesting that all level of cost and complexity is fine for scope, but simply calling up e.g. SeymourAV and ordering a taller screen for ~$100 more is completely outside of the realm of feasibility.


What are these levels of cost and complexity? You need a Scope screen of appropriate size, side masking, and a projector that is bright enough to hit your target light level and good lens memory. 



> Out of curiousity, *what percentage of installed CIH screens do you feel are sized appropriately?* How many people either undersize based on room constraints or changing preferences for immersion? I doubt that this is rare.


I couldn't possibly say. All I'm doing is laying out reasons why a CIH setup of appropriate size is a very, very good approach to good home theatre. 



> Who are these people that are defaulting to 16:9? I know that they exist, but they're not posting in this thread.


The broad question is between CIH and CIW, although of late the thread has shifted towards abandoning screens altogether. You have done an excellent job of making the case for an oversized screen with 4-way masking, and I think it's a good case! But the general thrust of all of these conversations is that CIH detractors believe CIH is a bad idea because it makes Flat or 16:9 content too small, and I am trying (and apparently mostly failing) to convey why that is not the case. 



> People don't generally care if Samuel Jackson's image is projected 5ft tall or 6 ft tall. They care that the image they viewing is sized to be both engaging and comfortable. CIH is a fine first approximation of that - better than CIW - but it's not perfect.


Really I think the argument ends there - CIH is a fine first approximation of the image being both engaging and comfortable - better than CIW - but not perfect.


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## bud16415

mattsteg said:


> It's good to remember that we're all individuals. The "science" does not exactly match our viewing situations, nor does one answer fully represent everyone's preference. People have a threshold of vertical comfort, and a threshold of how much they are comfortable observing in their peripheral vision vs. viewing a film like a tennis match. The widest edges of scope films are NOT composed to lie in the periphery like the top and bottom of IMAX films - they often contain material that demands critical attention.


It almost seems odd for me not to have conversations about screen size and immersion levels and aspect ratios now as I no longer consider any of it in my setup. I couldn’t tell you if the last ten scope movies were 2.35 or 2.4 or anything close. Even 2.0 streaming stuff compared to 1.77 makes little difference. Sure I notice the different cinematography but if my screen size or better put image size is an inch one way or the other I wouldn’t know or care.
My personal presentation started at one point but in the end it is about being able to change my virtual seating row. I sometimes move my seating virtually from the front 1/3 of the virtual theater to the back 1/3 to suit my less immersive guests. Then there are times I’m set up for middle of the theater showing for some friends that like to come over and do pay per vie UFC fights. 9 out of 10 times they yell at me for holding back the immersion saying they paid for a front row seat and they want it. Did I mention they chip in for the fight and bring the pizza and beer, so I give them what they want.


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## Philnick

dschulz said:


> Let me simplify this.
> 
> If I go to a commercial cinema, without knowing the aspect ratio of the movie, and see a Flat screen, I choose my seating position. If, between the preshow and the feature the side masking opens up to reveal a Scope screen, I think to myself "cool."
> 
> If I walk in to a Scope screen, and, after having chosen my seat, top and bottom masking opens up to reveal a Flat screen, I get up and move back two or three rows. I have a chosen comfort level that is almost solely based on screen height. Josh's screen grabs illustrate why that may be, inasmuch as shot compositions for close-up, medium close, medium are largely dependent on how much vertical space the actors are taking up. Upthread Saving Private Ryan was mentioned: I would submit that Saving Private Ryan is _not_ less immersive than it ought to be in a CIH setup, as Tom Hanks is taking up the same amount of real estate in a given shot as he would be in a similar shot in Cloud Atlas.


I love _Cloud Atlas_, and my one regret about it is that - given its use of different movie styles to flag which of the different eras you're in at any moment - they didn't use different aspect ratios for the same purpose.

Oh, and that we don't have a 4K / Atmos release to watch!


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## Josh Z

dschulz said:


> What are these levels of cost and complexity? You need a Scope screen of appropriate size, side masking, and a projector that is bright enough to hit your target light level and good lens memory.


And frankly, you don't really need side masking. I mean, it's a nice-to-have, but when you reduce zoom for 16:9, the sides of the screen are unlit, which is less distracting than projected letterbox bars.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> The broad question is between CIH and CIW, although of late the thread has shifted towards abandoning screens altogether. You have done an excellent job of making the case for an oversized screen with 4-way masking, and I think it's a good case! But the general thrust of all of these conversations is that CIH detractors believe CIH is a bad idea because it makes Flat or 16:9 content too small, and I am trying (and apparently mostly failing) to convey why that is not the case.


We are all different and I can only voice my opinion, but I actually find it pretty easy to understand others. Phil and I have several similarities as do you and I. My approach is as all of us here seem to say, do what makes you happy. Some of us also say only mention what makes you happy if it is what makes me happy.

That being said I think everyone understands the history and the logic behind CIH. Josh has done an excellent job of showing us how these two different AR work together from a film-making standpoint. He also shows us how little we notice a 30% difference in size when it is displayed side by side as a couple times now we had to actually measure to tell the difference. I know the guidelines for cinematography are general and people move around and change size compared to the screen. I also know if I go to a 60 row theater on Monday and watch from row 30 a scope movie with my sister and go on Tuesday and watch a flat movie from row 25 with my brother nether movie will be spoiled or that I would likely notice the difference.

For me personally (no one else may feel this) the type of movie plays a role with immersion. If I watch Moms’ Night Out (2014) a zany movie about mothers with Trace Adkins playing an old biker named Bones and filmed in 2.35:1 for some unknown reason in my living room on a 55” TV from 12’ away it is more than immersive enough for me. I have actually watched this movie as immersive as say Gravity (2013) or The Walk (2015) both great 2.35:1 movies. Where these movies (for me only) are greatly enhanced shown large and immersive in the HT a movie filmed and directed like Moms’ Night Out IMO was made worse. The grandness of the presentation exceeded the grandness of the movie. (again IMO). Now for me and my liking of immersion a movie like MI Ghost Protocol (2011) is great immersive, more than great IMAX1.89 and way more than great if you are lucky enough to see it in IMAX1.44. I know director Brad Bird felt the need to put it on BD as 2.35:1 for whatever reason but his fans strongly disagreed. In contrast Nolan making similar moves is moved to deliver as much of the frame as will fit in the window. I can’t make them do anything and can only enjoy what I get.

This leads to my contention that immersion is relative and if I have to fix my immersion at one point I then need to make several compromises. First compromise is my immersion compared to others that frequently watch with me immersion. second How much I love watching MI Ghost Protocol, Gravity or The Walk and hundreds more compared to Moms’ Night Out and thousands of those out there, that someone I share my life with likes to watch.
Yes I could dial it all back and have zero issue watching CIH from my least favorite level of immersion, and for me that would be much better than CIW.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> For me personally (no one else may feel this) the type of movie plays a role with immersion. If I watch Moms’ Night Out (2014) a zany movie about mothers with Trace Adkins playing an old biker named Bones and filmed in 2.35:1 for some unknown reason in my living room on a 55” TV from 12’ away it is more than immersive enough for me.


Fun fact, Mom's Night Out was written by a friend of mine, Andrea Nasfell. She is a delightful human being and I am very glad you like her movie!


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## Philnick

Fun fact: There are two different films by that name, one from 2014 and one from 2015 - but you appear to be talking about the same one!


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## bud16415

Fun fact. The screen play or story was likely ok I really don’t remember much of the movie. What I remember most is the waste of scope framing. The whole movie felt like someone was asked to put something interesting on both sides of the shot to fill out the image. There was one redeeming spot of less than 30 seconds where they go out a door or tunnel into a major league ball park. It was a good expansion of frame shot, but then again I may have fell asleep and that part was a dream.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Josh has done an excellent job of showing us how these two different AR work together from a film-making standpoint. He also shows us how little we notice a 30% difference in size when it is displayed side by side as a couple times now we had to actually measure to tell the difference.


Bud, are you honest to God saying that you can't immediately see a size difference between these two shots without measuring? Is that really what you're saying?










Or are you claiming that you believe one of these two images is *30%* larger than the other one?










I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt, Bud, when you made that 30% comment earlier, and assumed that you might have been joking, making a parody of Matt's statement about the two close-ups that were maybe 3 pixels different and calling it 30%. But if you were actually serious... Oy.


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## steve1106

Why shouldn't I do CIH? 

Answer:
I have grown to hate commercial theaters. From going every weekend, to several times a month, to never.
I am aspect ratio blind. Don't even notice once I get drawn in. 
I just want to be entertained and don't care what a director thinks or believes. 
I have a native 16:9 entry level faux 4K projector which is "plug and play" simple.
My 151.5" 16:9 screen provides me with the maximum scope allowed in my room. I use every inch.
I never watch "flat" and scope at the same time, so I don't notice that one is larger or one is smaller than the other. 
We've watched a variable aspect ratio movie and didn't even realize they were changing. (Oops.)
I don't notice bars with my current projector. With my first three, yes. My last two, not an issue.
I watch foreign films and anime with captions. 
I use an inexpensive 4K blu-ray player and like to see the menu.
Every aspect ratio is maximized with CIW in size and immersion. (Flexible sound and seating)
Flexible sound (five good wireless headphones or one great wired pair) and seating (from five to 17 feet).
Viewing angles seem to work with flexible seating except at extreme "up close" given I can recline or not recline.
I don't have/want a dedicated HT. I have/want a media room.
I enjoy all aspect ratios equally and really enjoy older content vs recent content. Can't see picking one over the others.

Why should I do CIH?
Answer:
Can't think of a single reason.

Is my CIW better than CIH, CIH+IMAX, two screens or 2:1/any CIH setup, nope... not at all. Is it better for me/my family, Yes? So what if we use it like a TV, it is a 151.5" TV with 143.5" of scope, 147.6" of 2:1, 123.8" of 4:3. 










.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Is this a creative way of saying that *you can't find the standards* that you've been claiming to be an advocate of?
> 
> If this is the case it's OK to admit it. If this is really such old-news and so well-supported than it shouldn't be so difficult for you to find and link the standards *that you claim exist. *It's not up to me to dig up standards that I'm not convinced exist.


Nope it's just what it says. Sorry the first few hits didn't satisfy what you want. It wasn't difficult to find, it just isn't what you want. Red, the maker of cameras currently used on A list films, has a diagram on their site saying the same thing, but I'd imagine that probably won't be good enough either.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Sorry - my mistake in attributing that to you.
> 
> And clearly _Aliens_ does break that pattern - but was that substitution made because I had just called it out?
> 
> Let's see what happens a few weeks from now when this discussion has faded from memory.


Phil I understand you want to see this as a put down, but it isn't. The wife and I just did a Hughes marathon recently and The Breakfast Club stood out as better than I remembered. Probably because I found myself able to empathize more with the adult characters. That and I recently watched a Professor of Rock snippet on YouTube on how Simple Minds and "Don't you forget about me" came to be. The reply to sub in Aliens was in response to your feelings on it.

I'd imagine I would use a 1.85:1 film I like as an example again down the road. Maybe it will be Ran or Saving Private Ryan. But the example certainly won't be to imply that 1.85:1 and it's presentation aren't important or that only lesser films are shot in that format.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Phil I understand you want to see this as a put down, but it isn't. The wife and I just did a Hughes marathon recently and The Breakfast Club stood out as better than I remembered. Probably because I found myself able to empathize more with the adult characters. That and I recently watched a Professor of Rock snippet on YouTube on how Simple Minds and "Don't you forget about me" came to be. The reply to sub in Aliens was in response to your feelings on it.
> 
> I'd imagine I would use a 1.85:1 film I like as an example again down the road. Maybe it will be Ran or Saving Private Ryan. But the example certainly won't be to imply that 1.85:1 and it's presentation aren't important or that only lesser films are shot in that format.


It's just that that's usually been precisely the context in which such statements have been made - "Surely _Film A_ shouldn't be shown with more impact than _Film B_!"


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> It's just that that's usually been precisely the context in which such statements have been made - "Surely _Film A_ shouldn't be shown with more impact than _Film B_!"


The display standard in theaters of 1.85:1 being intended to be seen at the same height and narrower than 2.35:1 is content independent. There are arguments in here about certain scope films wasting the framing and I can think of films that in my opinion would have benefitted from a wider framing. But we don't get to make those choices.

For example I always wondered why Aliens was framed in 1.85:1, the DVD commentary answers it:

According to James Cameron on the Aliens Special Edition DVD (2003) commentary, he'd previously had trouble getting visual effects right in the wider aspect ratio of 2.35:1 while working on the effects crew of Escape From New York (1981), and so for Aliens, opted for the narrower and easier 1.85:1 ratio. Cameron also stated that if given the chance again, he'd film Aliens in 2.35:1.

But make no mistake, the intended display size does not make a film better or worse. Saving Private Ryan is a better film for me than Bridge of Spies.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> If you think this is just me being sexist (and first, I wouldn't categorize The Breakfast Club as a "chick flick" - it seems to appeal to both genders as far as I can tell), then pick some male-focused character drama or comedy of your choosing: Rain Man, Good Will Hunting, Fargo. Whatever.


I think that if you'd start actually reading peoples' posts before replying to them, that would be a great start. "Arguing" with someone by making the same point they are is terrible form.


Josh Z said:


> That it isn't a problem *for you* doesn't mean that it isn't a legitimate concern for others - *including the people who actually make these movies.* It just means that you personally don't care about it.


I think we both know that you're never going to do this...but *you need to make citations here.* Not irrelevant citations from directors saying "IMAX content on a TV sucks", but actual meat to support your claim that reproduction height must be *identical* across all theatrical ratios, and that "the people who make these movies" are concerned about matching vertical angle of view *precisely *to other, completely unrelated films. Show us the quotes that suggest that even though angle of view would vary by a factor of 2 or more for films presented in a commercial theater, any deviation from *CONSTANT *vertical angle of view is contrary to the "people who actually make these movies".

Alternatively, if you can't pull such a citation, could you please shut up about it? The same goes for any references to "standards". Either cite actual links to relevant standards...or shut up about them.


Josh Z said:


> But it is OK for them to disparage my investment in the topic?





Philnick said:


> No one here has disparaged CIH theaters, just the attitude of CIH proselytizers in denigrating everyone elses' approaches.





fatherom said:


> I'll admit I haven't read every post, but I don't see the people that disagree with you as disparaging anything that you're passionate about. I may have missed it.


You haven't missed anything. Unless pixel-perfect height-matching of Robert Downey Junior's face is one of his true passions.


dschulz said:


> What are these levels of cost and complexity? You need a Scope screen of appropriate size, side masking, and a projector that is bright enough to hit your target light level and good lens memory.


You're responding to a quote that specifically mentions video processors, anamorphic lenses, and other (largely unnecessary) exotica. I agree that that's all you need, and I'm not really on board that masking is particularly necessary.

But the real point of the quoted material is that this is the *same* equipment that you need for other variable aspect rate setups. Setups that both you and Josh made various claims about such as:


Josh Z said:


> For *most *people, 2.0:1 isn't a practical option.





dschulz said:


> c) a higher lumen projector to be able to illuminate that larger screen





Josh Z said:


> CIH+IMAX is more expensive to buy a larger screen surface


The price difference is minimal - 100 bucks on a pretty nice custom screen. Potentially zero cost difference on a DIY. The lumen requirement is no different from that for a scope setup with zooming. Y'all are just making up objections to non-scope screens that just don't pass the smell test at all.

Cost/complexity really only come into play if you're militant about masking, which I'm not convinced most people notice once the lights are out and the movie is rolling...especially with projector with good black levels.


dschulz said:


> The broad question is between CIH and CIW


*No, it's not.* That's a false dilemma. Once you make the (good) choice to abandon CIW, you have a whole range of choices available which in general utilize the same hardware (with the exception of masking differences, anamorphic lens options, and obviously your choice of screen). The cost difference between a scope screen and taller screens is minimal. In the context of equipping a theater it's a drop in the bucket.


dschulz said:


> , although of late the thread has shifted towards abandoning screens altogether.


Actually, as far as I know the people doing that were involved in this thread from the beginning, and only very recently has there been much discussion from anyone running 16:9. The general impression that I continue to get from CIH advocates is that of tilting at windmills and hacking at strawmen. You invent and attack positions that aren't really being advocated by others.

You seem to come from a position of assuming that you've clearly thought more about proper presentation and aspect ratios than other parties in the discussion, yet remain trapped in the false choice between 2 and only 2 alternatives.


dschulz said:


> You have done an excellent job of making the case for an oversized screen with 4-way masking, and I think it's a good case! But the general thrust of all of these conversations is that CIH detractors believe CIH is a bad idea because it makes Flat or 16:9 content too small, and I am trying (and apparently mostly failing) to convey why that is not the case.


Maybe you need to do a better job of listening/reading? Within this thread, I feel like pretty much everyone is using the maximum available horizontal space in their room. They can't fit a larger scope screen. Are they constrained on seating position choice? Out of those who have mentioned, I think that this was the case. If so...a CIH setup *would* make Flat content "too small". Others are advocating for the ability to properly present IMAX VAR content as composed and intended. And some prefer a slightly taller Flat frame, while still projecting scope material much wider. I may have missed it, but no one is advocating what you claim the "general thrust" is. Those of us advocating taller-ratio screens are mostly doing so within the context of better screening content (e.g. IMAX) that doesn't suit scope screens, dealing with corner case issues like subs rendered offscreen, dealing with physical limitations of theater spaces and seating arrangements, etc. And some people do legitimately prefer a bit of extra height on their Flat or especially academy material. That's fine too...but I always suggest trying that extra height with scope material as well if you can manage it in your space.


dschulz said:


> Really I think the argument ends there - CIH is a fine first approximation of the image being both engaging and comfortable - better than CIW - but not perfect.


More or less this entire discussion has been about options for improving on the drawbacks of CIH with different-aspect screens, with CIH zealots just parroting back tired comparisons to 16:9 screens that other thread participants are not using nor advocating.

No one's saying CIH sucks. What people have been saying is more like

CIH is a good starting point, that gets you into the right ballpark for presentation of different aspect films
CIH has various drawbacks like VAR IMAX material etc.
It is relatively common to be constrained on screen width by fixed room and seating factors
This doesn't give correct vertical viewing angle
Often there is enough height to fit a taller screen which does give correct vertical angle
In these cases, the scope screen really *does* make flat material smaller, because the proper scope screen doesn't fit.

There's very little cost/complexity difference between running a scope screen with zooming and running a taller aspect non-CIW screen with zooming, unless you're picky about masking.
For all of these reasons and more,* if you're considering CIH, you should ALSO consider whether a larger, taller screen might be even better.*



jeahrens said:


> Nope it's just what it says. *Sorry the first few hits didn't satisfy what you want*. It wasn't difficult to find, it just isn't what you want. Red, the maker of cameras currently used on A list films, has a diagram on their site saying the same thing, but I'd imagine that probably won't be good enough either.


*What I want to see is a standard that agrees with what you say is standard*, or for you to quit yapping on about "standards" that do not exist. It clearly *is* difficult to find, since neither you nor I can find such a standard.

*I literally posted material on movie presentation standards.* You haven't.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> *What I want to see is a standard that agrees with what you say is standard*, or for you to quit yapping on about "standards" that do not exist. It clearly *is* difficult to find, since neither you nor I can find such a standard.
> 
> *I literally posted material on movie presentation standards.* You haven't.


Everything I posted agrees, just doesn't meet whatever mark you've determined you want. What sources meet your criteria?


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Everything I posted agrees, just doesn't meet whatever mark you've determined you want. What sources meet your criteria?


Well, since you're claiming "standards"...I'd suggest that you start by posting a standard. And since we're talking about projection and presentation of films, it should be a standard related to film presentation. And since you are claiming that height must be fixed and constant between different aspect films,it should be *a standard related to film presentation that states that height must be held constant between different aspect films. *Ideally it should state that this is for presentation-quality reasons rather than economic/ease of implementation purposes, but I understand that might be a bit esoteric.

I'm just asking for you to post what you claim to be referencing. In principle it should be quite simple, since you keep referring to it...


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Bud, are you honest to God saying that you can't immediately see a size difference between these two shots without measuring? Is that really what you're saying?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Or are you claiming that you believe one of these two images is *30%* larger than the other one?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt, Bud, when you made that 30% comment earlier, and assumed that you might have been joking, making a parody of Matt's statement about the two close-ups that were maybe 3 pixels different and calling it 30%. But if you were actually serious... Oy.


Ok let me try and explain.

I look at your first set of pictures where the extracted parts are showing CIW presentation and from a mile away you can see the presentation is off and the scope film is being shown less immersive than it should.

Now I look at the second set of pictures showing extracted parts showing CIH and it looks great as one would expect and the actors appear to be the same height and proportioned correctly. I assume you selected these as you also felt it was a good example of how CIH presentation creates a level of parity.

Now just because I could and I knew others had measured your examples I did the same. Not to be troll or anything like that as some felt I was doing in bringing up actual size again. I did it to see how close something would need to be before my eyes and your eyes really saw it as off. So I measured the heads and it just so happened the tops were in line so the chins tell the story. So in your example the heads in the 1.85 movie were 30% larger than the heads in the 2.35 movie.

Now before you get excited hear me out. I know a split second later in one movie or the other the actors could move and make things equal or even show us the opposite comparison. I didn’t select the frames you did and the important thing isn’t that one is 30% bigger or smaller what is important is we really can’t tell the difference when side by side so how will we tell the difference on day to the next or a week apart.

In terms of seating it would be like changing your seat a few rows in a real theater, and at home it would be like watching CIH or CIA.

30% really isn’t a big deal in terms of immersion as your photos show that seems to be the case for people like myself or Rob Hahn and others here with 2.0:1 screens or whatever that like the idea of a slightly more immersive vertically when given a quite a bit less immersive image horizontally. We even have members like Phil and Steve that have more than thought about this a little feeling that the largest they can go is always the best for them always. That is not my cup of tea and I know not yours and they will watch just like your first two pictures as CIW. If you really look at those two photos it is not the end of the world I have many times watched a scope movie less immersive than I would like when going to the movie with others that have less immersive tastes. The movie was ok I enjoyed it ok it would just not be where I would like to sit given my first choice. I wish I had a dollar for every movie I came into a few minutes late only to find I had to pick a seat back from where I would have liked to sit. I don’t go and ask for a refund. I move back and it is fine.

Now getting back to the compromise idea if a room is not quite wide enough for scope and where the seats go is locked in. The guy that is say a foot short of his CIH dream screen. Would it be better to compromise and do a type of mild CIA and say a 2.0:1 screen or tell him you don’t have the width so you must do CIW. I would take the CIA path myself. Now once the non scope screen Pandora’s Box has been open what difference does it make if that 2.0:1 screen becomes a 16:9 screen? None is the answer as long as the viewer has the discipline to not use it all making content more immersive than he likes. If he likes it then he is like Phil and Steve and that’s just fine too.
I have found it very easy to discipline myself to not show content overly immersive by not having a screen. I know it is a bizarre concept, but when you have a screen of infinite size (theoretically speaking) you know you don’t want to try and fill it. So you just fill it enough.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Well, since you're claiming "standards"...I'd suggest that you start by posting a standard. And since we're talking about projection and presentation of films, it should be a standard related to film presentation. And since you are claiming that height must be fixed and constant between different aspect films,it should be *a standard related to film presentation that states that height must be held constant between different aspect films. *Ideally it should state that this is for presentation-quality reasons rather than economic/ease of implementation purposes, but I understand that might be a bit esoteric.
> 
> I'm just asking for you to post what you claim to be referencing. In principle it should be quite simple, since you keep referring to it...


I did. You just didn't like it. Heck I posted a quote from James Cameron above mentioning 1.85:1 being narrower than scope. The fact that ARs are being described as "narrower" or "wider" in relation to each other means there IS a relation between them. They don't just exist as a definition for a shape that has no correlation with anything.


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## bud16415

As long as we are exploring all things presentation, I wonder how Mr. Average Joe that has bought a non automated zoom projector without even enough manual zoom for CIH and say no shift and manual focus. He takes it down to his basement and has a nice white wall to play on decides on screen size for CIW. He sets the projector on a milk crate or a stack of books hooks up a BD player or game station turns it on and adjusts it to get a picture. He sits on a lawn chair and starts to think. He invites the wife and kids down to see maybe his buddy he watched football with. He thinks if I move it back it will get bigger so he does. Then he moves it back until it is floor to ceiling. Someone says that’s cool and they try watching a movie and then think that’s maybe a little bigger than we need. Mostly the wife says that and the neighbor wished he had a taller basement. At some point the guy thinks where will the couch be and he compares when watching a scope movie to a non-scope movie. The wife and neighbors and kids offer input and eventually a size is selected.

No science, no knowledge of historic presentation, just doing what feels correct and maybe a little remembering going to the movies and how that felt.
My question is if we gave 1000 families this task what would be the average organic immersion level be with a 4k projector?


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I did. You just didn't like it. Heck I posted a quote from James Cameron above mentioning 1.85:1 being narrower than scope. The fact that ARs are being described as "narrower" or "wider" in relation to each other means there IS a relation between them. They don't just exist as a definition for a shape that has no correlation with anything.


If one does CIA is not Flat narrower than Scope and Academy narrower than Flat.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> I did.


No, you didn't.


jeahrens said:


> You just didn't like it.


No, I don't like that you refuse to post what you claim is easy to find.


jeahrens said:


> Heck I posted a quote from James Cameron above mentioning 1.85:1 being narrower than scope.


He (as best as I can tell from how you had relayed the quote) referred to a narrower aspect ratio for composition, not mentioning presentation.


jeahrens said:


> The fact that ARs are being described as "narrower" or "wider" in relation to each other means there IS a relation between them. They don't just exist as a definition for a shape that has no correlation with anything.


If I'm composing to fit a "wide" composition into a frame, I want a wider angular field of view. If I'm trying to fit something taller into a frame...then I want a taller aspect. This has nothing to do with prescribing an exact presentation size. It's an angular reference. That's why lenses are called "wide angle". It's why this cinematographer is referring to e.g. "wide" lenses and telephoto lenses. The size of the output frame does not become physically wider when using a "wide" lens. The angle of view does. "Width" in composition is about the shape of the frame, not the physical size of the projection screen.





Incidentally, *every screen ratio greater than 1.85:1 would also present scope material as physically wider than flat *material.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> No, you didn't.
> No, I don't like that you refuse to post what you claim is easy to find.He (as best as I can tell from how you had relayed the quote) referred to a narrower aspect ratio for composition, not mentioning presentation.
> 
> If I'm composing to fit a "wide" composition into a frame, I want a wider angular field of view. If I'm trying to fit something taller into a frame...then I want a taller aspect. This has nothing to do with prescribing an exact presentation size. It's an angular reference. That's why lenses are called "wide angle". It's why this cinematographer is referring to e.g. "wide" lenses and telephoto lenses. The size of the output frame does not become physically wider when using a "wide" lens. The angle of view does. "Width" in composition is about the shape of the frame, not the physical size of the projection screen.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Incidentally, *every screen ratio greater than 1.85:1 would also present scope material as physically wider than flat *material.


Then go back and look at the links I posted. They just don't meet your criteria, but they all say what I'm saying. I'm not going to bother to post more links that you'll decry aren't good enough.

Wait how is a screen ratio "greater" than 1.85:1 in your world? If I've understood your viewpoint here, aspect ratios have no common reference point. So in your world no AR can really be considered wider or narrower, they're just describing a shape. Yet clearly we have a plethora of information out there describing ARs in relation to each other. Which means there is indeed a common frame of reference to compare. Which is height and why theatrical ratios are X.XX:1. The idea that height is the constant is not new nor is it my invention.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> *Then go back and look at the links I posted. They just don't meet your criteria*, but they all say what I'm saying. I'm not going to bother to post more links that you'll decry aren't good enough.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You go on and on about CIH being based on "standards"...but ultimately when pressed you have *zero* to back that talk up with.


jeahrens said:


> Wait how is a screen ratio "greater" than 1.85:1 in your world? If I've understood your viewpoint here, aspect ratios have no common reference point.


"greater" equals a larger number - a proportionally larger ratio between height and width.


jeahrens said:


> So in your world no AR can really be considered wider or narrower, they're just describing a shape. Yet clearly we have a plethora of information out there describing ARs in relation to each other. Which means there is indeed a common frame of reference to compare. Which is height. The idea that height is the constant is not new nor is it my invention.


A ratio is, *by definition*, the result of one number divided by another. For comparing between different ratios, it is customary to express them with a common denominator. This is literally in* junior high math standards**.*

The funny thing with your pontification about "the first few google results" and such is that the first film-related result I get when looking for the definition of aspect ratio is this - which is quite clear and unambiguous.








A Formula for Framing Success


Know the basics. A brief post defining aspect ratio and why you need to know it.




www.studiobinder.com






> *Aspect ratio* is the ratio of width (w) to height (h) that describes the shape of your film, or image. It’s usually written as a ratio of (w)h) like 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9. *Aspect ratio has no relationship to how big or small the screen is* — you can have a 4:3 image on a cellphone or on a 40' movie theater screen. The original standard aspect ratio for filmmaking (1.33:1) was chosen based on the industry's adoption of 35mm celluloid film as the primary format. Since then, a number of technological and creative advances have opened up many options when it comes to aspect ratio.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> 
> You go on and on about CIH being based on "standards"...but ultimately when pressed you have *zero* to back that talk up with.
> "greater" equals a larger number - a proportionally larger ratio between height and width.


Naw I googled Theatrical Aspect Ratios and posted what I found. You didn't like it. I can post more links, but I'm not interested in chasing what sources you see as "legitimate".

But what are you basing greater on? What is your constant?



mattsteg said:


> A ratio is, *by definition*, the result of one number divided by another. For comparing between different ratios, it is customary to express them with a common denominator. This is literally in* junior high math standards**.*
> 
> The funny thing with your pontification about "the first few google results" and such is that the first film-related result I get when looking for the definition of aspect ratio is this - which is quite clear and unambiguous.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A Formula for Framing Success
> 
> 
> Know the basics. A brief post defining aspect ratio and why you need to know it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.studiobinder.com


So what is the common denominator in *Theatrical* aspect ratios? There needs to be one for all these directors to be using terms like "narrower" or "wider".

While theatrical aspect ratios don't determine a screen size, they certainly do a shape.


----------



## bud16415

As far as standards for interrelationship between film formats it can be somewhat computed and what we really talking about height, width etc mean nothing without the factor of immersion. IMAX has a 1.89 AR and conventional Flat movies are 1.85 for all practical purposes the same. The general feeling is that both in height and width IMAX is best viewed more immersive. The same is true for the original IMAX at 1.44 and 1950s TV at 1.33 same AR almost but best immersion two different things.

If someone wants to really investigate this they then have to look at all the seating standards that are out there and have been shown many times and are valid to talk about and look at where each overlap etc. Scope and flat are shown in the same theaters with the same seating so there is some credence to CIH unless you disregard some seating options. The theater by design is to provide so many optimal seat locations and then more ok seat locations. Theaters should not be designed to offer poor seat locations. IMAX compresses it into more or almost all seating being optimal. And it would be possible to overlay IMAX standards over CIH theater standards and also find some common immersions even Academy theater seat locations would apply to an overlapping with the known sizes of the original screens as many have been changed.

IMO all this relationship between scope and flat was not handed down with the ten commandments and the relationship between the two AR is not bound together by any science relating to our FOV. Most directors are likely aware of the CIH relationship and as Josh shows us likely film faces and people that way. Landscapes in flat/scope movies can go any direction as can TV in 16:9 as shown by shows like Planet Earth.
CIH was IMO invented out of connivance as are many things and once it was invented the art of making motion pictures conformed to it to some extent. No one should expect Academy that was long around before the invention to be assumed to conform or need to conform as TV shouldn’t be expected to. It happens to work out they do pretty well some of the time or at least good enough for many. A lot of it goes back to this overlapping seating immersion pattern between “standards” if you happen to be in a seating distance in terms of immersion where there is mutual overlap as acceptable then all is well with the world. If not then you may not be a CIH person.


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## bud16415

As a further example I’m often accused of malpractice for pointing out Game of Thrones (a TV show) looks wonderful at greater immersion than regular TV. I watch it at BudMAX immersion and point to where the producers and directors did some of the special releases of it in actual IMAX venues for their fans and both the directors and the fans commented on how much they enjoyed it that way. Lets assume we watched it in a proper commercial CIH theater and knowing the acting was shot per Josh standards same as scope and flat. There would not be one thing wrong with sitting in a seat nearest the screen that meets SMPTE specs as optimal seating Or THX if that’s your thing. When you overlay the IMAX options for immersion There you are in the same seat.
Sure people will be more immersive but not overly immersive according to SMPTE but you also get all the tremendous spectacular images at a much more immersive size. This is a trade off or a win, win situation without a doubt.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Well Googling Theatical Aspect Ratio ends up with the first hit at Wikipedia. Where all the theatrical ratios are illustrated and expressed with the height being constant.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)#/media/File:Filmaspectratios.svg
> https://www.masterclass.com/articles/guide-to-aspect-ratios#8-aspect-ratios-to-use-for-films-and-tv





jeahrens said:


> Naw I googled Theatrical Aspect Ratios and posted what I found. You didn't like it. I can post more links, but I'm not interested in chasing what sources you see as "legitimate".


You posted the above 2 links
one is an image titled "Comparison of several film aspect ratios with the heights forced to be equal. " on wikipedia. In the text of the article the most relevant reference to image height is "The motion picture industry convention assigns a value of 1.0 to the image's height ". It's clear that we already know that this is the convention for referring to motion picture ratios, because we've been discussing these ratios all thread long. We also know that cinemascope was developed as a technical solution to accommodate recording and projecting a wider aspect ratio image onto 35mm film that could be projected using existing equipment. It was developed to keep the projection costs manageable (to get theaters on board) and to differentiate from TV with a dramatically different shape and wider aspect ratio ('shape' if you insist on misinterpreting 'aspect ratio'). They also pushed to get theaters to also upgrade to larger screens. Scope-specific screens were built - bigger, better, more expansive, etc. Flat-ratio theaters remained too. The purpose of the technical solution was to go bigger. It also had some technical limitations (e.g. lens imperfections and distortions) that made zooming in to tight frames something to be avoided. These limitations are long-since resolved.

These are the objectives of *studio executives *70 years ago. They wanted something *big *and differentiated. Their objective was not to "keep height constant" - it was to get bigger and wider than the past. They advertised and promoted as not only wider, but taller too! The objective was to get BIG and give a big impact. * Not maintain a constant height. Here's an example promoting the first scope release.*










With all of that said - I'm more concerned with optimizing the presentation of all content. scope pioneers wanted their content to make a big impact - that doesn't mean that other creators don't have that same goal. I want to give all content the appropriate impact, and respect the artistic intent of all creators. 'Scope as a compositional standard has been around for 70 years. It's a medium that's far removed from its heritage as a 20th Century Fox property and has been used as a creative choice by directors for decades.

The discussion of framing for scope/academy/flat is a lot more than just "frame wider" (e.g. A Complete History of CinemaScope with Film Historian David Bordwell). A couple of examples from the academy ratio with crops to scope shown (plus a comparable frame from a scope movie on the second case - which also matches well with the RDJ discussion). It's not as simple as "frame wider".


















I don't care about the marketing objectives of 20th Century Fox executives 70 years ago (and those objectives weren't CIH anyway - just to create more of a spectacle.) I do, however, share a certain amount of their ethos in that *I want the material that I am screening to be as impressive and engaging as possible* - regardless of format.


jeahrens said:


> But what are you basing greater on? What is your constant?


The *relative* height of each image.


jeahrens said:


> So what is the common denominator in *Theatrical* aspect ratios? There needs to be one for all these directors to be using terms like "narrower" or "wider".


Obviously the industry has standardized on a denominator of '1'.


jeahrens said:


> While theatrical aspect ratios don't determine a screen size, they certainly do a shape.


Exactly. They don't determine a height or width. They determine the ratio between the two. The shape.


----------



## Philnick

In my theater, sitting 10 feet or so from an image that maxes out at six feet tall by 11 foot four inches wide for 1.85 material, using the projector's digital zoom to use the full width of its 17x9 imaging panels, no one has ever said "That's too big!" (They do sometimes say "That's too loud!") 

I'd show scope films that tall if I could, but the projector can't do that in my room.

So I watch scope films as tall as my rig can manage, which is just under four foot nine inches.

The size and shape of the screen-painted wall, which is 14 feet wide by eight feet high, partially covered by loudspeakers, is irrelevant, since the projector can't light it all up.

Saying that non-scope films (including _Saving Private Ryan _or _Aliens) _should be zoomed down in size so that they're the same height as a scope film serves no purpose other than satisfying an insistence on constant image height, and saying that this_ isn't_ shrinking them is, to put it politely, counter-factual.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> You posted the above 2 links
> one is an image titled "Comparison of several film aspect ratios with the heights forced to be equal. " on wikipedia. In the text of the article the most relevant reference to image height is "The motion picture industry convention assigns a value of 1.0 to the image's height ". It's clear that we already know that this is the convention for referring to motion picture ratios, because we've been discussing these ratios all thread long.


So is height the common denominator or isn't it? Is that the commonality when directors are using terms like "wider" or "narrower"?



mattsteg said:


> Scope-specific screens were built - bigger, better, more expansive, etc. Flat-ratio theaters remained too.


Why would scope be bigger? I thought your argument was these shapes have no common frame of reference.



mattsteg said:


> These are the objectives of *studio executives *70 years ago. They wanted something *big *and differentiated. Their objective was not to "keep height constant" - it was to get bigger and wider than the past. They advertised and promoted as not only wider, but taller too! The objective was to get BIG and give a big impact. * Not maintain a constant height. Here's an example promoting the first scope release. *


So why bother with making everything to :1 if the height isn't constant? Why not width? Why not express the ratio to a whole number like 16:9 if they have no commonality? If you're just defining a rectangle, 12:5 would work fine for scope.



mattsteg said:


> With all of that said - I'm more concerned with optimizing the presentation of all content. scope pioneers wanted their content to make a big impact - that doesn't mean that other creators don't have that same goal. I want to give all content the appropriate impact, and respect the artistic intent of all creators. 'Scope as a compositional standard has been around for 70 years. It's a medium that's far removed from its heritage as a 20th Century Fox property and has been used as a creative choice by directors for decades.


So why would a director even choose scope if it has no bearing on impact? Flat would be cheaper and according to you can have more impact since there is nothing relating aspect ratios to each other.

I watched Citizen Kane (1.37:1), Ran (1.85:1), Hidden Fortress (2.35:1) and Nobody (2.35:1) over the holidays and all of them filled 100% of my desired vertical immersion with varying degrees of horizontal immersion. Mimics what I saw as a kid and what I see today in the premium theaters.



mattsteg said:


> The discussion of framing for scope/academy/flat is a lot more than just "frame wider" (e.g. A Complete History of CinemaScope with Film Historian David Bordwell). A couple of examples from the academy ratio with crops to scope shown (plus a comparable frame from a scope movie on the second case - which also matches well with the RDJ discussion). It's not as simple as "frame wider".


I don't think anyone is interested in cropping Academy or Flat to scope. At least they shouldn't be. I don't like cropping scope to fit into 16:9 either. Ugly.



mattsteg said:


> I don't care about the marketing objectives of 20th Century Fox executives 70 years ago (and those objectives weren't CIH anyway - just to create more of a spectacle.) I do, however, share a certain amount of their ethos in that *I want the material that I am screening to be as impressive and engaging as possible* - regardless of format.
> The *relative* height of each image.
> Obviously the industry has standardized on a denominator of '1'.
> 
> Exactly. They don't determine a height or width. They determine the ratio between the two. The shape.


I don't care about executives either, I do care about presentation. What point do you see in a director choosing scope? Do you think Directors that go between ARs think their size in regards to each other are arbitrary? Why would they use the term "wider" when describing scope? Wider than what?


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Saying that non-scope films (including _Saving Private Ryan _or _Aliens) _should be zoomed down in size so that they're the same height as a scope film serves no purpose other than satisfying an insistence on constant image height, and saying that this_ isn't_ shrinking them is, to put it politely, counter-factual.


I feel there are certainly times when a room makes a screen choice impractical. I think you said yours had a column that would keep you from changing seating. If that keeps you constrained, then you make the best choice you can and enjoy.


----------



## mattsteg

bud16415 said:


> IMO all this relationship between scope and flat was not handed down with the ten commandments and the relationship between the two AR is not bound together by any science relating to our FOV. Most directors are likely aware of the CIH relationship and as Josh shows us likely film faces and people that way.


Directors aren't composing to try to make things constant height. They're composing to utilize the frame that they have chosen to tell a story. Faces ending up at a specific scale is more of a "coincidence" than an objective (and may hold much more between flat and scope - which are quite similar overall, than between scope and academy)


jeahrens said:


> So is height the common denominator or isn't it? Is that the commonality when directors are using terms like "wider" or "narrower"?


No. Wider or narrower refers to either the relative shapes of the image frames, or alternatively to the angle of view within it. It is not related to the physical size of the projection screen.


jeahrens said:


> Why would scope be bigger? I thought your argument was these shapes have no common frame of reference.


For marketing. Movie execs wanted to further differentiate the theater experience from movies, I'd assume.

Maybe you should hold a seance to contact the executives who were running 20th Century Fox 70 years ago, and marketed scope films as larger in every dimension..


jeahrens said:


> So why bother with making everything to :1 if the height isn't constant? Why not width? Why not express the ratio to a whole number like 16:9 if they have no commonality?


Simply because it's easier to see at a glance the relative proportions of different frames.


jeahrens said:


> So why would a director even choose scope if it has no bearing on impact? Flat would be cheaper and according to you can have more impact since there is nothing relating aspect ratios to each other.


The film aspect is chosen for a number of reasons. To allow for a certain compositional style. To differentiate from TV. To feel "filmic". To render panoramic details. To have a different impact.

Can you seriously not tell shapes apart from each other? Do you not know a rectangle from a square?


jeahrens said:


> I watched Citizen Kane (1.37:1), Ran (1.85:1), Hidden Fortress (2.35:1) and Nobody (2.35:1) over the holidays and all of them filled 100% of my desired vertical immersion with varying degrees of horizontal immersion. Mimics what I saw as a kid and what I see today in the premium theaters.


Good for you?


jeahrens said:


> I don't think anyone is interested in cropping Academy or Flat to scope. At least they shouldn't be. I don't like cropping scope to fit into 16:9 either. Ugly.


I agree that no one is interested in cropping Academy of Flat to scope for presentation. I do find it illuminating that you can crop these scenes from Academy to scope and end up with a composition that would be perfectly at home in a scope film, though.


jeahrens said:


> I don't care about executives either, I do care about presentation. What point do you see is a director choosing scope? Do you think Directors that go between ARs think their size in regards to each other are arbitrary? Why would they use the term "wider" when describing scope? Wider than what?


Wider in aspect ratio. They don't control the size of the screen that the film would be projected on, nor do they control where people sit in the theater. They control the shape of the frame.

Do you think that a director using a wide angle lens magically expands the width of the screen too?


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> In my theater, sitting 10 feet or so from an image that maxes out at six feet tall by 11 foot four inches wide for 1.85 material, using the projector's digital zoom to use the full width of its 17x9 imaging panels, no one has ever said "That's too big!"
> 
> *I'd show scope films that tall if I could*, but the projector can't do that in my room.


You'd show scope films as tall as 1.85:1 films if you could. That pretty much says it all right there. You have acknowledged that scope films would be more enjoyable if you could watch them at the same height that you watch 1.85:1 films. So, why exactly are you such an outspoken critic against the concept of Constant Image Height, when you just said you would do it yourself if you could?

The fact that your room or your projector have constraints or limitations in how you are able to project the image is _your _burden, and has no bearing on the concept of Constant Image Height as a practice for others to consider.

This seems to be a case of: "Well if _*I *_can't do it, nobody else should either!"


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I feel there are certainly times when a room makes a screen choice impractical. I think you said yours had a column that would keep you from changing seating. If that keeps you constrained, then you make the best choice you can and enjoy.


Even if I could move my seating forward, and move my sound speakers to compensate, I would do that only to make scope look as tall as flat, not to make zoomed down flat look as big as it already does - and it would hardly be worth the effort, given a less than 25% difference in height.


----------



## Philnick

What I object to is telling folks that they should deliberately limit the height of other films to the lesser height they can get from scope films by using a scope framed screen, and criticizing them for using taller screens by saying that they're "shrinking" scope films by doing so, when they're doing nothing of the sort, and actually showing them as large as possible.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Even if I could move my seating forward, and move my sound speakers to compensate, I would do that only to make scope look as tall as flat, not to make zoomed down flat look as big as it already does - and it would hardly be worth the effort, given a less than 25% difference in height.


It's not only 20+% less vertical immersion, but you are also decreasing the intended horizontal immersion substantially. I understand why, but it's not an insignificant difference.


----------



## Josh Z

Literally the book on how to make movies.










Interesting how these illustrations about how to photograph in different aspect ratios are shown at the same height, with only the width differing.










I'm sure Matt will invent some reason to misinterpret or discredit this.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> What I object to is telling folks that they should deliberately limit the height of other films to the lesser height they can get from scope films, and criticizing them for using taller screens by saying that they're "shrinking" scope films by doing so, when they're doing nothing of the sort.


If you can't adjust seating to where both wider and narrower AR material fills your vertical FOV, then I think a compromise is certainly something to consider.

By necessity a narrow AR screen is making wider AR material smaller. The wider it is the smaller it is. But as your situation illustrates, there are times when you have to make a call as to what you value most.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> What I object to is telling folks that they should deliberately limit the height of other films to the lesser height they can get from scope films by using a scope framed screen,


That is literally the opposite of what has been stated repeatedly in this thread and this forum all along.

Post 2 in this thread:



Josh Z said:


> If the 16:9 image is tiny, your screen is too small. The whole point of Constant Image Height is to start with a 16:9 image as large as you can possibly want it to be, and then add more width.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Directors aren't composing to try to make things constant height. They're composing to utilize the frame that they have chosen to tell a story. Faces ending up at a specific scale is more of a "coincidence" than an objective (and may hold much more between flat and scope - which are quite similar overall, than between scope and academy)
> No. Wider or narrower refers to either the relative shapes of the image frames, or alternatively to the angle of view within it. It is not related to the physical size of the projection screen.
> For marketing. Movie execs wanted to further differentiate the theater experience from movies, I'd assume.


How are they wider or narrower with no commonality? Why would you choose scope if Flat can be bigger and more impactful?



mattsteg said:


> Simply because it's easier to see at a glance the relative proportions of different frames.


Proportions relative to what?



mattsteg said:


> The film aspect is chosen for a number of reasons. To allow for a certain compositional style. To differentiate from TV. To feel "filmic". To render panoramic details. To have a different impact.


Why is one more panaoramic than another? How does the impact differ since they're completely arbitrary to one another?



mattsteg said:


> Can you seriously not tell shapes apart from each other? Do you not know a rectangle from a square?


I got my shapes down, but thanks for asking.



mattsteg said:


> Good for you?


Thanks! I enjoyed all of them and appreciated that all of them looked great with the same approximate impact they had in the theater with relation to one another.



mattsteg said:


> I agree that no one is interested in cropping Academy of Flat to scope for presentation. I do find it illuminating that you can crop these scenes from Academy to scope and end up with a composition that would be perfectly at home in a scope film, though.


Guess it depends on the scene. There are certainly scenes in Citizen Kane I just watched that wouldn't have worked at all.



mattsteg said:


> Wider in aspect ratio. They don't control the size of the screen that the film would be projected on, nor do they control where people sit in the theater. They control the shape of the frame.


How is wider though? There is no commonality. So it's all arbitrary right? But the shape of a 12:5 screen can be narrower than a 16:9 if I make it smaller in width?



mattsteg said:


> Do you think that a director using a wide angle lens magically expands the width of the screen too?


No but I think there just might be a common denominator between all these shapes that the filmmaker knows about that determines how it shown in relation to other films of differing shapes.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> I'm sure Matt will invent some reason to misinterpret or discredit this.


It's right in your screenshot:
'Widescreen formats require a different approach to image composition'

Sometimes that's wider, sometimes it's shorter. Either case it's different, and not related to projection height.


jeahrens said:


> How are they wider or narrower with no commonality? Why would you choose scope if Flat can be bigger and more impactful?


Well that would depend on whether I wanted to focus on taller things or wider things.

Maybe you should ask IMAX why they choose to use an aspect ratio that's more like Flat than scope for their presentations that are indisputedly intended for high impact.


jeahrens said:


> Proportions relative to what?


Width relative to height.


jeahrens said:


> Why is one more panaoramic than another? How does the impact differ since they're completely arbitrary to one another?


It depends on the material.


jeahrens said:


> Guess it depends on the scene. There are certainly scenes in Citizen Kane I just watched that wouldn't have worked at all.


'Widescreen formats require a different approach to image composition'


jeahrens said:


> How is wider though? There is no commonality. So it's all arbitrary right? But the shape of a 12:5 screen can be narrower than a 16:9 if I make it smaller in width?


Huh? Size and shape are 2 different things.


----------



## bud16415

mattsteg said:


> Directors aren't composing to try to make things constant height. They're composing to utilize the frame that they have chosen to tell a story. Faces ending up at a specific scale is more of a "coincidence" than an objective (and may hold much more between flat and scope - which are quite similar overall, than between scope and academy)
> No. Wider or narrower refers to either the relative shapes of the image frames, or alternatively to the angle of view within it. It is not related to the physical size of the projection screen.
> For marketing. Movie execs wanted to further differentiate the theater experience from movies, I'd assume.


I think we agree even though we said it differently.

In any given movie we are wildly shown different perspectives and even sometimes our perspective is changing relative to the actor/action rather than the other way around. This is all great filmmaking and giving us some feeling of being included in the action sometimes rather than watching the action.
The relative sizes of things and people in the frame I agree shouldn’t be driven by the height of the frame or AR of the frame just what the artistic nature of the shot might convey.
I think this is why I like variable immersion and not big for the sake of big. I could watch the 6:00 news immersive in my theater and not get an ounce more impact from it as watching it on the 32” TV in the kitchen from across the room. On the other hand a well-crafted movie that is intended to evoke feelings of space and movement is vastly different when watched more immersive.


----------



## Dan in Canada

Philnick said:


> In my theater ... no one has ever said "That's too big!" (They do sometimes say "That's too loud!")
> ...
> 
> Saying that non-scope films (including _Saving Private Ryan _or _Aliens) _should be zoomed down in size so that they're the same height as a scope film serves no purpose other than satisfying an insistence on constant image height, and saying that this_ isn't_ shrinking them is, to put it politely, counter-factual.



You want the largest screen you can get in your room
My wife complained when I moved the couch a foot closer to the 50" TV we watched LotR on at Christmas
I like to sit closer to the back in an IMAX theater
Ultrawide computer monitors are becoming more and more common
Ultrawide TV displays are basically extinct
Nobody bothered to implement anamorphic stretch for Blu-Ray, but it was quite successful with DVD
These are anecdotes. Anecdotes are very helpful when giving examples of outliers to keep in mind when making decisions about compromise. They do not give us a good understanding of how to formalize anything, other than "don't expect one standard to apply to everyone." 

CIH is a _suggestion_ for a principle of managing projection. Dare I say, it's an attempt at formalizing the science [applied knowledge] of projection with home video equipment/media. 
Isn't that why we're here on this forum?

If you can fill your front wall with satisfactory image quality, then leaving open the option to do so is beneficial. But, if you take for granted installing a bordered/matted screen, there are real advantages to picking a scope-width screen and manipulating your projector to maintain CIH.


----------



## mattsteg

Why are all of you CIH people not respecting the intent behind cinemascope and projecting onto giant curved screens both taller and wider than other formats?


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## mattsteg

Dan in Canada said:


> CIH is a _suggestion_ for a principle of managing projection.


Tell that to the crowd claiming that it follows some "standard" (but who can't back up that assertion)


----------



## Dan in Canada

Philnick said:


> What I object to is telling folks that they should deliberately limit the height of other films to the lesser height they can get from scope films by using a scope framed screen, and criticizing them for using taller screens by saying that they're "shrinking" scope films by doing so, when they're doing nothing of the sort, and actually showing them as large as possible.


CIH takes for granted the assumption that something will limit your screen size. Possibly your room, your projector, your choice of screen, or your comfortable FOV.
I have never seen a CIH advocate suggest that it's important to make flat/IMAX films smaller than you want them.
CIH only says "try to get over the limits in your projection setup which make scope films vertically shorter than other films you watch."



mattsteg said:


> Why are all of you CIH people not respecting the intent behind cinemascope and projecting onto giant curved screens both taller and wider than other formats?
> View attachment 3221775


Matt, you're trolling. C'mon. You know very well that most CIH advocated would be very happy to watch the imaginary Cinerama-format presentation in their home theater, but that none of us can justify inventing the quantum-jump machine to steal the exhibition prints and projector tech from the alternate reality where The Robe actually looked like that.

If you were using a VR headset to watch movies, wouldn't you _usually_ choose to watch 'scope films wider than flat films?


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Maybe you should ask IMAX why they choose to use an aspect ratio that's more like Flat than scope for their presentations that are indisputedly intended for high impact.


IMAX started out as a documentary format. Back in the day I always saw it expressed as 4:3 and it followed no conventional theater designs. 1.90:1 IMAX was a digital offshoot that allowed for more theaters to easily display IMAX. Again this did not follow normal theater designs with regards to presentation. Sitting in the same approximate seat in a 1.90:1 IMAX theater will be dramatically different than the same experience in a normal 1.85:1 theater. Just as an FYI Nolan still shoots in 4:3 IMAX for many things, we just get short changed to 1.78:1 because it will look bigger on TVs that way. I get it, but I don't like it.



mattsteg said:


> Width relative to height.
> It depends on the material.
> 'Widescreen formats require a different approach to image composition'
> Huh? Size and shape are 2 different things.


Yes there would be little point in a wider format if you didn't compose to take advantage of it, but thankfully there really can't be a wider format because that would imply a common denominator between ARs. Right?

Size and shape are different. But how can one shape be considered wider than another with no common frame of reference?


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## Philnick

Dan in Canada said:


> ...
> If you can fill your front wall with satisfactory image quality, then leaving open the option to do so is beneficial. But, if you take for granted installing a bordered/matted screen, there are real advantages to picking a scope-width screen and manipulating your projector to maintain CIH.





Dan in Canada said:


> CIH takes for granted the assumption that something will limit your screen size. Possibly your room, your projector, your choice of screen, or your comfortable FOV.
> I have never seen a CIH advocate suggest that it's important to make flat/IMAX films smaller than you want them.
> CIH only says "try to get over the limits in your projection setup which make scope films vertically shorter than other films you watch."
> ...


But I like VAR films that use an increase in height for dramatic effect - like showing Spock dwarfed by leaping lava inside a volcano (_Star Trek Into Darkness) _and a scope-framed screen precludes seeing that as provided on disk.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about a dystopia where no one was allowed to excel in any way. It often feels like CIH fans have given up on "leveling up" and have chosen instead to push for "leveling down."


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> But I like VAR films that use an increase in height for dramatic effect - like showing Spock dwarfed by leaping lava inside a volcano (_Star Trek Into Darkness) _and a scope-framed screen precludes seeing that as provided on disk.


If you are not viewing VAR material any differently than 1.85:1 then your experience isn't going to be any different than a person that has a CIH setup that gives them 100% of their desired vertical immersion. 1.78:1 content is the same size it was on my 16:9 screen.



Philnick said:


> Kurt Vonnegut wrote about a dystopia where no one was allowed to excel in any way. It often feels like CIH fans have given up on "leveling up" and have chosen instead to push for "leveling down."


The only things that CIH doesn't maximize for me is films wider than 2.35:1 and IMAX (which I have no desire to see at IMAX like levels of immersion). I understand you like what you have and I see no reason for you to want to change.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> But I like VAR films that use an increase in height for dramatic effect - like showing Spock dwarfed by leaping lava inside a volcano (_Star Trek Into Darkness) _and a scope-framed screen precludes seeing that as provided on disk.


"Dwarfed by leaping lava." 



















Really now? Let's be serious. There's a sliver more headroom in the IMAX version. 

Any shots that actually show Spock being _drawfed _by the lava are photographed from a further distance away, and convey the same effect in scope.

The way you keep repeating this story, you'd have everyone believe that the scope version is entirely super-tight close-ups while the IMAX version has expansive wide shots.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> Why are all of you CIH people not respecting the intent behind cinemascope and projecting onto giant curved screens both taller and wider than other formats?


Because CinemaScope did not actually mandate curved screens. That old promotional graphic is exaggerated for effect. It also shows the Scope frame appearing three times wider than Academy, which is not accurate, as it was closer to twice the width. 

That image is a better representation of Cinerama than CinemaScope. Frankly, it was false advertising. While that's unfortunate, it does not negate the fact that actual CinemaScope screens were the same height but wider than Academy screens.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> "Dwarfed by leaping lava."
> ...
> Any shots that actually show Spock being _drawfed _by the lava are photographed from a further distance away, and convey the same effect in scope.
> ...


Then show _those_ instead of close-up head shots, which are irrelevant to my point.

And show them "constant image width," - the same width as the scope version but taller, as in a VAR film - and not cropped vertically - to show the real difference between a VAR and a scope version.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> It's right in your screenshot:
> 'Widescreen formats require a different approach to image composition'
> 
> Sometimes that's wider, sometimes it's shorter. Either case it's different, and not related to projection height.


Serious question: Do you work in politics in your day job? Your ability to distort facts for the express purpose of bewildering your opponent into submission suggests a career as a professional spin doctor.

The page from that book says absolutely nothing of the sort.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Then show those instead of close-up head shots, which are irrelevant to my point.


I'm on my work computer right now and don't have the ability to screenshot the movie at the moment. That was a comparison I made when the Blu-ray came out. I'll do more later.


----------



## Dan in Canada

Philnick said:


> But I like VAR films that use an increase in height for dramatic effect - like showing Spock dwarfed by leaping lava inside a volcano (_Star Trek Into Darkness) _and a scope-framed screen precludes seeing that as provided on disk.
> 
> Kurt Vonnegut wrote about a dystopia where no one was allowed to excel in any way. It often feels like CIH fans have given up on "leveling up" and have chosen instead to push for "leveling down."


Phil, why do you keep bringing up VAR films as an objection to CIH?
A "CIH+IMAX" setup is, as _everyone in this thread has repeated over and over again_, something that would be nice to have.
_but_
Vertical expansion of the frame for IMAX presentations is a technique that pushes us closer to our comfort limit with vertical FOV.
Maximum effect of IMAX VAR is thus _by definition_ going to be achieved with a screen larger than you'd choose for comfortable 1.85:1 viewing. If it isn't, then you haven't really optimized your IMAX VAR setup.

Let's assume you _do_ have a limit for your comfortable screen size.
If someone asks you to pick a theoretical ideal screen for your viewing distance based on your comfortable angle of view, and you can change the screen for different films, that theoretical screen will almost certainly be wider for scope films than for most flat films and about the same height...
Right?

IIRC there are VAR films with windowboxing to show flat format for specific scenes, scope format for most of the movie, and IMAX format for other scenes. We don't have to throw away what we know about projection best practices to acknowledge that the director wants us to see those scenes smaller than the rest of the film, for specific effect.

In some industries, we talk about "best management practices." BMPs are never laws, they're ways of thinking about problems.
CIH is not a purported "law of projection." It's a way of thinking about how to size a screen and how to manipulate your projector when switching between _most_ Academy, A-Flat, Scope, TV and HDTV formatted material.


----------



## Philnick

Dan in Canada said:


> Phil, why do you keep bringing up VAR films as an objection to CIH?
> A "CIH+IMAX" setup is, as _everyone in this thread has repeated over and over again_, something that would be nice to have.
> _but_
> Vertical expansion of the frame for IMAX presentations is a technique that pushes us closer to our comfort limit with vertical FOV.
> Maximum effect of IMAX VAR is thus _by definition_ going to be achieved with a screen larger than you'd choose for comfortable 1.85:1 viewing. If it isn't, then you haven't really optimized your IMAX VAR setup.
> 
> Let's assume you _do_ have a limit for your comfortable screen size.
> If someone asks you to pick a theoretical ideal screen for your viewing distance based on your comfortable angle of view, and you can change the screen for different films, that theoretical screen will almost certainly be wider for scope films than for most flat films and about the same height...
> Right?
> 
> IIRC there are VAR films with windowboxing to show flat format for specific scenes, scope format for most of the movie, and IMAX format for other scenes. We don't have to throw away what we know about projection best practices to acknowledge that the director wants us to see those scenes smaller than the rest of the film, for specific effect.
> 
> In some industries, we talk about "best management practices." BMPs are never laws, they're ways of thinking about problems.
> CIH is not a purported "law of projection." It's a way of thinking about how to size a screen and how to manipulate your projector when switching between _most_ Academy, A-Flat, Scope, TV and HDTV formatted material.


In home video, IMAX is distributed as 1.85 or 16x9. A borderless - or "oversize 16x9" screen is as close to to a CIH+IMAX setup as most folks can get. So why vilify it, if you agree it's a good idea?


----------



## bud16415

Dan in Canada said:


> Matt, you're trolling. C'mon. You know very well that most CIH advocated would be very happy to watch the imaginary Cinerama-format presentation in their home theater, but that none of us can justify inventing the quantum-jump machine to steal the exhibition prints and projector tech from the alternate reality where The Robe actually looked like that.


I would say trolling except I have been told at least 600 times that if I watch an IMAX1.89 movie super huge with IMAX levels of immersion at home I can’t call it IMAX because to be IMAX I need a 6 story tall screen. Anything less than that is watching an open matte movie. Thus why I watch BudMAX movies at home.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> In home video, IMAX is distributed as 1.85 or 16x9. A borderless - or "oversize 16x9" screen is as close to to a CIH+IMAX setup as most folks can get. So why vilify it, if you agree it's a good idea?


A 16:9 screen equalizes any and all 1.85:1 content to the same immersiveness as IMAX. Good Will Hunting was not an IMAX movie.

The CIH+IMAX approach of semi-permanently masking the screen to 2.35:1 and only opening it up for true IMAX is perhaps the best way to maintain the intended immersion levels of all movies. But you have already pooh-poohed that as "shrinking 1.85:1" on countless occasions. Borderless screen or not, you've already told us you play all 1.85:1 movies at maximum size, which is not CIH+IMAX at all.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Then show _those_ instead of close-up head shots, which are irrelevant to my point.
> 
> And show them "constant image width," - the same width as the scope version but taller, as in a VAR film - and not cropped vertically - to show the real difference between a VAR and a scope version.


I've switched computers, so here you go.

I hope you will agree that I've picked the best case scenario shot for your argument of Spock being "drawfed by leaping lava" in IMAX.

2.35:1









IMAX 16:9









Difference









Is the effect of Spock being dwarfed by the lava more pronounced in IMAX? Yes, I would obviously not disagree with that. If that's something you want to preserve, a CIH+IMAX configuration is the best way to do it.

But if you look at the 2.35:1 shot on its own, can you honestly tell me that you get no sense of Spock being dwarfed by the lava? The scope version is completely inadequate at conveying that story point, in your opinion?


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## bud16415

*Has anyones mind been changed?*
*
Pause……..

*
*Ok the answer is no. Please continue.  *


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I've switched computers, so here you go.
> 
> I hope you will agree that I've picked the best case scenario shot for your argument of Spock being "drawfed by leaping lava" in IMAX.
> 
> 2.35:1
> View attachment 3221847
> 
> 
> IMAX 16:9
> View attachment 3221848
> 
> 
> Difference
> View attachment 3221849
> 
> 
> Is the effect of Spock being dwarfed by the lava more pronounced in IMAX? Yes, I would obviously not disagree with that. If that's something you want to preserve, a CIH+IMAX configuration is the best way to do it.
> 
> But if you look at the 2.35:1 shot on its own, can you honestly tell me that you get no sense of Spock being dwarfed by the lava? The scope version is completely inadequate at conveying that story point, in your opinion?


Here is what the extra lava does for me sitting 1.2 –1.5 the height of the BudMAX screen away. In the scope version there is a black bar area that is inside my peripheral vision. This black area makes my mind conceive this as an image of a defined size I am looking at. Lets call it a open window I’m looking out at the action. In the BudMAX version it completes and fills my peripheral vision top and bottom in the same way scope fills it side to side. The difference then is I’m not looking thru a window I’m now on the other side of the window floating in the action.
It is not that there is nothing important in the bars it is that there is something in the bars.


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## Dan in Canada

bud16415 said:


> *Has anyones mind been changed?*
> 
> *Pause……..*
> 
> 
> *Ok the answer is no. Please continue. *


Changing minds (or "winning the argument") is not the only goal.
We're hear to learn about home theater.
We're here to share what we learn.
Your contributions to this topic are invaluable. Do not make less of them by pretending you don't understand the points we make.


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## Philnick

@Josh Z : That's a much fairer set of comparison shots. Like @bud16415, I think the taller version makes you feel much more like you're there, instead of watching through a window.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> Serious question: Do you work in politics in your day job? Your ability to distort facts for the express purpose of bewildering your opponent into submission suggests a career as a professional spin doctor.


Do you? You spend closing in on 100% of your time either responding to arguments that people aren't making or claiming that your path is the right one without any real meat to back it up (just claims of "standards" that no one can bother to find and link).

Sounds like the perfect politician.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> A 16:9 screen equalizes any and all 1.85:1 content to the same immersiveness as IMAX. Good Will Hunting was not an IMAX movie.
> 
> The CIH+IMAX approach of semi-permanently masking the screen to 2.35:1 and only opening it up for true IMAX is perhaps the best way to maintain the intended immersion levels of all movies. But you have already pooh-poohed that as "shrinking 1.85:1" on countless occasions. Borderless screen or not, you've already told us you play all 1.85:1 movies at maximum size, which is not CIH+IMAX at all.


I like to feel like I'm "on the scene" in many movies, and showing them big makes that possible. Doesn't matter to me what the aspect ratio is.


----------



## bud16415

Dan in Canada said:


> Changing minds (or "winning the argument") is not the only goal.
> We're hear to learn about home theater.
> We're here to share what we learn.
> Your contributions to this topic are invaluable. Do not make less of them by pretending you don't understand the points we make.


After 5+ years of the same pros and cons I was just checking if anyone was feeling a different feeling. I also think a little levity now and then to show people we can disagree and disagree as friends is never a bad thing.
The topic may be a non-topic before long as each year or every six months there is a thread are projectors dead thread. And someone says now that 16:9 TV sets are 65” no 75” no 85” oh no 100” and are brighter, better CR, better blacks, no need for light control, and on and on why do I want a projector. Will we be soon locked into a world of 16:9 CIW forever because of tech. Or will someone build a new and improved CIH+IMAX TV set?


----------



## Dan in Canada

mattsteg said:


> Do you? You spend closing in on 100% of your time either responding to arguments that people aren't making or claiming that your path is the right one without any real meat to back it up (just claims of "standards" that no one can bother to find and link).
> 
> Sounds like the perfect politician.


Matt, in my brief search for an exact quote from the SMPTE standards, your use of a graphic that's derived from the standards (along with THX and Fox interpretations) showed up a few times (including in this thread.) That mock-up references 2.35 as the standard format for cinema screens, listing seating distances in both *IH and *IW.

You yourself reference image height as a reference for seating distance when making suggestions to people in other threads on this forum.

You opened your participation in this thread with the statement "I can fit about a 60 in tall screen in my space, and this gives me a picture size that I like for 16:9 from my seating location. There's only room for a 120in wide screen. So I have a 2.0:1. If I had a wider space I'd likely have gone scope."

Pretending that absent a citation of some ISO-listed standard CIH advocates are just making things up is... well, I don't know what. There is a standard of practice for projection and masking, and it changes depending on the film format and the screen format and the seating format.

We're discussing why or why not the time/money/frustration of getting 'scope images as tall as A-flat images is worthwhile.
The science behind seating distance and screen size and immersion is interesting, but it doesn't change any of what Josh opened with, and you've already acknowledged that.


----------



## mattsteg

Dan in Canada said:


> Phil, why do you keep bringing up VAR films as an objection to CIH?
> A "CIH+IMAX" setup is, as _everyone in this thread has repeated over and over again_, something that would be nice to have.


I wouldn't go that far. Some people have poohpoohed it as expensive, complicated, worse than a scope screen, and "not a real option" (even if it solves most of the issues with scope format screens)


Dan in Canada said:


> _but_
> Vertical expansion of the frame for IMAX presentations is a technique that pushes us closer to our comfort limit with vertical FOV.
> Maximum effect of IMAX VAR is thus _by definition_ going to be achieved with a screen larger than you'd choose for comfortable 1.85:1 viewing. If it isn't, then you haven't really optimized your IMAX VAR setup.


Isn't that the point? To have an extra-immersive viewing experience that you don't necessarily use for comfortable flat content viewing...


Dan in Canada said:


> Let's assume you _do_ have a limit for your comfortable screen size.
> If someone asks you to pick a theoretical ideal screen for your viewing distance based on your comfortable angle of view, and you can change the screen for different films, that theoretical screen will almost certainly be wider for scope films than for most flat films and about the same height...
> Right?


Even 1.85 and 2.35 are only 20% different. Even CIW is "about" the same. SMPTE recommendations are +/- 33%. 

In general - I expect for most people and most films, it's like you suggest. I also think a lot of people buy-in to the idea of CIH and then undersize their screens. ALWAYS play around with a temp screen before committing to a permanent one, unless you're experienced with projection. I'd also imagine that the closer we run towards "biggest and most immersing comfortable scale" there may be some day to day preference depending on the content being viewed, or between preferences of e.g. spouses.

ALL of this is a ballpark, and that ballpark is generally larger than the 20% difference in image height.


Dan in Canada said:


> In some industries, we talk about "best management practices." BMPs are never laws, they're ways of thinking about problems.
> CIH is not a purported "law of projection." It's a way of thinking about how to size a screen and how to manipulate your projector when switching between _most_ Academy, A-Flat, Scope, TV and HDTV formatted material.


You might want to let the CIH police in on this idea. They've been extraordinarily aggressive in arguing against larger-than-scope screens. And some of them purport to refer to "standards" that *precisely require* literal constant image height (of course, they can't actually cite any of these "standards")


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## bud16415

@Dan in Canada in a way has given me pause to think. A half dozen of us here debate this topic semiannually. Over the past while I have noticed any thought I have on this subject or even other subjects in this forum just hang out there unnoticed by the core bunch of folks. When I do get a reply or more often a PM it is from someone that doesn’t post here all the time or even members that chose to never post and just use the site for gathering information. I suspect there are huge numbers of non-members reading along as well. Something like 5000 views for a couple hundred posts tell me someone is reading.
Are they learning anything or just becoming confused Is the question? As I jokingly asked if anyone’s mind was changed yet. And I and we all know that wont happen. We need to stay aware what we say is ether helping or confusing someone outside. I hope my posts try and explain a point of view I have. You can agree or disagree I don’t care but I hope I’m not confusing people.


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## mattsteg

Dan in Canada said:


> Pretending that absent a citation of some ISO-listed standard CIH advocates are just making things up is... well, I don't know what. There is a standard of practice for projection and masking, and it *changes depending on the film format and the screen format and the seating format.*



Well gee...if there is a standard of practice that *changes depending on the film format and screen format*...wouldn't that lead us down the path that those who claim CIH is *the* standard for movie presentation are, in fact, "making it up"?


Dan in Canada said:


> We're discussing why or why not the time/money/frustration of getting 'scope images as tall as A-flat images is worthwhile.


Who is "we", and when did they reframe this discussion?

If you look at the evolution of this thread, the discussion has overwhelmingly been between people who insist on projecting films at EXACTLY CIH (and that this is the *one true way)*, and people who project scope films wider than flat, but not _exactly_ CIH, or who vary their presentation based on content.


----------



## Dan in Canada

mattsteg said:


> You might want to let the CIH police in on this idea. They've been extraordinarily aggressive in arguing against larger-than-scope screens. And some of them purport to refer to "standards" that *precisely require* literal constant image height (of course, they can't actually cite any of these "standards")


Let's talk about the actual details here instead of vague references to ideals.

CIH guides I've read always suggest picking the 16x9 screen size I want and then matching that height with a 2.35:1-wide screen. 
How is that "undersizing" a screen?

The restrictions, as far as I can tell, are not from the "rules" of CIH. They are compromises inherent in the equipment we're discussing.
If you buy an anamorphic lens, you will be more limited than those with motorized zoom.
If you install fixed matting at 2.35:1, you will be more limited than those with variable matt and/or no-matt setups. (Which _is_ a novelty in projection; projectionists have traditionally worked very hard to ensure unused screen area is masked.)

The question of CIH is:
Do you want to spend time/money/frustration getting the lens/image control required to make 'scope movies as tall as your TV shows and A-flat movies
or
Do you want to live with letterboxed movies

Custom zooming per-movie _is_ practically equivalent to a CIH approach. It's far more flexible than an anamorphic lens, but doesn't get you the benefit of maximizing resolution/light output... But then again, you could just take the anamorphic lens off when you're watching VAR movies!!!


----------



## mattsteg

Dan in Canada said:


> CIH guides I've read always suggest picking the 16x9 screen size I want and then matching that height with a 2.35:1-wide screen.
> How is that "undersizing" a screen?


If people aren't experienced with projection, they tend to undershoot. Others run into space limitations and pushed into the false choice between a CIH scope screen and a CIW flat screen choose the undersized scope screen. I see lots of theaters with small 'scope screens.


Dan in Canada said:


> The restrictions, as far as I can tell, are not from the "rules" of CIH. They are compromises inherent in the equipment we're discussing.
> If you buy an anamorphic lens, you will be more limited than those with motorized zoom.
> If you install fixed matting at 2.35:1, you will be more limited than those with variable matt and/or no-matt setups. (Which _is_ a novelty in projection; projectionists have traditionally worked very hard to ensure unused screen area is masked.)


If you have a scope screen, you're not projecting anything taller than scope.


Dan in Canada said:


> The question of CIH is:
> Do you want to spend time/money/frustration getting the lens/image control required to make 'scope movies as tall as your TV shows and A-flat movies
> or
> Do you want to live with letterboxed movies


That's the wrong question. From what I gather, most people engaging in this discussion have made the choice that they want to be able to control image height. Why ask a question that everyone in the discussion has already answered affirmatively?

The better question is once you've made that choice...what is the BEST screen arrangement for your situation Is it a scope screen, or *something bigger? (*I say bigger for 2 reasons. The first is that most people have space available for a taller screen than scope. The second is that the image sizes of a CIH screen should be the *minimums *to start from)

The question isn't "is CIH worth it" but rather "IS CIH good enough/the best".


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> If people aren't experienced with projection, they tend to undershoot. Others run into space limitations and pushed into the false choice between a CIH scope screen and a CIW flat screen choose the undersized scope screen.


I'm sorry, what was that you said earlier about "responding to arguments that people aren't making"? Where exactly in this thread has anyone argued in favor of purposefully undersizing a 16:9 or 1.85:1 image? The consistent messaging throughout this thread has been: Start with as large a 16:9 image as you want and then go wider for scope.

If the 16:9 portion of a CIH screen is too small, then ipso facto the 2.35:1 image is also too small. Ideally, what you should have is a large 16:9 image and an equally tall yet wider 2.35:1 image - *not* a medium sized 2.35:1 image and a small 16:9 image. Of course, if your room can't support that ideal, then you start looking into compromises.

You are acting defensive and hostile because you think people are criticizing your choice of a 2.0:1 screen, when nobody has actually done that. Discussing the merits of 2.35:1 CIH as a concept and a practice does not preclude anyone from making their own compromise solutions if their room can't support it or they simply don't like it. But just because you personally don't like it or couldn't make it work *does not* invalidate the concept. It just means that you made a different compromise.

All I've ever wanted is for people to put more thought into this decision than just, "My TV is 16:9, so I guess my projector screen should be too. That's just the shape screens are supposed to be."

You obviously put some thought into your room conditions and your viewing preferences when you chose 2.0:1. That puts you well ahead of most people. I would never begrudge you just because the solution you settled on is different than the one I did.

However, this attitude of "CIH IS FOR ZEALOTS ONLY! FIGHT THE TYRANNY OF 2.35:1!" that you've come in with is wrongheaded and tiresome.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Here is what the extra lava does for me sitting 1.2 –1.5 the height of the BudMAX screen away. In the scope version there is a black bar area that is inside my peripheral vision. This black area makes my mind conceive this as an image of a defined size I am looking at. Lets call it a open window I’m looking out at the action. In the BudMAX version it completes and fills my peripheral vision top and bottom in the same way scope fills it side to side. The difference then is I’m not looking thru a window I’m now on the other side of the window floating in the action.
> It is not that there is nothing important in the bars it is that there is something in the bars.


That being the case, you ought to really hate these VAR movies like Star Trek into Darkness that repeatedly cut back to 2.35:1 ratio and put that "window" back into your view in 3-5 second intervals.

What is more distracting, watching the entire movie through the same window, or watching it scene-to-scene (or shot-to-shot, as this one does) Window / No Window / Window / No Window / Window again? In the former, you can tune out the window and focus on the movie. In the latter, the movie keeps drawing attention back to the window.


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## Philnick

The reason that scope screens tend to undersize non-scope images is that unless you have a very wide room, an anamorphic lens and a very deep throw distance, or sit very close, it's very hard to achieve the "ideal" of a scope screen as tall as your (or at least my) desired 16x9 screen.

Instead, you end up with a screen 25% shorter than desired for 16x9, and can't show VAR films properly.

However, if you simply don't frame your screen area at all and just let things breathe free, you can size everything the way you like, without any problems. Scope and non-scope images can be sized however you prefer without any artificial interference from a frame


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## dschulz

Philnick said:


> The reason that scope screens tend to undersize non-scope images is that unless you have a very wide room, an anamorphic lens and a very deep throw distance, or sit very close, it's very hard to achieve the "ideal" of a scope screen as tall as your (or at least my) desired 16x9 screen.


I don't think that's really the case. Most people, left to their own devices, sit somewhere between 2X and 3X screen height of whatever size screen they're looking at, which is pretty easily achievable with a CIH Scope screen, a good projector and no anamorphic lens. My favorite theatre among my friends here has a 120" wide scope screen, and the MLP seating position is 10' away from the screen ( 1X screen width or ~2.4X screen height). 

How far do you sit from your screen wall when you're in 16:9 mode, expressed as a multiple of screen height?


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> That being the case, you ought to really hate these VAR movies like Star Trek into Darkness that repeatedly cut back to 2.35:1 ratio and put that "window" back into your view in 3-5 second intervals.
> 
> What is more distracting, watching the entire movie through the same window, or watching it scene-to-scene (or shot-to-shot, as this one does) Window / No Window / Window / No Window / Window again? In the former, you can tune out the window and focus on the movie. In the latter, the movie keeps drawing attention back to the window.


Of course I would rather the full IMAX frame run consistently thru the movie. Some moviemakers craft the changes better than others. When the APL is really low of course the black bars fade in more. Any scene changes done rapidly back and forth dark to bright can be hard on the eyes with or without AR changes.

Seeing as some directors don’t put IMAX expanders on disc and some do I can understand the assumption that the changes being watched on TV may be worse than the scope safe with bars. I don’t see the reason for not giving the whole IMAX frame when the whole movie is in the IMAX frame.
I don’t recall that movie I don’t own it. Not sure if I had watched it or not. My comments were directed as to the general trend of what the IMAX frame is used for. Each movie can be a special case.


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## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> I'm sorry, what was that you said earlier about "responding to arguments that people aren't making"? Where exactly in this thread has anyone argued in favor of purposefully undersizing a 16:9 or 1.85:1 image? The consistent messaging throughout this thread has been: Start with as large a 16:9 image as you want and then go wider for scope.


No one is saying that that advice is being given, but rather than newcomers to projection, in general, commonly undershoot screen size. They don't know what they want. Why not iterate with another round of sanity checking. "Decide on what you think is big enough, then try bigger".


Josh Z said:


> If the 16:9 portion of a CIH screen is too small, then ipso facto the 2.35:1 image is also too small. Ideally, what you should have is a large 16:9 image and an equally tall yet wider 2.35:1 image - *not* a medium sized 2.35:1 image and a small 16:9 image. Of course, if your room can't support that ideal, then you start looking into compromises.


There you go again, claiming that CIH is the ideal, because you've created a definition that claims it's ideal.


Josh Z said:


> You are acting defensive and hostile because you think people are criticizing your choice of a 2.0:1 screen, when nobody has actually done that. Discussing the merits of 2.35:1 CIH as a concept and a practice does not preclude anyone from making their own compromise solutions if their room can't support it or they simply don't like it. But just because you personally don't like it or couldn't make it work *does not* invalidate the concept. It just means that you made a different compromise.


Not at all. It's the ridiculous insistence of you (and others) that any one screen size is ideal and that CIH represents anything more than a convenient approximation of optimal projection. It's great as long as you don't watch IMAX/VAR films, material with subs rendered out of the frame, Academy films composed for a larger screen etc. and desire to have a screen filled to your maximum vertical comfort level, etc. It's less great if you don't match these...

It's also less great if you attempt to implement an ideal scope setup but encounter limitations in the space. After all, according to you any ratio ofther than scope and flat "is not an option for most people (even though it's actually quite simple)


Josh Z said:


> All I've ever wanted is for people to put more thought into this decision than just, "My TV is 16:9, so I guess my projector screen should be too. That's just the shape screens are supposed to be."


If that were actually the case, you'd be advocating for projection setups that first and foremost free scope content from the tyranny of a fixed-aspect flat projection screen...not claiming that any solution other than a scope screen is somehow suddenly and mysteriously impractical and expensive.


Josh Z said:


> However, this attitude of "CIH IS FOR ZEALOTS ONLY! FIGHT THE TYRANNY OF 2.35:1!" that you've come in with is wrongheaded and tiresome.


Perhaps you (and @jeahrens) would benefit from looking in the mirror about how you present your case and whether you're presenting valid and relevant data.

Coming in with zero history here, my STRONG impression is that you are RIGIDLY promoting CIH as *the* (better) alternative to CIW...and that you are doing so by falaciously referring to "standards" which either don't exist or aren't relevant, and by posting pictures of Robert Downey Junior's Face.

You're not presenting many if any of the actual good reasons to consider CIH, and in a thread entitled:_ Why Should (or Shouldn't) I Do Constant Height?" Discussion_ you're frequently refusing to acknowledge reasons to consider other options, or outright misleading about the cost/complexity in pursuing them.

It only took a few bad-faith and outright misleading statements from you to see your true colors.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Perhaps you (and @jeahrens) would benefit from looking in the mirror about how you present your case and whether you're presenting valid and relevant data.


And you get to determine what is valid and relevant right? Go check that mirror yourself.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> The reason that scope screens tend to undersize non-scope images is that unless you have a very wide room, an anamorphic lens and a very deep throw distance, or sit very close, it's very hard to achieve the "ideal" of a scope screen as tall as your (or at least my) desired 16x9 screen.
> 
> Instead, you end up with a screen 25% shorter than desired for 16x9, and can't show VAR films properly.
> 
> However, if you simply don't frame your screen area at all and just let things breathe free, you can size everything the way you like, without any problems. Scope and non-scope images can be sized however you prefer without any artificial interference from a frame


Phil I understand your perspective, but roughly half the rooms I've been to (these are in normal houses) have implemented scope setups just fine. So it's really not difficult. In cases where you run into issues, like your room, then it certainly makes sense to pursue other solutions. And there's always the situation where a person simply has a use case that makes 16:9 the most practical choice (or that's just what they prefer).

Let's not lose sight that this is a hobby we all enjoy. Most every home setup can meet or exceed what the majority of commercial cinemas can produce quality wise. If I came over for a movie at your place, I'd be much more interested in debating things like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Directors vs. Theatrical cut than screen size/ratio.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> And you get to determine what is valid and relevant right? Go check that mirror yourself.


Are you claiming that film presentation should not be held to film presentation standards? That's a bold move.


jeahrens said:


> Phil I understand your perspective, but roughly half the rooms I've been to (these are in normal houses) have implemented scope setups just fine. So it's really not difficult.


Are you citing a 50% success ratio???


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> Are you claiming that film presentation should not be held to film presentation standards? That's a bold move.
> 
> Are you citing a 50% success ratio???


No I'm saying you get to decide whether information is valid or not discussing this with you.

I'm saying that about half of the houses I've visited on various crawls decided to use a scope screen. There was nothing crazy with their homes (they weren't mansions), so implementing that sort of setup isn't terribly difficult. I didn't ask the 16:9 users if they considered scope, so I have no idea if they did and ran into issues or simply decided they wanted 16:9.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> . . .
> Let's not lose sight that this is a hobby we all enjoy. Most every home setup can meet or exceed what the majority of commercial cinemas can produce quality wise. If I came over for a movie at your place, I'd be much more interested in debating things like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Directors vs. Theatrical cut than screen size/ratio.


Ah, so you remember that I prefer the theatrical cut, which doesn't continue after "That may be so, Doctor, but what about Reliant? She's on her way" - a great bottom for that scene - to add a line from Carol Marcus about playing hide and seek with Reliant which unnecessarily dissipates the dramatic tension.

It's been a very long time since I posted that observation.


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## Philnick

dschulz said:


> . . .
> How far do you sit from your screen wall when you're in 16:9 mode, expressed as a multiple of screen height?


I sit about 10 feet from a screen that in 1.85:1 and 16x9 mode is six feet tall, or 1 2/3 screen height, or twice scope image height - a little less than one screen width away - because I like to feel like I'm there, not just watching it from a distance.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Ah, so you remember that I prefer the theatrical cut, which doesn't continue after "That may be so, Doctor, but what about Reliant? She's on her way" - a great bottom for that scene - to add a line from Carol Marcus about playing hide and seek with Reliant which unnecessarily dissipates the dramatic tension.
> 
> It's been a very long time since I posted that observation.


I was keeping up with the UHD thread and remembered your observation. I agree with that scene, but there is other stuff in the DC that makes it a harder call. Now for TMP the directors cut is easily better and I'm looking forward to the 4k redo. But that's enough of a tangent


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## bud16415

In the are projectors dead thread there are hundreds of arguments for and against projectors and flat panel TV. Many say when affordable flat panels reach 100” they are in. Others talk about light control and cross reflections. A lot about 4k HDR and black levels. But the main thing keeping projectors alive is the impact of image size.

No one seems to talk about presentation or what I find the greatest thing about projectors being is that the image can be zoomed. I remember as a kid for Christmas I got a projector enlarger device that had a 100w bulb in it and you could place it on a page or a book or picture and shoot it on the wall. I think my dad got it off Edmund Scientific and it was made from black Bakelite. I was amazed at maybe 10 years old the greater I moved it away from the wall the larger my comic book image became and it was in color and the darker I made the room the better it looked and the larger I could make the image. TV couldn’t do that it was always B&W and always 19”. My dad would get out the Bell & Howell projector a few times a year and we would watch the latest home movie and then all the old home movies and that was a treat and we couldn’t go larger than the 4’ ground glass screen that would roll up not down. In school maybe once a year we would get a movie in the gym that seemed huge and of course maybe 4 times a year driving to the city and going into the Warner Theater and seeing something for me was about as close to heaven as it got for me.
All of this had in common was the size and that the size could be controlled relative to my point of view. Nowhere did any of these things impose an immersion on me other than my mother telling me I was sitting to close to the TV and it was full of radiation and would ruin my brain and eyes. Kids always sat in the front for home movies and in the Warner when they finally left me alone I sat where I wanted for each movie I went to. That for me is what it is all about. Nothing super scientific just having options in a commercial theater to sit in whatever row you want each time you go to the movies. at home I don’t have rows of seats instead I’m in charge of the zoom.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Seeing as some directors don’t put IMAX expanders on disc and some do I can understand the assumption that the changes being watched on TV may be worse than the scope safe with bars. I don’t see the reason for not giving the whole IMAX frame when the whole movie is in the IMAX frame.


These directors are also concerned with preserving their image composition, and open-matte transfers expose extra headroom that pushes faces down toward the middle of the frame.

That isn't as much of a concern in a real IMAX theater, because viewers aren't looking all the way up to the top of the frame. Their eyes are naturally drawn toward the middle and bottom third of an IMAX screen, so that's where the director and camera operator should position the actors' faces. On a normal screen size where the entire image is within the viewer's field of view, the open-matte composition looks loose and unbalanced.

This problem existed for decades before IMAX. All movies shot with spherical "flat" lenses expose more picture information on the film negative than is intended to be seen by the viewer. All movies composed for 1.85:1 actually capture a taller 1.37:1 image on the negative. The Super 35 format is approximately 1.66:1 with the intent that the image be matted to 2.35:1. The camera viewfinders and video assist monitors all contain frame marker etchings to indicate what parts of the image will be seen or not seen.

Just because more picture information exists doesn't mean you need to see it.


----------



## Dan in Canada

bud16415 said:


> In the are projectors dead thread there are hundreds of arguments for and against projectors and flat panel TV. Many say when affordable flat panels reach 100” they are in. Others talk about light control and cross reflections. A lot about 4k HDR and black levels. But the main thing keeping projectors alive is the impact of image size.
> 
> No one seems to talk about presentation or what I find the greatest thing about projectors being is that the image can be zoomed. I remember as a kid for Christmas I got a projector enlarger device that had a 100w bulb in it and you could place it on a page or a book or picture and shoot it on the wall. I think my dad got it off Edmund Scientific and it was made from black Bakelite. I was amazed at maybe 10 years old the greater I moved it away from the wall the larger my comic book image became and it was in color and the darker I made the room the better it looked and the larger I could make the image. TV couldn’t do that it was always B&W and always 19”. My dad would get out the Bell & Howell projector a few times a year and we would watch the latest home movie and then all the old home movies and that was a treat and we couldn’t go larger than the 4’ ground glass screen that would roll up not down. In school maybe once a year we would get a movie in the gym that seemed huge and of course maybe 4 times a year driving to the city and going into the Warner Theater and seeing something for me was about as close to heaven as it got for me.
> All of this had in common was the size and that the size could be controlled relative to my point of view. Nowhere did any of these things impose an immersion on me other than my mother telling me I was sitting to close to the TV and it was full of radiation and would ruin my brain and eyes. Kids always sat in the front for home movies and in the Warner when they finally left me alone I sat where I wanted for each movie I went to. That for me is what it is all about. Nothing super scientific just having options in a commercial theater to sit in whatever row you want each time you go to the movies. at home I don’t have rows of seats instead I’m in charge of the zoom.


Bud, I think most of us here get you (I've been lurking for years and the first time I read your description of "BudMAX" I had a giant smile on my face), and we love your enthusiasm for giant screens.

But we are most certainly talking about presentation. Look at Josh's first post (and the post above.) That's _all_ we're intending to talk about.

Can we stop for a second and acknowledge the difference in intent, design, composition and technology between a giant/immersive/dome/IMAX screen and a "regular" screen as described in _SMPTE standard EG-18-1994_, the _THX TAP_, et al?
[Edit: finally found a reference to copy from that wasn't a scanned image:]


> "A motion picture image should be as large as possible within the dimensions of the auditorium and be presented at certain angles to maximize impact and minimize discomfort.
> The horizontal viewing angle (field of vision) from the most distant seat should be no less than 26 degrees (36 recommended).
> The *vertical viewing angle *from the first raw should not exceed 35 degrees.


That's a rough guideline. It's not going to fit every theater-owner's taste. But it tells us the range of what directors expect most screens to be like.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> These directors are also concerned with preserving their image composition, and open-matte transfers expose extra headroom that pushes faces down toward the middle of the frame.
> 
> That isn't as much of a concern in a real IMAX theater, because viewers aren't looking all the way up to the top of the frame. Their eyes are naturally drawn toward the middle and bottom third of an IMAX screen, so that's where the director and camera operator should position the actors' faces. On a normal screen size where the entire image is within the viewer's field of view, the open-matte composition looks loose and unbalanced.
> 
> This problem existed for decades before IMAX. All movies shot with spherical "flat" lenses expose more picture information on the film negative than is intended to be seen by the viewer. All movies composed for 1.85:1 actually capture a taller 1.37:1 image on the negative. The Super 35 format is approximately 1.66:1 with the intent that the image be matted to 2.35:1. The camera viewfinders and video assist monitors all contain frame marker etchings to indicate what parts of the image will be seen or not seen.
> 
> Just because more picture information exists doesn't mean you need to see it.


I agree. I don’t want to see more of the Image or less of the image than the director intended. Going way back to my 32” Sony and my VHS player I didn’t want to watch a pan n scan to fit my tube. I really see IMAX the same way it is sold to us as the premier venue we pay more to see it that way and 99% of the time it is touted as something special. I rarely hear a director come out before a movie release and say don’t waste your money the scope version is better than IMAX.

Directors also know that porting something from a gigantic theater to a TV set is going to lose a lot of impact however it is done, but some do it one way some do it the other. TV sets are also getting more immersive so some of the gap is closing. Directors making 2.0:1 streaming content that never goes to a theater must know 2.0 is not wider than TV it is shorter than TV because TV is always 1.78:1
Director like Nolan maybe think people that buy his BD have 85” TV and other directors think we have 32” TVs. I have no idea.

I don’t think any of us are thinking about real 1.44 IMAX theaters when we say IMAX we are talking about the 1.89 ones. Any director working in the 1.44 AR is taking care of the cropping for home. A 1.89 IMAX theater is much closer to a scope theater in terms of design Not some big dome place.
I don’t want to see picture information that exists but was not to be seen. In the case of IMAX it was made to be seen and IMO should be.


----------



## bud16415

Dan in Canada said:


> Bud, I think most of us here get you (I've been lurking for years and the first time I read your description of "BudMAX" I had a giant smile on my face), and we love your enthusiasm for giant screens.
> 
> But we are most certainly talking about presentation. Look at Josh's first post (and the post above.) That's _all_ we're intending to talk about.
> 
> Can we stop for a second and acknowledge the difference in intent, design, composition and technology between a giant/immersive/dome/IMAX screen and a "regular" screen as described in _SMPTE standard EG-18-1994_, the _THX TAP_, et al?
> [Edit: finally found a reference to copy from that wasn't a scanned image:]
> 
> That's a rough guideline. It's not going to fit every theater-owner's taste. But it tells us the range of what directors expect most screens to be like.


This what I have been talking about. I really could care less about IMAX 1.44 and the giant domes and any attempt at duplicating that at home.

Like you I looked at the SMPTE and THX specs along with the IMAX1.89 specs for theater seating / immersion. That was my goal.

There were two ways to achieve that goal the first would be to mount my seating on tracks and move my body relative to the screen of any given size. THX uses angles so we could use angles if you like. I wanted to roughly duplicate every angle SMPTE, THX, IMAX1.89 (I even included Academy from the limited info I found) offers as acceptable viewing. Because I didn’t want to move my seating I chose adjusting the zoom.

So I can say every setting I watch at is within the set down standards of what can be found in any certified theater in the world.

Now the question becomes and the bone of contention for some. Is it ok to pick a seat in a commercial theater on Monday and a different one on Tuesday? Keeping in mind SMPTE, THX, IMAX and the director of the movie have no issue with doing it.
Take it even a step more and lets say I’m watching alone on Monday and the movie was Starwars and on Tuesday I’m watching with my sister A River Runs Through It Then on Wednesday another seat with my 3-4 year old nephews watching Sherk then on Thursday I watch Planet Earth alone, and Friday I host a UFC fight for 6 friends. Now I take it easy over the weekend and I watch The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Gone With the Wind and Stranger Things all to different SMPTE angles.
Could a person do all that within CIH and immensely enjoy it from the same seat? Of course. If someone wants to jump seats All within a properly designed and certified theater were they ever once breaking presentation protocol? I say no.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I don’t think any of us are thinking about real 1.44 IMAX theaters when we say IMAX we are talking about the 1.89 ones. Any director working in the 1.44 AR is taking care of the cropping for home. A 1.89 IMAX theater is much closer to a scope theater in terms of design Not some big dome place.
> I don’t want to see picture information that exists but was not to be seen. In the case of IMAX it was made to be seen and IMO should be.


It was made to be seen _specifically on IMAX screens_.

Even for 1.89:1, the extra headroom forces the faces down lower in the frame, which draws attention to the needless empty headroom above them. This is a question of balance and symmetry. The 2.35:1 framing is more dynamic.

If this shot in Avengers: Endgame had been composed for normal 1.85:1 projection, the actor's heads would be closer to the top of the frame (as they are in the 2.35:1 extract).










On an IMAX screen, the excess headroom is beneficial, because if the heads were too high, viewers would need to uncomfortably crane their necks way up to see them. That is not a concern on a regular sized screen.

The whole movie looks like this, with the actors' faces centered around the middle of the screen, rather than the upper third where they'd normally be.

Looking at this shot on a regular screen, Thanos is more imposing when he fills the height of the frame. The open-matte version turns a medium shot into a wide shot, which causes a perspective shift that makes him seem smaller.










Again, if this shot had actually been composed for 1.85:1, the character would take up more screen area.

On a normal, non-IMAX screen, watching the IMAX version of this movie is no different than watching a "This film has been modified to fit your screen" version of a Super 35 movie like Lord of the Rings that had the mattes opened up for TV broadcast.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> It was made to be seen _specifically on IMAX screens_.
> 
> Even for 1.89:1, the extra headroom forces the faces down lower in the frame, which draws attention to the needless empty headroom above them. This is a question of balance and symmetry. The 2.35:1 framing is more dynamic.
> 
> If this shot in Avengers: Endgame had been composed for normal 1.85:1 projection, the actor's heads would be closer to the top of the frame (as they are in the 2.35:1 extract).
> 
> View attachment 3222272
> 
> 
> On an IMAX screen, the excess headroom is beneficial, because if the heads were too high, viewers would need to uncomfortably crane their necks way up to see them. That is not a concern on a regular sized screen.
> 
> The whole movie looks like this, with the actors' faces centered around the middle of the screen, rather than the upper third where they'd normally be.
> 
> Looking at this shot on a regular screen, Thanos is more imposing when he fills the height of the frame. The open-matte version turns a medium shot into a wide shot, which causes a perspective shift that makes him seem smaller.
> 
> View attachment 3222273
> 
> 
> Again, if this shot had actually been composed for 1.85:1, the character would take up more screen area.
> 
> On a normal, non-IMAX screen, watching the IMAX version of this movie is no different than watching a "This film has been modified to fit your screen" version of a Super 35 movie like Lord of the Rings that had the mattes opened up for TV broadcast.


We have to agree to disagree. There is an assumption when releasing a motion picture to the home market (TV) that it will be watched under immersive. I think we agree on that.

Under immersive IMAX is not the intended theater experence just as under immersive scope is not the intended theater experence. So both could be thought of as somewhat less experence than at proper THX immersion levels on a proper sized screen. If we didn’t believe that you and I would have 40” TV sets on the wall and we would sit all around our living rooms watching movies like we watched TV in 1980. Movie theaters would not need large screens we could just put a 24” monitor on the seat in front of us like an airplane.

The directors of the movie are not aware that you and I can do theater level immersion and in my case BudMAX level immersion in our homes. We really are the exception to the millions of discs they sell.

So some directors assume as you do that adding a bit of space not to really be looked at on the top and bottom confuses people and the confusion or looking odd outweighs getting rid of the black bars for the millions of people that hate black bars also. I personally don’t see it and the examples you show look fine to me on small under immersive TVs and look even better IMO than replacing them with black bars. I don’t know but my guess is if you and I set up a table at Wal-Mart and gave away a free BD disc of the latest Marvel movie for taking a survey where we showed Joe Walmart the two framings that you posted and in selecting that’s the disc they got. We would give away 1000 IMAX to 10 scopes. 

Now what if we chopped the top and bottom scope safe we could also chop the sides in the pictures you showed to get 16:9 for TV. After all what would we lose a little bit of shoulder and blurry dumpster. Now we would have a more immersive tiny TV image. Of course we wouldn’t do it. Just like if the IMAX cut is put out on disc people wont mask their TV set down with black poster board and Velcro.

I can honestly say I’m 0% bothered by the IMAX framing on TVs if anything I wish they did them like Nolan did at 16:9 and get rid of the thin black lines. I’m also not nearly as bothered by watching scope on a TV as some people are it would be how I would want it when IMAX frame wasn’t an option.
In my perfect world the disc would ask me before I played it and the streaming site would ask before I streamed it if I wanted scope/IMAX Just like I can pick a language or subtitles etc. No one has explained to me why this can’t be a simple thing to do in the year 2022.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> We have to agree to disagree. There is an assumption when releasing a motion picture to the home market (TV) that it will be watched under immersive.


Explain why the 2.35:1 version was also sent to all theaters other than IMAX - theaters with 30-foot or larger screens far bigger than any TV.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Explain why the 2.35:1 version was also sent to all theaters other than IMAX - theaters with 30-foot or larger screens far bigger than any TV.


My guess is they were scope theaters and couldn't play the IMAX cut unless they played it CIH and the flat venues I'm not sure as they really shouldn't be playing scope movies in flat venues even though they do and showing ether in a flat venue would be showing them under immersive per THX specs. 

I could be wrong but I believe Avatar was instructed to play as large as possible in all venues including BD.


----------



## bud16415

Ok @Josh Z here is what I’m thinking and I will let you do it as you have access to the photos and all that. We go over to the LCD Flat Panel Displays or the OLED Flat Panel forum or maybe both as the frequent posters in each might have a different opinion.

We put up a poll to vote on showing the two different pictures side by side of the scope version and the IMAX version the same ones we were just talking about. Without any advice or commentary on the what and why of this. Just, What would you like your next BD to be framed like Scope or IMAX ??? Title the thread Black Bars or Tiny Black Bars.
Make the two photos 16:9 and the big black bars on the scope and the thin black bars on the IMAX1.89 just like TV would look.
Then we just stand back and see how people vote and what the conversation path takes. My guess is the posters on AVS are more informed and passionate about all this than the guy on the street so it might sway the conversation a little. But then in a week or two we will know what others feel.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> My guess is they were scope theaters and couldn't play the IMAX cut unless they played it CIH and the flat venues I'm not sure as they really shouldn't be playing scope movies in flat venues even though they do and showing ether in a flat venue would be showing them under immersive per THX specs.


No. All theaters other than IMAX got the 2.35:1 version, no matter the screen format. And most multiplexes these days run 1.85:1 screens due to laziness and cost-cutting (after laying off all their projectionists).

The filmmakers chose 2.35:1 for all screens other than IMAX. Only IMAX screens (which, again, should be so large as to exceed your field of vision) got the open-matte version.



> I could be wrong but I believe Avatar was instructed to play as large as possible in all venues including BD.


Avatar was a special one-off case, not the norm. And its multiple verions were the result of James Cameron changing his mind about the aspect ratio at the last minute, after he'd already composed the photography for 2.35:1 during production.



bud16415 said:


> Ok @Josh Z here is what I’m thinking and I will let you do it as you have access to the photos and all that. We go over to the LCD Flat Panel Displays or the OLED Flat Panel forum or maybe both as the frequent posters in each might have a different opinion.
> 
> We put up a poll to vote on showing the two different pictures side by side of the scope version and the IMAX version the same ones we were just talking about. Without any advice or commentary on the what and why of this. Just, What would you like your next BD to be framed like Scope or IMAX ??? Title the thread Black Bars or Tiny Black Bars.
> Make the two photos 16:9 and the big black bars on the scope and the thin black bars on the IMAX1.89 just like TV would look.
> 
> Then we just stand back and see how people vote and what the conversation path takes. My guess is the posters on AVS are more informed and passionate about all this than the guy on the street so it might sway the conversation a little. But then in a week or two we will know what others feel.


No thank you. That sounds like the biggest waste of time imaginable.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> No. All theaters other than IMAX got the 2.35:1 version, no matter the screen format. And most multiplexes these days run 1.85:1 screens due to laziness and cost-cutting (after laying off all their projectionists).
> 
> The filmmakers chose 2.35:1 for all screens other than IMAX. Only IMAX screens (which, again, should be so large as to exceed your field of vision) got the open-matte version.
> 
> 
> 
> Avatar was a special one-off case, not the norm. And its multiple verions were the result of James Cameron changing his mind about the aspect ratio at the last minute, after he'd already composed the photography for 2.35:1 during production.
> 
> 
> 
> No thank you. That sounds like the biggest waste of time imaginable.


My guess then is IMAX stuck their ugly face in and said no directly or indirectly to the use of the framing. No one is going to pay twice as much for a ticket when they can walk down the street to a Cineplex with a 1.85 screen sit closer than normal and get the same thing. I think IMAX could be behind some of the scope releases to disc as well. I’m sure once the IMAX master is released IMAX has their hand out. IMAX enhanced is their answer to this or at least they had hoped it was. Only so many ways to split a pie, cut someone out your piece gets larger.
I kind of figured you would say waste of time. I’m sure you read all the comments on the BD sites.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> That sounds like the biggest waste of time imaginable.


Oh, come on. That's a bit hyperbolic. And it sounds like either A) you don't really care what others think or B) you're worried the masses don't think like you do


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I was keeping up with the UHD thread and remembered your observation. I agree with that scene, but there is other stuff in the DC that makes it a harder call. Now for TMP the directors cut is easily better and I'm looking forward to the 4k redo. But that's enough of a tangent


I have the 4K box set of the first four _Trek_ films, including _The Motion Picture_. I believe that the director's cut of TMP is the only version that's been sold for a long time. I enjoyed it a lot more this time than I did when it first came out, since I knew what to expect and wasn't waiting with bated breath for an action-packed and character-driven _Trek_ film with the series' characteristic humor.

Now that I know that Roddenberry wanted it to be less like the TV show and more like _2001: A Space Odysessy_ - and its director was not a fan of the show (he had to be urged by his wife to include Spock, and rejected all pitches to him of comic bits by Shatner and Nimoy) - I've stopped calling it The Motionless Picture and I accept it for what it is, since we got what we wanted in the following films.


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## dschulz

One takeaway from this discussion is I wish I could afford to do a long road trip home theatre crawl, and visit the home theatres of everyone who has participated in this discussion.


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## Philnick

dschulz said:


> One takeaway from this discussion is I wish I could afford to do a long road trip home theatre crawl, and visit the home theatres of everyone who has participated in this discussion.


If you're coming to the Boston area, give me a shout by PM. I live on the Cambridge shore of the Charles River, not far from the Boston University Bridge.


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## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> One takeaway from this discussion is I wish I could afford to do a long road trip home theatre crawl, and visit the home theatres of everyone who has participated in this discussion.


You should definitely look for local/regional crawls. It's really interesting to see what others are doing with their rooms and it's a great way to meet folks involved in this hobby. I've been on 3 and highly recommend it.


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## Philnick

fatherom said:


> Oh, come on. That's a bit hyperbolic. And it sounds like either A) you don't really care what others think or B) you're worried the masses don't think like you do


I suspect that there's a fear that the 1.9:1 (or even - _gasp_ - 1.78:1) versions would be popular the way that "fullscreen" pan-and-scan horizontally-cropped versions of films were in the days of VHS (and the early years of DVD), among folks who didn't want to lose part of their small TV screens to letterbox bars, and didn't understand that they were losing part of the picture that that they were supposed to see.

The advantage of the 1.9 and 1.78 versions is that since they're not horizontally-cropped the fullscreen crowd can watch them happily, as can those of us with large screens who enjoy vertical immersion.

That's what the fans of 2.39:1 framing are afraid of.

By the way, has anyone told Brad Bird that a scope version on a small TV looks smaller - not larger - than the IMAX version, and faces are the same size either way?


----------



## bud16415

I looked yesterday and found a poll kind of on this subject on another site. It was asking would you rather have the scope version or a two pack for a bit more containing one disc of both AR. There were about 800 votes and it was about 2 to 1 in favor of both discs. Some wanted a DVD also added but the thread was a few years old. The long comments explained much of what Josh has been telling us and the short post from the uneducated were more like if it can fill my screen without loss of the scope information FILL MY Screen.

The one movie that was brought up a lot was MI Ghost Protocol. Many had seen it IMAXed and then were pretty disappointed with the home version. Many were saying they didn’t have tiny TVs and felt a 65” watching those black bars was painful knowing what was cut off.
Many in favor of scope called the IMAX version open matte and open matte should never be opened.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> I suspect that there's a fear that the 1.9:1 (or even - _gasp_ - 1.78:1) versions would be popular the way that "fullscreen" pan-and-scan horizontally-cropped versions of films were in the days of VHS (and the early years of DVD), among folks who didn't want to lose part of their small TV screens to letterbox bars, and didn't understand that they were losing part of the picture that that they were supposed to see.
> 
> The advantage of the 1.9 and 1.78 versions is that since they're not horizontally-cropped the fullscreen crowd can watch them happily, as can those of us with large screens who enjoy vertical immersion.
> 
> That's what the fans of 2.39:1 framing are afraid of.


Honestly the only thing I fear is people happily cropping information that is intended by the filmmaker to be seen because my TV needs every inch filled. Ever seen the Harry Potter films cropped to 16:9? They've been broadcast that way. HBO I think. It was terrible. Scenes with characters talking to each other had a good portion of their bodies cropped out. As film fans none of us should want that.

If filmmakers choose narrower aspect ratios to fit better with 16:9 sets, doesn't bother me. But scope doesn't seem to be getting less popular and VAR films seem to continue to come out in a trickle. So I don't see big changes ahead. At least not yet.

Not sure why fans of 2.35:1 framing would fear framings like 2.00:1 or 1.90:1. Most of us are enjoying 100% vertical immersion on those ratios already. We just don't decrease our vertical immersion if things go wider (unless you are talking 2.76:1 and then you have to be Vern Dias to do that).



Philnick said:


> By the way, has anyone told Brad Bird that a scope version on a small TV looks smaller - not larger - than the IMAX version, and faces are the same size either way?


We as film enthusiasts should want films shown in the format directors feel best represent their work. Villeneuve has scenes in Dune that were shot in IMAX and yet the streaming and discs contain a 2.35:1 framing. I don't think anyone should be upset about it any more than if he choose a VAR presentation.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I have the 4K box set of the first four _Trek_ films, including _The Motion Picture_. I believe that the director's cut of TMP is the only version that's been sold for a long time.


The Director's Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was last released on DVD. That version of the movie was constructed at 480p resolution, with all of its new CGI VFX rendered in SD due to budget constraints. Many fans complained about Paramount's penny-pinching and lack of forward thinking when they made that decision.

All subsequent releases of the film in the high-def era have returned to the original theatrical cut, because that is the only version of the movie that exists on high quality film elements that can be rescanned at better resolutions.

Paramount has recently indicated that they are at work reconstructing the Director's Edition in higher resolution, which means rebuilding it from scratch and redoing all the CGI VFX. There's been no indication of when they expect to release that. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns up as a Paramount+ streaming exclusive.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> My guess then is IMAX stuck their ugly face in and said no directly or indirectly to the use of the framing. No one is going to pay twice as much for a ticket when they can walk down the street to a Cineplex with a 1.85 screen sit closer than normal and get the same thing. I think IMAX could be behind some of the scope releases to disc as well. I’m sure once the IMAX master is released IMAX has their hand out. IMAX enhanced is their answer to this or at least they had hoped it was. Only so many ways to split a pie, cut someone out your piece gets larger.
> I kind of figured you would say waste of time. I’m sure you read all the comments on the BD sites.


If the directors had wanted to compose for 1.85:1, they had that option. Plenty of 1.85:1 movies play on IMAX screens at almost the exact same size as the few actually shot with IMAX cameras. IMAX has no "We won't play any 1.85:1 movie unless it was shot with our own cameras!" rule. 

Nevertheless, the directors chose to compose for 2.35:1 for all theaters other than IMAX.


----------



## mattsteg

bud16415 said:


> So I can say every setting I watch at is within the set down standards of what can be found in any certified theater in the world.
> 
> Now the question becomes and the bone of contention for some. Is it ok to pick a seat in a commercial theater on Monday and a different one on Tuesday? Keeping in mind SMPTE, THX, IMAX and the director of the movie have no issue with doing it.


That's about the shape of it. There are bigger formats than 'scope, so why not set up an appropriate viewing environment for them?


Josh Z said:


> It was made to be seen _specifically on IMAX screens_.
> 
> Even for 1.89:1, the extra headroom forces the faces down lower in the frame, which draws attention to the needless empty headroom above them. This is a question of balance and symmetry. The 2.35:1 framing is more dynamic.
> 
> If this shot in Avengers: Endgame had been composed for normal 1.85:1 projection, the actor's heads would be closer to the top of the frame (as they are in the 2.35:1 extract).
> 
> 
> On an IMAX screen, the excess headroom is beneficial, because if the heads were too high, viewers would need to uncomfortably crane their necks way up to see them. That is not a concern on a regular sized screen.


This is why some of us are advocating for larger-than-scope screens (and by that I mean taller than a scope screen sized for an optimal viewing experience)


Josh Z said:


> Explain why the 2.35:1 version was also sent to all theaters other than IMAX - theaters with 30-foot or larger screens far bigger than any TV.





Josh Z said:


> No. All theaters other than IMAX got the 2.35:1 version, no matter the screen format. And most multiplexes these days run 1.85:1 screens due to laziness and cost-cutting (after laying off all their projectionists).


(this seems to fly in the face of those who insist that CIH presentation is the standard)


Josh Z said:


> The filmmakers chose 2.35:1 for all screens other than IMAX. Only IMAX screens (which, again, should be so large as to exceed your field of vision) got the open-matte version.


As discussed a ton already, this likely comes down to some combination of MONEY/MARKETING and IMAX wanting to protect the exclusivity and quality of their branded offerings. Every seat in an IMAX theater should provide an IMAX experience, and that's something that they charge extra for. A local cookie-cutter cineplex with 1.85 screens will (in principle, at least visually) be able to provide an IMAX-like experience in some seats, but not others. For this reason they can't charge the IMAX premium...and IMAX does not want to let people get their premium product without paying for it.

Does the approach that directors take to such mixed-presentation IMAX films vary? Absolutely. Some work to make the added content meaningful and make the IMAX version the definitive one. Others doubtless accept the hassle of shooting for IMAX as a cost of doing business and making big movies, and compose for scope.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> (this seems to fly in the face of those who insist that CIH presentation is the standard)


CIH is the standard by which movies (other than those very few shot with IMAX cameras) are made. The fact that the theatrical exhibition market has gone downhill and currently treats movie theater screens as little more than oversized TVs is an unfortunate circumstance, but has no bearing on the intent by which the movies were actually photographed.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> CIH is the standard by which movies (other than those very few shot with IMAX cameras) are made. The fact that the theatrical exhibition market has gone downhill and currently treats movie theater screens as little more than oversized TVs is an unfortunate circumstance, but has no bearing on the intent by which the movies were actually photographed.


What does that even mean? CIH is a presentation technique.

Movies aren't "photographed CIH". E.g. RED's latest cameras are a 1.9:1 sensor I believe. Their screens and viewfinders are all 1.85 or narrower, best as I see. 

I have 2 distinct points that I want to make sure to communicate:

The choice on how to best view a film should be based on comfort and immersion, not based on trying to hold any other parameter constant.
Movies are not "composed to CIH"

Movies are composed and photographed to best utilize the shape of the chosen aspect. For some types of shots and styles (particularly comparing between the generally similar scope and flat aspects) that tends to result in a framing that follows "CIH". For others it doesn't - especially when comparing back to academy (There can be just too much of a difference composing for in image aspect that's ~twice as wide).

The end result is that you have some shots that scope looks like "flat but wider" and other shots (less common, but nowhere near as rare as you make them out to be.) where a scope composition is tighter to the top/bottom of the frame. Maybe not to the extent of CIW, but shots like these, for example (from American Hustle and All the President's Men which I selected at random and picked the first scene I jumped to featuring 1 guy in each). If scaled to CIH, the scope frame is composed just a bit tighter - the focal point of the eyes is ~5% higher on the scope image. This seems pretty typical and common on this type of shot. There's just not enough to fill the width of a scope image, so directors tend to crop tighter. That brings my focal point down, and has me spending a bit more time looking in the central third of the screen. This means it's comfortable to bump up the size of the image just a tad. Not all the way 16/9, but not CIH either.












In general, you want to make sure that the areas of critical viewing are within your comfortable viewing area. From what you've said - this is a lot of why you endorse CIH. However, there are some subtle differences in how the aspects are composed. *To be clear, I'm 0% concerned about "matching sizes"* - I can't imagine any director gives a care if some face is 10% different in size, especially given the variability of theater experiences. *What I am concerned about is making sure that the areas of the frame that I'm going to concentrate on are within my comfortable viewing range.* CIH is a good, conservative starting point here, but I find that going a little bit bigger can make sense, give greater impact to more films while still providing a comfortable viewing experience.


----------



## jeahrens

Josh Z said:


> The Director's Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was last released on DVD. That version of the movie was constructed at 480p resolution, with all of its new CGI VFX rendered in SD due to budget constraints. Many fans complained about Paramount's penny-pinching and lack of forward thinking when they made that decision.
> 
> All subsequent releases of the film in the high-def era have returned to the original theatrical cut, because that is the only version of the movie that exists on high quality film elements that can be rescanned at better resolutions.
> 
> Paramount has recently indicated that they are at work reconstructing the Director's Edition in higher resolution, which means rebuilding it from scratch and redoing all the CGI VFX. There's been no indication of when they expect to release that. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns up as a Paramount+ streaming exclusive.


It does look like they will be releasing the disc after an exclusive window for streaming:








IT’S OFFICIAL: The STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE – DIRECTOR’S EDITION is getting restored in 4K!!


Heads-up, folks! No sooner did I post here on The Bits about that Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection cover artwork leak, I got an email back from Paramount with a link to the official Star Trek website with this news: Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture Set to Be Fully...




thedigitalbits.com





Fingers crossed it does, good news for fans of TMP.


----------



## jeahrens

Because Red cameras were discussed, they have a page on their site about aspect ratios.






RED.com







www.red.com





They have aides inside the view finder that will show you the frame of the AR you want to capture. Film has also been captured with an AR differing from what it would be cropped/matted too for presentation, so nothing new.

They also have a diagram showing aspect ratios in comparison to each other:


https://s3.amazonaws.com/red_3/uploads/asset_image/image/51bf8fa017ef02442c00032f/standards1.png


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> Movies aren't "photographed CIH". E.g. RED's latest cameras are a 1.9:1 sensor I believe. Their screens and viewfinders are all 1.85 or narrower, best as I see.


The camera viewfinder and video assist monitors all have frame markers on them for the desired final aspect ratio, regardless of the sensor size. The camera operators don't just eyeball it and hope for the best. The shots are *composed *for the intended aspect ratio.

And within that aspect ratio, certain rules of composition apply - most prominently the Rule of Thirds, which works the same at all aspect ratios.

No, this does not mean that every shot in a movie is required to follow the Rule of Thirds. Filmmakers will sometimes break it (and perhaps even break it a lot) for specific effect. However, by and large, you will find tremendous commonality between almost any movie and TV show you watch. In close-ups and medium shots, human faces are nearly always composed with the eyes approximately 1/3 down from the top of the frame. That's the case at *all *aspect ratios.

If you think this is BS, take out your phone, hand it to someone near you, and ask them to take a "nice" photo of you. Not something silly from a canted low angle or an extreme close-up of your nose hairs, but just a nice headshot in landcape orientation. Now, where are the eyes? I bet they're about 1/3 down from the top of the frame, aren't they? The person taking the photo doesn't have to be trained for this. They don't even need to do it consciously. That's just what looks best.

Filmmakers have no idea what size screen you'll watch on, but they do know the frame they're working within, and how objects should be sized within that frame. If the director wants the face to look really big, they'll push the camera in tight for a close-up. If they want it to look smaller, they'll pull the camera away. Again, that works the same at any aspect ratio. Yet always, if they want a pleasing sense of symmetry, the Rule of Thirds dictates that object "size" is determined by the height of the frame.

So yes, motion picture photography operates from the basic assumption of Constant Image Height between aspect ratios.



> The end result is that you have some shots that scope looks like "flat but wider" and other shots (less common, but nowhere near as rare as you make them out to be.) where a scope composition is tighter to the top/bottom of the frame. Maybe not to the extent of CIW, but shots like these, for example (from American Hustle and All the President's Men which I selected at random and picked the first scene I jumped to featuring 1 guy in each). If scaled to CIH, the scope frame is composed just a bit tighter - the focal point of the eyes is ~5% higher on the scope image.
> 
> This seems pretty typical and common on this type of shot. There's just not enough to fill the width of a scope image, so directors tend to crop tighter. That brings my focal point down, and has me spending a bit more time looking in the central third of the screen. This means it's comfortable to bump up the size of the image just a tad. Not all the way 16/9, but not CIH either.
> 
> View attachment 3222795


First, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, as these two shots were photographed with the camera at different distances from the subject.

Second, you are completely missing the point. I'm not saying there has to be 100% pixel-to-pixel alignment between the two shots. Obviously, that's impossible. They're two completely different movies.

We're talking about ranges here. These two shots - specifically in regard to how large the character appears in the frame - are way more similar to each other than not. If you can't see that, this conversation is fruitless. 










Are they 5% different when you count pixels? Maybe, but they're certainly much closer to looking the same than the same two images compared in Constant Width, where the shot taken with the camera closer to the actor is significantly smaller than the one taken from a further distance away.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> The shots are *composed *for the intended *aspect ratio.*


Ratio, not height.


Josh Z said:


> And within that aspect ratio, certain rules of composition apply - most prominently the Rule of Thirds, which works the same at all aspect ratios.


I'm not an idiot. I probably know as much or more about composition as you do. I even posted an example of how these compositional rules tend to get bent/interpreted jussst slightly different. The examples I posted are almost perfect rule of thirds compositions.

The focal point (eyes) is almost exactly at the rule of thirds location - but just a bit higher in the scope composition. For this reason we tend to spend a bit less time looking at the vertical extremes of the flat image, so can comfortably view that material just a bit taller.

Quit talking down to me like I'm some sort of schoolchild.


Josh Z said:


> First, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, as these two shots were photographed with the camera at different distances from the subject.


They're representative samples of common framing for showing one person in isolation in a film. Obviously there are differences - you make different choices depending on what format you're shooting and the story you want to tell.

You've fabricated a circular definition of "apples to apples" where the only valid "comparison" is a shot where the flat shot is a literal CIH crop of the scope frame, all other comparisons are invalid, and therefore CIH is the only way.


Josh Z said:


> Are they 5% different when you count pixels? Maybe, but they're certainly much closer to looking the same than the same two images compared in Constant Width


No one's advocating constant width. Just a taller image than constant height. Something in the range of Constant Image Area or halfway between CIH and CIA is a superior presentation to me, for the reasons that I've laid out.
sqrt(1.1^2+(1.1*1.85)^2)


Josh Z said:


> where the shot taken with the camera closer to the actor is significantly smaller than the one taken from a further distance away.


The size of the actor on the screen is immaterial. We're not trying to make scale reproductions of actors.

The *usage of the frame for composition* and *how that relates to the viewing experience* is a more relevant factor.


----------



## Josh Z

mattsteg said:


> They're representative samples of common framing for showing one person in isolation in a film. Obviously there are differences - you make different choices depending on what format you're shooting and the story you want to tell.


No, you have cherry-picked examples where the actor is closer to the camera in one shot than the other, and are making a broad generalization that "Scope films are always shot with the camera closer to the actors," which is nonsense. If anything, directors tend to pull cameras back further for scope. Especially if they're shooting with anamorphic lenses, which don't focus as well at closer distances.

And before you clap back at me, yes, I did cherry-pick examples where the actor is the same distance from the camera, as that is a much fairer comparison than the one you've fabricated.



> No one's advocating constant width. Just a taller image than constant height. Something in the range of Constant Image Area or halfway between CIH and CIA is a superior presentation to me, for the reasons that I've laid out.


And why is that better? The reasons you've laid out are that YOU like it better, as if that were relevant to anyone else. 

If you like the Constant Area approach better, fine, do it that way. That's your prerogative. But that doesn't mean that it's the end-all/be-all superior method and that everyone should emulate you.

The historical evidence is very clear that the scope format was invented for the specific purpose of being the same height but wider than other formats, and for many decades that was the standard by which the best premium cinemas projected their images until the cost-cutting of the modern era. You may not personally care about that, but those are facts.


----------



## mattsteg

Josh Z said:


> No, you have cherry-picked examples where the actor is closer to the camera in one shot than the other, and are making a broad generalization


I didn't cherry-pick anything. I literally picked 2 movies at random and skipped around until I found a scene showing one person in each. Both scenes managed to be near-perfectly composed rule-of-thirds shots, with slight framing differences that happen to align with your previous examples as well as my general observations.


Josh Z said:


> that "Scope films are always shot with the camera closer to the actors," which is nonsense. If anything, directors tend to pull cameras back further for scope.


Ok wait a second here. Maybe I was giving you WAY too much credit with your closer/further talk. I was assuming that you were looking at the composition and perspective of the images, inferring a lens angle-of-view choice, and from that inferring "closer" or "further".

But no, you're still stuck on image size.



Josh Z said:


> The historical evidence is very clear that the scope format was invented for the specific purpose of being the same height but wider than other formats


Is there really? It was definitely invented to be wider both in aspect and in scope, to differentiate from the TV experience. It was marketed as a bigger experience. Hollywood pushed theaters to invest in bigger screens (or collapse under the expense). It was developed as a technology that could use a lot of existing equipment (projectors, lenses, etc.) with anamorphic added on top of that, and share equipment for projecting anamorphic and flat films. The economics and 50s-era tech dictated switching between frame-sizes in a CIH manner.

The overall push was to expand and market the spectacle. The technical means of doing so most economically resulted in a technology that made the *cheapest and easiest *way to do so CIH projection.



Josh Z said:


> and for many decades that was the standard by which the best premium cinemas projected their images until the cost-cutting of the modern era.


Are you saying that the best premium cinemas no longer project CIH?

The goal of 'scope projection was a BIG, wide, engaging cinematic experience. Bigger screens, bigger spectacles.

CIH projection exists because it was the cheapest, simplest way to project scope and flat images in the same theater while fulfilling those objectives. With 50s-era technology, the choice was between CIW and CIH. CIH is clearly the better option. 70 years later we have much more developed projection technology, and no longer need to be slaves to the cost-driven compromises of 70 years ago. We can easily optimize presentation of both scope and flat material, without needing to prioritize one or the other over cost concerns.[/QUOTE]


----------



## jeahrens

It's a curious that the premium screening rooms and Dolby Cinemas are almost always a CIH presentation. These venues could easily employ (and afford) masking to expand height, yet don't. Almost as if expressing the ratios to:1 means something and they aren't doing it to be cheap.


----------



## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> It's a curious that the premium screening rooms and Dolby Cinemas are almost always a CIH presentation. These venues could easily employ (and afford) masking to expand height, yet don't. Almost as if expressing the ratios to:1 means something and they aren't doing it to be cheap.


Alas that has not been my experience. Almost all PLF rooms (including Dolby Cinema) in Southern California are maskless Flat screens. There is one particular Dolby Cinema I frequent precisely because it's the only CIH Dolby Cinema around. Alamo Drafthouse is a notable exception - the guy in charge of projection for them is a strong believer in big CIH Scope screens. 

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the flagship industry screening rooms (the Academy's Goldwyn and Linwood Dunn theatres, plus the new rooms at the Academy Museum, the WGA, the DGA, the Television Academy) are all 4-way masking rooms that often bump the height a tick or two over the Scope sizing when running Flat or Academy features. But run-of-the-mill multiplex houses are split between CIW and CIH with masking in only one direction or the other (if there is masking at all), and I greatly prefer the CIH houses for all of the reasons enumerated in this thread.


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## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> Alas that has not been my experience. Almost all PLF rooms (including Dolby Cinema) in Southern California are maskless Flat screens. There is one particular Dolby Cinema I frequent precisely because it's the only CIH Dolby Cinema around. Alamo Drafthouse is a notable exception - the guy in charge of projection for them is a strong believer in big CIH Scope screens.
> 
> And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the flagship industry screening rooms (the Academy's Goldwyn and Linwood Dunn theatres, plus the new rooms at the Academy Museum, the WGA, the DGA, the Television Academy) are all 4-way masking rooms that often bump the height a tick or two over the Scope sizing when running Flat or Academy features. But run-of-the-mill multiplex houses are split between CIW and CIH with masking in only one direction or the other (if there is masking at all), and I greatly prefer the CIH houses for all of the reasons enumerated in this thread.


That's interesting. Doing searches on studio screening rooms turn up a majority of the results being CIH. The DGA screen in NY looks like a masked setup, the LA theater seems to be CIH for at least 2 of the 3 (the pictures on the smaller rooms are hard to tell). Same with a search on Dolby Cinema, but that could be what they choose to advertise or just what floats to the top in Google. It's still telling that places that can certainly afford another solution, don't. 

The 3 Alamos I've been to, 2 were CIH and one was CIW. No Dolby's local. We did get a nice IMAX venue though.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> It's a curious that the premium screening rooms and Dolby Cinemas are almost always a CIH presentation. These venues could easily employ (and afford) masking to expand height, yet don't. Almost as if expressing the ratios to:1 means something and they aren't doing it to be cheap.


There's always a law of diminishing returns that commercial venues - even elite ones - follow.


dschulz said:


> Alas that has not been my experience. Almost all PLF rooms (including Dolby Cinema) in Southern California are maskless Flat screens. There is one particular Dolby Cinema I frequent precisely because it's the only CIH Dolby Cinema around. Alamo Drafthouse is a notable exception - the guy in charge of projection for them is a strong believer in big CIH Scope screens.
> 
> And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the flagship industry screening rooms (the Academy's Goldwyn and Linwood Dunn theatres, plus the new rooms at the Academy Museum, the WGA, the DGA, the Television Academy) are all 4-way masking rooms that often bump the height a tick or two over the Scope sizing when running Flat or Academy features. But run-of-the-mill multiplex houses are split between CIW and CIH with masking in only one direction or the other (if there is masking at all), and I greatly prefer the CIH houses for all of the reasons enumerated in this thread.


To put some numbers on that "just a tick", the Goldwyn and WGA have (per their specs) 2.33:1 screens. The Linwood Dunn screen spec is 2.5:1 which fels like a compromise between scope and 70mm. 4-way masking is probably more for handling 2.76 material than anything, and dimensions may be rounded to integer feet for convenience. Goldwyn and WGA are listed at exactly 1 ft narrower than a 2.4:1 screen.


jeahrens said:


> That's interesting. Doing searches on studio screening rooms turn up a majority of the results being CIH. The DGA screen in NY looks like a masked setup, the LA theater seems to be CIH for at least 2 of the 3 (the pictures on the smaller rooms are hard to tell). Same with a search on Dolby Cinema, but that could be what they choose to advertise or just what floats to the top in Google. It's still telling that places that can certainly afford another solution, don't.
> 
> The 3 Alamos I've been to, 2 were CIH and one was CIW. No Dolby's local. We did get a nice IMAX venue though.


CIH vs. almost-CIH is such a niche tweak for venues that already offer a wide range of viewing experiences that I imagine it's not worth the hassle. When you control precisely the viewing experience as in a home theater there's more benefit. Tweaking the size of flat up just a tad is appropriate, as is having some extra breathing room for e.g. subs and added expansion for vertically larger formats. 

*The most important consideration is to NOT compromise the presentation of your prioritized and most epic content that you're designing to (typically scope, or simultaneously scope + IMAX).* Let's not get distracted from this.

Once you've optimized for that (and considering CIH vs. CIW and traditional CIH sizing guidelines is a great path to doing this) it's well worth reconsidering everything from that baseline and whether you'd want to make any tweaks. I would NEVER suggest to make scope smaller to accommodate flat films, and I'd also not suggest to make flat (or IMAX/VAR) films smaller to accommodate scope. CIH is a good rule of thumb, but I'd always suggest to try even larger screen sizes...if nothing else you might find that you undersized the CIH screen and would prefer an even larger one.

The director, cinematographer, and projectionist's intent is to provide a great experience across a range of viewing distances. Any reasonable home theater setup will be WELL within this range and an extra few-percent of screen size this way or that does not compromise this. Absent a very specific presentation such as a designed double-feature of a scope and flat film or VAR films, the artistic intent is not to compare one film and aspect vs another, but to enjoy each on its own merits.


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## bud16415

So what has this thread taught us about should or shouldn’t I do CIH?

Great cases have been made that it is a historically correct method of presentation in many commercial theaters. Although it hasn’t been shown there is a doctrine stating it is cast in stone to do it that way. If you go back in the history the movie industry was looking for something different to wow the moviegoers back into the theaters. They found some guy making lens back in the 20s that could be added to a camera to compress a wider image onto the same film they were using and then another lens to spread it back out. The two images then would be the same height because the lens only distorted the image in one direction. This allowed no change to the film, cameras, projectors etc. All they needed was a wider not taller screen.

So the simplicity of CIH has been around from the beginning and has been mentioned quite a few times in this thread. The variability of immersion in commercial theaters has always been an option as they are set up with many rows of seats. I have read many times here that a person should be satisfied with a constant seating distance going between scope and flat in support of CIH but I have never actually seen that in any kind of a document put out by the motion picture industry. It is said directors are taught methods of filmmaking that show certain shots between the two AR be shot so figures take up same height and are framed the same way in the height. But from watching many movies I have seen heads and bodies sized and framed in infinite number of comparisons and when shown examples of what should be considered the same they can be off as much as 30% when actually measured, but to the eye look quite similar.

A lot of the reasons one might want to have a taller than scope screen really don’t apply to Flat and Scope movie and should have no affect on doing CIH for those two movie ARs if one wanted to. Movies like IMAX I’m told need to be reduced to scope to be properly enjoyed at home, but despite that some directors say no and put them out taller. I have been shown how odd a IMAX frame is supposed to look on a home screen, but they look just fine to me and look better than black bars to the vast majority of people buying movies on disc and they are always upset when a new action release comes out in scope only. Recently Marvel and Disney started streaming the IMAX cuts and the buzz was positive in most places.

Sports and nature TV is not movies so I don’t see why if there was a CIH official rule they would care how they need to be viewed.

So in the end a home theater is not a commercial theater and even the biggest proponents of CIH will tell you in your own home do what makes you happy. The problem really is if you tell anyone else what makes you happy and it is not CIH even though at the end you tell them to do what makes them happy.

Here is a link for reference for what it is worth.
CinemaScope - Wikipedia


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## dschulz

Unsurprisingly I have a different take-away from this thread, which is that for Flat and Scope (and 16:9) movies and TV shows, CIH is both the best and the easiest presentation. It makes TV shows and Flat motion pictures the precise size that you find comfortable in your room, and Scope movies even bigger (and still comfortable). What Josh's mysteriously controversial screen grabs show is that, contra CIH skeptics, crucial image info in a Flat movie is not smaller than it ought to be: rather, actors in various framings (close-up, medium close etc) are precisely the same size in Flat and Scope presentations. 

But the thread has illuminated four reasons why you may not want CIH:

1) You just want Flat or 16:9 material to be a little (or a lot) bigger than you would have in a CIH rig. Use cases could be gaming, YouTube videos, still photography, sports, or a general desire to just throw the largest possible image
2) You want to project Academy ratio movies a little larger than you'd get in CIH
3) You want to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup
4) You want to have some flexibility to handle subtitles that are placed in the letterbox bars

Of these exceptions, I dismiss 1 out of hand. I dismiss 3 out of hand as well, because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height) and there's just not enough content to justify it, IMO. This format gets discussed here a lot, but how many movies are we talking about? Around ten, I think, most of them directed by Christopher Nolan. 

2 and 4 are more compelling, because these could be accommodated by having a slightly larger screen (say 2.00:1) and 4-way masking. But to keep things clean and simple I'm happy to forego making Academy movies just a little bit bigger. The subtitle issue is definitely pesky and troubling, and as more content is streamed with baked-in subs in the letterbox bars may become a compelling reason to go CIA with 4-way masking.


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## dschulz

mattsteg said:


> There's always a law of diminishing returns that commercial venues - even elite ones - follow.
> 
> To put some numbers on that "just a tick", the Goldwyn and WGA have (per their specs) 2.33:1 screens. The Linwood Dunn screen spec is 2.5:1 which fels like a compromise between scope and 70mm. 4-way masking is probably more for handling 2.76 material than anything, and dimensions may be rounded to integer feet for convenience. Goldwyn and WGA are listed at exactly 1 ft narrower than a 2.4:1 screen.


Nicely done finding the screen specs! I've reached out to some folks at the Academy and here's what I've learned so far:

Flat and Scope films are projected CIH. Academy films are adjusted so that they are somewhat larger than they would be CIH. Still working on confirmation on how they handle 2.20 Super Panavision (CIH, or keeping the Scope width but bumping out the top & bottom masking).

I'm hitting up some folks at other screening rooms about & will report my findings.


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## Philnick

dschulz said:


> . . .[T]he thread has illuminated four reasons why you may not want CIH: . . .
> 3) You want to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup
> 4) You want to have some flexibility to handle subtitles that are placed in the letterbox bars
> Of these exceptions, I dismiss 1 out of hand. I dismiss 3 out of hand as well, because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height) and there's just not enough content to justify it, IMO. This format gets discussed here a lot, but how many movies are we talking about? Around ten, I think, most of them directed by Christopher Nolan.
> 
> 2 and 4 are more compelling, because these could be accommodated by having a slightly larger screen (say 2.00:1) and 4-way masking. But to keep things clean and simple I'm happy to forego making Academy movies just a little bit bigger. The subtitle issue is definitely pesky and troubling, and as more content is streamed with baked-in subs in the letterbox bars may become a compelling reason to go CIA with 4-way masking.


Rejecting #3 "out of hand" is, to put it quite simply, arrogant.

When someone has the largest scope image possible in their setup, what objection can you really have to letting the screen be that wide but even taller (#3) "to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup"?

You dismiss #3 "because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height)" - But if someone _does_ have a screen as large as the largest possible scope image in their theater with the extra height (as I do), what's wrong with that setup, which also accommodates reasons #1, #2, and #4 as well as #3?

Is it just that you just can't stand Christopher Nolan VAR films (including the _Dark Knight_ films, _Intersellar_, and others)? And you also don't like the VAR and IMAX Marvel films (the _Ant-Man _films_, _the_ Avengers _films_, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange_, the _Guardians of the Galaxy_ films,_ Iron Man, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Thor:Ragnarok, The Winter Soldier_) some now out in VAR in 3D and some beginning to be streamed in 4K by Disney +, and you don't like the VAR 4K _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ or _Tron:Legacy_? And of course you don't like Wes Anderson's films, which go back and forth between Academy and scope (_The Grand Budapest Hotel_, _The French Dispatch_, and several others). What _do_ you like? (By the way, we're already over two dozen legitimately taller-than-scope films.)

Just because taller-than-scope films are inconvenient in your CIH setup, you shouldn't automatically blame the films. You could equally-well blame the rigidty of the CIH setup.

Attacking the idea of taking a screen that works for CIH and expanding it vertically to accommodate taller images begins to look to me like a defense mechanism against considering the possibility that it was a mistake to choose a CIH screen.

I thought you scope fans liked things to look "epic." God forbid someone makes them look even more epic by expanding them vertically as well as horizontally!


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## ahmedreda

dschulz said:


> Unsurprisingly I have a different take-away from this thread, which is that for Flat and Scope (and 16:9) movies and TV shows, CIH is both the best and the easiest presentation. It makes TV shows and Flat motion pictures the precise size that you find comfortable in your room, and Scope movies even bigger (and still comfortable). What Josh's mysteriously controversial screen grabs show is that, contra CIH skeptics, crucial image info in a Flat movie is not smaller than it ought to be: rather, actors in various framings (close-up, medium close etc) are precisely the same size in Flat and Scope presentations.
> 
> But the thread has illuminated four reasons why you may not want CIH:
> 
> 1) You just want Flat or 16:9 material to be a little (or a lot) bigger than you would have in a CIH rig. Use cases could be gaming, YouTube videos, still photography, sports, or a general desire to just throw the largest possible image
> 2) You want to project Academy ratio movies a little larger than you'd get in CIH
> 3) You want to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup
> 4) You want to have some flexibility to handle subtitles that are placed in the letterbox bars
> 
> Of these exceptions, I dismiss 1 out of hand. I dismiss 3 out of hand as well, because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height) and there's just not enough content to justify it, IMO. This format gets discussed here a lot, but how many movies are we talking about? Around ten, I think, most of them directed by Christopher Nolan.
> 
> 2 and 4 are more compelling, because these could be accommodated by having a slightly larger screen (say 2.00:1) and 4-way masking. But to keep things clean and simple I'm happy to forego making Academy movies just a little bit bigger. The subtitle issue is definitely pesky and troubling, and as more content is streamed with baked-in subs in the letterbox bars may become a compelling reason to go CIA with 4-way masking.


Having an CIH+IMAX is not necessarily hard or expensive if you have control of the viewing distance and have the ceiling height. In my setup, I opted for a 138" 16:9 screen and the entire room is 10.5x13. My viewing distance is 6'7" so my flat viewing angle is 58 degrees. My scope/IMAX viewing angle is 74.4 degrees. If I dare to project flat content full screen without masking, my eyes will probably bother me. This is not the case for IMAX content which is great at the large viewing angle.

The addition of the extra height was basically free in my case. The screen material is the same price (trimmed less of the material height). I am using the zoom method for scope so no extra lumens were needed.

There is a lot of content that justifies adding the extra IMAX height and a lot of the demo material for my setup come from that content. Avatar in 3D, Dark Knight, Titanic 3D, documentaries etc.

Note that my flat viewing angle (58 degrees) is very close to the 60 degrees (2xSH) which is often recommended as "immersive for scope". I do find it that if I view scope at that recommendation, flat and academy ratios are small / short to my eyes. The key point is to make the 16:9 image as large as you would like and go from there. 

Is a giant 16:9 perfect? In my opinion, it is an excellent compromise for home viewing since it properly displays the "home" version of the IMAX content without compromising scope and the smaller aspect ratios. It still doesn't accommodate the few extra wide movies and the 1.43:1 shifting aspect ratios in Batman V Superman and 1.43:1 content in general which will be problematic for all screens. FWIW, BVS uses 1.43:1 for IMAX scenes followed by 2.4:1 for non-IMAX scenes.


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## dschulz

Philnick said:


> Rejecting #3 "out of hand" is, to put it quite simply, arrogant.
> 
> When someone has the largest scope image possible in their setup, what objection can you really have to letting the screen be that wide but even taller (#3) "to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup"?


I have no objection to that at all; if the room geometry and budget supports it, this is obviously the best case scenario. For me it's not as easy as giant screen wall though - I get cranky when there's no masking, and want to make sure I'm hitting target light levels. 



> You dismiss #3 "because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height)" - But if someone _does_ have a screen as large as the largest possible scope image in their theater with the extra height (as I do), what's wrong with that setup, which also accommodates reasons #1, #2, and #4 as well as #3?


Nothing wrong with that at all.



> Is it just that you just can't stand Christopher Nolan VAR films (including the _Dark Knight_ films, _Intersellar_, and others)? And you also don't like the VAR and IMAX Marvel films (the _Ant-Man _films_, _the_ Avengers _films_, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange_, the _Guardians of the Galaxy_ films,_ Iron Man, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Thor:Ragnarok, The Winter Soldier_) some now out in VAR in 3D and some beginning to be streamed in 4K by Disney +, and you don't like the VAR 4K _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ or _Tron:Legacy_? And of course you don't like Wes Anderson's films, which go back and forth between Academy and scope (_The Grand Budapest Hotel_, _The French Dispatch_, and several others). What _do_ you like? (By the way, we're already over two dozen legitimately taller-than-scope films.)


This is where the discussion goes sideways. You are ascribing some bad faith to me that I do not appreciate. Let's take Nolan, for example. I _love_ Christopher Nolan. I am an advocate for 70mm film image acquisition and playback. I am fortunate enough to live in Los Angeles, where I have the opportunity to see films presented every which way; IMAX digital, IMAX film, Dolby Cinema, 70mm, everything. I saw Tenet upon its release in 5-perf 70mm - that was presented at 2.20:1. I later saw it in IMAX film with a VAR that maxed at 1.43:1. Interstellar I first saw in anamorphic 35mm at 2.39:1, and then again in IMAX at 1.43 with VAR. All of those Nolan films cited released theatrically primarily in 2.39. 

I love the MCU. Almost all of those films were released Scope both theatrically and on home video. It's only since Disney+ announced they were going to make the VAR version available to stream that they entered the chat at all. 

I love Wes Anderson. I love Tron: Legacy so much it legit makes my top 25 or so favorite films list. I first saw Tron: Legacy on the Disney lot back when I worked at DTS to QC the soundtrack, in 2.39:1. I saw it twice more in cinemas as a civilian, once in a regular cinema at 2.39 and again in IMAX with VAR. 



> Just because taller-than-scope films are inconvenient in your CIH setup, you shouldn't automatically blame the films. You could equally-well blame the rigidty of the CIH setup.


I am not blaming the films, I am noting their relatively small numbers so far, the fact that all of them are presented without complaint at 2.39 in over 90% of their theatrical dates, and asking whether its worth designing around a relatively small number of films. There are quite a few _wider_ than 2.39 films as well, but I don't expend much effort into worrying about a system that can accommodate them at full size. 

Yes, now that Nolan films and Marvel are releasing IMAX-style home video releases, that weighs into the decision making. But there are thousands of movies, thousands, that work perfectly well in CIH. 



> Attacking the idea of taking a screen that works for CIH and expanding it vertically to accommodate taller images begins to look to me like a defense mechanism against considering the possibility that it was a mistake to choose a CIH screen.


I just think we shouldn't question each other's motivations so much, which is why I think this discussion has gotten so heated, in a group that should be pretty supportive of each other's hobby. Here's the thing; both you and Bud are using my Exception #1 as your reason for running very large 16:9 screen walls, and then using #2 - #4 to attack the idea of CIH. I'm just saying CIH is still a really viable option, dismissed too quickly by most, and should be the starting point for thinking about a good home theatre before then weighing the reasons to go even larger.


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## dschulz

ahmedreda said:


> Having an CIH+IMAX is not necessarily hard or expensive if you have control of the viewing distance and have the ceiling height. In my setup, I opted for a 138" 16:9 screen and the entire room is 10.5x13. My viewing distance is 6'7" so my flat viewing angle is 58 degrees. My scope/IMAX viewing angle is 74.4 degrees. If I dare to project flat content full screen without masking, my eyes will probably bother me. This is not the case for IMAX content which is great at the large viewing angle.
> 
> The addition of the extra height was basically free in my case. The screen material is the same price (trimmed less of the material height). I am using the zoom method for scope so no extra lumens were needed.
> 
> There is a lot of content that justifies adding the extra IMAX height and a lot of the demo material for my setup come from that content. Avatar in 3D, Dark Knight, Titanic 3D, documentaries etc.
> 
> Note that my flat viewing angle (58 degrees) is very close to the 60 degrees (2xSH) which is often recommended as "immersive for scope". I do find it that if I view scope at that recommendation, flat and academy ratios are small / short to my eyes. The key point is to make the 16:9 image as large as you would like and go from there.
> 
> Is a giant 16:9 perfect? In my opinion, it is an excellent compromise for home viewing since it properly displays the "home" version of the IMAX content without compromising scope and the smaller aspect ratios. It still doesn't accommodate the few extra wide movies and the 1.43:1 shifting aspect ratios in Batman V Superman and 1.43:1 content in general which will be problematic for all screens. FWIW, BVS uses 1.43:1 for IMAX scenes followed by 2.4:1 for non-IMAX scenes.


Nice looking room! Adding you to the theoretical Home Theatre Grand Tour in my head.


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## dschulz

Not sure how practical this would be, but if I organized a Zoom chat would be people be interested in meeting virtually and giving the rest of us a tour of their home theatre via their laptop cameras? I sometimes convene an AVSForum Cocktail Hour for the LA local bunch via Zoom, and we've had some good conversations that way.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> I just think we shouldn't question each other's motivations so much, which is why I think this discussion has gotten so heated, in a group that should be pretty supportive of each other's hobby. Here's the thing; both you and Bud are using my Exception #1 as your reason for running very large 16:9 screen walls, and then using #2 - #4 to attack the idea of CIH. I'm just saying CIH is still a really viable option, dismissed too quickly by most, and should be the starting point for thinking about a good home theatre before then weighing the reasons to go even larger.


I’m not questioning motives at all and from my very first post to this forum have insisted CIH presentation is excellent and far better than CIW.

If people would read what I have said rather than assuming I’m condemning CIH we would see there is much agreement between us all.

You seem to give a little credence to Academy for many may need to be taller than scope. I have been saying that for 5 years or more and generally have been told in the days of Academy they somehow when wider formats came along intended them to fit the Academy height thus all was CIH from then on. We now find some well known members feel Academy needs a bump and some high end theaters also do that.

Once you find any reason to extend the height and if you have the room to do it what advantage is there in just doing it a smidgen. If 2.0 works 1.78 will also work. If you need masking once you step outside CIH you need 4way masking and 4way masking will work just as well and cost the same for 2.0 or 1.78.
There could be some case made for making a screen area match the projectors AR. I know I did when I had a 4:3 projector and also when I had a 16:10 projector.

The reason I would say that’s the biggest reason I support CIH is that it is the best of the simplest methods. It needs a special projector or some special lens is all.
My use of variable presentation goes far beyond making things larger than they should be or as some would say they should be. I actually make just as many things smaller as I do larger. I use variable to control immersion in the same way a real theater uses rows of seats. I only have one row so if my personal immersion like is much greater than a guest I can adjust the virtual row we sit in to suit their tastes.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> You seem to give a little credence to Academy for many may need to be taller than scope. I have been saying that for 5 years or more and generally have been told in the days of Academy they somehow when wider formats came along intended them to fit the Academy height thus all was CIH from then on. We now find some well known members feel Academy needs a bump and some high end theaters also do that.


It's just a question of numbers. I certainly watch more Academy ratio films than I do IMAX material, by an order of magnitude, but it still represents, I dunno, 10% of my total viewing or so? 



> Once you find any reason to extend the height and if you have the room to do it what advantage is there in just doing it a smidgen. If 2.0 works 1.78 will also work. If you need masking once you step outside CIH you need 4way masking and 4way masking will work just as well and cost the same for 2.0 or 1.78.


Fair point. I think it's the subtitling problem that will push me over the edge into wanting 4-way masking though. 



> The reason I would say that’s the biggest reason I support CIH is that it is the best of the simplest methods. It needs a special projector or some special lens is all.


Well said; it's the best of the simplest methods. You don't need a special projector or lens, though.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> It's just a question of numbers. I certainly watch more Academy ratio films than I do IMAX material, by an order of magnitude, but it still represents, I dunno, 10% of my total viewing or so?
> 
> 
> 
> Fair point. I think it's the subtitling problem that will push me over the edge into wanting 4-way masking though.
> 
> 
> 
> Well said; it's the best of the simplest methods. You don't need a special projector or lens, though.


By special I was thinking zoom, shift and focus adjustments suitable for CIH. Many of the entry level projectors with manual settings do seem to have enough to do CIA. Throw distance is also a little more complex with CIH as some of it gets used up by the placement needed to pull off zoom.
Of course I figured out a simple way of doing it using a basic projector with a shorter throw suitable for CIH+IMAX in a short room. Not a lot of options in such a room. I chose to ceiling mount on an inclined slide and get zoom, offset and focus without touching a setting and a range well beyond what is needed for CIH+IMAX.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Rejecting #3 "out of hand" is, to put it quite simply, arrogant.
> 
> When someone has the largest scope image possible in their setup, what objection can you really have to letting the screen be that wide but even taller (#3) "to accommodate IMAX or VAR movies on a larger screen, such that material cropped to letterbox Scope is comparable in size to the equivalent CIH setup"?
> 
> You dismiss #3 "because to do CIH+IMAX correctly you need a substantially larger screen (as big as a large Scope screen + the extra height)" - But if someone _does_ have a screen as large as the largest possible scope image in their theater with the extra height (as I do), what's wrong with that setup, which also accommodates reasons #1, #2, and #4 as well as #3?
> 
> Is it just that you just can't stand Christopher Nolan VAR films (including the _Dark Knight_ films, _Intersellar_, and others)? And you also don't like the VAR and IMAX Marvel films (the _Ant-Man _films_, _the_ Avengers _films_, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange_, the _Guardians of the Galaxy_ films,_ Iron Man, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Thor:Ragnarok, The Winter Soldier_) some now out in VAR in 3D and some beginning to be streamed in 4K by Disney +, and you don't like the VAR 4K _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ or _Tron:Legacy_? And of course you don't like Wes Anderson's films, which go back and forth between Academy and scope (_The Grand Budapest Hotel_, _The French Dispatch_, and several others). What _do_ you like? (By the way, we're already over two dozen legitimately taller-than-scope films.)
> 
> Just because taller-than-scope films are inconvenient in your CIH setup, you shouldn't automatically blame the films. You could equally-well blame the rigidty of the CIH setup.
> 
> Attacking the idea of taking a screen that works for CIH and expanding it vertically to accommodate taller images begins to look to me like a defense mechanism against considering the possibility that it was a mistake to choose a CIH screen.
> 
> I thought you scope fans liked things to look "epic." God forbid someone makes them look even more epic by expanding them vertically as well as horizontally!


I don't think anyone with a CIH setup feels like they are attempting to create an IMAX setup and most are pretty honest about it. It's about 1% of the material out there and scope is around 50%, so not really a hard call as to which you want to compromise on in my opinion (keep in mind my interest is in film and not gaming or other content that is primarily 16:9).

IMAX and 1.85:1 aren't intended to be viewed with the same immersion. If a person isn't watching these formats differently than their experience and a CIH setup are essentially the same, except they've chosen to reduce the vertical and horizontal immersion of wider AR material by going with a narrow AR screen. IMAX is not just a big CIW setup.

A CIH+IMAX setup would look more or less like the diagram attached. The dark red area being used only for IMAX, the bright red is 1.85:1/16:9 and the green scope.


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> I love Tron: Legacy so much it legit makes my top 25 or so favorite films list. I first saw Tron: Legacy on the Disney lot back when I worked at DTS to QC the soundtrack, in 2.39:1. I saw it twice more in cinemas as a civilian, once in a regular cinema at 2.39 and again in IMAX with VAR.


Off topic, but where is my 4K version of this? It may not be in my top 25, but it's a really entertaining film and it did well enough that I'm surprised a sequel hasn't been made. At least the Blu Ray is really good. Thanks for your work on that excellent soundtrack.


----------



## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> Off topic, but where is my 4K version of this? It may not be in my top 25, but it's a really entertaining film and it did well enough that I'm surprised a sequel hasn't been made. At least the Blu Ray is really good. Thanks for your work on that excellent soundtrack.


That's a great question. Doubly frustrating because Joseph Kosinksi really likes Dolby Vision and this would be a great candidate for a DV re-grade for a UHD release.


----------



## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> I don't think anyone with a CIH setup feels like they are attempting to create an IMAX setup and most are pretty honest about it. It's about 1% of the material out there and scope is around 50%, so not really a hard call as to which you want to compromise on in my opinion (keep in mind my interest is in film and not gaming or other content that is primarily 16:9).
> 
> IMAX and 1.85:1 aren't intended to be viewed with the same immersion. If a person isn't watching these formats differently than their experience and a CIH setup are essentially the same, except they've chosen to reduce the vertical and horizontal immersion of wider AR material by going with a narrow AR screen. IMAX is not just a big CIW setup.
> 
> A CIH+IMAX setup would look more or less like the diagram attached. The dark red area being used only for IMAX, the bright red is 1.85:1/16:9 and the green scope.


I made a version of this excellent chart that adds room for 2.76 Ultra Panavision (and bumps 2.20 Super Panavision to being the same width as Scope but slightly taller, to give Lawrence of Arabia a little extra grandeur).


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> I made a version of this excellent chart that adds room for 2.76 Ultra Panavision (and bumps 2.20 Super Panavision to being the same width as Scope but slightly taller, to give Lawrence of Arabia a little extra grandeur).


My room doubles as a listening room, so as much as I would enjoy trying a 2.76:1 setup I'm just not willing to try to make the room work with an AT screen. Pushing the L/R out further for a non-AT screen seems like it would be a problem for good imaging. Not enough content out there to really give me the itch, but I'm sure it's amazing when you see it in person.


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> That's a great question. Doubly frustrating because Joseph Kosinksi really likes Dolby Vision and this would be a great candidate for a DV re-grade for a UHD release.


I'd have to watch the ever so slightly poorer HDR10 grade of it, but I would gladly take it. An Atmos mix would be icing on the cake and the scenes in the grid seem tailor made for HDR.


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## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> My room doubles as a listening room, so as much as I would enjoy trying a 2.76:1 setup I'm just not willing to try to make the room work with an AT screen. Pushing the L/R out further for a non-AT screen seems like it would be a problem for good imaging. Not enough content out there to really give me the itch, but I'm sure it's amazing when you see it in person.


Oh, this is very much a pie-in-the-sky, cost truly no object scenario. Precious few cinemas around that can show Ultra Panavision at CIH with other formats.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I don't think anyone with a CIH setup feels like they are attempting to create an IMAX setup and most are pretty honest about it. It's about 1% of the material out there and scope is around 50%, so not really a hard call as to which you want to compromise on in my opinion (keep in mind my interest is in film and not gaming or other content that is primarily 16:9).
> 
> IMAX and 1.85:1 aren't intended to be viewed with the same immersion. If a person isn't watching these formats differently than their experience and a CIH setup are essentially the same, except they've chosen to reduce the vertical and horizontal immersion of wider AR material by going with a narrow AR screen. IMAX is not just a big CIW setup.
> 
> A CIH+IMAX setup would look more or less like the diagram attached. The dark red area being used only for IMAX, the bright red is 1.85:1/16:9 and the green scope.


If scope is only about 50% of theatrical films - and I'm not talking about games or sports - why subjugate the other 50% of films to being smaller than your projector can show you (unless you're using an anamorphic lens full-time)? Put aside the "everything's supposed to be the same height" and "you're elevating rom-coms over blockbusters" dogmas. Why not just let every film be seen at its best, with no "my film is bigger than your film" comparisons?


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> If scope is only about 50% of theatrical films - and I'm not talking about games or sports - why subjugate the other 50% of films to being smaller than your projector can show you (unless you're using an anamorphic lens full-time)? Put aside the "everything's supposed to be the same height" and "you're elevating rom-coms over blockbusters" dogmas. Why not just let every film be seen at its best, with no "my film is bigger than your film" comparisons?


I love this. Let's ask a question, and then pre-emptively disqualify the two best answers to that question for... reasons.

Why shouldn't I steal your car? Put aside the "it's morally wrong to steal" and "it's illegal and I will go to jail" dogmas. Other than those, what's to stop me from stealing your car right now? Once you've eliminated those two excuses, there's really no good reason _not _to.  

(No, I'm not actually going to steal your car, Phil.)


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> If scope is only about 50% of theatrical films - and I'm not talking about games or sports - why subjugate the other 50% of films to being smaller than your projector can show you (unless you're using an anamorphic lens full-time)? Put aside the "everything's supposed to be the same height" and "you're elevating rom-coms over blockbusters" dogmas. Why not just let every film be seen at its best, with no "my film is bigger than your film" comparisons?


I'll reiterate this since you may not be remembering it: my "other 50%" is as big as it was on the 16:9 screen which I sized in my room to be as large as I wanted it to be vertically.

I AM letting as many films as I can be seen at their best. I'm not elevating anything over anything. In fact you have decided that 1.85:1 be seen with the same horizontal and more vertical immersion than 2.35:1 in opposition to the filmmakers intent.


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## dschulz

dschulz said:


> Nicely done finding the screen specs! I've reached out to some folks at the Academy and here's what I've learned so far:
> 
> Flat and Scope films are projected CIH. Academy films are adjusted so that they are somewhat larger than they would be CIH. Still working on confirmation on how they handle 2.20 Super Panavision (CIH, or keeping the Scope width but bumping out the top & bottom masking).
> 
> I'm hitting up some folks at other screening rooms about & will report my findings.


Adding some data points:

The Goldwyn and Linwood Dunn (the two Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences rooms) treat Flat and Scope as CIH presentations, but they project Academy ratio films somewhat larger height-wise than flat & scope. 

The Ross (flagship theatre on the Warner Bros lot) does not follow CIH - Scope and Flat are adjusted to make the image as large as possible. Ditto for the Amblin screening room at the Amblin offices. The Ross uses the same width as Scope for 70mm, but adjusts the height to get to 2.20.

I also had a chat with a friend who works at a company that designs & installs studio screening rooms, dub stages, private cinemas for the Bel Air circuit types of customers, etc. and his builds are almost universally 4-way masked and run Flat taller than Scope. 

So in terms of professional screenings room and so on in the LA area, the overwhelming majority are neither CIH nor CIW, but 4-way with Scope wider but Flat taller, with the notable exception of the Academy itself which is functionally CIH for Flat and Scope features (but going taller for Academy ratio pictures).


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## mattsteg

dschulz said:


> I'm just saying CIH is still a really viable option, dismissed too quickly by most, and should be the starting point for thinking about a good home theatre before then weighing the reasons to go even larger.


I think that's where most of the participants in this thread are coming from. The vast majority of posts from all "sides" come from people running screens with scope content either sized for their maximum immersion, or sized as large as their space allows, and are all committed to controlling their projection setup to optimize for different aspects rather than just accept CIW (well actually 16/9 since it isn't really ciw)


Thank you for the legwork on LA-area screening rooms. I found it quite interesting.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> . . .
> I AM letting as many films as I can be seen at their best. I'm not elevating anything over anything. In fact you have decided that 1.85:1 be seen with the same horizontal and more vertical immersion than 2.35:1 _in opposition to the filmmakers intent_. [italics added]


Which filmmakers? Remember, you're invoking the intent of the makers of the 1.85:1 and the 16x9 films. When and where did they say they don't want their films to be shown taller than scope films?

Don't show me quotes from the makers of scope films - quotes that I've already pointed out were about "little boxes" and TVs, not projector-based home theaters - but in any case, from the makers of films that you're saying shouldn't be outclassed.

You're saying that I'm violating the intent of the makers of the 1.85:1 and 16x9 films I show large.

So show me quotes from the makers of the films whose intent I'm you say violating by showing their films large.

Something along the lines of "I never meant for my film to be shown larger than a scope film!"

I'll wait.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Which filmmakers? Remember, you're invoking the intent of the makers of the 1.85:1 and the 16x9 films. When and where did they say they don't want their films to be shown taller than scope films?
> 
> Don't show me quotes from the makers of scope films - quotes that I've already pointed out were about "little boxes" and TVs, not projector-based home theaters - but in any case, from the makers of films that you're saying shouldn't be outclassed.
> 
> You're saying that I'm violating the intent of the makers of the 1.85:1 and 16x9 films I show large.
> 
> So show me quotes from the makers of the films whose intent I'm you say violating by showing their films large.
> 
> Something along the lines of "I never meant for my film to be shown larger than a scope film!"
> 
> I'll wait.


Why do you think scope exists then? Why a few pages ago did Cameron call scope wider? Almost all filmmakers make films in both ARs. You think they choose 1.85:1 to be bigger? That's absurd.

You're not violating the artistic intent when showing a 1.85:1 film on your screen filling your vertical field of view. The potential problem comes when wider material is constrained horizontally and shrunk vertically. But I understand that with your room challenges and proclivities why you don't address that.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Why do you think scope exists then? Why a few pages ago did Cameron call scope wider? Almost all filmmakers make films in both ARs. You think they choose 1.85:1 to be bigger? That's absurd.
> 
> You're not violating the artistic intent when showing a 1.85:1 film on your screen filling your vertical field of view. The potential problem comes when wider material is constrained horizontally and shrunk vertically. But I understand that with your room challenges and proclivities why you don't address that.


I think the term wider when referring to film ARs is being misconstrued as some physical measurement of one AR compared to another. I feel the term wider is closer to how lens are described as wider or longer or normal they are not talking about the size of the lens rather what it accomplishes. A wider AR is simply an AR (Aspect Ratio) aspect is position we see something and ratio is the relationship between 2 things. Nowhere in AR is size a determinate. It is rather conveying a shape irregardless of size.

An example is. I got a new TV. Oh what size is it? It is a 16:9. Oh wow that’s a lot larger than a 4:3.
That conversation has no logic.
A 2.35:1 movie has a special shape and many 1000s of movies have used that shape to convey all kinds of images. The beauty of the AR is in its shape not its size or how close I want to view it from its immersion.
If I take a photo with a 35mm camera and I take one portrait and I take one landscape and my prints come in the mail and they are CIA. The portrait photo does not take anything away from the landscape photo because it is taller. There is also no reason that the face sizes in the two photos should be the same size. They are not interrelated in any way and should each stand on their own.


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## jeahrens

No, this isn't defining a shape in a vacuum. Go back and read the comment. There is a reason that ARs are defined :1.


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## dschulz

This is somewhat off topic but I think participants here will get a kick out of this tidbit of info. As part of my digging into screening room practices in LA I learned that both DCI and SMPTE specify that proper screen masking is a requirement for digital cinema.

Obviously in commercial practice this requirement is ignored. But I learned that in France, where cinema is taken very seriously, there is a law on the books that SMPTE standards, if ratified by the ISO, have the force of law. That is to say, in France it is technically _illegal_ to project a film in a commercial cinema without proper masking in place!


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> No, this isn't defining a shape in a vacuum. Go back and read the comment. There is a reason that ARs are defined :1.


Why then does every publication I have ever read refer to the Old IMAX AR as 1.44 or 1.43:1 and the new IMAX AR as 1.90 or 1.89:1. It is widely believed these ARs are presented taller than other ARs that also are in the format of X:1.

Further proof is look on any BD container or any IMDB specs for a movie that expands between scope and IMAX1.89 and the two ARs. It will show them as 1.39:1 scope and 1.89:1 IMAX in a presentation selected by the studio and the directors baked into the product.

I’m willing to think about your assertion that the common ".1" plays a role in proper presentation just show me where SMPTE or others say that for example 16:9 indicates a different standard of presentation than 1.78:1 or any other AR.


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## jeahrens

IMAX in the 90's I only saw referred to as 4:3 and it wasn't really a theatrical ratio, it was mainly a documentary format (it was used mostly at zoos/planetariums/museums). I suspect they started using the familiar nomenclature when they moved away from that even though their presentation has always been done differently. I suspect the digital IMAX ratio came about from how the display chip ratio was expressed. IMAX has always been an outlier.

No one is walking into a 1.85:1 theater and seeing scope and thinking "this is wider". Cut out a 2" wide rectangle in 2.35:1 and a 6" wide rectangle in 1.85:1 and set them down and ask people which is wider? The idea these exist with no correlation to one another is absurd. Go argue with Red about their diagram. Yes :1 implies commonality within standard theatrical ratios. 16:9 is a compromise TV ratio.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> IMAX in the 90's I only saw referred to as 4:3 and it wasn't really a theatrical ratio, it was mainly a documentary format (it was used mostly at zoos/planetariums/museums). I suspect they started using the familiar nomenclature when they moved away from that even though their presentation has always been done differently. I suspect the digital IMAX ratio came about from how the display chip ratio was expressed. IMAX has always been an outlier.
> 
> No one is walking into a 1.85:1 theater and seeing scope and thinking "this is wider". Cut out a 2" wide rectangle in 2.35:1 and a 6" wide rectangle in 1.85:1 and set them down and ask people which is wider? The idea these exist with no correlation to one another is absurd. Go argue with Red about their diagram. Yes :1 implies commonality within standard theatrical ratios. 16:9 is a compromise TV ratio.


I never heard the original IMAX referred to as anything other than 1.43/1.44:1 even back in the day. People were familiar with 4:3 being the ratio of TV so that may have been what you were hearing uneducated folks on the subject calling it. When IMAX put their nature and science movies on DVD they did it in the 4:3 option.

The question isn’t if someone walked into a 1.85 theater and saw a scope movie playing they would say it was wider. I don’t even know what they are saying it is wider than, I guess you mean the flat movie they viewed there last week.

What they would say the movie playing is a wider aspect ratio than the movie that was there last week.

Just show me some documentation saying the “:1” is a common reference in the movie industry saying it is how one presentation should be shown to another keeping a common height because of the “:1”. 
I don’t think you will find one because I believe it is just a convention the industry follows. Just as for a while everything seemed to being talked about in terms of “:9” such as 22:9.


----------



## jeahrens

I posted what the camera manufacturer Red has on their site. And the Wiki page (which is sourced from various industry pages). So already posted examples.

If you can't connect the dots on why someone would not call scope wider viewed on a 1.85:1 screen I can't help you. IMAX has always done their own thing and yes magazines back in the day described it as 4:3 (erroneous or not).

:9 is used for TV/Monitors.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> This is somewhat off topic but I think participants here will get a kick out of this tidbit of info. As part of my digging into screening room practices in LA I learned that both DCI and SMPTE specify that proper screen masking is a requirement for digital cinema.
> 
> Obviously in commercial practice this requirement is ignored. But I learned that in France, where cinema is taken very seriously, there is a law on the books that SMPTE standards, if ratified by the ISO, have the force of law. That is to say, in France it is technically _illegal_ to project a film in a commercial cinema without proper masking in place!


This is an interesting tidbit of information I had never seen before.

Might be the next story line for Wes Anderson. A movie about the French Police hunting down movie house owners that fail to comply with the masking laws as directors keep making zany movies where the aspect ratios keep changing and the projectionist can’t keep up with the changes.

For me it is just another reason I hope I never live in France.
I have been hearing on the news a lot about mask mandates now I know what they are.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I posted what the camera manufacturer Red has on their site. And the Wiki page (which is sourced from various industry pages). So already posted examples.
> 
> If you can't connect the dots on why someone would not call scope wider viewed on a 1.85:1 screen I can't help you. IMAX has always done their own thing and yes magazines back in the day described it as 4:3 (erroneous or not).
> 
> :9 is used for TV/Monitors.


Then we again must agree to disagree.

If I watch a 2.39:1 movie on my iPhone and we should all agree that is pretty small, but it will still be a “Wide”screen movie and it would be referred to as a wide aspect ratio. It might only be 5” wide but it is still wide-screen and a wide AR. If I watch a 2.76:1 movie on my iPhone it is an even wider AR.
My final comment on the subject. Please have the last word.


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## niterida

Weren't they originally 16:9 and 21:9 Widescreen ? That indicates to me that they are supposed to be the same height with one on a Widescreen.
I can't believe people can't see that is the way it is meant to be.


----------



## bud16415

niterida said:


> Weren't they originally 16:9 and 21:9 Widescreen ? That indicates to me that they are supposed to be the same height with one on a Widescreen.
> I can't believe people can't see that is the way it is meant to be.


I don’t think anyone is saying CIH is a bad idea or not a historic method of presentation. It is a simple and elegant solution that shows several ARs with great relative sizing for most people.

The question is exactly what you stated, is it meant to be?

The title of the thread is why should I or shouldn’t I do CIH? The title is not is CIH better than CIW etc? Or is CIH a legitimate tried and true method of presentation?
Some of us feel it gets the job done quite well except it like most things has room for improvement. As to the common denominator to the ratio, be it :1 or :9 there is nothing set in stone saying those numbers dictate how two different things are required it be projected back to back, just as there is no rule you have to sit in the same seat every time you go out to see a movie.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> If I watch a 2.76:1 movie on my iPhone it is an even wider AR.


Why is it wider if these are just shapes with no commonality with each other? It's not physically wider on the phone.

People keep trying to verbally fence their way around anything that implies standard theatrical aspect ratios have a common denominator, but make statements or use quotes that only make sense if they do. Directors stating aspect ratio X is wider than Y make zero sense if these ratios are just shapes with no point of comparison. They aren't saying proportionally or implying anything abstract here. 



bud16415 said:


> there is nothing set in stone saying those numbers dictate how two different things are required it be projected back to back


Really that's weird. Compression ratios for internal combustion are to :1. Do you think that is just an abstract thing and not a constant? When you cook and someone says 2 parts butter to 1 part flour for a roux what does that mean to you? Again, how does a director say an aspect ratio is wider than another if they exist in a vacuum with no correlation? Why would it be "wider" if they have no basis of comparison. What is the point of scope then? You think Peter Jackson choose scope for The Lord of the Rings to be no wider than Aliens and be a sliver of your vertical field of view? The spin here is absurd. 

I have been going to the movies my whole life. I have been in theaters with 1.85:1 screens and 2.35:1 screens. The experience of seeing a 1.85:1 movie in both venue types at roughly the same seating (I sit just past halfway) has without fail always been comparable. This is not a coincidence. I have not been in theaters with whatever non-standard screen ratio the owner thinks is nifty. No 1:1 or 4.00:1 shaped screens. No making a movie bigger or smaller based on how the projectionist feels about the material. Standard theatrical aspect ratios don't exist as shapes in the ether to wax philosophical on. 

I don't honestly care what someone ends up with in their room if they are happy with the results. It's your room.


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## jeahrens

niterida said:


> Weren't they originally 16:9 and 21:9 Widescreen ? That indicates to me that they are supposed to be the same height with one on a Widescreen.
> I can't believe people can't see that is the way it is meant to be.


16:9 was TV ratio that was decided on as a compromise between the widest common theatrical ratio (2.35:1) and TVs at the time (4:3). As I understand it, it was expressed as 16:9 to keep commonality with consumer displays (to my knowledge no theatrical film has released in this ratio, though it is very close to 1.85:1) which use whole numbers in their ratios. I didn't see 16:9 really referred to as 1.78:1 until people started talking about it in conjunction with projection.

Computer monitors at the time of 16:9 HDTV coming to market were primarily 4:3 and 5:4, but they quickly died out to 16:10 and 16:9. 21:9, which is quite close to 2.35:1, came about as people with multiple monitors sought a simpler solution to increasing horizontal area for either work or games. It's expressed by :9 to keep commonality with other consumer displays and it's increased horizontal area in comparison to 16:9.


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## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> People keep trying to verbally fence their way around anything


The only person trying to "verbally fence" around anything is you with your faux "standards" that you can't actually produce, and which, per @dschulz are somewhat commonly not followed by elite LA-area screening rooms (which seems about as close to "intent" as we're likely to get)


jeahrens said:


> Compression ratios for internal combustion are to :1. Do you think that is just an abstract thing and not a constant?


The '1' is different whether you are running at sea level or on the side of a mountain, and that's before considering forced induction such as turbos (which incidentally are tuned differently depending on the use)


jeahrens said:


> When you cook and someone says 2 parts butter to 1 part flour for a roux what does that mean to you?


It says add *twice as much butter as flour.* If I want to make a different batch-size (say double), I double both. If I compare that recipe to a typical 1:1 butter/flour ratio...it is more buttery regardless of how much roux I choose to prepare.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> The only person trying to "verbally fence" around anything is you with your faux "standards" that you can't actually produce, and which, per @dschulz are somewhat commonly not followed by elite LA-area screening rooms (which seems about as close to "intent" as we're likely to get)


Yes my faux standards. You caught me. I hacked the Red camera page, wrote the wiki page, forged the 2003 commentary quote and wrote all kinds of articles under assumed names over the years. I'm quite nefarious.

Which LA screening room? The one they just built which is scope? 2 of the 3 DAG screen rooms appear to be CIH, the third I can't tell.



mattsteg said:


> The '1' is different whether you are running at sea level or on the side of a mountain, and that's before considering forced induction such as turbos (which incidentally are tuned differently depending on the use)


Are you serious here? 10:1 compression is 10:1 in the mountains or in Florida. The air density is definitely different. Forced induction does not in any way change the compression ratio of an engine.



mattsteg said:


> It says add *twice as much butter as flour.* If I want to make a different batch-size (say double), I double both. If I compare that recipe to a typical 1:1 butter/flour ratio...it is more buttery regardless of how much roux I choose to prepare.


Yes but you are adding it in the same unit volume. There is absolutely a commonality. I'm not adding 2 tablespoons butter and 1 pound of flour. SMH.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> Yes my faux standards. You caught me. I hacked the Red camera page, wrote the wiki page and forged the 2003 commentary quote. I'm quite nefarious.


It's more that your reading comprehension skills...are more than dubious and none of those materials say what you claim they do.


jeahrens said:


> Are serious here? *10:1 compression is 10:1 in the mountains or in Florida*. The air density is definitely different. Forced induction does not in any way change the compression ratio or an engine.


Just like 2.35:1 in my theater is 2.35:1 in your theater (or anyone else's), even though we probably have different sized screens and view at different distances. It's a shape.


jeahrens said:


> Yes but you are adding it in the same unit volume. There is absolutely a commonality. I'm not adding 2 tablespoons butter and 1 pound of flour. SMH.


The unit is "flour volumes", which you change depending on how much of the recipe that you want to make. Just like you can't make a 2:35:1 screen that's 2.35 ft x 1 inch.

If I make a recipe for a different sauce, I choose the quantity of ingredients based on how much sauce I want. The only reason I'd want to scale the recipe based on how much flour to use would be if I was on my last tablespoon of flour or something. The better solution is to not run out of flour.


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## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> It's more that your reading comprehension skills...are more than dubious and none of those materials say what you claim they do.


Of course they don't. It just reads that they do.

And please help me with my reading comprehension. When a filmmaker says that scope is wider, what do they mean? How can it be wider with no common point of reference?



mattsteg said:


> Just like 2.35:1 in my theater is 2.35:1 in your theater (or anyone else's), even though we probably have different sized screens and view at different distances. It's a shape.


Yup, just a shape with no correlation with any other standard theatrical aspect ratio. So how is one "wider" than another again? I mean they're just shapes right?



mattsteg said:


> The unit is "flour volumes", which you change depending on how much of the recipe that you want to make. Just like you can't make a 2:35:1 screen that's 2.35 ft x 1 inch.
> 
> If I make a recipe for a different sauce, I choose the quantity of ingredients based on how much sauce I want. The only reason I'd want to scale the recipe based on how much flour to use
> would be if I was on my last tablespoon of flour or something. The better solution is to not run out of flour.


Might want to work on that reading comprehension yourself there. You seem to have missed the point.


----------



## mattsteg

jeahrens said:


> You seem to have missed the point.


I think it's clear that you have none.


----------



## jeahrens

mattsteg said:


> I think it's clear that you have none.


Aww what about the top of my head?


----------



## Philnick

I'm going to have to quote from Harry Nilsson's 1971 musical cartoon _The Point_ - "Everyone has a point."

Just ask Oblio.


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## beaRA

As a newcomer to front projection, this has been an entertaining thread to follow. I appreciate the arguments put forth by all of the perspectives here despite the occasional detours into personal attacks. My conclusion is to get the largest screen that my projector can throw at its native aspect ratio. From there, I will mask down for comfortable immersion and/or brightness targets.


----------



## Philnick

beaRA said:


> As a newcomer to front projection, this has been an entertaining thread to follow. I appreciate the arguments put forth by all of the perspectives here despite the occasional detours into personal attacks. My conclusion is to get the largest screen that my projector can throw at its native aspect ratio. From there, I will mask down for comfortable immersion and/or brightness targets.


And if you go with a low-gain screen (I simply painted the whole wall with a 50/50 mix of Valspar flat white latex paint and Basics Silver acrylic paint) and avoid the "triple black velvet" treatment of the surrounding surfaces (I just painted the walls and ceiling matte black, and installed dark grey carpeting), the remaining low-level reflected light can raise the area around the screen to about the same shade as the letterbox/pillarbox bars, making them invisible and masking unnecessary.


----------



## jeahrens

beaRA said:


> As a newcomer to front projection, this has been an entertaining thread to follow. I appreciate the arguments put forth by all of the perspectives here despite the occasional detours into personal attacks. My conclusion is to get the largest screen that my projector can throw at its native aspect ratio. From there, I will mask down for comfortable immersion and/or brightness targets.


@beaRA

It's important to make sure regardless of what screen ratio you decide to make sure the screen size works comfortably and meets your goals. Make sure the screen size is going to work well with your audio setup, unless you're going acoustically transparent having your center speaker to low can effect imaging and dialogue clarity. Also with 4K HDR make sure that you'll hit a target brightness that you will be comfortable with. That alone can sometimes make a smaller screen viewed closer desirable. Depending on what type of projector you go with, it can also impact screen dimensions based on its installation location.

My suggestion is generally to get an idea of all of that and tape off the screen dimensions you feel will work. Sit down where you want your seating (put down a portable chair if your room is still in the construction phase) and determine if the size is comfortable for you. Adjust your screen size (or seating distance) accordingly until you come up with a size that works for your room.

A painted screen is a great budget solution and there are also several screens on sites like Amazon that will give decent results without breaking the bank. Generally if you are going with a low contrast projector, like a 4K DLP, a screen that enhances contrast is desirable. Generally for a high contrast projector, like an Epson 5050 or JVC a neutral (1.0) or positive gain screen are desirable, just research whether the positive gain screen has visible artifacts you may find objectionable. Some manufacturers will send samples that you can pin to the wall and see what they will look like with your projector. That's a great way to zero in on what you want.


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## bud16415

The director and the cinematographer are having a chat and the director tells him this next shot I want a wide lens we are going to shoot it with a wide AR and I want to see the entire horizon of this location. The cinematographer replies got it you want a 2.39:1 AR but you want it about 52 miles wide. He then asks how will we be able to show this movie no one has a screen 52 miles wide?

My car had 10:1 compression and I wanted to soup it up so I took it to my mechanic and said what can you do for me? He said leave it overnight and for $1000 when you pick it up in the morning it will have 30:3 compression. I thought oh boy 3 times the compression I can’t wait.

I told someone once that 50% of the people in the world had below average intelligence. He said really I didn’t think it was that high.


----------



## beaRA

jeahrens said:


> @beaRA
> 
> It's important to make sure regardless of what screen ratio you decide to make sure the screen size works comfortably and meets your goals. Make sure the screen size is going to work well with your audio setup, unless you're going acoustically transparent having your center speaker to low can effect imaging and dialogue clarity. Also with 4K HDR make sure that you'll hit a target brightness that you will be comfortable with. That alone can sometimes make a smaller screen viewed closer desirable. Depending on what type of projector you go with, it can also impact screen dimensions based on its installation location.
> 
> My suggestion is generally to get an idea of all of that and tape off the screen dimensions you feel will work. Sit down where you want your seating (put down a portable chair if your room is still in the construction phase) and determine if the size is comfortable for you. Adjust your screen size (or seating distance) accordingly until you come up with a size that works for your room.
> 
> A painted screen is a great budget solution and there are also several screens on sites like Amazon that will give decent results without breaking the bank. Generally if you are going with a low contrast projector, like a 4K DLP, a screen that enhances contrast is desirable. Generally for a high contrast projector, like an Epson 5050 or JVC a neutral (1.0) or positive gain screen are desirable, just research whether the positive gain screen has visible artifacts you may find objectionable. Some manufacturers will send samples that you can pin to the wall and see what they will look like with your projector. That's a great way to zero in on what you want.


Thanks for the advice! I wasn't expecting a long reply. I've got my hands on what seems like one of the last retail JVC NX5's. It'll throw an image max 127in wide in my room with front row ~10ft away. I've got samples coming from Seymour to make sure the XD grain isn't distracting at that distance. I plan on throwing the picture on the wall before committing to a screen purchase, but it's not prohibitive to just go as large as possible and then mask down if I want less immersion or more brightness.


----------



## jeahrens

beaRA said:


> Thanks for the advice! I wasn't expecting a long reply. I've got my hands on what seems like one of the last retail JVC NX5's. It'll throw an image max 127in wide in my room with front row ~10ft away. I've got samples coming from Seymour to make sure the XD grain isn't distracting at that distance. I plan on throwing the picture on the wall before committing to a screen purchase, but it's not prohibitive to just go as large as possible and then mask down if I want less immersion or more brightness.


No worries. The NX5 is a fantastic unit and with prices going the way they are you were lucky to snag one new. That image size with XD from that distance should be fine, though it's getting borderline where folks say they start to see the weave. So good call on testing it.


----------



## talk show host

I also just got a nx5 and have just been projecting onto a wall to get feel for the size screen I like. I find that i enjoy watching tv on a ~100 inch screen and then for movies, the maximum width i can achieve is the same height as a 100” 16:9 screen. So i was thinking of going with a 2.35 screen. But then i started watching mission impossible: fall out and, with the changing aspect ratios, it made me want a 135” 16:9 screen. But other that certain action movies, i find that size way too big for normal viewing.

any recommendations on what i should do? Shoud i just paint the wall with screen paint? Should i just get the2.35:1 screen since that will work best for most (but not all) of my desired uses? And is there an appreciable difference between brands like silver ticket vs. Seymour? (Stewart is out of my budget)


----------



## beaRA

talk show host said:


> I also just got a nx5 and have just been projecting onto a wall to get feel for the size screen I like. I find that i enjoy watching tv on a ~100 inch screen and then for movies, the maximum width i can achieve is the same height as a 100” 16:9 screen. So i was thinking of going with a 2.35 screen. But then i started watching mission impossible: fall out and, with the changing aspect ratios, it made me want a 135” 16:9 screen. But other that certain action movies, i find that size way too big for normal viewing.
> 
> any recommendations on what i should do? Shoud i just paint the wall with screen paint? Should i just get the2.35:1 screen since that will work best for most (but not all) of my desired uses? And is there an appreciable difference between brands like silver ticket vs. Seymour? (Stewart is out of my budget)


Several posts in this thread have mentioned a CIH+IMAX setup to accommodate this desire for more immersion in the occasional IMAX sequence. You could just get the bigger 16:9 screen and keep it masked to scope for the majority of content, only opening it up for those few mixed AR movies. For a Seymour XD screen, you are talking $100 more for a 120" wide 16:9 vs 120" wide scope.

Not sure if you are going acoustically transparent, but check out this thread for a comparison of AT materials.


----------



## bud16415

talk show host said:


> I also just got a nx5 and have just been projecting onto a wall to get feel for the size screen I like. I find that i enjoy watching tv on a ~100 inch screen and then for movies, the maximum width i can achieve is the same height as a 100” 16:9 screen. So i was thinking of going with a 2.35 screen. But then i started watching mission impossible: fall out and, with the changing aspect ratios, it made me want a 135” 16:9 screen. But other that certain action movies, i find that size way too big for normal viewing.
> 
> any recommendations on what i should do? Shoud i just paint the wall with screen paint? Should i just get the2.35:1 screen since that will work best for most (but not all) of my desired uses? And is there an appreciable difference between brands like silver ticket vs. Seymour? (Stewart is out of my budget)


What you are experiencing sounds a lot like what I went thru and I finally decided like a few others that the ability to customize size outweighed everything else.

I had long been a fan of DIY screens making my first 20 years ago. In the new house I finished the drywall very flat and painted it with a simple DIY neutral gray screen paint and stopped worrying about masking. Like you most TV is better smaller and the epic IMAX movies are amazing with IMAX immersion.

Others will tell you they are only 1% of the movies made and also look good cutting the top and bottom off making them scope. I have watched almost all of them both ways and disagree.
You may want to watch some of the old classic Academy movies Like Wizard of Oz before you decide as well. I feel they deserve a little more height than a scope screen provides. That is not to say they don’t look fine within that scope frame.


----------



## jeahrens

talk show host said:


> I also just got a nx5 and have just been projecting onto a wall to get feel for the size screen I like. I find that i enjoy watching tv on a ~100 inch screen and then for movies, the maximum width i can achieve is the same height as a 100” 16:9 screen. So i was thinking of going with a 2.35 screen. But then i started watching mission impossible: fall out and, with the changing aspect ratios, it made me want a 135” 16:9 screen. But other that certain action movies, i find that size way too big for normal viewing.
> 
> any recommendations on what i should do? Shoud i just paint the wall with screen paint? Should i just get the2.35:1 screen since that will work best for most (but not all) of my desired uses? And is there an appreciable difference between brands like silver ticket vs. Seymour? (Stewart is out of my budget)


@talk show host I'd certainly consider all options.

VAR/IMAX still makes up about 1% of what is out there to watch. So I personally don't really endorse setting up your room around a niche format. VAR+IMAX can be treated just like a normal 16:9 presentation on a scope screen or depending on the content it can be safely masked. For instance MI:Fallout is a "scope safe" IMAX presentation. Which means if you were to show it masked on a 2.35:1 screen it would be the same as what the movie looked like in a non-IMAX theater. Most IMAX outside of Nolan's films fall into the "scope safe" category, but it's completely up to you if you want to watch it VAR or cropped for scope (I would only consider cropping IMAX that I know is scope safe). Your NX5 supports masking for each installation mode, so the overspill would be eliminated in this case. I've also watched IMAX VAR and cropped and I don't find the extraneous information to be missed. For scope safe IMAX, which is the majority, it's purposefully shot to not contain anything vital. And not having the picture constantly change shape, bringing me out of the film, is also a bonus.

Painted screens are a really good option. But you have to makes sure you get the wall prepped really well (you'd be surprised what will show up). I'd probably pick up an inexpensive screen simply for the ease of implementation. If you go painted, also consider 2.00:1 as it is a great compromise ratio.


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## bud16415

I really don’t lend much credence to the 1% or any percentage with regards to if a presentation should or shouldn’t allow for certain ARs.

Here is my logic is that 1% something you enjoy watching and if it is then it is 100% of your viewing at the time you are watching it. I don’t care for slasher movies and people running thru the woods in the dark by others wearing masks. Those movies might make up 5% of the new movies being made but I personally won’t likely watch any of them. On the other hand I will watch a great movie like Dunkirk quite a few times.

Then the question becomes what is scope safe. It is a new term to filmmaking that was put into play because it was the best they could do showing taller than scope films in scope venues or really all non IMAX venues. Some will say it is an equal method of presentation and if it is why make the IMAX at all. The viewing public should have seen thru the LieMAX scam after the first film was made that way and the venues should have went away. Why are people driving farther and paying more if the experence is the same as going to a regular theater and seeing it as scope.

@talk show host has done what I often suggest and he watched Mission Impossible: Fall Out in its full glory IMAX1.89 as wide as scope will be and saw the impact of IMAX. They should now turn on the masking feature on their projector with it blanked out to scope and see if they feel it is equally as good. Watch Avatar and The Aeronaut and many more movies both ways and in the end if they seem equal then play them scope safe.
This percentage thing is of little use IMO maybe 1/3 of the movies made were in Academy AR, but if you don’t watch old movies who cares. Many people come to AVS saying they watch 50% sports and 50% movies and many other combinations. The sports have no bearing on the movies.


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## jeahrens

If for some reason someone watches predominantly IMAX, then of course it's more of a consideration. I watch a wide variety of content and IMAX doesn't make up large part of it.

Scope safe is easy to grasp and has been explained.

People generally go for whatever the premium screen is in their preferred venue. In an IMAX theater it's IMAX obviously. In most of the Drafthouses I've been in and our local Flix it's scope. I don't know that I've had anyone ever demand one or the other. Mostly it's the closest/best experience.

I don't find it hard to believe that on a 100" CIW setup that IMAX had more of an impact. The scope image is a small fraction of the immersion it should be here. Do the same experiment on a 125" scope screen. Also most setups don't treat IMAX any differently than 1.85:1 which is a CIW setup and not doing the format justice. Academy is shown the same height as either of the standard theatrical ratios in every commercial theater I have visited. It's never felt lacking shown this way at home. You may feel it needs extra height, but the industry doesn't seem to.

If someone has a room that can accommodate a CIH+IMAX setup there's nothing wrong with that approach. I just find it hard to justify for a niche format.


----------



## bud16415

If he was sitting 6’ from that 100” screen I would think he could nicely appreciate the IMAX parts of the movie. There is no reason to compare a 125” scope screen at a totally different seating distance when trying to compare impact of IMAX over scope safe. If you want to do a comparison you fix everything down and lock it in. Seating distance and screen width and then go for it scope safe or IMAX.

Now if you pick an immersion level that is more IMAX correct say 1.5 screen height for IMAX and 2.0 screen height for scope safe now you are comparing apples to apples at home.

Some people only have room for a 100” 16:9 screen so they adjust their seating.
None of us know what someone else preferences in movies are. The only thing I know for sure is if a presentation method is inclusive of every movie ever made then by definition it will suit 100% of everyone’s needs. That’s what I did.


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## jeahrens

My response is based on what was posted, not theoretical scenarios.


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## Josh Z

And here we are with the "Just sit closer to the screen for some movies" argument. Nobody (except Bud) actually does that. 

As I posted previously in this thread:

_The audio from your speakers and subwoofer has a sweet-spot. Moving away from that sweet-spot, in either direction, means that the audio may not converge on your ears as well and bass could totally disappear into a null. That's why Audyssey recommends that its calibration microphone positions all be within a two-foot radius of the prime listening position. For all practical purposes, home theater owners do not change seat from movie to movie. They have one seat that is their prime seat, and that's where they sit. Every time. _


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> And here we are with the "Just sit closer to the screen for some movies" argument. Nobody (except Bud) actually does that.
> 
> As I posted previously in this thread:
> 
> _The audio from your speakers and subwoofer has a sweet-spot. Moving away from that sweet-spot, in either direction, means that the audio may not converge on your ears as well and bass could totally disappear into a null. That's why Audyssey recommends that its calibration microphone positions all be within a two-foot radius of the prime listening position. For all practical purposes, home theater owners do not change seat from movie to movie. They have one seat that is their prime seat, and that's where they sit. Every time. _


This explains quite well that you have never read a word I wrote. Guess what I don’t change my seating location nor do I move my speakers.

I can however change my virtual row and how do I do that, I zoom.

Same exact sound stage for IMAX immersion as scope immersion. If I feel like sitting in the 1st virtual row or the 50th row the sound moves with me like magic.
I don’t expect you to understand as I think the concept is out of your capacity for deep thought into such matters. Others seem to be able to grasp the topic well enough so we can continue the conversation.


----------



## Philnick

bud16415 said:


> This explains quite well that you have never read a word I wrote. Guess what I don’t change my seating location nor do I move my speakers.
> 
> I can however change my virtual row and how do I do that, I zoom.
> 
> Same exact sound stage for IMAX immersion as scope immersion. If I feel like sitting in the 1st virtual row or the 50th row the sound moves with me like magic.
> I don’t expect you to understand as I think the concept is out of your capacity for deep thought into such matters. Others seem to be able to grasp the topic well enough so we can continue the conversation.


If you read what your opponents actually say, it makes it much harder to construct arguments based on straw men.

To quote the Scarecrow after being ripped apart by the flying monkeys, "That's me all over!"


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> This explains quite well that you have never read a word I wrote. Guess what I don’t change my seating location nor do I move my speakers.


So you're not telling people to sit closer for IMAX?



bud16415 said:


> If he was sitting 6’ from that 100” screen I would think he could nicely appreciate the IMAX parts of the movie.
> 
> Some people only have room for a 100” 16:9 screen so they adjust their seating.


----------



## Hawks07

beaRA said:


> Thanks for the advice! I wasn't expecting a long reply. I've got my hands on what seems like one of the last retail JVC NX5's. It'll throw an image max 127in wide in my room with front row ~10ft away. I've got samples coming from Seymour to make sure the XD grain isn't distracting at that distance. I plan on throwing the picture on the wall before committing to a screen purchase, but it's not prohibitive to just go as large as possible and then mask down if I want less immersion or more brightness.


Do yourself a favor and get a sample of the XY SoundMax 4k screen. 
You may get lucky but at 10’ you most likely will see some weave on the XD. 
Either way, the XY is smoother, about the same brightness and cheaper.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> So you're not telling people to sit closer for IMAX?


Correct. I have never told anyone to sit closer for IMAX at home. (Yes we know there is no IMAX at home) I tell people a good starting point for IMAX at home is the same seating distance as they would use for scope and flat. If that distance was 2X the screen height for scope and flat then IMAX would be 1.5X without moving their seats or their sound. 
If I were the poster we were talking about I would sit 6’ from the screen for all content.


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## jeahrens

I agree that about 1.5 screen height (or less) for IMAX and around 2 screen heights for standard ratios is where you want to be seating wise. That means masking the top/bottom for standard ratios (so 2x the masked height) and opening up for IMAX (1.5x the increased height). If I was going to attempt IMAX at home, that's how I would do it. 

So for an example if you had a 150" 16:9 screen that gives you a height of 73.5". Your seating would be 110" or about 9.2' (73.5" tall x 1.5). Masked down for 1.37:1/1.85:1/2.35:1 you would have a screen height of 54.5" so that same seating distance would give you 2.02x screen height to seating distance ratio. Most CIW/CIH screen height to seating distance ratios are between 2-3x so this ends up being a normal (if on the close side) distance for non-IMAX material. IMAX gets it's overwhelming vertical immersion and standard theatrical ratios are within where most watch them.

Personally I don't see IMAX being enough of a consideration to build around it, but if you wanted to that is how I would approach it.


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## bud16415

@jeahrens did a great job of explaining the concept of CIH+IMAX.
Now that leaves to question what else can you do with that screen area that is non motion picture? He makes a valid point some people might find 30-40 movies and a few more if you like 3D not enough to spend an extra 50-100 bucks on a larger screen and maybe another 100 bucks building DIY top and bottom masking that could flip up and down or maybe a strip of black cloth held in place with snaps or magnets.

But what could you do with that IMAX sized screen other than IMAX?

Maybe open the bottom mask for subtitles when you can’t move them.
Maybe watch TV sports where the players are tiny on the playing field and the top and bottom of the picture is a bunch of stats.
Maybe do a flight simulator or other action games where being totally immersive is fun to do.
Maybe watch sports documentaries with people surfing or snow skiing or hang gliding and the image is vast landscapes for hours on end.
Maybe do family photo slide shows where landscape and portrait photos can be large and close to the same size. 

I’m sure others reading have unique immersive likes different than mine they have tried on their projectors. I would love to hear them.
The thing is once you have the screen area to match your projectors native AR and the ability to do the largest presentation you ever will need even if you never once watch an IMAX movie, it doesn’t rule out CIH for all motion pictures and still leaves you the ability to use the area for whatever comes along non motion picture. It really is an option with very little downside.


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## jeahrens

There are all kinds of factors on whether a setup will or won't work in a room. There can certainly be downsides to one setup vs. another. For example very tall screen can push you towards an Acoustically Transparent (AT) screen to keep the center speaker from sitting on the floor (an AT screen can also color the sound), may cause reflection issues being too close to the ceiling and may not create a desirable viewing angle. Or depending on the room it may not cause any issues at all. Wide AR screens can have their own challenges as well. Again the room is a system, one needs to figure out their goals and see what works in it.

My main comment would be that a scope screen should not diminish the impact of narrow aspect films and it is accomplishing this by filling 100% of your desired vertical immersion. If that is the case then other material really shouldn't be underwhelming or need anything exotic to be appreciated.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> There are all kinds of factors on whether a setup will or won't work in a room. There can certainly be downsides to one setup vs. another. For example very tall screen can push you towards an Acoustically Transparent (AT) screen to keep the center speaker from sitting on the floor (an AT screen can also color the sound), may cause reflection issues being too close to the ceiling and may not create a desirable viewing angle. Or depending on the room it may not cause any issues at all. Wide AR screens can have their own challenges as well. Again the room is a system, one needs to figure out their goals and see what works in it.
> 
> My main comment would be that a scope screen should not diminish the impact of narrow aspect films and it is accomplishing this by filling 100% of your desired vertical immersion. If that is the case then other material really shouldn't be underwhelming or need anything exotic to be appreciated.


The example you gave in post #380 describes a 150” IMAX sized screen and seating distances masked down to CIH. In that example the amount of extra screen top and bottom is 9.5” Will lowering the center speaker 9.5” cause a major loss in audio? I don’t know. I know the audiophiles will say an AT screen is a necessity in both cases and many of us are less critical of center location and below the screen is fine. I gave up on a center channel a few years ago and found for all things movie I’m much happier with running a phantom center and having my RL right at ear level, and with music I much prefer simple stereo to anything else. With a phantom center having the RL mains just outside the scope screen angled in a little, watching 2.0 X SH seating distance is fine.

I have read of others that use an upper and lower center that is blended. I have never tried that.
I do agree each room has its problems. Unless you are designing a theater from the ground up you always have work around. The biggest problem for IMAX at home is ceiling height and if you want more than one row of seats.


----------



## Philnick

I've always used a center channel speaker that's the same as my right and left tower speakers - just lying on its side.

Yes, it's on the floor, but the floor is carpeted with low-pile office carpeting. I could raise it up a bit with a cinderblock, but I don't think that would make much difference in the sound, since my AVR does automatic tonal EQ to match the sound of the speakers, and it's more stable on the floor than it would be on a cinderblock.


----------



## jeahrens

It will depend completely on the room on whether a screen causes a problem. For example in my own room the center would essentially be on the floor. That close to the floor would certainly be a problem for imaging and would definitely cause a muffling of sound (the same reason you don't want the L/R right up against a wall). I could go with a false wall and an AT screen, but my room doubles as a listening room. I don't really want an AT screen and any potential coloration for music listening. AT would also mean constructing a false wall, which impacts how much room is left for seating. That much vertical expansion would also mean the screen center would now be lower than eye height causing the viewer to tilt their head down, which is not comfortable for extended viewing (at least for me it isn't). The top of the screen would now butt directly up to the ceiling, which is not desirable from a reflection standpoint. All factors why I choose the 16:9 screen size I did, which was then replaced with the scope screen of the same height.

I could do things like re-orient the room and potentially compromise audio with an AT screen, but what goal am I going for? Do I desire an IMAX level of immersion for IMAX? No, it's a niche format and I have no issues with it at 16:9 image sizing. Do I really want a super large picture to try to drive HDR on? No. The room's goal is above all else for viewing film, so that has determined a lot of why I have gone the route I have. Again these are all questions an individual needs to answer when they approach the room. Not everyone will have the same answers/goals and that's fine.


----------



## Josh Z

The biggest problem for IMAX at home is that there is no such thing as IMAX at home. If you're going to be watching sports or family slide shows or playing video games at the full height of of the sceen, none of that has anything to do with IMAX. It's just a big 16:9 TV at that point.

Again, if those things are a priority to you and that's how you most enjoy experiencing them, by all means have at it. Nothing wrong with that. But please, for the love of Pete, stop trying to use your own idiosyncratic preferences or a small handful of outlier cases as alleged proof that CIH doesn't work and a big 16:9 screen is always the best thing for everybody.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> Again, if those things are a priority to you and that's how you most enjoy experiencing them, by all means have at it. Nothing wrong with that. But please, for the love of Pete, stop trying to use your own idiosyncratic preferences or a small handful of outlier cases as alleged proof that CIH doesn't work and a big 16:9 screen is always the best thing for everybody.


You need to accept that other people have different preferences, and not be judgmental by calling them "idiosyncratic". If you removed that word from your last post, I would've agreed with everything you said.


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## bud16415

These guys seem to think there is.

IMAX Enhanced: Unleash the power of IMAX at home


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## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> You need to accept that other people have different preferences, and not be judgmental by calling them "idiosyncratic". If you removed that word from your last post, I would've agreed with everything you said.


www.dictionary.com

*idiosyncrasy*


_a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual. _

And before you go there:

*peculiar*

_distinctive in nature or character from others._
_belonging characteristically (usually followed by to):_


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> www.dictionary.com
> 
> *idiosyncrasy*
> 
> 
> _a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual. _
> 
> And before you go there:
> 
> *peculiar*
> 
> _distinctive in nature or character from others._
> _belonging characteristically (usually followed by to):_


Come on, man, you know the "spirit" of what I meant. You use judgmental language. Be humble, take the high road, present your arguments, and let other people make fools of themselves in their aggressiveness. Since 16:9 is a common screen size, it's not THAT "peculiar". If anything, CIH 2.35:1 screens are the less common screens out there amongst most people.

And to your other point, you keep saying that other people are saying things like "alleged proof that CIH doesn't work and a big 16:9 screen is always the best thing for everybody"...WHO is saying that? If anything, YOU are getting all bent out of shape because people aren't adopting your way of doing things. Stop being so defensive. It comes across as really ugly.


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## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> Come on, man, you know the "spirit" of what I meant. You use judgmental language. Be humble, take the high road, present your arguments, and let other people make fools of themselves in their aggressiveness. Since 16:9 is a common screen size, it's not THAT "peculiar". If anything, CIH 2.35:1 screens are the less common screens out there amongst most people.


I didn't choose the word "peculiar." That's from the dictionary.com definition. Substitute "specific" if it makes you feel better.

I did choose "idiosyncratic," because I think that Bud's insistence that family slide shows are equivalent to IMAX is an argument that only makes sense to him.

If you think that's too judgemental, consider the many stronger word choices I didn't go with.


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> I didn't choose the word "peculiar." That's from the dictionary.com definition. Substitute "specific" if it makes you feel better.
> 
> I did choose "idiosyncratic," because _I think that Bud's insistence that family slide shows are equivalent to IMAX_ is an argument that only makes sense to him.
> _[Italics added]_
> . . .


Here's what Bud said:

_But what could you do with that IMAX sized screen *other* than IMAX? [Bold and italics added]_

Maybe open the bottom mask for subtitles when you can’t move them.
Maybe watch TV sports where the players are tiny on the playing field and the top and bottom of the picture is a bunch of stats.
Maybe do a flight simulator or other action games where being totally immersive is fun to do.
Maybe watch sports documentaries with people surfing or snow skiing or hang gliding and the image is vast landscapes for hours on end.
Maybe do family photo slide shows where landscape and portrait photos can be large and close to the same size.

But you're too ready to create straw men to pay attention to words like "other than IMAX" - because you're afraid that folks may catch on to the unsuitability of scope screens for general use.

Do you sell scope screens? I doubt it - so why do you care if other folks choose to set up screens taller than scope ratio, but just as wide?

More likely it's because you're secretly afraid that you made the wrong choice in screen shape and are limiting your theater's flexibility, and hearing from folks who choose differently underscores that fear.


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## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> insistence that family slide shows are equivalent to IMAX


He said that? Where?



Josh Z said:


> consider the many stronger word choices I didn't go with


Wow, so angry and threatening...it's a shame. It significantly undercuts your ability to convey information simply, and not look foolish.


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## dschulz

Just a couple of observations:

1) Camp CIH agrees that there is much to be said for CIH + IMAX with 4-way masking if you care about the relatively small number of titles that would benefit 
2) There are not many titles in this category
3) The vocal CIH+IMAX advocates I have seen here are not actually running CIH+IMAX, they are running either CIW on large screens or screen walls, or Bud-style variable size/variable AR on a screen wall
4) #3B (commonly known as BudMAX) is actually rather idiosyncratic by the standards of AVS Forum users, who largely use either a TV or spend a lot of time/energy thinking about the correct screen size & geometry for their room. That doesn’t make it wrong or bad! But not inside the commonly found solution.
5) it’s really tiresome to hear repeatedly that the only reason to defend CIH is defensiveness over having made the somehow wrong choice, when the same could be said in the other direction.


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## jeahrens

fatherom said:


> He said that? Where?


In post 381 Bud went into a bit of "whataboutisms" and one was family photos.


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## fatherom

jeahrens said:


> In post 381 Bud went into a bit of "whataboutisms" and one was family photos.


Fair enough...I must've missed that. I'll say I've never done family "slide show" on my 16:9 screen.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> More likely it's because you're secretly afraid that you made the wrong choice in screen shape and are limiting your theater's flexibility, and hearing from folks who choose differently underscores that fear.


I don't think anyone really believes that of Josh that including you.


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## jeahrens

fatherom said:


> Fair enough...I must've missed that. I'll say I've never done family "slide show" on my 16:9 screen.


I did it on our 65" TV for an oversees trip. Easier than getting elderly folks into the theater room. But none of them would have likely even noticed the downstairs screen AR if I had.


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## Philnick

fatherom said:


> Fair enough...I must've missed that. I'll say I've never done family "slide show" on my 16:9 screen.


Once again - (I explained this in post 392)

Here's what Bud said:

_But what could you do with that IMAX sized screen *other* than IMAX? [Bold and italics added]_

Maybe open the bottom mask for subtitles when you can’t move them.
Maybe watch TV sports where the players are tiny on the playing field and the top and bottom of the picture is a bunch of stats.
Maybe do a flight simulator or other action games where being totally immersive is fun to do.
Maybe watch sports documentaries with people surfing or snow skiing or hang gliding and the image is vast landscapes for hours on end.
Maybe do family photo slide shows where landscape and portrait photos can be large and close to the same size. 

So no, you didn't miss something. 

Josh Z manufactured something, just like he routinely throws quotes from authorities around without acknowledging that they explicitly contain language that shows they don't apply to projector-based theaters. ("little boxes" "TVs" "3DTVs and handheld devices")


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Here's what Bud said:
> 
> _But what could you do with that IMAX sized screen *other* than IMAX? [Bold and italics added]_


"Other than IMAX," but (in his mind) of equal importance and worthiness in projecting as large as IMAX.

Or are you going to spin this to have us believe there's some other reason he projects them as large as IMAX movies?


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Once again - (I explained this in post 392)
> 
> Here's what Bud said:
> 
> _But what could you do with that IMAX sized screen *other* than IMAX? [Bold and italics added]_
> 
> Maybe open the bottom mask for subtitles when you can’t move them.
> Maybe watch TV sports where the players are tiny on the playing field and the top and bottom of the picture is a bunch of stats.
> Maybe do a flight simulator or other action games where being totally immersive is fun to do.
> Maybe watch sports documentaries with people surfing or snow skiing or hang gliding and the image is vast landscapes for hours on end.
> Maybe do family photo slide shows where landscape and portrait photos can be large and close to the same size.
> 
> So no, you didn't miss something.
> 
> Josh Z manufactured something, just like he routinely throws quotes from authorities around without acknowledging that they explicitly contain language that shows they don't apply to projector-based theaters. ("little boxes" "TVs" "3DTVs and handheld devices")


A lot of this again skirts by a fundamental of what we're discussing. I can't think of an owner of a CIH screen that I've talked to that did not make their 16:9/1.85:1 image as large as they wanted and then go wider. So really in the examples cited they aren't going to feel like they need more immersion than they have. I certainly wouldn't. My seating is designed to work with the height I have, which keeps the other things I mentioned in previous posts in check. If I had the old 16:9 screen (which has the same image size for 16:9 as my current scope screen) I would still be perfectly happy doing all those things on it. Because I sized it taking in all of the factors in the room and my desired immersion level.


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## beaRA

After reading this thread, what makes the most sense to me is to get a screen as wide as you want (or can fit) in your projector's native AR. Then you can mask it down from there for CIH scope. Why not have the extra vertical real estate in your back pocket to take full advantage of the projector's native AR for whatever idiosyncratic situations arise? The cost is not prohibitive compared to a scope screen of the same width.


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## Philnick

beaRA said:


> After reading this thread, what makes the most sense to me is to get a screen as wide as you want (or can fit) in your projector's native AR. Then you can mask it down from there for CIH scope. Why not have the extra vertical real estate in your back pocket to take full advantage of the projector's native AR for whatever idiosyncratic situations arise? The cost is not prohibitive compared to a scope screen of the same width.


Bingo! And that's precisely why the CIH faction is so defensive - they know that what you're saying is correct.


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## jeahrens

beaRA said:


> After reading this thread, what makes the most sense to me is to get a screen as wide as you want (or can fit) in your projector's native AR. Then you can mask it down from there for CIH scope. Why not have the extra vertical real estate in your back pocket to take full advantage of the projector's native AR for whatever idiosyncratic situations arise? The cost is not prohibitive compared to a scope screen of the same width.


The problem with that is you're setting up your vertical immersion around the narrower AR. So wider material (2.00:1,2.20:1, 2.35:1) gets no wider and shrinks vertically. So scope will be no wider, yet be > 20% smaller vertically on that setup. Do you feel like that is the intent of the format? Look at the attached diagram. The widest format is the smallest you'd be watching. Masking will not fix that, though it does improve the perceived image contrast.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Bingo! And that's precisely why the CIH faction is so defensive - they know that what you're saying is correct.


Not defensive at all. If you want a CIW setup and it makes more sense to you, go for it. As long as you understand what it is and isn't doing for you.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> The problem with that is you're setting up your vertical immersion around the narrower AR. So wider material (2.00:1,2.20:1, 2.35:1) get no wider and shrink vertically. So scope will be no wider, yet be > 20% smaller vertically on that setup. Do you feel like that is the intent of the format? Look at the attached diagram. The widest format is the smallest you'd be watching. Masking will not fix that, though it does improve the perceived image contrast.


You - and your illustration - assume that the room has a ceiling so low that a screen in the projector's native aspect ratio will have to be narrower than a scope screen - but if the ceiling is high enough, the native aspect ratio screen can be as wide as the widest scope screen the projector could fill.

Then the scope images will not be made smaller. Your remaining objection appears to be that scope films will not be as big vertically as 16x9 or 1.85:1 films. Poor baby!

Just don't show a tall film on a double bill with a scope film so no one is confronted by the disparity in height.

Problem solved.

Much easier than projector-masking or zooming down narrower AR films to fit onto a scope screen - and you can show variable aspect ratio films as the director intended.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> You assume that the room has a ceiling so low that a screen in the projector's native aspect ratio will have to be narrower than a scope screen - but if the ceiling is high enough, the native aspect ratio screen can be as wide as the widest scope screen the projector could fill.
> 
> Then the scope images will not be made smaller. Your remaining objection appears to be that scope films will not be as big vertically as 16x9 or 1.85:1 films. Poor baby!
> 
> Just don't show a tall film on a double bill with a scope film so no one is confronted by the disparity in height.
> 
> Problem solved.
> 
> Much easier than projector-masking or zooming down narrower AR films to fit onto a scope screen.


No, I'm not assuming anything. If you setup your vertical immersion around the narrow AR that now represents 100% of the vertical image size. Wider AR material gets no wider yet shrinks vertically in direct opposition of the intent of the filmmaker. Scope images are not intended to be shown the same width as 1.85:1 theatrically. Never have been. They are supposed to be shown theatrically at the same height though.

Not showing films of differing AR back to back does not change the lack of vertical and horizontal immersion a CIW setup has with wide material. I've never been tricked into thinking a CIW setup was anything other than what it is.

I have essentially the same projector, it's not hard to setup an installation mode and hit a button to select it. There is a reason lens memory is a feature that keeps getting attention from manufacturers. I don't know how it could be any easier to deal with differing ARs.


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## beaRA

jeahrens said:


> The problem with that is you're setting up your vertical immersion around the narrower AR. So wider material (2.00:1,2.20:1, 2.35:1) gets no wider and shrinks vertically. So scope will be no wider, yet be > 20% smaller vertically on that setup. Do you feel like that is the intent of the format? Look at the attached diagram. The widest format is the smallest you'd be watching. Masking will not fix that, though it does improve the perceived image contrast.


In my room, if I zoom my projector all the way to wide angle, the height of the native AR fits between the floor and ceiling. All I'm saying is I may as well have screen material there. Masking can turn it into a scope screen and thus enable CIH adherence. I can also remove the mask for occasional idiosyncrasies.


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## BlueMan Jones

jeahrens said:


> No, I'm not assuming anything. If you setup your vertical immersion around the narrow AR that now represents 100% of the vertical image size. Wider AR material gets no wider yet shrinks vertically in direct opposition of the intent of the filmmaker. Scope images are not intended to be shown the same width as 1.85:1 theatrically. Never have been. They are supposed to be shown theatrically at the same height though.
> 
> Not showing films of differing AR back to back does not change the lack of vertical and horizontal immersion a CIW setup has with wide material. I've never been tricked into thinking a CIW setup was anything other than what it is.
> 
> I have essentially the same projector, it's not hard to setup an installation mode and hit a button to select it. There is a reason lens memory is a feature that keeps getting attention from manufacturers. I don't know how it could be any easier to deal with differing ARs.


Let me try a hypothetical to see if I understand your argument. Say you had a 16x9 screen that was as big as the broad side of a barn...pretty darn big  So you've maxed out your width. Now if a scope movie comes along, you have only two options to remove the black bars at the top and bottom. Zoom out the picture so that the black bars drop off the top and bottom edges of the screen. Mission accomplished for the top and bottom, but now the left and right sides of the image spill past the edges of the barn. There is no way to get the scope picture to fit the width of our barn screen while at the same time filling the height as well and keep the same aspect ratio. You'll either have to shrink the picture both horizontally and vertically....thus producing black bars...or you'll have to do what they did in Dune (2021) and actually cut off portions of the picture and replace them with black bars in the home version of the picture.

Or you could do what I do from time to time...at least I did do before I upgraded to the Epson 5050UB and vertically stretch the scope image to get rid of the black bars. Hey, if it's good enough for 90's martial arts flicks, it's good enough for me 😁

But yes, i think I understand how by necessity, you have to shrink a scope picture to fit on a 16x9 screen and keep the same AR. Interesting....I'm still keeping my 16x9 screen as i've learned to live with the bars or find a way to get vertical stretch in the 5050 (ducks head), but I see where you're coming from.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> Just a couple of observations:
> 
> 1) Camp CIH agrees that there is much to be said for CIH + IMAX with 4-way masking if you care about the relatively small number of titles that would benefit
> 2) There are not many titles in this category
> 3) The vocal CIH+IMAX advocates I have seen here are not actually running CIH+IMAX, they are running either CIW on large screens or screen walls, or Bud-style variable size/variable AR on a screen wall
> 4) #3B (commonly known as BudMAX) is actually rather idiosyncratic by the standards of AVS Forum users, who largely use either a TV or spend a lot of time/energy thinking about the correct screen size & geometry for their room. That doesn’t make it wrong or bad! But not inside the commonly found solution.
> 5) it’s really tiresome to hear repeatedly that the only reason to defend CIH is defensiveness over having made the somehow wrong choice, when the same could be said in the other direction.


Well I will reply to your thread because I took a few hours off to watch an amazing IMAX movie and I return to several pages of new debate.

First off I didn’t start the thread Josh did and in the title he asked for a discussion on is a CIH the right choice for people. It is clearly the correct choice for most of the frequent posters in the CIH forum. People coming here might like a thread explaining different peoples views on the subject based around what they use their theaters and media room for. It seems the thread was not made for that purpose as when I gave some of my alternate uses for a non CIH screen as always I was called out as a negative influencer to the cause of CIH. Why start a thread asking if you prefer Ford or Chevy only to wait for someone to say Ford so you can tell them they are stupid.

Next I call my screen sizing BudMAX not by choice. Over the last few years any thread in any forum where I mention the presentation method of CIH+IMAX I’m commented to by Josh that there is no such thing as IMAX in the home and unless I have a 70’ tall 1.43 screen and a $10M projection system playing 70mm movies I do not have IMAX. The same is true if I use the term IMAX for a movie like Dunkirk on BD I’m told that the IMAX movie is 1.43 and not on BD. So I adopted typing in IMAX1.89 or IMAX1.43 as IMAX can not be used in any generic fashion here without comment even though the rest of the world now calls IMAX1.89 simply IMAX.

Next there are people here that I respect their form of presentation like Steve and Phil that like large and project mostly a CIW method with some variables. My form of presentation I gave a name and started a thread about and I call it PIA. It is not at all Willy Nilly zooming out of control, but Josh has posted that enough times I can see why people believe that is what I do. Lets call it fake news. My method of presentation started out as a method for people trying to put a lock on what method they wanted to use and like what I thought this thread was about gaining understanding of other methods of presentation. I said what if I wanted to try out CIH, CIH+IMAX1.89, CIA or any derivative. What size and shape screen would I need. For years I have read start with a painted wall and figure out how big you like. Well I gave that concept a structure to experiment within. As time went on I saw similarities to classical commercial presentation methods being tried in home theaters and one major drawback is scaling seating to a smaller screen than in a real movie theater made even 2 row immersion a real problem. I also saw just within my small group of friends and family a great difference in preference for immersion so I set out to solve that problem for myself with the concept of virtual rows of seating selection. Here is what I found. Before I ha a theater in my home and in the days of poorer resolution I was a 2/3 back sitter. As were many of my friends and family. With better and better equipment at home and more and more view time my like for immersion grew to where I’m now a 1/3 back sitter for CIH media. IMAX media made me even more immersive. My friends and family didn’t have the exposure I had and remained more center row or back people. I don’t know about others but I built my home theater to be enjoyed with my friends and family as well as by myself and if I went out to a movie with a group of friends I wouldn’t force them to sit in the forth row back just because I want to. So at home I zoom to accommodate others tastes as well as my own. Call me strange but I find a home theater with 6-10 seats that only ever gets used by just one person kind of a lonely experence. Just like we copy other aspects of real theaters in our home one of the things I like about Cinema is the shared experence.

I have never once told anyone CIH was a mistake they made or if they were happy they were lying to themselves. I also view presentation very serious and understand the impact it has done correctly.
I would love to openly be able to talk on these subjects, and I do quite often when members I have never heard of PM me with questions. Group talk here always reverts back to the same thing.


----------



## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> Well I will reply to your thread because I took a few hours off to watch an amazing IMAX movie and I return to several pages of new debate.


What did you watch? I hope you enjoyed it.



> First off I didn’t start the thread Josh did and in the title he asked for a discussion on is a CIH the right choice for people. It is clearly the correct choice for most of the frequent posters in the CIH forum. People coming here might like a thread explaining different peoples views on the subject based around what they use their theaters and media room for. It seems the thread was not made for that purpose as when I gave some of my alternate uses for a non CIH screen as always I was called out as a negative influencer to the cause of CIH. Why start a thread asking if you prefer Ford or Chevy only to wait for someone to say Ford so you can tell them they are stupid.


I think that's a somewhat uncharitable read of the direction the conversation keeps going. The OP lays out some reasons to pick a Ford instead of a Chevy, and many of the Chevy fans are willfully misreading the points made by the Ford fans.

To be clear, the CIH argument is simply that if you have a CiH setup, similarly framed shots will have consistent _size_ of image onscreen, in terms of the actors in place in a given style of shot. This means that contra some arguments made again it, you are not making Flat movies or 16:9 television content too small when shown on a Scope screen. That's the point of all of the screen grabs that have been nitpicked to death in, IMO, utterly bad faith. The framing intention is quite clear: Scope is larger than Flat. There may be _other_ reasons to forego CIH (IMAX or subtitles or non-theatrical usage) but you do not need to forego CIH if your intent is to watch Flat and Scope movies at appropriate, pleasingly immersive scale.



> Next I call my screen sizing BudMAX not by choice. Over the last few years any thread in any forum where I mention the presentation method of CIH+IMAX I’m commented to by Josh that there is no such thing as IMAX in the home and unless I have a 70’ tall 1.43 screen and a $10M projection system playing 70mm movies I do not have IMAX. The same is true if I use the term IMAX for a movie like Dunkirk on BD I’m told that the IMAX movie is 1.43 and not on BD. So I adopted typing in IMAX1.89 or IMAX1.43 as IMAX can not be used in any generic fashion here without comment even though the rest of the world now calls IMAX1.89 simply IMAX.


I genuinely was not meaning to be provocative or in attack mode when I mentioned BudMAX, I think it's a clever term for your screen wall, variable immersion approach. If you prefer I not use it I will refrain. I really am trying to have a real conversation here, and not just add more kindling to the ongoing flame war.


> I have never once told anyone CIH was a mistake they made or if they were happy they were lying to themselves. I also view presentation very serious and understand the impact it has done correctly.
> I would love to openly be able to talk on these subjects, and I do quite often when members I have never heard of PM me with questions. Group talk here always reverts back to the same thing.


It keeps reverting because the main pro-CIH point keep getting glossed over. There is not a lot of IMAX content, and what content there is, is mostly also available in 2.39 form and indeed was mostly released theatrically in 2.39. Meanwhile there are thousands upon thousands of movies and television episodes that are perfectly presented in CIH form, with a system optimized both visually and acoustically to present them in Flat or Scope or every ratio in between.

In fairness there are two non-IMAX reasons why CIH may not be the best solution: a desire to run Academy films a little taller, and the oft-discussed subtitle problem. In my opinion the simplicity and elegance of a CIH system with adjustable side masking outweighs those two concerns, but of course YMMV.


----------



## dschulz

BlueMan Jones said:


> Let me try a hypothetical to see if I understand your argument. Say you had a 16x9 screen that was as big as the broad side of a barn...pretty darn big  So you've maxed out your width. Now if a scope movie comes along, you have only two options to remove the black bars at the top and bottom. Zoom out the picture so that the black bars drop off the top and bottom edges of the screen. Mission accomplished for the top and bottom, but now the left and right sides of the image spill past the edges of the barn. There is no way to get the scope picture to fit the width of our barn screen while at the same time filling the height as well and keep the same aspect ratio. You'll either have to shrink the picture both horizontally and vertically....thus producing black bars...or you'll have to do what they did in Dune (2021) and actually cut off portions of the picture and replace them with black bars in the home version of the picture.
> 
> Or you could do what I do from time to time...at least I did do before I upgraded to the Epson 5050UB and vertically stretch the scope image to get rid of the black bars. Hey, if it's good enough for 90's martial arts flicks, it's good enough for me 😁
> 
> But yes, i think I understand how by necessity, you have to shrink a scope picture to fit on a 16x9 screen and keep the same AR. Interesting....I'm still keeping my 16x9 screen as i've learned to live with the bars or find a way to get vertical stretch in the 5050 (ducks head), but I see where you're coming from.


You're on the right track. Here's a related thought experiment: 

Say you have a big, wide, Scope screen. As big as you could possibly want it to be. Star Wars looks amazing, engrossing, transports you straight to the deserts of Tatooine. 

Now, you decide to watch a Flat movie. "Oh no," you think, "now there are black bars on the sides of the picture and the picture is now too small." But then as you start watching Jurassic Park, you notice that Alan Grant in a medium shot is _exactly the same size_ as Luke Skywaker in a medium shot. Nothing has gotten smaller at all! It's just the cinematographer and director have chosen to use a canvas that's not as wide. That's what CIH buys you.


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## Philnick

I'd like to refine @BlueMan Jones argument:

Let's say that his barn-sized 16x9 screen can hold anything you throw at it at your projector's maximum magnification. Scope and academy both fit with no issue. The only remaining objection from the CIH side of the argument is that scope images are not as tall as academy images. So what?

Why should academy images be shown at reduced magnification to be the same height as scope images? Tradition?

That tradition was created as the least expensive way possible to get people away from their TVs and back into theaters: by widening the stages at theaters for bigger images, since raising the ceiling would have required much more expensive structural changes to weight-bearing portions of the buildings. Widening the stages, on the other hand, was just cosmetic renovations.

The image height stayed constant not for artistic but economic reasons. When most theaters had scope screens, most films were released in that shape.

Now, with automated theaters, theater owners have discovered that it's much more practical to use a large screen with an aspect ratio that matches that of the projector, which is usually either 16x9 or 17x9 (1.89:1) and show everything as large as fits on that screen, which is essentially my setup.

And - _mirable dictu_ - filmmakers are slowly starting to adapt to and take advantage of that new theater environment by releasing VAR and quasi-IMAX films on disk and even on streaming. (I know you consider it not true IMAX - but very few venues, and no homes, have full-size scope screens - so until you stop saying I don't have an IMAX screen, I'll call your setup quasi-scope.)

The CIH crowd is beginning to resemble the old king telling the tide not to roll in - which he knew was futile - he did that to show his subjects that his powers were not infinite. The only difference is that while he knew what he was doing was a joke, the CIH crowd hasn't yet figured that out.


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## dschulz

All I'm saying, @Philnick, is there is no reason to throw the largest image you possibly can, just because you can. It seems to me you believe if you are projecting a Flat image that is smaller than you could be throwing, because your projector can and your wall is larger than your screen, you are somehow cheating yourself. Whereas I want to optimize the system for Flat and Scope, and CIH is a simple and elegant solution that covers almost all use cases. I don't want Jurassic Park to be any larger than it is in my above example, because if it _was_ any larger I'd feel the need to move back a row or two.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Let's say that his barn-sized 16x9 screen can hold anything you throw at it at your projector's maximum magnification. Scope and academy both fit with no issue. The only remaining objection from the CIH side of the argument is that scope images are not as tall as academy images. So what?
> 
> Why should academy images be shown at reduced magnification to be the same height as scope images? Tradition?


Phil, the thing you continually neglect to acknowledge is the other side of that question. What is it about "flat" or Academy images that requires you to project them larger than everything else? You've said many times that your room has more height than width, but even when talking about this theoretical "side of a barn" screen that removes that limitation, you continue to cling to the idea that 16:9 needs to be as large as it can no matter what. Yet for scope movies... eh, whatever... who cares what size those are?

At what point is a 16:9 image big enough for you? Forget the side of a barn. Let's say you have the Great Wall of China in front of you, about 50 feet at its tallest (hey, IMAX height!) and stretching literally hundreds of miles to both your left and right. You're offered the chance to cover the damn thing with seamless OLED panels. What aspect ratio do you make that image? Do you still stick to 16:9, and if so, why?

What is it about 16:9 that says to you: _"This is my life goal. Nothing is more important than this!"_?

As has been argued countless times in this forum, look at the types of movies being photographed in each aspect ratio. When Hollywood goes to crank out its next mega-budget visual spectacle blockbuster, what aspect ratio is it most likely to be? 2.35:1, that what. And what types of movies are most often shot at 1.85:1? Why are those 1.85:1 movies more worthy of maximum immersion than the 2.35:1 movies?



> And - _mirable dictu_ - filmmakers are slowly starting to adapt to and take advantage of that new theater environment by releasing VAR and quasi-IMAX films on disk and even on streaming.


"Slowly" being the operative word here. We're talking a maximum of 1-2 films shot in IMAX format per year. To which you'll say, _"Wow, that's two more IMAX movies than I had last year! What an embarrassment of IMAX riches!"_ Meanwhile, the rest of the movies being produced each year are pushing at a much more rapid rate toward 2.35:1 as the predominant aspect ratio. We're now up to more than 70% of movies each year in 2.35:1. How long before we hit 80%, or 90%?

For some reason, none of those other movies mean anything to you. It's this year's one IMAX movie that you need to design your entire home theater around.

Honestly, I don't even have a problem with that. If Star Trek into Darkness happens to be your favorite movie of all time and you watch it over and over again, go nuts and make your home theater the "Trekkin' into Darkness Cinema" for the most optimal Star Trek into Darkness experience you can get.

But does it really seem right to you to elevate every 1.85:1 indie film or 16:9 sitcom to the same status as the IMAX scenes in that movie? You've told us that you don't do CIH+IMAX. Everything 16:9 fills your screen at maximum immersion. Doesn't it make the home theater IMAX experience less special when it's projected at the same size as reruns of The Big Bang Theory? For that matter, don't you find it deflating when Star Trek into Darkness cuts to its 2.35:1 scenes and they're smaller than Wheel of Fortune?

For you, maybe not. Maybe you don't give a s**t. I'm sure you'll tell me that you don't ever watch sitcoms or game shows in your home theater, or even low-budget indie movies. It's only IMAX movies for you. Fair enough.

Some of us do watch plenty of TV and all sorts of other content in our home theaters, though. And some of us do care about preserving the intended scale of one movie or show to another, even if you don't. That's why saying, "Just put in a bigger 16:9 screen" is not a worthwhile solution. A bigger 16:9 screen is basically just an oversized TV. Quite frankly, that sucks.


----------



## jeahrens

beaRA said:


> In my room, if I zoom my projector all the way to wide angle, the height of the native AR fits between the floor and ceiling. All I'm saying is I may as well have screen material there. Masking can turn it into a scope screen and thus enable CIH adherence. I can also remove the mask for occasional idiosyncrasies.


Does that work for your audio? Are you concerned about how much light your setup will generate (if you intend to do HDR you should be)? What will the viewing angle end up being? "Filling the wall" is not generally a good way to approach a room. That's regardless of what screen AR you go with.

Are you masking for everything except IMAX to attempt to replicate that experience as best you can? If not then you're simply masking a CIW setup. Which doesn't help with the limitations of that approach. It does make it look nicer though.


----------



## jeahrens

BlueMan Jones said:


> Let me try a hypothetical to see if I understand your argument. Say you had a 16x9 screen that was as big as the broad side of a barn...pretty darn big  So you've maxed out your width. Now if a scope movie comes along, you have only two options to remove the black bars at the top and bottom. Zoom out the picture so that the black bars drop off the top and bottom edges of the screen. Mission accomplished for the top and bottom, but now the left and right sides of the image spill past the edges of the barn. There is no way to get the scope picture to fit the width of our barn screen while at the same time filling the height as well and keep the same aspect ratio. You'll either have to shrink the picture both horizontally and vertically....thus producing black bars...or you'll have to do what they did in Dune (2021) and actually cut off portions of the picture and replace them with black bars in the home version of the picture.


One of the hardest things people have grasping about their room and how they would set it up is realizing that the perceived size of the image is a product of its physical dimensions and the distance you are from it. Your barn scenario simply looks at what image size you can project and nothing else. Do you want an image that big? Do you want a CIW setup so that blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark are smallest thing you watch? The best way to approach that scenario would be to outline your goals. If you wanted a CIH setup then you would look at what you have to work with from a physical size perspective and adjust the other variables, notably seating distance, to get you to the point where the vertical image size is where you prefer it, but now wider AR films are actually wider and get bigger as they get wider which is exactly what the filmmaker intends. Now that's just a theoretical situation, the room itself can lend challenges that make one setup preferable to another.

Dune was released in the aspect ratio the filmmaker preferred. There are no black bars on a scope screen to speak of (the handful of 2.76:1 films are an exception of course). Each of the common standard theatrical ratios fills the height of the screen and gets progressively wider. There are side pillarboxes that are not lit by the panel for anything 16:9 and wider which don't usually require any masking. Academy 1.37:1 and 4:3 do have pillarboxing lit by the panel (due to being narrower than 16:9) but with a higher contrast projector, like your Epson, they don't generally call a lot of attention to themselves.



BlueMan Jones said:


> Or you could do what I do from time to time...at least I did do before I upgraded to the Epson 5050UB and vertically stretch the scope image to get rid of the black bars. Hey, if it's good enough for 90's martial arts flicks, it's good enough for me 😁
> 
> But yes, i think I understand how by necessity, you have to shrink a scope picture to fit on a 16x9 screen and keep the same AR. Interesting....I'm still keeping my 16x9 screen as i've learned to live with the bars or find a way to get vertical stretch in the 5050 (ducks head), but I see where you're coming from.


There's not a thing wrong with keeping what you like. If it puts a smile on your face and you don't feel like your missing anything then rock on. If you ever decide to experiment, you have a great projector to do it with.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Now, with automated theaters, theater owners have discovered that it's much more practical to use a large screen with an aspect ratio that matches that of the projector, which is usually either 16x9 or 17x9 (1.89:1) and show everything as large as fits on that screen, which is essentially my setup.


They can fit more theaters in their multiplex by going narrower. They're not being innovative, they're being cheap. Premium theaters still regularly go scope or IMAX. The Century XD experience I related earlier where the Ford truck commercial was the largest thing I saw did not impress much. No that's not a "chick flick" attack on any AR, it's just the truth. It was the largest content on the narrow AR screen that night. The feature was letterboxed scope.



Philnick said:


> And - _mirable dictu_ - filmmakers are slowly starting to adapt to and take advantage of that new theater environment by releasing VAR and quasi-IMAX films on disk and even on streaming. (I know you consider it not true IMAX - but very few venues, and no homes, have full-size scope screens - so until you stop saying I don't have an IMAX screen, I'll call your setup quasi-scope.)
> 
> The CIH crowd is beginning to resemble the old king telling the tide not to roll in - which he knew was futile - he did that to show his subjects that his powers were not infinite. The only difference is that while he knew what he was doing was a joke, the CIH crowd hasn't yet figured that out.


IMAX is still releasing a trickle and scope is still 50% or more. Just like it was years ago when it was posited we would see a shift. Can it shift? Sure. Will it? I have no idea. Doesn't show any signs of it though.


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## Philnick

@Josh Z To turn your question around, since I'm advocating giving _every_ kind of movie as much immersion as possible and I'm showing scope as large as possible in my theater, "Why are Academy and 16x9 films _less_ worthy of maximum immersion than scope films?"

That's what you have trouble answering. I've encountered sexist answers that have been disavowed when I pointed that out, and seen you argue that people are too large in Academy films shown at the same magnification as scope films - but no one is shown the same size throughout _any_ film.

I've seen complaints that showing Academy films as wide as scope films "wastes" screen space on skies and terrain or water - and I've seen no answer to my asking if that isn't something that's the filmmaker's choice for artistic reasons - not yours to shave off to fit onto a screen that's shorter than what your projector can fill, or to shrink the whole scene to fit onto that screen.

The burden of proof is truly on _you_ to show why screens should be short and tailored to fit only one type of film, not on those who match their screen size to match the full range of their projector's capabilities.

And so far, I've never seen anything from the CIH camp sufficient to show that it's more likely than not that a short screen is more useful than a screen that matches the projector's imaging capability.


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## bud16415

@dschulz you are fine referring to my setup as BudMAX just understand the origin of the name. It now has grown to include playing family photos of our new 3 month old adorable niece close ups for family gatherings so large the grandparents grin ear to ear as the rest of us laugh out loud.

The barn analogy is and the Great Wall of China analogy are great but both teams are viewing them thru a perspective they have a belief in. Let me once again bring in my perspective even though I don’t believe ether camp will take a beat and think about it. @BlueMan Jones might.

In my setup for all practical purposes I have an infinite area to project to no constraints in width or in height and no frame depicting any AR. So unlike Phil as you all see him infinite bigness is not the goal. Even though I’m totally unconstrained my seating distance is fixed that is my only constraint. Given those set of circumstances I realize I have maximum size constraints not by the size of my barn but by the limitations of my human body. I might add I once was constrained by the PQ/resolution of the image, but that no longer is a factor.

So what does this mean? Having done this experiment that few have tried I view immersion or screen size not as a goal in height or width or AR. I don’t have to recognize or make lists of what percentage of movies and TV is made in what AR each year. Why would I care about these things they are out of my control. Why do I care about the size of a face in a medium long shot between one AR and another. Why would I care to even think about it? Just as I could care less Nolan expands some of his movies and they are only 1-2 per year or every 5 or so years a 2.76:1 movie pops up and I say cool and watch The Hateful Eight wider than anything that year. The Life of Pi comes out and Holy Cow the fish jump right out of the scope image now that’s cool.

By un-constraining I found I naturally migrated to the system of presentation that suits me and surprising as this sounds It closely matches CIH+IMAX with expanded height for Academy diminished area for most old school TV and movie like presentation for most Prestige TV.

Being honest and doing the experiment has lead me to greatly enjoying all media to its fullest IMO.

Organic presentation is going to a movie theater and sitting in the row with people you care about that feels correct for everyone, forgetting that there are black floor levels and a slip in the masking, not caring if the movie is 2.00 or 1.85, not thinking about what’s on or off the screen in some other venue, having your bucket of popcorn between you to share and your drink in the cup holder, letting everything go and transporting into the movie.
That’s my goal and what I have achieved at home and I call it BudMax.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> @Josh Z To turn your question around, since I'm advocating giving _every_ kind of movie as much immersion as possible and I'm showing scope as large as possible in my theater, "Why are Academy and 16x9 films _less_ worthy of maximum immersion than scope films?"


You have not at all answered the question I asked. Please try again.

If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?

I have exhaustively explained and illustrated how scope photography is composed to have the same image height but greater width than 1.85:1. The best counter-argument you've been able to muster is: _Nuh uh. I don't believe it. Nyah! _



> I've seen complaints that showing Academy films as wide as scope films "wastes" screen space on skies and terrain or water - and I've seen no answer to my asking if that isn't something that's the filmmaker's choice for artistic reasons - not yours to shave off to fit onto a screen that's shorter than what your projector can fill, or to shrink the whole scene to fit onto that screen.


We were not talking about Academy films. Academy films are composed using the same Rule of Thirds guidelines as 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. They typically do not have much excess space on skies or terrain or water. If anything, they're usually cramped due to having very limited width.

It is the IMAX VAR films that leave a lot of empty ambient space at the top of the frame. They are composed that way because the top of the frame should fall outside your field of vision. Those movies are explicitly made with the intention of being cropped to 2.35:1 in all theaters other than IMAX.



> The burden of proof is truly on _you_ to show why screens should be short and tailored to fit only one type of film, not on those who match their screen size to match the full range of their projector's capabilities.
> 
> And so far, I've never seen anything from the CIH camp sufficient to show that it's more likely than not that a short screen is more useful than a screen that matches the projector's imaging capability.


It's fruitless to have this discussion with you if you're just going to flat-out lie about what others have said. No one here has ever argued in favor of a "short" screen. It has been repeated endlessly that the intention of CIH is to start with as large a 16:9 image as you could want, and then add width to it.

Believe it or don't believe it, I don't care anymore. I've given up on you. You clearly have a mental blockage that prevents you from grasping the concept. Whatever, so be it.

But please do explain why you insist on endlessly posting in the 2.35:1 CONSTANT IMAGE HEIGHT CHAT forum when you so vehemently loathe 2.35:1 Constant Image Height? What is it you get out of trolling this forum?


----------



## beaRA

jeahrens said:


> Does that work for your audio?


Yes, planning on acoustically transparent. 



jeahrens said:


> Are you concerned about how much light your setup will generate (if you intend to do HDR you should be)?


Yes, but the light output is kind of irrelevant to the height of the screen since I am not using an anamorphic lens. 



jeahrens said:


> What will the viewing angle end up being? "Filling the wall" is not generally a good way to approach a room. That's regardless of what screen AR you go with.


Undecided. Front row will be 10ft-10.5ft away. Max wide angle would be 127in wide, but I might reduce once I test immersion and light levels. Regardless, once I decide on a scope size, it's not cost prohibitive to get a native AR screen of the same width. 



jeahrens said:


> Are you masking for everything except IMAX to attempt to replicate that experience as best you can? If not then you're simply masking a CIW setup. Which doesn't help with the limitations of that approach. It does make it look nicer though.


That's the plan, but I take no responsibility for the laziness of my future self.


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> . . .
> But please do explain why you insist on endlessly posting in the 2.35:1 CONSTANT IMAGE HEIGHT CHAT forum when you so vehemently loathe 2.35:1 Constant Image Height? What is it you get out of trolling this forum?


You started this thread - which is titled "Why Should or (_Shouldn't)_ I do Constant Height" (emphasis added) - when I objected to you telling folks in my projector's thread who were discussing that question to take it to the CIH forum by saying that if they did that they'd be attacked there.

So you began this thread explicitly to discuss that question. I'm arguing, in line with the explicit purpose of this thread for a debate, that folks _shouldn't_ do constant height, and that the burden of proof is on those urging folks to hobble their theaters' capabilities by installing screens that can't handle the full native aspect ratio of their projectors, advantaging scope films over all others.

Your saying that it's trolling to discuss what the thread asks - by it's very title - just shows who is really the troll - and proves my original point - don't feed the trolls. Despite being established in a sector of AVS for discussion of CIH, this thread is supposed to be neutral turf. You clearly have forgotten that in the three weeks its been since you yourself started it.

Discussion of how to set up a projector to best advantage belongs here as well as on the neutral turf of a projector's own thread, with no one entitled to feel that the argument is being waged on their own turf and that anyone who disagrees with them should be shouted down.

PS You and I are not going to convince each other. I'm here to protect the innocent you lure into your parlor with this seemingly neutral thread title, by trying to cut folks loose from your web.


----------



## jeahrens

beaRA said:


> Yes, planning on acoustically transparent.
> 
> Yes, but the light output is kind of irrelevant to the height of the screen since I am not using an anamorphic lens.
> 
> Undecided. Front row will be 10ft-10.5ft away. Max wide angle would be 127in wide, but I might reduce once I test immersion and light levels. Regardless, once I decide on a scope size, it's not cost prohibitive to get a native AR screen of the same width.
> 
> That's the plan, but I take no responsibility for the laziness of my future self.


Sound like you have a good plan. With an AT screen you'll be likely getting a real world gain of about .9. So you might think about going a bit smaller depending on the output of your projector. But your proposed width isn't crazy for something like a JVC or Epson.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> So you began this thread explicitly to discuss that question. I'm arguing, in line with the explicit purpose of this thread for a debate, that folks _shouldn't_ do constant height, and that those urging folks to hobbe their theaters' capabilities by installing screens that can't handle the full native aspect ratio of their projectors, advantaging scope films over all others, have the burden of proof on why folks should do that.


That's just nonsense. I can show a 17:9 image just as well as you can. Too bad I can't think of any content out there in 17:9. No one is hobbling anything here.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> You started this thread - which is titled "Why Should or (_Shouldn't)_ I do Constant Height" (emphasis added) - when I objected to you telling folks in my projector's thread who were discussing that question to take it to the CIH forum by saying that if they did that they'd be attacked there.


You've been trolling this forum since long before this particular thread started.



> So you began this thread explicitly to discuss that question. I'm arguing, in line with the explicit purpose of this thread for a debate, that folks _shouldn't_ do constant height, and that those urging folks to hobbe their theaters' capabilities by installing screens that can't handle the full native aspect ratio of their projectors, advantaging scope films over all others, have the burden of proof on why folks should do that.


Oh, so you're providing a public service, is that it? To protect all those innocent AVSers out there from the evil CIH boogeyman? 

I have provided your requested burden of proof. Your response has been to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend you didn't hear it. Your contribution to this thread does not serve the purpose you pretend it does.

And I will note that you have once again dodged my question, so here it is again:

If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?


----------



## bud16415

beaRA said:


> Yes, planning on acoustically transparent.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, but the light output is kind of irrelevant to the height of the screen since I am not using an anamorphic lens.
> 
> 
> 
> Undecided. Front row will be 10ft-10.5ft away. Max wide angle would be 127in wide, but I might reduce once I test immersion and light levels. Regardless, once I decide on a scope size, it's not cost prohibitive to get a native AR screen of the same width.
> 
> 
> 
> That's the plan, but I take no responsibility for the laziness of my future self.


It sounds like you have given your setup a lot of thought. I often bring up the point of unit brightness FL or nits. That is the deciding factor on screen size in the end unless you do something complicated like an A-lens or someone builds a scope projector where all the brightness is applied to scope field.

It is a bit like what pilots are told when gliding to a landing, you can’t use the runway behind you or the air above you. In the case of a projection screen area you don’t have to use the whole screen area, but you can’t use area you don’t have.
I like how you phrased it that your future self may be lazy. It is also true that our current self doesn’t know what the future will bring. Being ready for something you don’t know about is never a bad approach.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> That's just nonsense. I can show a 17:9 image just as well as you can. Too bad I can't think of any content out there in 17:9. No one is hobbling anything here.


17/9=1.89
therefore,
17:9 is 1.89:1
Lots of material is released in 1.85:1, which differs from 1.89:1 by only 2.1% - they're essentially equivalent.

I would estimate that a quarter to a third of all theatrical releases are in that format.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> That's just nonsense. I can show a 17:9 image just as well as you can. Too bad I can't think of any content out there in 17:9. No one is hobbling anything here.


This sounds a bit like talks you and I have had in the past except I believe it was 16:10 and 4:3, 16:12 if you like.

I once told you I like 4:3 or better yet 4:4. None of it matters as any shape rectangle can be inserted into any other shaped rectangle. As long as the unit brightness and pixel density is enough what does it matter how much or how little of the frame is used and unused.
When I had a 4:3 projector I wanted a 4:3 screen area when I had a 16:10 projector I wanted a 16:10 screen area now I have a 16:9 projector I want a 16:9 screen area. If I ever get a 2.4:1 projector I will want a 2.4:1 screen area. At no time should I feel compelled to make everything as big as I can just because I can, but logic compels me to make available an area as large as I would ever need and in the AR of the machine I have.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> 17/9=1.89
> therefore,
> 17:9 is 1.89:1
> Lots of material is released in 1.85:1, which differs from 1.89:1 by only 2.1% - they're essentially equivalent.
> 
> I would estimate that a quarter to a third of all theatrical releases are in that format.


Sure they're close and I'm aware of that. But still not the same, thus the statement. I'm well aware of 1.85:1 and its importance.


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## bud16415

Philnick said:


> 17/9=1.89
> therefore,
> 17:9 is 1.89:1
> Lots of material is released in 1.85:1, which differs from 1.89:1 by only 2.1% - they're essentially equivalent.
> 
> I would estimate that a quarter to a third of all theatrical releases are in that format.


I would call that an IMAX projector Phil.
A marriage made in heaven!


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> This sounds a bit like talks you and I have had in the past except I believe it was 16:10 and 4:3, 16:12 if you like.
> 
> I once told you I like 4:3 or better yet 4:4. None of it matters as any shape rectangle can be inserted into any other shaped rectangle. As long as the unit brightness and pixel density is enough what does it matter how much or how little of the frame is used and unused.
> When I had a 4:3 projector I wanted a 4:3 screen area when I had a 16:10 projector I wanted a 16:10 screen area now I have a 16:9 projector I want a 16:9 screen area. If I ever get a 2.4:1 projector I will want a 2.4:1 screen area. At no time should I feel compelled to make everything as big as I can just because I can, but logic compels me to make available an area as large as I would ever need and in the AR of the machine I have.


No, it doesn't. I have never said your choice of whatever ratio your painted wall area figures out to be is incapable of showing the native resolution of your projector.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I would call that an IMAX projector Phil.
> A marriage made in heaven!


If all of the recent IMAX content wasn't delivered cropped to 1.78:1 you could maybe make case for that statement for 1.90 IMAX. But alas it is.


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## Philnick

bud16415 said:


> I would call that an IMAX projector Phil.
> A marriage made in heaven!


1.89:1 is the standard aspect ratio for JVC and Sony's (and at least one of Epson's) true 4K projectors.


----------



## bud16415

I do find it interesting that Phil has a projector that is spot on IMAX1.89 AR. In today’s world with 70% of the new motion pictures being made are 2.39:1 no one is building a HT scope projector. The attempts of building them have never had success and the same with the short lived 2.39:1 TVs.

I would at least think someone would put out a 16:9 projector with scope blanking like they have and also built in CIH function within the masked area. They have had the capability to do that for at least 20 years now. What practical purpose does all the zooming accomplish. If the most important movie is scope and the brightness is there as well as the resolution shouldn’t that be good enough for a flat movie or TV.

I bought a WXGA projector for 300 bucks and it has anamorphic compression built in. So clearly the projector makers are thinking about scope presentation. Are they thinking I will go out and buy an A-lens for 10X the cost of the projector so I can have a scope projector? I hope not.

Why no native scope projectors? Why no scope CIH scaling projectors? Why no encoded native scope media? 70% of the media being printed to disc and streamed is a bunch of encoded black pixels of data.
What’s going on here?


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> If all of the recent IMAX content wasn't delivered cropped to 1.78:1 you could maybe make case for that statement for 1.90 IMAX. But alas it is.


The IMAX-enhanced and VAR IMAX films I've seen have been in 1.85 or 1.89:1 inside a 16x9 frame (the same way scope films are delivered) - they look pretty much the same on my projector in its 16x9 mode - a hair shorter than the full height - so I kick in 1.89:1 mode on the projector, which is a 6 2/3% digital zoom to fill the whole width of the imaging panels - which also makes them fill its whole height.


----------



## bud16415

Philnick said:


> The IMAX-enhanced and VAR IMAX films I've seen have been in 1.85 or 1.89:1 inside a 16x9 frame (the same way scope films are delivered) - they look pretty much the same on my projector in its 16x9 mode - a hair shorter than the full height - so I kick in 1.89:1 mode on the projector, which is a 6 2/3% digital zoom to fill the whole width of the imaging panels - which also makes them fill its whole height.


Be careful that 6 2/3 % can cause neck strain.


----------



## Philnick

bud16415 said:


> I do find it interesting that Phil has a projector that is spot on IMAX1.89 AR. In today’s world with 70% of the new motion pictures being made are 2.39:1 no one is building a HT scope projector. The attempts of building them have never had success and the same with the short lived 2.39:1 TVs.
> 
> I would at least think someone would put out a 16:9 projector with scope blanking like they have and also built in CIH function within the masked area. They have had the capability to do that for at least 20 years now. What practical purpose does all the zooming accomplish. If the most important movie is scope and the brightness is there as well as the resolution shouldn’t that be good enough for a flat movie or TV.
> 
> I bought a WXGA projector for 300 bucks and it has anamorphic compression built in. So clearly the projector makers are thinking about scope presentation. Are they thinking I will go out and buy an A-lens for 10X the cost of the projector so I can have a scope projector? I hope not.
> 
> Why no native scope projectors? Why no scope CIH scaling projectors? Why no encoded native scope media? 70% of the media being printed to disc and streamed is a bunch of encoded black pixels of data.
> What’s going on here?


My JVC projector has two features of (differing amounts of) value for scope film:

(1) A 6 2/3% zoom feature to use the entire 17x9 imagers, which also makes the images the same 6 2/3% taller. That's the Aspect:Zoom setting (Aspect:Auto uses the same total height but a narrower 16x9 area within it). I use Aspect:Zoom for everything 1.85:1 and wider, to get a larger image on screen. (Used on 16x9 films that would shave off 3 1/3% of the top of the image and the same amount of the bottom of the image. There probably isn't anything there that advances the plot, but I'd rather not shave that much off. I'm willing to shave 1.05% off the top and bottom of 1.85:1 films for a 6 2/3% increase in width, but not over three times that much!)

(2) Scope masking. Yes, if you want to, you can tell the projector to turn upper and lower areas of the image into letterbox bars. This is of no interest to me, but for those with scope screens, they can keep image in non-scope films from spilling onto the wall above and below the screen.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I do find it interesting that Phil has a projector that is spot on IMAX1.89 AR. In today’s world with 70% of the new motion pictures being made are 2.39:1 no one is building a HT scope projector. The attempts of building them have never had success and the same with the short lived 2.39:1 TVs.
> 
> I would at least think someone would put out a 16:9 projector with scope blanking like they have and also built in CIH function within the masked area. They have had the capability to do that for at least 20 years now. What practical purpose does all the zooming accomplish. If the most important movie is scope and the brightness is there as well as the resolution shouldn’t that be good enough for a flat movie or TV.
> 
> I bought a WXGA projector for 300 bucks and it has anamorphic compression built in. So clearly the projector makers are thinking about scope presentation. Are they thinking I will go out and buy an A-lens for 10X the cost of the projector so I can have a scope projector? I hope not.
> 
> Why no native scope projectors? Why no scope CIH scaling projectors? Why no encoded native scope media? 70% of the media being printed to disc and streamed is a bunch of encoded black pixels of data.
> What’s going on here?


1.89:1 IMAX was chosen because it was the ratio of the display chips in theatrical projectors. JVC and Sony use the same ratio as theatrical display chips. Mystery solved.

There's no native scope projectors because there doesn't need to be. Just like there aren't any native scope theatrical projectors I'm aware of.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> The IMAX-enhanced and VAR IMAX films I've seen have been in 1.85 or 1.89:1 inside a 16x9 frame (the same way scope films are delivered) - they look pretty much the same on my projector in its 16x9 mode - a hair shorter than the full height - so I kick in 1.89:1 mode on the projector, which is a 6 2/3% digital zoom to fill the whole width of the imaging panels - which also makes them fill its whole height.


Nope, it's cropped from what I've seen.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> If I ever get a 2.4:1 projector I will want a 2.4:1 screen area. At no time should I feel compelled to make everything as big as I can just because I can, but logic compels me to make available an area as large as I would ever need and in the AR of the machine I have.


So if you bought a projector with an oval-shaped imaging panel, you would install an oval-shaped screen - even though there are 0 oval-shaped movies or TV shows to watch on it? Where is the "logic" in that?

It seems to me that you and Phil are being driven entirely by the AR of the machine, while others of us are driven by the AR of the content. This is a huge, irreconcilable philosophical difference.

The machine's job is to display the content. I care about the content. I don't care about the machine, beyond its ability to display that content well.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> So if you bought a projector with an oval-shaped imaging panel, you would install an oval-shaped screen - even though there are 0 oval-shaped movies or TV shows to watch on it? Where is the "logic" in that?
> 
> It seems to me that you and Phil are being driven entirely by the AR of the machine, while others of us are driven by the AR of the content. This is a huge, irreconcilable philosophical difference.
> 
> The machine's job is to display the content. I care about the content. I don't care about the machine, beyond its ability to display that content well.


Well I doubt I would buy a projector with an oval AR even if one were made, unless it was a big enough oval to contain enough pixels to provide what I wanted to display in the rectangular arrangements I wanted to use. One could mask off an oval just as easy as any other shapes. You do bring up and interesting point as most lens are circular the lamp source is circular etc. No one finds it odd to look thru a magnifying glass that’s round or a telescope that’s round. Most of the light in the light path in a projector is circular so I would think there is a lot of inefficiency in wasted light. It bothers some a lot more than it does me in the light loss taking 16:9 down to scope. Like I said above I’m more of a unit brightness person.
Quite the opposite for Phil and myself we may be driven by the machines capabilities and shape of image where you are driven by the shape of the screen. Not knowing what the shape of the media may be we are providing a match between the machine and the screen that includes everything that could ever be put thru the machine. It would be 100% imposable for any image to not fit on my screen. Can you say the same?


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> Can you say the same?


Of course he can. You could have your 1:1 screen you've talked about and with zoom/focus/placement make your 16:9 projector panel fit in there. If you had 1:1 material you could even fill that screen.

The panel or film stock has never limited commercial cinemas from using a different shaped screen. Home users have been doing this clear back to CRT projectors too.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Of course he can. You could have your 1:1 screen you've talked about and with zoom/focus/placement make your 16:9 projector panel fit in there. If you had 1:1 material you could even fill that screen.
> 
> The panel or film stock has never limited commercial cinemas from using a different shaped screen. Home users have been doing this clear back to CRT projectors too.


So you and Josh can play IMAX full width on your scope screens without any of the image being projected above or below the screen without blanking or masking? I know you don’t want to do that, but could you do that is the question.


----------



## BlueMan Jones

bud16415 said:


> @dschulz
> In my setup for all practical purposes I have an infinite area to project to no constraints in width or in height and no frame depicting any AR.


Wow!! That's a HUGE wall  Putting aside practical purposes for a minute, what would be the actual area of that wall....surely it can't be infinity X infinity. Is it 16 foot by 9 foot maybe


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## Philnick

Reminds me of the clothes drier that - because it doesn't have discrete settings but instead continuous adjustment - calls it "Infinite Heat." Ouch.


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## BlueMan Jones

Philnick said:


> Reminds me of the clothes drier that - because it doesn't have discrete settings but instead continuous adjustment - calls it "Infinite Heat." Ouch.


Is that a fusion reactor you got there......Nah, it's a Maytag


----------



## bud16415

BlueMan Jones said:


> Wow!! That's a HUGE wall  Putting aside practical purposes for a minute, what would be the actual area of that wall....surely it can't be infinity X infinity. Is it 16 foot by 9 foot maybe


My mother told me a million times not to exaggerate.

Lets say infinite in my space or anyone’s space for that matter would be 1.5X larger than the largest IMAX immersion I would ever want. In practical terms that doesn’t have to be that large if factor in seating distance into what is immersion. There is a limit IMO and others here as to when our eyes see a screen large enough to be considered cinematic. As Josh often points out you can’t press your face against a 32” TV and call it IMAX or any kind of cinema experence. We all may have different points where we feel a screen or image in my case is large enough and I feel in a totally blacked out room with perfect light control where nothing is giving away the size of the screen except how our eyes are spaced apart and how our eyes tell us size based on focal length. A screen of 120” will provide a similar feeling of immersion as the real thing. As Josh also reminds me a lot that nothing is going to replicate a 70’ tall IMAX screen or for that matter a 50’ tall scope screen, and he is correct. There is a point of good enough to try it at home, again IMHO. Is it IMAX? Of course not. Is it enough that I grab my armrests when I feel I’m about to fall 160 stories off the face of a building? Yes. Could I improve on my setup? For sure. I like to think of it in terms of percentages lets say I can provide myself 60% of an IMAX experence or even 50%. For me that is really something special. Maybe a goal would be to get to 70-80% would be an achievable goal with both sight and sound. I’m sure spending the $500,000 and letting IMAX do it for you might get you in the high 90s. In my case I have to drive well over 100 miles to find a real IMAX theater and even though I have a large number of IMAX 1.43 movies on disc and I can play them IMAX immersive I’m only really trying to watch the IMAX1.89 newer action movies, and they perhaps have a slightly lower bar.
My point was with the infinite talk is when you have more area to fill and no predetermined shape to fill than you could ever need. You take on a new mindset when not thinking about how things need to fit. The urge to go bigger is not there as is smaller than you feel is enough and you simply enjoy what you are watching with who you are watching it with. It is no different really than getting in your car and turning the music on. Then the wife gets in and gives you the look and cranks it down 50%. Who is to say what is correct?


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> So you and Josh can play IMAX full width on your scope screens without any of the image being projected above or below the screen without blanking or masking? I know you don’t want to do that, but could you do that is the question.


So it's a different question now. Got it. And you know the answer to it. If you feel like 1% of the content out there is something you want to set your room up for, by all means enjoy. Me deciding to show IMAX the same as 16:9 is no different than Phil doing the exact same thing.

Going back to the original thread, panel or film stock shape has never determined the shape of the screen theatrically and it's never had to do the same at home.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> So it's a different question now. Got it. And you know the answer to it. If you feel like 1% of the content out there is something you want to set your room up for, by all means enjoy. Me deciding to show IMAX the same as 16:9 is no different than Phil doing the exact same thing.
> 
> Going back to the original thread, panel or film stock shape has never determined the shape of the screen theatrically and it's never had to do the same at home.


I agree about film and screen AR. I also don’t agree with Phil’s method of presentation but I respect his right to enjoy it. Having done CIW or what ever we want to call it. More correctly it is fitting the image into the native frame of the projector as large as possible. In a world of 16:9 and Academy CIW is really CIH isn’t it.

But having done it for a long time CIW I understand that it is not all about proper vertical sizing. I can go to a theater and sit in the back row of the theater with one group of friends and watch a movie and the next week go with different friends and sit in the middle of the theater and enjoy both movies equally. You yourself have even said as much when you say I can watch a Nolan expander just fine using your 16:9 preset to watch the IMAX framing and still enjoying the movie. I think a lot of people doing CIW end up splitting the difference in immersion between flat and scope and that makes each maybe off only half as much.
We need to keep in mind the stuff we talk about here is not night and day changes it is working around perfecting something that is very much ok to start with. I feel going from CIW to CIH is a nice change going from CIH to variable is really a much smaller degree of improvement for those that wish to do it or feel it is improvement. The simple fact variable involves 4way masking if you feel you need masking is enough to make it impractical.


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## dschulz

Earlier in the thread Scope projectors were brought up. There are actually a handful of Barco Residential native Scope projectors. They're an interesting product, but very expensive and as far as I can tell not particularly successful or popular products.

Regarding commercial digital cinema: there are no native Scope projectors. Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) come in three flavors: Flat (1998 x 1080), Scope (2048 x 858) and Full Container which uses the full chip (2048 x 1080). All commercial cinemas have presets for Flat and Scope; the occasional odd aspect ratio movie, such as something in 2.00:1, always gives them fits. IMAX of course is using the Full Container. 

Scaling is not permitted in digital cinema, with the exception that projectors are allowed to have an anamorphic mode to scale a Scope DCP to use the full chip and then project through an anamorphic lens. In practice this is never done.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> You yourself have even said as much when you say I can watch a Nolan expander just fine using your 16:9 preset to watch the IMAX framing and still enjoying the movie.


I understand and accept that I'm not attempting to show IMAX as it is intended vs standard theatrical ratios.



bud16415 said:


> I think a lot of people doing CIW end up splitting the difference in immersion between flat and scope and that makes each maybe off only half as much.


CIW 16:9 is not "splitting the difference". Flat (1.85:1) loses a small fraction shown on a 16:9 (1.78:1 screen showing 1.85:1 material) screen, where scope is taking a HUGE hit in both vertical and horizontal immersion. I gained 75% more screen area with scope films on a scope setup and lost NOTHING when showing 1.85:1. The closest commonly used screen AR to splitting the difference is 2.00:1 in my opinion.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I understand and accept that I'm not attempting to show IMAX as it is intended vs standard theatrical ratios.
> 
> 
> 
> CIW 16:9 is not "splitting the difference". Flat (1.85:1) loses a small fraction shown on a 16:9 (1.78:1 screen showing 1.85:1 material) screen, where scope is taking a HUGE hit in both vertical and horizontal immersion. I gained 75% more screen area with scope films on a scope setup and lost NOTHING when showing 1.85:1. The closest commonly used screen AR to splitting the difference is 2.00:1 in my opinion.


Ok about 95% of the projectors sold do not have automated zoom, shift , focus abilities. So the people at least in the <3000 forum are all forced to do CIW except me that figured out a way to move the projector. Of those people doing CIW they take some time and try and figure out the size screen they want hopefully and the splitting the difference I speak of is in that selection process. Of course a more expensive projector with power zoom makes that selection a different thing and maybe 2.00:1 is splitting the difference in that world.

In the world of no zoom the process is different you pick a size and watch some streaming show like Game of Thrones and you say that looked amazing then you put in a scope movie and say that looks a little small so you go larger till it looks grand and amazing and then you go back to GoT and it is now just bigger than you think you like. You end up finding some point in the middle as a compromise splitting the difference.
About that time the wife comes in and says wait a minute I’m not coming down to the basement and watching anything that big so if you want me to watch with you we need to tone this back. So you compromise again leaving scope smaller than both of you may want but she will watch 16:9 ok. Then 6 months pass with the new screen you bought after she has watched 50-100 movies on it and she says, ya know we should have bought a larger screen. Then your football buddies come over for the big game and they say you have that huge wall why the heck didn’t you fill it up.


----------



## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> Ok about 95% of the projectors sold do not have automated zoom, shift , focus abilities.


About 95% of home theatres don't have projectors at all, they're just running large flat panel TVs. That doesn't mean it's not worth advocating for better ways of doing things, such as moving from an emissive display to a projector, a wider screen than 16:9, optimizing sight lines, etc etc.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> Ok about 95% of the projectors sold do not have automated zoom, shift , focus abilities. So the people at least in the <3000 forum are all forced to do CIW except me that figured out a way to move the projector. Of those people doing CIW they take some time and try and figure out the size screen they want hopefully and the splitting the difference I speak of is in that selection process. Of course a more expensive projector with power zoom makes that selection a different thing and maybe 2.00:1 is splitting the difference in that world.
> 
> In the world of no zoom the process is different you pick a size and watch some streaming show like Game of Thrones and you say that looked amazing then you put in a scope movie and say that looks a little small so you go larger till it looks grand and amazing and then you go back to GoT and it is now just bigger than you think you like. You end up finding some point in the middle as a compromise splitting the difference.
> About that time the wife comes in and says wait a minute I’m not coming down to the basement and watching anything that big so if you want me to watch with you we need to tone this back. So you compromise again leaving scope smaller than both of you may want but she will watch 16:9 ok. Then 6 months pass with the new screen you bought after she has watched 50-100 movies on it and she says, ya know we should have bought a larger screen. Then your football buddies come over for the big game and they say you have that huge wall why the heck didn’t you fill it up.


And if the statements I was responding to had anything to do with projector features, this would be meaningful. They weren't. CIW 16:9 is not splitting the difference. It's not even close.

I'd push for where you got your 95% statistic, but I'm honestly not interested. There are sub $3k projectors with lens memory (the Epson 5050 mentioned earlier fits here and is fantastic). This thread is about why you would or would not want to implement a CIH setup. That should attract people who either have the equipment to implement it or are considering upgrading to equipment that has the means to implement it. If you don't have the equipment needed and don't plan to, I don't know why you would be in here.


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## BlueMan Jones

I'm waiting for native scope panels before i'd upgrade to a scope screen. I'll probably be waiting forever. I could do it now if I wanted since i recently upgraded to the 5050, but I just don't like the idea of zooming out to eliminate black bars...and because Christopher Nolan is a thing. I find it interesting that when I was a kid, I was told that you wanted your movies with black bars. That it means they weren't pan and scanned to death. Now we've come full circle where we do everything we can to eliminate black bars.

Oh well


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Like I said above I’m more of a unit brightness person.


If you were really a unit brightness person, you would project a smaller image and not force it to fill your whole wall.



> Quite the opposite for Phil and myself we may be driven by the machines capabilities and shape of image where you are driven by the shape of the screen.


Phil in particular has no concern at all for the shape of the image and wants everything to fill his wall, edge to edge, 100% of the time. And you say _I'm_ supposedly the one driven by the screen? How does that work?


----------



## Josh Z

BlueMan Jones said:


> I just don't like the idea of zooming out to eliminate black bars...and because Christopher Nolan is a thing.


Realistically, how many Christopher Nolan movies do you actually like? IMO, Inception was the last watchable movie he made. Which means there's really only one Christopher Nolan VAR movie (The Dark Knight) of concern here.


----------



## jeahrens

BlueMan Jones said:


> I'm waiting for native scope panels before i'd upgrade to a scope screen. I'll probably be waiting forever. I could do it now if I wanted since i recently upgraded to the 5050, but I just don't like the idea of zooming out to eliminate black bars...and because Christopher Nolan is a thing. I find it interesting that when I was a kid, I was told that you wanted your movies with black bars. That it means they weren't pan and scanned to death. Now we've come full circle where we do everything we can to eliminate black bars.
> 
> Oh well


The thing is this is how they do it in digital theaters (they don't use scope AR panels either). You're seeing 1920x800 pixels for Blu Rays and 3840x1600 for UHD (give or take a few vertical pixels to account for 2.35:1 vs 2.40:1) no matter what AR screen you use. Unless they master things differently all a scope AR display panel would do is scale that same material to fill it. Be nice from a light output perspective, but that's about it. Just as an FYI I've seen an Epson 5040 fill a 158" scope screen beautifully (user is Carp in Kansas City) so you've got the tools if you ever decide to do anything differently.


----------



## BlueMan Jones

Josh Z said:


> Realistically, how many Christopher Nolan movies do you actually like? IMO, Inception was the last watchable movie he made. Which means there's really only one Christopher Nolan VAR movie (The Dark Knight) of concern here.


Dark Night, Interstellar, Memento, Tenet, Prestige, Inception. Honestly, Dunkirk is probably my least favorite. Honestly, i'm not against CIH screens at all. They would fit 90 percent of my library. My screen is large enough where even though I have the bars, it's still big enough for me to enjoy the sense of immersion. My Sanyo PLV-Z5 had a vertical stretch mode so that's how I eliminated the bars then...and yes, I know that's heresy to some, but it doesn't bother me. The 5050 doesn't have it for 4K material so I just live with the bars. My HT is blacked out enough to where it's not at all distracting...and it shouldn't be. I spent my late high school and all of my college years watching scope movies on a 45'' television. Why should it be so upsetting now to have black bars.


----------



## BlueMan Jones

jeahrens said:


> The thing is this is how they do it in digital theaters (they don't use scope AR panels either). You're seeing 1920x800 pixels for Blu Rays and 3840x1600 for UHD (give or take a few vertical pixels to account for 2.35:1 vs 2.40:1) no matter what AR screen you use. Unless they master things differently all a scope AR display panel would do is scale that same material to fill it. Be nice from a light output perspective, but that's about it. Just as an FYI I've seen an Epson 5040 fill a 158" scope screen beautifully (user is Carp in Kansas City) so you've got the tools if you ever decide to do anything differently.


Yep, I know. And i'll probably go scope at some point, just not high at all on the priority list.


----------



## Josh Z

BlueMan Jones said:


> Dark Night, Interstellar, Memento, Tenet, Prestige, Inception. Honestly, Dunkirk is probably my least favorite.


Memento, The Prestige, and Inception are straight 2.35:1. No VAR concerns there.

The Dark Knight Rises is where Nolan falls off a cliff for me and has yet to recover. I'm never going to rewatch Interstellar again, no matter what aspect ratio it is. YMMV.


----------



## BlueMan Jones

Josh Z said:


> Memento, The Prestige, and Inception are straight 2.35:1. No VAR concerns there.
> 
> The Dark Knight Rises is where Nolan falls off a cliff for me and has yet to recover. I'm never going to rewatch Interstellar again, no matter what aspect ratio it is. YMMV.


lol....Interstellar is my best Nolan film. To each his own I guess.


----------



## dschulz

BlueMan Jones said:


> lol....Interstellar is my best Nolan film. To each his own I guess.


Same. Not only my favorite Nolan film but inside my top 25 or so films of all time. I hold as a design goal for a great home theatre to be able to play Interstellar at reference clean and pleasant with no distortion.


----------



## jeahrens

BlueMan Jones said:


> Yep, I know. And i'll probably go scope at some point, just not high at all on the priority list.


Hey if you're happy, it doesn't have to be.


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> Same. Not only my favorite Nolan film but inside my top 25 or so films of all time. I hold as a design goal for a great home theatre to be able to play Interstellar at reference clean and pleasant with no distortion.


I like Interstellar, but top 25? Don't know if I'd go that high. Tough call though, as it's very good. Thankfully that whole Nolan set in 4K was mastered extremely well. I did find Tenet to be overly indulgent in many ways. The ingredients were there for a great film, but it just didn't quite come out of the oven right for me.


----------



## BlueMan Jones

dschulz said:


> Same. Not only my favorite Nolan film but inside my top 25 or so films of all time. I hold as a design goal for a great home theatre to be able to play Interstellar at reference clean and pleasant with no distortion.


With two F18 subs, I don't think my foundation could take the scene where they slingshot around the star played at reference levels.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> About 95% of home theatres don't have projectors at all, they're just running large flat panel TVs. That doesn't mean it's not worth advocating for better ways of doing things, such as moving from an emissive display to a projector, a wider screen than 16:9, optimizing sight lines, etc etc.


I agree and 99% of homes don’t have home theaters. Some have a 4:3 CRT TV with a converter box and most now have 32-48” TV sitting on a stand or screwed to the wall in the living room. The vast majority still are playing DVDs as their personal media of choice. Red Box rents way more DVDs than BD and don’t even offer 4kBD.

I don’t see what any of this has to do with CIH presentation as my point was if you buy a <2000 projector for your HT start up you won’t have the features to do CIH. Those are the people that might be reading this thread and wondering if CIH is a better method of presentation than CIW. Even though the title of the thread never mentions CIW. The wide belief of the author of the thread is clearly there are two methods of presentation only CIW and CIH. Nothing else is an option. Of course given those two options I would pick CIH. I have said it a thousand times and likely Phil would pick CIW. There are many other options though that go un-talked about.
If one thinks compromise is not used in the selection of a CIW screen then they have not tried to set one up in a long time. Compromise by its very nature is searching for middle ground and that is exactly how most people implement CIW.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> If you were really a unit brightness person, you would project a smaller image and not force it to fill your whole wall.
> 
> 
> 
> Phil in particular has no concern at all for the shape of the image and wants everything to fill his wall, edge to edge, 100% of the time. And you say _I'm_ supposedly the one driven by the screen? How does that work?


I never thought I would say this but this is getting old. You are actually wearing me down to your level and beating me with experience as they say.

Let me go on record officially so you can quote this post over and over.

What I like to do is project everything as large as humanly possible and then I like to move my chair as close to the screen as possible and watch like that. My head casts a shadow on the screen so I’m thinking of going to UST to solve that problem. My ideal screen would be a 250” IMAX screen and I will sit 1’ from the screen. I will need at least a 250 lumen projector though to do this with a .2 gain screen. My second row for everyone else will be 20’ back and they will just have to look around me.
OK now it is out there what I really like.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I don’t see what any of this has to do with CIH presentation as my point was if you buy a <2000 projector for your HT start up you won’t have the features to do CIH. Those are the people that might be reading this thread and wondering if CIH is a better method of presentation than CIW.


I guess I give people enough credit to figure out what is being discussed and see if it has relevance to them. If their equipment can't do it and they aren't considering an upgrade to gear that can, wouldn't the obvious answer be to move on to something relevant to them? If they are upgrading to equipment that opens this option (or considering it) and have questions, then by all means ask away.



bud16415 said:


> Even though the title of the thread never mentions CIW. The wide belief of the author of the thread is clearly there are two methods of presentation only CIW and CIH.


I'd like to see a quote where Josh says this. His acknowledgment of 2.00:1 screens seems to contradict your assertion.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I'd like to see a quote where Josh says this. His acknowledgment of 2.00:1 screens seems to contradict your assertion.


I don’t know if I can find you a quote where Josh says there are only two methods of presentation, but I can find you a hundred where he says my way is to play everything as big as possible.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I don’t know if I can find you a quote where Josh says there are only two methods of presentation, but I can find you a hundred where he says my way is to play everything as big as possible.


I was talking about Phil this time. You see where I said "Phil in particular"?


----------



## Philnick

CIW only compromises scope if it shows scope films smaller than what you could show if you installed the largest possible scope screen in your theater.

If a scope film is shown the same size as it would be on a scope screen, there's no compromise.

All that remains are the "bitter-ender" complaints that using that screen to show 1.85:1 films the same width, and 16x9 films 94% that width, somehow "shrinks" scope by allowing things not designed for custom IMAX theaters to be shown larger than their beloved scope films.

Of course, there are so few of those old IMAX houses that IMAX has rebranded itself to include 1.89:1 films, which are close enough to 1.85:1 (and 16x9) to be functionally the same.

You're free to say, "That's not really IMAX," to which someone will undoubtedly someday reply, "Then you're not really Josh Z."

Scope has been rebranded over and over again from 2.76:1 to 2.35:1 to 2.39:1. Am I entitled to say that 2.39:1 isn't really scope?


----------



## fatherom

Phil and Josh are going to both be in some nursing home somewhere decades from now still going back and forth, saying the same things over and over.

Seriously, guys, let it go...it's all been said (SOOOOOOO many times, over and over)


----------



## bud16415

fatherom said:


> Phil and Josh are going to both be in some nursing home somewhere decades from now still going back and forth, saying the same things over and over.
> 
> Seriously, guys, let it go...it's all been said (SOOOOOOO many times, over and over)


I like how you think. I will be the guy showing the latest Nolan expander to the rest of the seniors in the game room.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> CIW only compromises scope if it shows scope films smaller than what you could show if you installed the largest possible scope screen in your theater.


CIH only compromises 16:9 if it shows 16:9 smaller than what you could show if you installed the largest possible 16:9 screen in your theater.

You see how easy it is to turn that around?

Still waiting for you to answer this question:

If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else? 

You can't do it, can you? Because you know that there is nothing special about those formats that demands larger image size than anything else, and answering honestly would reveal you to be a terrible hypocrite.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> CIH only compromises 16:9 if it shows 16:9 smaller than what you could show if you installed the largest possible 16:9 screen in your theater.
> You see how easy it is to turn that around?
> Still waiting for you to answer this question:
> If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?
> 
> You can't do it, can you? Because you know that there is nothing special about those formats that demands larger image size than anything else, and answering honestly would reveal you to be a terrible hypocrite.


I have no desire to use any greater or lesser magnification for any aspect ratio than any other.

I'm a believer not in Constant Image Height or Constant Image Width but Constant Image Magnification.

If that results in some formats being taller or wider than others, that's the filmmakers' choice.

I'm not exalting one format over another - I'm giving them all equal treatment, except that I'm _not_ giving 16x9 and 4:3 films the additional 6 2/3% magnification I give 1.85:1 and wider films, because that additional magnification would shave a significant amount of image off of the top and bottom of 16x9 and 4:3 films, which already use the full height of the imaging panels in my projector.

It's not my idea to show one format larger than another - it's the choice of the director of the film to make their film the size and shape they want.

PS As to your opening challenge, if you installed a scope screen as tall as the largest 16x9 screen that you could light up in your theater, it wouldn't compromise 16x9 presentation - fully agreed.

But I don't think you'd accept that was a CIH setup, because even after enlarging the scope image with my projector's 6 2/3% zoom function, while the scope image is 6 2/3% wider than 16x9, it's only 80% as tall.

That's my setup, by the way - I haven't framed either aspect ratio on the screen, because to frame it for 16x9 would prevent enlarging the image for scope, and to frame it for scope would require showing 16x9 or 1.85:1 material reduced in size to fit the 80% height restriction a scope screen would impose - violating the premise of your challenge: having the largest 16x9 screen possible.

Using maximum magnification avoids compromising any aspect ratio's presentation - it's putting a frame on a screen that turns it into a Procustean bed that compromises any other aspect ratio.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Using maximum magnification avoids compromising any aspect ratio's presentation


It sure can if your goal is theatrical presentation. And in your case roughly half of the films you watch are being compromised. I know you don't care and that's fine.



Philnick said:


> - it's putting a frame on a screen that turns it into a Procustean bed that compromises any other aspect ratio.


Seriously how does this keep getting recycled? Just because you have painted patch on the wall doesn't make it this infinite palette. The patch has a width and height to it just like a screen. It's neither better or worse, it just lacks a border. It's just silly to think that not putting a border around the image area somehow makes it "special".


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## bud16415

It is odd to me that so few of us view AR as an artistic feature of an image rather than a relative size. Movie theaters from the very first one 100 years ago have provided for variable immersion.

The director of the movie has a strong desire you watch it in the AR they intended it to be. They have zero desire what distance you view their movie from, immersion. I have never heard a director say they require you to sit in the same seat to watch a flat movie they made one year as the scope movie they made the next year. They have not a care in the world about personal immersion beyond maybe you sit in one of the seats prescribed by SMPTE and that allows for a wide range of immersion.

Now is there some logic to sitting in the same row and viewing CIH? I think there is. The directors understand theater design and the concept of composition as Josh often demonstrates. They are likely more aware now that they are tasked with making scope safe IMAX movies. They are also likely aware that in today’s world a large amount of their revenue stream will be coming from the home market where the SMPTE standards are out the window.

Listen to any directors talk about the evil days of pan n scan. Back when TV sets were 4:3 and only 25” they were very vocal that the movie had to remain in the AR it was made in and their intention. They allowed it to go to TV and be very under-immersive because their goal is foremost maintaining the artistic quality of the AR. It was not about size or relative size someone would watch wheel of fortune on their TV. It was about the shape and the composition within that shape.

When Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper it was like a scope movie the way it was framed. He intended it to have an artistic appeal that way and he could have cared less where the viewer would stand to view it or if the viewer had to turn their head to view it. He did the Mona Lisa as a half length portrait framed more like an iPhone picture and again the AR was part of the artistic method. There is no real expectations by da Vinci how immersive the painting should be viewed at. 

Let me turn the topic to TV and in particular “Prestige TV” as I know many here will conceder some of it worthy of HT presentation. We even have threads here keeping track of TV shows with ARs other than 16:9.
What exactly are these directors thinking? They know their made for TV movie or series is not intended to be shown to SMPTE standards in a theater. The show is going straight to the homes of millions and will be played on TVs of millions and if it is done in 2.0:1 they will see it with black bars. Over half the commercials I see today are shot in scope. What are those directors thinking? I believe they are thinking there is a beauty and an artistic reason for that AR even knowing they will be watched less immersive by almost everyone.
AR is AR and immersion is immersion and they can be related but in not relating them there is no harm.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> It is odd to me that so few of us view AR as an artistic feature of an image rather than a relative size. Movie theaters from the very first one 100 years ago have provided for variable immersion.


You're entitled to your opinion. However theater construction does not mirror your "these are just shapes with no correlation" nor do statements made by film directors or industry sites that show ratio comparisons. Granted this is commercial theater presentation of standard aspect ratios. No has to do this at home, but the idea these ratios exist in a vacuum is false when talking theatrical presentation of standard ratios.

If your main use case is TV, gaming, or PC use then you can make a case for a TV AR screen. Or if you just plain prefer it or don't really care about theatrical presentation then do what makes you happy. Again since a scope screen should not be compromising narrower contents immersion, "prestige TV" looks fantastic.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Again since a scope screen should not be compromising narrower contents immersion, "prestige TV" looks fantastic.


Exactly my point. Prestige TV looks great. I agree and it was not constructed to mate up with any motion picture convention. It looks great because you like it that way.

I could make a case saying TV is supposed to be smaller and compare every TV made in the last 50 years to every movie theater built and say see you have a 120” scope screen but stranger things should only be shown at 50” max. There is no logic to that. You play it the size that feels correct for you and in your case CIH is that.
If you polled 10,000 people showing them movies in CIH and CIW my guess is 9,000 would like CIH. So without a doubt it is a good method. Now the question would be if we threw in CIA? Or a 2.0:1 screen approach?


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## jeahrens

If TV is your yardstick, then this discussion is probably not terribly relevant to you. Any of the presentation methods that can show TV AR material with a pleasing amount of vertical immersion will be acceptable to the masses.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I have no desire to use any greater or lesser magnification for any aspect ratio than any other.
> 
> I'm a believer not in Constant Image Height or Constant Image Width but Constant Image Magnification.


Which is larger on your screen, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1?



> If that results in some formats being taller or wider than others, that's the filmmakers' choice.


Yes, it is the filmmaker's choice to compose a 2.35:1 movie to be the same height as 1.85:1 but wider. Yet you flagrantly disregard that choice.



> It's not my idea to show one format larger than another - it's the choice of the director of the film to make their film the size and shape they want.


The cognitive dissonance here is staggering.



> But I don't think you'd accept that was a CIH setup, because even after enlarging the scope image with my projector's 6 2/3% zoom function, while the scope image is 6 2/3% wider than 16x9, it's only 80% as tall.
> 
> That's my setup, by the way - I haven't framed either aspect ratio on the screen, because to frame it for 16x9 would prevent enlarging the image for scope, and to frame it for scope would require showing 16x9 or 1.85:1 material reduced in size to fit the 80% height restriction a scope screen would impose - violating the premise of your challenge: having the largest 16x9 screen possible.


C'mon. I have the same projector you do (or one model up). Your projector has a 17:9 panel. That's about a hair's breadth different than 16:9. Let's not pretend you're doing Constant Image Area. It's nowhere close to that.


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## Philnick

Philnick said:


> . . .
> Using maximum magnification avoids compromising any aspect ratio's presentation - it's putting a frame on a screen that turns it into a Procustean bed that compromises any other aspect ratio.





jeahrens said:


> It sure can if your goal is theatrical presentation. And in your case roughly half of the films you watch are being compromised. I know you don't care and that's fine.
> . . .


Please be specific. How does showing a scope image at the maximum possible size possible in a theater "compromise" it?

"Compromised" in the sense you're using it means made worse than it could be.

So I will not accept any comparison to showing anything else as relevant to whether scope is "compromised."

The only thing "compromised" by showing other aspect ratios at a similar magnification is not the presentation of a scope film itself - which is being shown as well as possible - but only your psychological investment in calling it the best format.

However, a scope-shape screen forces one to significantly reduce the magnification of other aspect ratios, really - not metaphysically - compromising their presentation - and don't tell me "don't believe your lyin' eyes - those films are supposed to be smaller" - since that's the intent of the scope filmmakers, not the intent of the makers of the non-scope films.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Please be specific. How does showing a scope image at the maximum possible size possible in a theater "compromise" it?


You have a 17:9 screen/wall area. The height of that area represents 100% of your vertical immersion. Films wider than that ratio are not getting wider and are taking less of your vertical immersion than intended. The wider the film the smaller it is.



Philnick said:


> The only thing "compromised" by showing other aspect ratios at a similar magnification is not the presentation of a scope film itself - which is being shown as well as possible - but only your psychological investment in calling it the best format.


Where have I called any theatrical format "best"? That's simply not the case. All I've said is that my goal is to get the best presentation of film in my room. I admit that the 1% of IMAX content out there is not best served by my choice, but I feel the other 99% is.



Philnick said:


> However, enforcing a scope-shape screen forces significantly reducing the magnification of other aspect ratios - compromising their presentation


The magnification? Heh that's different. Yeah a wider aspect ratio film shown properly vs. a narrower one on the same projector will need a different zoom/lens position. I really don't know why that would be bad. Just to be clear my zoom/focus/shift is the same for the scope screen showing 1.85:1 films as it was on the 16:9 screen, but somehow this is still somehow bad right?

Nope it doesn't compromise presentation of any film outside of IMAX. Which is the point.


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## Josh Z

Phil, quick quiz:

1) Which of these two movies do you think is intended by the artists to be displayed larger than the other?

Clerks (Shot on 16mm. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9)
Journey to the South Pacific (Shot on IMAX 15/70. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9.)

2) Which of those movies is actually displayed larger than the other in your home theater?

Trick question! They're both projected the same size in your home theater. How do you reconcile that with your alleged adherence to the wishes of the artists?

Do you see no difference between a low-budget, grainy 16mm film like Clerks and a genuine IMAX production? Do you think they're both meant to be displayed at equal magnification? 

How many IMAX theaters did Clerks play in? Oh, that's right: zero!

Look at the composition of shots in both movies. Clerks has a lot of very tight close-ups that will make the actors look monstrously huge on your screen. Journey to the South Pacific pulls the camera back farther from the subjects, which will leave people looking much smaller on your screen than those in Clerks. Do you think that's what the makers of the South Pacific film wanted when they shot it in IMAX - a format whose top selling point is size above all else?

Can you acknowledge that relative size of the projected image is in fact a concern that filmmakers take into consideration?

If you can finally at least acknowledge that IMAX is meant to be larger than other formats, is it really beyond comprehension to consider the possibly that relative scale may also be a factor in other photography formats? Like, oh I don't know, scope being intentionally larger than 1.85:1?


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> 1) Which of these two movies do you think is intended by the artists to be displayed larger than the other?
> 
> Clerks (Shot on 16mm. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9)
> Journey to the South Pacific (Shot on IMAX 15/70. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9.)



Well I think this is a trick question because if someone answers Journey to the South Pacific should be larger then you will jump them with, “No because there is no such thing as IMAX at home.” “Clerks can be shown at home because it is not IMAX.”


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> C'mon. I have the same projector you do (or one model up). Your projector has a 17:9 panel. That's about a hair's breadth different than 16:9. Let's not pretend you're doing Constant Image Area. It's nowhere close to that.


On a 100” screen it is about 3”.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> If TV is your yardstick, then this discussion is probably not terribly relevant to you. Any of the presentation methods that can show TV AR material with a pleasing amount of vertical immersion will be acceptable to the masses.


To paraphrase Josh: Should Wheel of Fortune then be given the same height as Saving Private Ryan? Or should these two things reflect equal importance?


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Phil, quick quiz:
> 
> 1) Which of these two movies do you think is intended by the artists to be displayed larger than the other?
> 
> Clerks (Shot on 16mm. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9)
> Journey to the South Pacific (Shot on IMAX 15/70. Aspect ratio on Blu-ray 16:9.)
> 
> 2) Which of those movies is actually displayed larger than the other in your home theater?
> 
> Trick question! They're both projected the same size in your home theater. How do you reconcile that with your alleged adherence to the wishes of the artists?
> 
> Do you see no difference between a low-budget, grainy 16mm film like Clerks and a genuine IMAX production? Do you think they're both meant to be displayed at equal magnification?
> 
> How many IMAX theaters did Clerks play in? Oh, that's right: zero!
> 
> Look at the composition of shots in both movies. Clerks has a lot of very tight close-ups that will make the actors look monstrously huge on your screen. Journey to the South Pacific pulls the camera back farther from the subjects, which will leave people looking much smaller on your screen than those in Clerks. Do you think that's what the makers of the South Pacific film wanted when they shot it in IMAX - a format whose top selling point is size above all else?
> 
> Can you acknowledge that relative size of the projected image is in fact a concern that filmmakers take into consideration?
> 
> If you can finally at least acknowledge that IMAX is meant to be larger than other formats, is it really beyond comprehension to consider the possibly that relative scale may also be a factor in other photography formats? Like, oh I don't know, scope being intentionally larger than 1.85:1?


1) To "compromise" the presentation of a film means to show it looking and/or sounding worse than your theater is capable of.

There is no other interpretation of that word that's anything other than a theological insistence that you like to have scope films look bigger than normal films. I asked a simple question that you can't answer honestly without admitting that showing a scope film as large as my projector can in my theater can in no way compromise it. Talking about comparisons to other kinds of films is rationalization - to use a polite word for it.

2) You never admit that the makers of non-scope films also want to have their films seen as well as possible. Before you say that I'm violating _their_ artistic intent by showing their films larger than scope, _ask them_ if their film should be zoomed down to 80% of the size my theater is capable of, just to make sure they're no taller than a scope movie.

That's a discussion you never seem to be willing to engage in. _All you say is that the makers of the scope films want them to be bigger_ - and never consider what the makers of the "ordinary" films want, since those film makers clearly don't matter to you.

The desire of the makers of scope films to outclass normal films in projection size doesn't override the artistic intentions of the makers of normal films, and thus to how normal films should be shown.

And the desire of the owners of scope screens to make everything fit on their screens is in last place in terms of priority.

Choosing an inflexible screen shape does not give you any right to tell others to watch normal films small to avoid hurting your feelings.

There were giants of film making before the introduction of cinemascope, and there are excellent film makers working in 1.85:1 and narrower aspect ratios today. They would be horrified to read your opinions. By the way, where is it that you're published, other than here?


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> . . .
> C'mon. I have the same projector you do (or one model up). Your projector has a 17:9 panel. That's about a hair's breadth different than 16:9. Let's not pretend you're doing Constant Image Area. It's nowhere close to that.


On my screen, 16x9 is 72" tall by 10' 8" wide. 17x9 is 72" tall by 11' 4" wide. That's eight inches wider - a pretty broad hair.

And I never said I do Constant Image Area, Constant Image Height, or Constant Image Width.

I do *Constant Lens Magnification*, augmented for aspect ratios 1.85:1 and wider by the projector's 6 2/3% digital zoom.

So 16x9 films are shown 6' tall but only 10' 8" wide, while scope films are shown typically, 5' 10" tall and 11' 4" wide ("This! is cinerama" - sorry, couldn't resist.)

Have you watched the BBC TV series _Sherlock_ starring Benedict Cumberbach and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson in modern-day London? (You can watch it through Amazon Prime.) That's an amazingly cinematic 4K production, with thirteen 90 minute mini-movies framed in 16x9. (One of them, _The Abominable Bride_, set in 1895 with the same cast, ran between the third and fourth seasons.) It would be a sin to shrink them down simply because it's "just a TV show" and not worthy of full immersion.


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## fatherom

“Constant lens magnification”

LMAO


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## fatherom

If people could speak in terms of diagonal inches for screen sizes (like most people do) instead of “so many feet tall” and “so many feet wide” that would help a lot, as well.


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## Philnick

@fatherom Diagonal measurements are a relic of old television sets, which advertised the diagonal because it was the largest measurement.

But when dealing with differing aspect ratios, it is meaningless.

Only those wedded to a single aspect ratio find the diagonal meaningful - though it is once again the largest measurement!


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## dschulz

I found this article to make a pretty good case for CIH: Widescreen Explained: What’s with the Black Bars?


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> @fatherom Diagonal measurements are a relic of old television sets, which advertised the diagonal because it was the largest measurement.
> 
> But when dealing with differing aspect ratios, it is meaningless.
> 
> Only those wedded to a single aspect ratio find the diagonal meaningful - though it is once again the largest measurement!


Wow you really do just make up whatever justification to suit your argument. Go to any screen manufacturer website and you’ll see the screens expressed in diagonal inches. Definitely not in feet. 

All this “my image is this many feet tall” comes across as a desperate attempt to impress. And it’s not working.


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## dschulz

Awhile ago I listed some of my findings for how the screening rooms used professionally in Hollywood are set up. Many are 4-way masking, with Scope significantly wider than Flat and Flat a little taller than Scope. None are CIW.

I want to make particular note of the Academy's Goldwyn Theater. This is the flagship cinema in LA (well, Beverly Hills if you want to be pedantic) - it is supervised by the Academy's Theatre Standards Committee. It has always been one of the finest, calibrated-to-within-an-inch-of-its life rooms in the world. This is the room where films submitted for Academy Awards consideration for VFX and Sound awards screen for the "bake-offs" which determine what films will be nominated in those categories. Also everything nominated in all categories plays there during awards season, for voting members to have a chance to see them when they have opportunity. Happily the theatre is also often open to the public for film screenings, and I certainly encourage you to visit when visiting LA.

The Goldwyn has 4-way masking. It can adjust its screen size for any format, or a Powerpoint presentation, or live videoconference. Standard motion pictures, Flat and Scope, are played at CIH, even though there is ample screen area to adjust the masking to make Flat larger. This is in part due to the sound people wanting to have the acoustic center of the speakers at 2/3 screen height, and keeping CIH keeps that specification nailed. They do play Academy ratio films somewhat taller than that CIH area.

Filmmakers do absolutely understand that Scope is larger than Flat. That doesn't mean you have to play it that way, and there are all sorts of considerations that go into the setup of any given screening room, private or commercial. It does mean, however, that it is asinine to claim that choosing to show Flat content smaller than Scope is anything other than perfectly in line with bog-standard professional projection practice.


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## Philnick

I've always considered bogs to be rather uncomfortable locations. 

"Hip deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on." - Pete Seeger


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## Philnick

fatherom said:


> Wow you really do just make up whatever justification to suit your argument. Go to any screen manufacturer website and you’ll see the screens expressed in diagonal inches. Definitely not in feet.
> 
> All this “my image is this many feet tall” comes across as a desperate attempt to impress. And it’s not working.


No one here is citing as small a number as 72" (6 feet) but me. 

The scope crowd is bragging about 100" to 155" diagonals - so who's trying to impress?


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## dschulz

The 2/3 height thing is interesting - it tells you where the sound engineers expect the dialogue to be coming from most of the time. And that makes sense - picture a generic scene in a movie with humans onscreen, and in the main their heads are towards the top of the screen. True for both Flat and Scope, as you can see from Josh's screen grabs. Keeping the height constant makes sure the speakers are in the right position for both Flat & Scope. 

The Dolby standards for a theatrical mixing room stipulate that the acoustic center of the LCR speakers be at that same 2/3 height if the screen is CIH, varying its width between 1.85 and 2.39.

If the mixing room is CIW (which is permitted) then the requirement is to put the acoustic center exactly in between 2/3 height for Scope and 2/3 height for Flat. I leave you draw your own conclusions about which setup is actually optimal in terms of that speaker placement.


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> No one here is citing as small a number as 72" (6 feet) but me.
> 
> The scope crowd is bragging about 100" to 155" diagonals - so who's trying to impress?


The only screen sizes I’ve noticed on this thread are yours, maybe for the very reason that you’re using non vernacular units of measure to describe them, and it stands out. 

I live in Canada, and could express my screen size in centimeters, but I would never do that because I can “read the room” and see how everyone else (including most of the industry) is doing it.


----------



## fatherom

Philnick said:


> No one here is citing as small a number as 72" (6 feet) but me.
> 
> The scope crowd is bragging about 100" to 155" diagonals - so who's trying to impress?


You’re also mixing measurements (dimensions). The 100” to 155” crowd is talking diagonal and you’re not.


----------



## Philnick

fatherom said:


> You’re also mixing measurements (dimensions). The 100” to 155” crowd is talking diagonal and you’re not.


That's right - except in my signature (where I let the diagonal-obsessed compare my image to theirs) - I keep my discussion to more meaningful measurements, where resort to the Pythagorean Theorem isn't required to figure out how big the picture is at different aspect ratios. 

Yes, my scope image is as big as most of the CIH crowd's - which is why I find their insistence that I'm somehow "compromising" my scope image so nonsensical - and I let them know that in my signature, but measures of height and width are much more meaningful to me, and if you're honest with yourself, to you.


----------



## dschulz

Philnick said:


> That's right - except in my signature (where I let the diagonal-obsessed compare my image to theirs) - I keep my discussion to more meaningful measurements, where resort to the Pythagorean Theorem isn't required to figure out how big the picture is at different aspect ratios.
> 
> Yes, my scope image is as big as most of the CIH crowd's - which is why I find their insistence that I'm somehow "compromising" my scope image so nonsensical - and I let them know that in my signature, but measures of height and width are much more meaningful to me, and if you're honest with yourself, to you.


I don't think your Scope image is compromised, I just think your Flat image is too big. But it's not my room, so what I think doesn't matter! But I think most filmmakers visiting your room would be perfectly happy if you showed their Flat movie CIH within your Scope area and not feel particularly put upon.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> Wow you really do just make up whatever justification to suit your argument. Go to any screen manufacturer website and you’ll see the screens expressed in diagonal inches. Definitely not in feet.


Not that I really want to side with Phil, but measuring screen size by the diagonal really only works for 16:9. Otherwise, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison when you compare screens of different aspect ratios. A 100" 2.35:1 screen is smaller than a 100" 16:9 screen. The comparable sized 2.35:1 screen would be 125" diagonal.

Most people (even laymen) have an intuitive concept of how large a 60" 16:9 TV is, and can fairly easily extrapolate how much larger a 100" or 120" or 150" screen would be relative to that. But when those measurements pertain to screens of different aspect ratios, that becomes really confusing for the reader/listener to grasp during a conversation, and requires doing quite a bit of math to keep everything straight.

Measuring by the width or the height of the screen makes for an easier basis of comparison.


----------



## Josh Z

dschulz said:


> I don't think your Scope image is compromised, I just think your Flat image is too big. But it's not my room, so what I think doesn't matter! But I think most filmmakers visiting your room would be perfectly happy if you showed their Flat movie CIH within your Scope area and not feel particularly put upon.


Phil strikes me as the kind of guy who'd complain about being so terribly "width limited" even if his wall had a good 15 feet of width to work with.

_"Oh, woe is me. A 2.35:1 screen would only be 6 feet tall! But my wall is 8 feet tall. Look at all those precious inches I could be using!"_


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Phil strikes me as the kind of guy who'd complain about being so terribly "width limited" even if his wall had a good 15 feet of width to work with.
> 
> _"Oh, woe is me. A 2.35:1 screen would only be 6 feet tall! But my wall is 8 feet tall. Look at all those precious inches I could be using!"_


That comes from out of nowhere. 

I'm not complaining about my theater - the complaints come from those who read my description of it and think they know better than me what my setup should be.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> You never admit that the makers of non-scope films also want to have their films seen as well as possible. Before you say that I'm violating _their_ artistic intent by showing their films larger than scope, _ask them_ if their film should be zoomed down to 80% of the size my theater is capable of, just to make sure they're no taller than a scope movie.


Again, Phil, look at the types of movies being made in each aspect ratio. When directors make big, epic productions with a lot of scale and spectacle, the types of movies that demand to be seen on the biggest screens possible, which aspect ratio are they far more likely to use, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1?



> That's a discussion you never seem to be willing to engage in. _All you say is that the makers of the scope films want them to be bigger_ - and never consider what the makers of the "ordinary" films want, since those film makers clearly don't matter to you.


If the makers of those "ordinary" films had wanted a larger image canvas to paint on, they would've shot in scope. That option is available to them.



> The desire of the makers of scope films to outclass normal films in projection size doesn't override the artistic intentions of the makers of normal films, and thus to how normal films should be shown.
> 
> Choosing an inflexible screen shape does not give you any right to tell others to watch normal films small to avoid hurting your feelings.


I love your passive-aggressive use of "normal" here, as if to imply that 1.85:1 is the _correct _way to make movies, unlike all those "abnormal" 2.35:1 movies made by freaks and weirdos.

I do not watch anything _small _on my screen. 16:9 content is exactly the size it should be. 2.35:1 content is the same height, but wider, as explicitly intended by the people who made it.



> There were giants of film making before the introduction of cinemascope, and there are excellent film makers working in 1.85:1 and narrower aspect ratios today.


Yes, *NARROWER *aspect ratios! Not taller aspect ratios. Narrower. That is the correct word.



> They would be horrified to read your opinions.


Many of those giants of Hollywood's Golden Age, if they continued working past the 1950s, made movies in scope later in their careers. Do you think they expected those to be projected smaller than their older movies?



> By the way, where is it that you're published, other than here?


Ooh, burn!

Tell you what, Phil. If the company you work for ever has a catastrophic budget cut and lays you off, please let me know so that I can rub your nose in it. Thanks much.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> I found this article to make a pretty good case for CIH: Widescreen Explained: What’s with the Black Bars?


Good read. I found it interesting they didn’t mention IMAX, but they did mention a couple cases where a screen sized like IMAX would be an option one being sports. I have long felt the same.
Not sure when the article was written? It seems to me that technology and media have begun to overrun what many conceder the norm of what a HT is used for.


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## bud16415

To address this size talk stuff I agree with Phil when comparing two screens of different ARs the diagonal measurement means very little. If height and width are hard to follow screen areas would be a better comparison as it factors in both.

Even screen area is mostly meaningless because we don’t know seating distance and relative immersion is what we really are talking about, that and human vision.

Here are a few observations.

Phil’s room is not width limited for CIH all he would have to do is move his seating forward and in terms of immersion. Every room can handle CIH.

In designing a commercial CIH theater many rows of seats factor into the design even though every seat will have the same vertical immersion for both scope and flat. This makes the assumption that there is some magic relationship in the AR of 2.35:1 that it fills your height and width requirement equally at the same time. When a person selects their seat in a CIH theater do they do that based on height only? I’m not so sure. People may well pick the same seat in a CIH theater for both flat and scope, but going between a flat and a scope theater would chose a different immersion. I also think there is a difference person to person with regards to what point 2.35 fills their horizontal vision relative to vertical.
This is obvious if you ever get to a first come first serve theater early and sit in the back and watch people file in and select their seats.

Home theater for most does not have these options for seating but has the advantage of no competition for seating and if well designed the perfect seat every time although no selection for someone different.

So if home theater is to be fixed with no adjustments to suit one person’s tastes only. Then why should any of us feel we have a lock on what someone else personal tastes are? That’s the main difference between HT and commercial theater. CIH works best when a wide selection of immersions are possible. When only one immersion is possible at best CIH should be a suggestion not a rule.
For the above reasoning and logic I went variable. Phil could come over to my house and watch movies with immersions he likes and I could go to his house and do the same.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> I found this article to make a pretty good case for CIH: Widescreen Explained: What’s with the Black Bars?


And at eight minutes into the embedded video version, the presenter says that using a 16x9 screen as wide as the widest scope screen you can fit (or fill) can give you "the best of both worlds." (Be careful - you might be "assimilated.")

He makes no mention of VAR or IMAX films, which would of course, make good use of the taller screen - but note that he never says that this taller screen in any way "compromises" one's experience of scope. (That's purely the CIH camp's overlay on the discussion.) In fact, he says that scope images would be just as big this way as on a scope screen. He also talks in terms of width and height - not just diagonals - and cites sizes in feet as well as in inches

My 17x9 setup (to match my projector's imaging grid) takes this to the next level, by allowing the largest possible images for VAR and IMAX as well as for scope, with the presentation of none of the formats being compromised in order to optimize the setup for another format.


----------



## dschulz

Well yes, and I have quite openly embraced the concept that if IMAX is important to you, or an oversized screen for any other purpose, then a giant screen + 4-way masking is the way to go. What the article does convey, though, is that if you have a Scope screen of appropriate size then Flat content is not in fact too small but is just right. And since 95% of what I watch is either Scope or Flat features, or television varying between 16:9 and Scope, an acoustically transparent CIH Scope screen, with side masking, with the speakers behind the screen at exactly the right height and angles relative to the main listening position is a highly optimized solution.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> Well yes, and I have quite openly embraced the concept that if IMAX is important to you, or an oversized screen for any other purpose, then a giant screen + 4-way masking is the way to go. What the article does convey, though, is that if you have a Scope screen of appropriate size then Flat content is not in fact too small but is just right. And since 95% of what I watch is either Scope or Flat features, or television varying between 16:9 and Scope, an acoustically transparent CIH Scope screen, with side masking, with the speakers behind the screen at exactly the right height and angles relative to the main listening position is a highly optimized solution.


I'm happy for you. We each have our own preferred setup.

Since this thread is specifically for helping folks decide whether or not CIH is appropriate for them, I trust that I won't be criticized for describing the advantages of my own approach for giving a theater the flexibility to show VAR and IMAX films taller than scope, as well as showing 1.85 and 1.78 taller than scope when desired.

Let's not get "bogged down" in arguments about how some types of films are "supposed" to be projected at higher magnifications than others.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> Well yes, and I have quite openly embraced the concept that if IMAX is important to you, or an oversized screen for any other purpose, then a giant screen + 4-way masking is the way to go. What the article does convey, though, is that if you have a Scope screen of appropriate size then Flat content is not in fact too small but is just right. And since 95% of what I watch is either Scope or Flat features, or television varying between 16:9 and Scope, an acoustically transparent CIH Scope screen, with side masking, with the speakers behind the screen at exactly the right height and angles relative to the main listening position is a highly optimized solution.


I agree totally with your post here.

The one item you didn’t address is how do you deal with people that join you to watch a movie in terms of your liked immersion and theirs? I will give an example.

In my case my love of movies and frequent use of my theaters has brought me to a point I like immersion more than many of my friends and family. I of course foremost want my theater to meet my needs for immersion. I have a nephew that also likes a high immersion level and we watch quite a bit together. The others that live with me like less and a couple find my level to be even a bit of a strain on them. I actually don’t mind dialing back immersion for them because a great deal of the time I have already watched the movie and it is a second showing. When I do watch a movie less immersive maybe the second time, it does not ruin the movie for me in any and often it is a slightly different take on the movie.

I must admit something here and I feel it is a big clue to who may like variable over CIH and why. For me comparing say two scope movies as to take away the IMAX controversy say The Walk (2015) and Hall Pass (2011). Josh will correctly point out when people in both movies are talking to each other proper Film-101 cinematography is in place and bodies and head sizes are kind of a constant between two scope films. Although for me the drama of an overhead shot of a guy walking on a wire between the twin towers with helicopters blowing on him and birds pecking him looking down at the streets below has a greatly different visual impact that is improved with my max immersion compared to Owen Wilson talking to a girl sitting at a bar. Also the likelihood of me picking Hall Pass as a movie to watch alone is pretty low even though I’m sure there are some immersive city views in it that would hold up to greater immersion quite well. So on a scale of 1-10 watching Hall Pass more immersive is improved about 1 and The Walk about 8.
I know others in my circle of friends would find The Walk too jarring at my level as well.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> I agree totally with your post here.
> 
> The one item you didn’t address is how do you deal with people that join you to watch a movie in terms of your liked immersion and theirs? I will give an example.


If anyone leaves the cinema feeling like they've had a subpar experience due to my screen choice, I have done something very, very wrong. I am 100% certain that this will never, ever happen in a well thought out CIH room.

Coincidentally, I got to visit a friend's theatre last night. He has a ~130" wide Scope screen, with a viewing distance to the front row of 9 feet, just under 2x screen height. Christie laser projector, Trinnov-based 11.1.6 Atmos setup. We started the night with some 16:9 material, YouTube 4K nature stuff, and I thought the screen felt too big at 16:9, wanted to move to the 2nd row, but I was assured that the sound was best from where I was so I should stay put. I then sort of got used to the oversized image.

The main event was the new Dune, in its home theatre presentation ratio of 2.39, and at that size, at that seating distance, the Scope image was _spectacular._ This was my first time seeing the Scope version (I saw it in 1.43 IMAX theatrically), and one thing I took note of was how carefully crafted for Scope that movie was. It was an amazing night at the movies, and it was nice to see some of the stuff discussed in this forum played back in a real world home theatre executed at such a high level.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> If anyone leaves the cinema feeling like they've had a subpar experience due to my screen choice, I have done something very, very wrong. I am 100% certain that this will never, ever happen in a well thought out CIH room.
> 
> Coincidentally, I got to visit a friend's theatre last night. He has a ~130" wide Scope screen, with a viewing distance to the front row of 9 feet, just under 2x screen height. Christie laser projector, Trinnov-based 11.1.6 Atmos setup. We started the night with some 16:9 material, YouTube 4K nature stuff, and I thought the screen felt too big at 16:9, wanted to move to the 2nd row, but I was assured that the sound was best from where I was so I should stay put. I then sort of got used to the oversized image.
> 
> The main event was the new Dune, in its home theatre presentation ratio of 2.39, and at that size, at that seating distance, the Scope image was _spectacular._ This was my first time seeing the Scope version (I saw it in 1.43 IMAX theatrically), and one thing I took note of was how carefully crafted for Scope that movie was. It was an amazing night at the movies, and it was nice to see some of the stuff discussed in this forum played back in a real world home theatre executed at such a high level.


Subpar was an interesting choice of wording. Par meaning average and subpar meaning below-average, inadequate, mediocre, second-rate, etc. I’m pretty sure most people here building home theaters and talking about CIH presentation are shooting at a target quite a bit better than par. So I’m sure a visit to your HT none of us would leave feeling a subpar experence.

It was great you had the chance to experence a great movie like Dune at an immersion level of 1.96 SH I think I also would find that height with that kind of equipment wonderful as well. My equipment is subpar of that and right now I’m at 2.2 SH wishing for a tad more. Most of my friends and family are more comfortable at 2.5 SH and I have a sister that’s happiest at 2.8-3.0 SH.

If anyone wants to take the time and actually compare SH for CIH to CIW they might be surprised at how small the differential really is. In fancy seating that reclines it will change your eye to screen distance most of the difference with a 110-120” screen. Most don’t realize what putting a second row back 6’ does to the math at home.

I don’t know what your immersion level is at home you are used to that you were comparing to at your friends house last night but that’s likely the amount I’m talking about in terms of having a variable setup. You said the 4k YouTube stuff seemed too large and I can understand that. It would have been fun in way of a comparison if say your friend had showed you a DVD of Deliverance (1972) or maybe a BD of Star Wars (1977) to see if the resolution drop pushed you away from the 1.96 SH immersion. I’m betting it would have had you liking the back row better at about 2.6 SH immersion. Least that’s how I feel about it and in my case I only have one row so I don’t have that change row option. I can really fast with zoom make the change from 2.2 SH to 2.5 SH though. It is just about as easy as changing my sound volume from 50-40.
No one wants subpar and no one will ever complain about the difference between +10 par to +12 par except in golf.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> To paraphrase Josh: Should Wheel of Fortune then be given the same height as Saving Private Ryan? Or should these two things reflect equal importance?


If I cared about TV and it's presentation vs. film that may matter. 1.85:1 films look as good as they ever have.


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## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> If anyone leaves the cinema feeling like they've had a subpar experience due to my screen choice, I have done something very, very wrong. I am 100% certain that this will never, ever happen in a well thought out CIH room.
> 
> Coincidentally, I got to visit a friend's theatre last night. He has a ~130" wide Scope screen, with a viewing distance to the front row of 9 feet, just under 2x screen height. Christie laser projector, Trinnov-based 11.1.6 Atmos setup. We started the night with some 16:9 material, YouTube 4K nature stuff, and I thought the screen felt too big at 16:9, wanted to move to the 2nd row, but I was assured that the sound was best from where I was so I should stay put. I then sort of got used to the oversized image.
> 
> The main event was the new Dune, in its home theatre presentation ratio of 2.39, and at that size, at that seating distance, the Scope image was _spectacular._ This was my first time seeing the Scope version (I saw it in 1.43 IMAX theatrically), and one thing I took note of was how carefully crafted for Scope that movie was. It was an amazing night at the movies, and it was nice to see some of the stuff discussed in this forum played back in a real world home theatre executed at such a high level.


Interesting my screen is 120" wide and I'm about 8'. So very similar. Though my setup is a bit more modest than a Christie and 11.6 . I too found Dune in scope to be a very pleasing presentation. Thanks for sharing your experience.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> My 17x9 setup (to match my projector's imaging grid) takes this to the next level, by allowing the largest possible images for VAR and IMAX as well as for scope, with the presentation of none of the formats being compromised in order to optimize the setup for another format.


You've stated you don't watch IMAX any differently than 1.85:1, so you're not really optimizing anything for IMAX. *The panel AR is totally irrelevant to the screen aspect ratios you can use. *As long as your vertical immersion is based around a narrow AR image area then wide material is going to be compromised. The wider it is the smaller it is. There is nothing revolutionary or next level about a large CIW system like you're deploying. But that's not a bad thing as you really enjoy it.

To anyone interested in what direction to go, I'd simply encourage you to figure out what the goal is for the room. And then see how to realize that. There a lot of good reasons not to simply put up the largest image you can and then make the room work around it.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> You've stated you don't watch IMAX any differently than 1.85:1, so you're not really optimizing anything for IMAX. *The panel AR is totally irrelevant to the screen aspect ratios you can use. *As long as your vertical immersion is based around a narrow AR image area then wide material is going to be compromised. The wider it is the smaller it is. There is nothing revolutionary or next level about a large CIW system like you're deploying. But that's not a bad thing as you really enjoy it.
> 
> To anyone interested in what direction to go, I'd simply encourage you to figure out what the goal is for the room. And then see how to realize that. There a lot of good reasons not to simply put up the largest image you can and then make the room work around it.


You don't even acknowledge my pointing out that the presenter, on the very page you cite, said in his embedded video version that a taller screen that's as wide as the widest possible scope screen in the room gives you "the best of both worlds." (I guess you missed my _Star Trek_ reference - that was the title of the _Next Generation_ two-part season cliffhanger when Captain Picard was "assimilated" into the Borg.)

Far from being irrelevant to the screen's aspect ratio, the projector's panels' aspect ratio is what projector can send (unless you add an anamorphic lens, greatly increasing both the cost of the projector and the size of the room needed to acommodate such a lens).

Matching the screen's aspect ratio to that of the projector maximizes the capability of your theater. Any other screen aspect ratio requires reducing the size on screen of one or more film aspect ratios in order to fit onto the screen. Deny that if you like, but it's simple physics.

That a film with a wider aspect ratio than that of the screen results in its not using the screen's full height is an artistic choice made by the filmmaker, not by me. I'm showing it as wide and tall as possible. I'm not shrinking or compromising its presentation. That a film with a narrower aspect ratio has a closer fit to the screen's shape is a good thing, even if you think it looks too big. Shrink it if you like, but the setup doesn't _force_ that choice on you, young Padawan.

Better to have the ability to show a larger image in your back pocket for when you want it, than to want it and not have it, _hmmm_?

As was pointed out last night in this thread's companion Variable Aspect Ratio films thread, showing 2.76:1 films on a 2.35:1 screen shrinks them in the same way that showing a scope film on an undersized 16x9 screen does, and showing a 2.39:1 film on a 2.76:1 screen would require the same kind of shrinking that a 1.85:1 film is subjected to a 2.39:1 screen.

However, on a screen that's the same shape as the projector's imager, all of the above types of film are shown without any forced reduction in size. They simply are what their filmmakers wanted them to be, shown as large as you consider appropriate in your screening room.

It's time for fans of particular types of film stopped saying "Mine's bigger than yours!" and just enjoyed them all for what they were meant to be.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> You don't even acknowledge my pointing out that the presenter, on the very page you cite, said in his embedded video version that a taller screen that's as wide as the widest possible scope screen in the room gives you "the best of both worlds." (I guess you missed my _Star Trek_ reference - that was the title of the _Next Generation_ two-part season cliffhanger when Captain Picard was "assimilated" into the Borg.)


I haven't embedded any videos.



Philnick said:


> Far from being irrelevant to the screen's aspect ratio, the projector's panels' aspect ratio is what projector can send (unless you add an anamorphic lens, greatly increasing both the cost of the projector and the size of the room needed to acommodate such a lens).


As many of us have pointed out, digital theaters do indeed show wider aspect ratios with a 17:9 panel and no lens. People have been using screens that don't match the source ratio for a very long time. An anamorphic lens is not needed at home (or in theaters). This is an absurd premise.



Philnick said:


> Matching the screen's aspect ratio to that of the projector maximizes the capability of your theater. Any other screen aspect ratio requires reducing the size on screen of one or more film aspect ratios in order to fit onto the screen. Deny that if you like, but it's simple physics.


It doesn't maximize anything. It just matches the shape of the panel. Which it doesn't have to do at home and doesn't in a lot of commercial theaters. This is just insanity thinking one has to dictate the other.



Philnick said:


> That a film with a wider aspect ratio than that of the screen results in its not using the screen's full height is an artistic choice made by the filmmaker, not by me. I'm showing it as wide and tall as possible. I'm not shrinking or compromising its presentation. That a film with a narrower aspect ratio has a closer fit to the screen's shape is a good thing, even if you think it looks too big. Shrink it if you like, but the setup doesn't _force_ that choice on you, young Padawan.


So which filmmakers are stating that scope is supposed to be narrow and short vs. flat or academy again? Oh right, they aren't. In fact they're saying the opposite.



Philnick said:


> As was pointed out last night in this thread's companion Variable Aspect Ratio films thread, showing 2.76:1 films on a 2.35:1 screen shrinks them in the same way that showing a scope film on an undersized 16x9 screen does, and showing a 2.39:1 film on a 2.76:1 screen would require the same kind of shrinking that a 1.85:1 film is subjected to a 2.39:1 screen.
> 
> However, on a screen that's the same shape as the projector's imager, all of the above types of film are shown without any forced reduction in size. They simply are what their filmmakers wanted them to be, shown as large as you like in the screening room.
> 
> It's time for fans of particular types of film stopped saying "Mine's bigger than yours!" and just enjoyed them all for what they were meant to be.


There's no reduction of anything, you've simply invented the idea that not using zoom/shift/focus to display theatrical ratios properly is somehow proper. You're reducing what is supposed to be the widest standard film ratio to the smallest thing you watch and trying to tell us not to "force a reduction". Oh the irony. Of course I do understand folks that simply prefer what a 16:9 screen offers and that's fine.


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## Josh Z

A TV or projector is just a box whose job is to display content. Is the box more important to you than the content? Because it sure seems like you're prioritizing the specs of the box above all else.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> I haven't embedded any videos.


The embedded video was in the page @dschulz linked to. Sorry I thought that was you:


dschulz said:


> I found this article to make a pretty good case for CIH: Widescreen Explained: What’s with the Black Bars?


If you watch starting around eight minutes in you'll see this guy, who starts out advocating scope screens, admits that a tall screen the same width gives you "the best of both worlds."


jeahrens said:


> As many of us have pointed out, digital theaters do indeed show wider aspect ratios with a 17:9 panel and no lens. People have been using screens that don't match the source ratio for a very long time. An anamorphic lens is not needed at home (or in theaters). This is an absurd premise.


I only referenced anamorphic lenses to cover the possibility of a projector throwing an image wider than 17x9, and then dismissed that possibility as impractical.


jeahrens said:


> It doesn't maximize anything. It just matches the shape of the panel. Which it doesn't have to do at home and doesn't in a lot of commercial theaters. This is just insanity thinking one has to dictate the other.
> 
> So which filmmakers are stating that scope is supposed to be narrow and short vs. flat or academy again? Oh right, they aren't. In fact they're saying the opposite.


Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I said that filmmakers decide what shape their own images should be. They don't have any right to say what the relative size another filmmaker's film should be, and it would be simple arrogance to say their own films are entitled to be bigger - that's merely doctrine among some hobbyists.


jeahrens said:


> There's no reduction of anything, you've simply invented the idea that not using zoom/shift/focus to display theatrical ratios properly is somehow proper. You're reducing what is supposed to be the widest standard film ratio to the smallest thing you watch and trying to tell us not to "force a reduction". Oh the irony. Of course I do understand folks that simply prefer what a 16:9 screen offers and that's fine.


What I'm saying is that by matching your screen to the largest image your projector can throw in your room, you keep maximum flexibility in presentation. By using a screen any other shape, you deny yourself that flexibility by forcing yourself to reduce the size of films shot in other shapes to fit on the screen.

What's so bad about retaining flexibility? You can always show things smaller if you consider that approprate, but by using a screen the same shape as your projector's imagers, you have larger projection in your back pocket when you want to use it.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> The embedded video was in the page @dschulz linked to. Sorry I thought that was you:
> 
> If you watch starting around eight minutes in you'll see this guy, who starts out advocating scope screens, admits that a tall screen the same width gives you "the best of both worlds."


I guess I don't agree with this guy then, because it certainly doesn't.



Philnick said:


> Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I said that filmmakers decide what shape their own images should be. They don't have any right to say what the relative size another filmmaker's film should be, and it would be simple arrogance to say their own films are entitled to be bigger - that's merely doctrine among some hobbyists.


Filmmakers choose aspect ratios knowing how they are intended to be shown in relation to each other. 



Philnick said:


> What I'm saying is that by matching your screen to the largest image your projector can throw in your room, you keep maximum flexibility in presentation. By using a screen any other shape, you deny yourself that flexibility by forcing yourself to reduce the size of films shot in other shapes to fit on the screen.
> 
> What's so bad about retaining flexibility? You can always show things smaller if you consider that approprate, but by using a screen the same shape as your projector's imagers, you have larger projection in your back pocket when you want to use it.


Matching the shape of the panel with your screen matches the shape of the panel. That's it. Nothing wrong with doing it if you understand what it is and isn't doing for you. Again if someone has a use case that favors a certain AR or really isn't bothered by the pros and cons then by all means enjoy what makes you happy.

What is "flexible" with showing Alien at the same width and over 20% less vertical immersion vs Aliens when both directors would agree that the former should be shown larger than the latter? These standard theatrical aspect ratios do not exist as free form shapes in a vacuum, they are expressed vs. one another with height as the constant.


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## Philnick

Nothing _forces_ you to use the largest magnification for narrower aspect ratio films - but having a tall screen leaves you with the _ability_ to do so when you want to, for IMAX, for VAR, or to move subtitles down below a scope image if your player has that ability. Why deprive yourself that ability, even if you don't use it often?


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> Nothing _forces_ you to use the largest magnification for narrower aspect ratio films - but having a tall screen leaves you with the _ability_ to do so when you want to, for IMAX, for VAR, or to move subtitles down below a scope image if your player has that ability. Why deprive yourself that ability, even if you don't use it often?


I already explained one reason, which you ignored. If I had a giant 17:9 screen that I didn’t utilize very often, I’d have to spend a ton on masking solutions to cover the unused portions of the screen.


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## Philnick

fatherom said:


> I already explained one reason, which you ignored. If I had a giant 17:9 screen that I didn’t utilize very often, I’d have to spend a ton on masking solutions to cover the unused portions of the screen.


Heavy black cardboard from an artists supply store is _so_ expensive.

So are highly-reflective screens, while homemade screen paint applied to a skim-coated plaster covered wall - with lower reflectivity - costs less than a high gain screen and doesn't require masking at all with a projector that has good black levels.


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> Heavy black cardboard from an artists supply store is _so_ expensive.
> 
> So are highly-reflective screens, while homemade screen paint applied to a skim-coated plaster covered wall - with lower reflectivity - costs less than a high gain screen and doesn't require masking at all with a projector that has good black levels.


Sorry, I don't agree at all.

Heavy black cardboard?  It reflects a TON. I use syfabrics triple velvet for everything in my batcave.

And most avsforum users would agree that a proper screen far outshines projecting on a wall. Sorry to say, and I'm sure you'll balk at someone 'disparaging' your setup, but I would never project on a wall.


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## bud16415

fatherom said:


> Sorry, I don't agree at all.
> 
> Heavy black cardboard?  It reflects a TON. I use syfabrics triple velvet for everything in my batcave.
> 
> And most avsforum users would agree that a proper screen far outshines projecting on a wall. Sorry to say, and I'm sure you'll balk at someone 'disparaging' your setup, but I would never project on a wall.


I think this is exactly what this thread should be about. The fact that lots of people approach a problem with lots of differing idea about what works best in their opinion.

So you never could see yourself projecting to a wall prepared and painted with a surface that could be tested to be as good or better than the best commercial screens is fine. It is just one opinion of many and it is what someone trying to see what works for them needs to hear. I know others that would never dream of not using an AT screen surface, and still others that insist the best velvet masking is on all 4 sides of the projected image so when viewing flat on a scope screen they install masking. Others say it is not needed. Some directors produce movies with changing ARs that make 4 sided masking imposable.

@dschulz posted he watched Dune at a friends theater the other day and it was more immersive than he would have watched it at home and he enjoyed it. I really doubt him liking it that size/immersion caused him to go home and buy a larger screen. We have all watched movies from different rows in commercial theaters over the years and enjoyed them. watching a flat movie one week with one immersion and a scope movie the next week with a different immersion really isn’t something any normal person would find objection in.
There are options out there and to Phil’s point having a screen that is as large as you will ever need and in the AR of your projector keeps your options open. To your point doing that if you feel masking is important then you will need to figure out how to do that and how to pay for it.


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## mogrub

Suntan said:


> I think I'm at the same website I've been posting in for years and years. And for years and years people continue to debate all the SAME EXACT points about CIH. It baffles me ... maybe I'll stop back in to see how all these same arguments are holding up in another 5 or 6 years.


Or don't. That would be fine too.


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## bud16415

mogrub said:


> Or don't. That would be fine too.


I agree. The debate is not between the knowledgeable folks with ether beliefs. IMO it is more for the people coming to it for the first time and having questions.
Ten years ago it was a bit different as projection offered maybe more than it does today as TVs are closing in on sizes. It is not all about size, but it is still about size and immersion, and if immersion is a variable for some.


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## Philnick

This thread was started when, in the JVC lamp-based true 4K projector forum, a new user asked about screen shapes and my advice about my borderless approach was attacked by CIH users.

Josh said to take the discussion to the CIH forum, which I objected to because of the objection by CIH users to the use of any other kind of screen, so he started this thread. (I personally believe that such discussion _does _belong in a projector's own forum as well, among users of that projector.)

Those with firm positions on the subject of screen shapes will probably not convince each other to change their opinions - that's not the purpose of this thread, which is to provide alternatives to others.

As such, it's best for us to refrain from criticizing each other and instead keep the focus on the merits of our own respective approaches.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> This thread was started when, in the JVC lamp-based true 4K projector forum, a new user asked about screen shapes and my advice about my borderless approach was attacked by CIH users.


Please post where this happened. 



Philnick said:


> Josh said to take the discussion to the CIH forum, which I objected to because of the objection by CIH users to the use of any other kind of screen, so he started this thread. (I personally believe that such discussion _does _belong in a projector's own forum as well, among users of that projector.)
> 
> Those with firm positions on the subject of screen shapes will probably not convince each other to change their opinions - that's not the purpose of this thread, which is to provide alternatives to others.
> 
> As such, it's best for us to refrain from criticizing each other and instead keep the focus on the merits of our own respective approaches.


I'm all for people enjoying what they feel is the best approach for them.


----------



## Josh Z

If I'm not mistaken, I've asked Phil this question directly at least three times in this thread, and a couple times indirectly via different wording. He has yet to answer any of them, so here it is again:

If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> If I'm not mistaken, I've asked Phil this question directly at least three times in this thread, and a couple times indirectly via different wording. He has yet to answer any of them, so here it is again:
> 
> If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?


If I'm watching anything called IMAX - whether or not you consider it to be IMAX because it's not the original 1.43:1 format or it's not composed the way you'd compose an IMAX scene - or anything in variable aspect ratio, I want it to expand vertically beyond what will fit on a 2.35:1 screen.

I believe that we should keep the ability to do so in our back pocket by not using a bordered screen, so we're not constrained by the shorter height of a 2.35:1 screen.

For the same reason, I won't use a 16x9 bordered screen unless it's as wide as the widest scope image I can throw, so the width of my scope films isn't constrained by a screen narrower than the films are.

I don't consider any aspect ratio to be some kind of "gold standard" that should set a limit on the height or width of anything else.

That's purely a matter of taste. It's not like Newton's Law of Gravity, nor the Speed of Light.

There's nothing special about films made in any aspect ratio that privileges their size over others.

By using a borderless area on my wall, there's no frame that implies subliminally that what you're watching is shorter or narrower than it could be.

Nor do I consider it to be anyone else's business what the relative sizes of different aspect ratios in my theater are.

I'll shrink something down if it's not high enough resolution to look decent at normal magnification, but not otherwise - and more likely, I'll watch it outside my theater on my wife's 50" flat panel TV.

PS Nothing in this post is something I've never posted before. I've said all of this many times here.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> If I'm not mistaken, I've asked Phil this question directly at least three times in this thread, and a couple times indirectly via different wording. He has yet to answer any of them, so here it is again:
> 
> If you had no size constraints in your room whatsoever, why would you want 16:9 and 1.85:1 to be the largest things you watch? What's so special about those formats, or the content photographed in them, that demands larger image size than everything else?


I don’t want to answer for Phil but don’t you think it is possible that some people like to watch content as large as they can. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that method, but 100s of million people watching TVs have no issue doing just that. The ones with 32” TVs want 50” the ones with 50” want 70” the ones with 70” want 85” and the ones with 85” are dreaming of screen walls coming down to a price they can afford. I never once hear people dreaming of an 85” 2.35:1 TV.

So what is wrong with someone liking that system. The logic is right there if you have a machine that makes a 16:9 image why not have a screen that takes that image. I know you feel IMAX is the only exception but 100s of million people watch things other than scope, flat, and an occasional IMAX movie on their TV sets. The same is true for people with projectors. I don’t see where anywhere that says CIH is not a proper theater presentation method. It is fine just as it would be fine to enjoy a scope movie from a different seat than a flat movie in a commercial theater if you feel like it.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> If I'm watching anything called IMAX - whether or not you consider it to be IMAX because it's not the original 1.43:1 format or it's not composed the way you'd compose an IMAX scene - or anything in variable aspect ratio, I want it to expand vertically beyond what will fit on a 2.35:1 screen.
> 
> I believe that we should keep the ability to do so in our back pocket by not using a bordered screen, so we're not constrained by the shorter height of a 2.35:1 screen.


I didn't ask about IMAX. I'm asking about regular, plain-jane 1.85:1 movies - stuff like Clerks, Good Will Hunting, etc. In what way are those distinguished from IMAX on your screen?



> I don't consider any aspect ratio to be some kind of "gold standard" that should set a limit on the height or width of anything else.


Not even IMAX? I don't believe you. You've been very clear that you think IMAX is supposed to be larger than scope movies like Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, etc. In this very same response, you said: _"If I'm watching anything called IMAX... I want it to expand vertically beyond what will fit on a 2.35:1 screen._

Yet you don't think an IMAX movie is supposed to be larger than Dead Poets Society? Those two things are equivalent in your mind. Why is that?

By your own logic, should not IMAX also expand vertically beyond a regular 1.85:1 movie?


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I don’t want to answer for Phil but don’t you think it is possible that some people like to watch content as large as they can. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that method, but 100s of million people watching TVs have no issue doing just that. The ones with 32” TVs want 50” the ones with 50” want 70” the ones with 70” want 85” and the ones with 85” are dreaming of screen walls coming down to a price they can afford. I never once hear people dreaming of an 85” 2.35:1 TV.


I'm not asking Joe Sixpack this question. I'm asking someone who posts in a dedicated home theater forum, someone who would spend many thousands of dollars to buy and install a high-end projector and build a custom viewing space for it. I would expect such a person to put more thought into the presentation of content than just, "Me like big TV."


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> I didn't ask about IMAX. I'm asking about regular, plain-jane 1.85:1 movies - stuff like Clerks, Good Will Hunting, etc. In what way are those distinguished from IMAX on your screen?
> 
> 
> 
> Not even IMAX? I don't believe you. You've been very clear that you think IMAX is supposed to be larger than scope movies like Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, etc. In this very same response, you said: _"If I'm watching anything called IMAX... I want it to expand vertically beyond what will fit on a 2.35:1 screen._
> 
> Yet you don't think an IMAX movie is supposed to be larger than Dead Poets Society? Those two things are equivalent in your mind. Why is that?
> 
> By your own logic, should not IMAX also expand vertically beyond a regular 1.85:1 movie?


You don't listen very well. I said I want IMAX to expand vertically beyond scope's height. I just project the actual 16x9 image in the disk or streaming file and throw it on the wall as big as I can. 

I don't shrink 1.85:1 images so they'll be smaller than IMAX, nor do I shrink anything to be smaller than anything else.

I just don't care about the relative sizes of different formats.

I like to feel that I'm "on the scene" of whatever film I'm watching, which means as big as possible. Period.

Everything gets shown as big as it can unless it's too low-res, in which case I'll shrink it to look ok or watch it outside of my theater on 50" flat panel tv.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I didn't ask about IMAX. I'm asking about regular, plain-jane 1.85:1 movies - stuff like Clerks, Good Will Hunting, etc. In what way are those distinguished from IMAX on your screen?
> 
> 
> 
> Not even IMAX? I don't believe you. You've been very clear that you think IMAX is supposed to be larger than scope movies like Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, etc. In this very same response, you said: _"If I'm watching anything called IMAX... I want it to expand vertically beyond what will fit on a 2.35:1 screen._
> 
> Yet you don't think an IMAX movie is supposed to be larger than Dead Poets Society? Those two things are equivalent in your mind. Why is that?
> 
> By your own logic, should not IMAX also expand vertically beyond a regular 1.85:1 movie?


Again everyone with a TV watches IMAX the same size as Dead Poets Society and never give it a second thought and if they could get a larger TV they would. The fact I don’t do it that way and you do it a different way has no bearing on the enjoyment of people doing it that way.

Years ago I was torn between watching some content in the HT wondering if it got us used to the size and then in turn spoiled the theater experence for actual motion pictures. There used to be two lines of thought on the subject. We didn’t have the ability to zoom like we can today. I always hung on to that idea and it is part of how I use variable to this day. It is not so much about the cinematography and the size of people heads matching up as just the grandeur of the quality material being the most impressive it can be. My personal tastes are I look forward to the next IMAX movie as it is a special treat. Just as when we get a 2.76:1 movie that is also special.
Each their own.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I'm not asking Joe Sixpack this question. I'm asking someone who posts in a dedicated home theater forum, someone who would spend many thousands of dollars to buy and install a high-end projector and build a custom viewing space for it. I would expect such a person to put more thought into the presentation of content than just, "Me like big TV."


Last I checked a lot of Joe Sixpacks are running projectors.
Have you ever watched the Super Bowl?


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Last I checked a lot of Joe Sixpacks are running projectors.
> Have you ever watched the Super Bowl?


Having a projector does not automatically make a room a home theater. Someone can have a projector to watch sports and not give a single crap about movies. These are different use cases. 

Again, I am not asking that person. I was asking Phil, who supposedly does care a lot about movies and I believe has even said that he never watches TV in his home theater.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> You don't listen very well. I said I want IMAX to expand vertically beyond scope's height. I just project the actual 16x9 image in the disk or streaming file and throw it on the wall as big as I can.
> 
> I don't shrink 1.85:1 images so they'll be smaller than IMAX, nor do I shrink anything to be smaller than anything else.
> 
> I just don't care about the relative sizes of different formats.


You are full of contradictions. You say that you don't care about the relative sizes of different formats, except that IMAX absolutely has to be bigger than scope. No question, no exceptions. No matter how big a wall you had, IMAX would always be bigger than scope.

But IMAX doesn't have to be bigger than regular 1.85:1 movies, because somehow the relative size between those two formats doesn't matter. Only 2.35:1 is the outlier. Even if you had no size limitations in your room at all, that one would always be smallest.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> You are full of contradictions. You say that you don't care about the relative sizes of different formats, except that IMAX absolutely has to be bigger than scope. No question, no exceptions. No matter how big a wall you had, IMAX would always be bigger than scope.
> 
> But IMAX doesn't have to be bigger than regular 1.85:1 movies, because somehow the relative size between those two formats doesn't matter. Only 2.35:1 is the outlier. Even if you had no size limitations in your room at all, that one would always be smallest.


Josh, you're beginning to sound like a troll.

I want IMAX to expand vertically beyond scope because at the same width it _is_ taller. Period.

I don't do anything to reduce the size of scope films. They're in the widest class of films on my wall, along with 1.85:1 films, since using the projector's digital zoom is feasible on those films.

Anything that takes the full height of the imaging panels I'm not going to use the digital zoom on because it would trim off more image at the top and the bottom than I'm willing to sacrifice.

So 16x9 is 10' 8" wide by 6' tall.

1.85:1 is 11' 4" wide by 6' tall because I can use the digital zoom on it, since the amount of image shaved off at the top and bottom is trivial (about 1%).

Scope, on which I also use the digital zoom, is also 11' 4" wide by the height of the scope image, which is approximately 4' 10" - but that's not reduced in size by me (in fact, I increase it with the digital zoom) but by the filmmakers' choice to use a scope-shaped frame.

Complain to the _filmmakers_ if you think their films should be as tall as 1.85:1 films. I _can't_ make them any bigger. Period.

And saying that I should shrink all other kinds of films (except your selected subset of IMAX films that you feel are worthy of the name) to be no taller than 4' 10" is simply a waste of breath.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Josh, you're beginning to sound like a troll.
> 
> I want IMAX to expand vertically beyond scope because at the same width it _is_ taller. Period.
> 
> I don't do anything to reduce the size of scope films. They're in the widest class of films on my wall, along with 1.85:1 films, since using the projector's digital zoom is feasible on those films.
> 
> Anything that takes the full height of the imaging panels I'm not going to use the digital zoom on because it would trim off more image at the top and the bottom than I'm willing to sacrifice.
> 
> So 16x9 is 10' 8" wide by 6' tall.
> 
> 1.85:1 is 11' 4" wide by 6' tall because I can use the digital zoom on it, since the amount of image shaved off at the top and bottom is trivial (about 1%).
> 
> Scope, on which I also use the digital zoom, is also 11' 4" wide by the height of the scope image, which is approximately 4' 10" - but that's not reduced in size by me (in fact, I increase it with the digital zoom) but by the filmmakers' choice to use a scope-shaped frame.
> 
> Complain to the _filmmakers_ if you think their films should be as tall as 1.85:1 films. I _can't_ make them any bigger. Period.
> 
> And saying that I should shrink all other kinds of films (except your selected subset of IMAX films that you feel are worthy of the name) to be no taller than 4' 10" is simply a waste of breath.


You have a CIW setup and we all understand what that brings to the table. You don't present IMAX as the filmmaker intends and you don't show any film that is intended to be wider than 1.89:1 as the filmmaker intends either. There's nothing wrong with that approach if you enjoy the experience it brings. But it's not magically "flexible". And painting the largest area you can is not figuring out something new or cutting edge. You've chosen your compromises and so have I. There's no need to continually try to spin this approach as something it isn't.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Having a projector does not automatically make a room a home theater. Someone can have a projector to watch sports and not give a single crap about movies. These are different use cases.
> 
> Again, I am not asking that person. I was asking Phil, who supposedly does care a lot about movies and I believe has even said that he never watches TV in his home theater.


I understand you are badgering Phil not Joe Sixpack about this but you bring up an interesting point.

What does make a HT? I see many people in the dedicated HT section set up with TVs even. I see many people in a basement with a 16:9 pull down screen and a projector without zoom capabilities to do CIH calling the area a HT where they watch movies with their kids and provide sound with an old stereo setup.

I called my first room a HT and back then the screen was 4:3 6’x8’ in this house now I call it my media room. I watch a lot of motion pictures in there but also a lot of prestige TV and even sports like the Olympics and the Super Bowl. Why wouldn’t I it is the best PQ the best sound and the best seats in the house.
I didn’t realize we looked down on people here in the CIH forum because of their tastes in media.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> You have a CIW setup and we all understand what that brings to the table. You don't present IMAX as the filmmaker intends and you don't show any film that is intended to be wider than 1.89:1 as the filmmaker intends either. There's nothing wrong with that approach if you enjoy the experience it brings. But it's not magically "flexible". And painting the largest area you can is not figuring out something new or cutting edge. You've chosen your compromises and so have I. There's no need to continually try to spin this approach as something it isn't.


Can you point to one filmmaker that cares what seat/row you sit in when watching one of their movies in a commercial theater?
Can you point to one cinematographer of prestige TV that cares what size TV you own or how your living room is set up for seating?


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> Can you point to one filmmaker that cares what seat/row you sit in when watching one of their movies in a commercial theater?
> Can you point to one cinematographer of prestige TV that cares what size TV you own or how your living room is set up for seating?


No but theater construction has definite parameters that define the best presentation with regards to size of the image/ratio at a certain seating location.

If prestige television is your main priority, then you probably aren't concerned with most of this and would get a 2.00:1 screen as that is the most common ratio used.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I understand you are badgering Phil not Joe Sixpack about this but you bring up an interesting point.
> 
> What does make a HT? I see many people in the dedicated HT section set up with TVs even. I see many people in a basement with a 16:9 pull down screen and a projector without zoom capabilities to do CIH calling the area a HT where they watch movies with their kids and provide sound with an old stereo setup.
> 
> I called my first room a HT and back then the screen was 4:3 6’x8’ in this house now I call it my media room. I watch a lot of motion pictures in there but also a lot of prestige TV and even sports like the Olympics and the Super Bowl. Why wouldn’t I it is the best PQ the best sound and the best seats in the house.
> I didn’t realize we looked down on people here in the CIH forum because of their tastes in media.


This spin bait is getting old. If you haven't figured out the priority differences in someone setting up a home theater space and someone setting up a sports bar themed entertainment room, then I suggest doing some research.

No one is looking down on anyone. The elitist implication you're making here with regards to this forum is below you.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> This spin bait is getting old. If you haven't figured out the priority differences in someone setting up a home theater space and someone setting up a sports bar themed entertainment room, then I suggest doing some research.
> 
> No one is looking down on anyone. The elitist implication you're making here with regards to this forum is below you.


I agree but I’m not the one calling out people as Joe Sixpack or saying people that spend many thousands of dollars buying the best high end equipment and building custom viewing spaces have a corner on calling their spaces a HT and have a lock on what they call perfect presentation.
I would point out again that the AVS HT of the decade does not use CIH. Is the owner a Joe Sixpack. I guess that award should be the Home sports bar of the decade award.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> You have a CIW setup and we all understand what that brings to the table. You don't present IMAX as the filmmaker intends and you don't show any film that is intended to be wider than 1.89:1 as the filmmaker intends either. There's nothing wrong with that approach if you enjoy the experience it brings. But it's not magically "flexible". And painting the largest area you can is not figuring out something new or cutting edge. You've chosen your compromises and so have I. There's no need to continually try to spin this approach as something it isn't.


I don't call my setup anything it's not, but I reject all attempts to say that what I'm doing in showing Film A violates the intent of the maker of Film A for how it should be shown, since I'm showing it in its full glory.

Find me a quote from the maker of a 1.85:1 film saying that their film should not be shown any taller than a scope film - don't bother with quotes from the maker of any other film about how films other than their own should be shown.

*The maker of Film B has no right to say anything about how Film A should be shown, and neither do the fans of Film B.*

What I object to is the insistence by the adherents of Constant Image Height that since the makers (and some fans) of scope films want scope films to be bigger than anything but IMAX films, the showing of non-scope, non-IMAX films (a category into which they insist on lumping contemporary IMAX films) should be scaled down in size to accommodate scopers' insistence that scope should be bigger by restricting their height to that of scope films.

Once again, the purpose of this thread is to propose alternative approaches to the display of films, and the advantages and disadvantages of differing approaches.

I present my method of borderless projection of theatrical films allowing all films to be shown as large as possible, and I say its advantage is that it preserves flexibility by not degrading any film's presentation for the benefit of another film.

CIH adherents discount the value of flexibility and present as the advantage of CIH that scope is _supposed_ (according to scope adherents - not anyone else) to be biggest and "true IMAX" (by which they mean the original IMAX format - which is no longer used) is so rare that it's not worth accommodating the needs of that format in the design of a theater (some are even so extreme as to say that no home theater is big enough for a true IMAX screen), so it's perfectly fine with them to just shave off anything above and below the scope frame - what they call the "scope safe" area. And VAR films, in their opinion, should never be released on home video in their original VAR format.

Essentially, they _advocate_ degrading any images that are not scope, by shrinking or cropping them to fit their screen.

To quote the old childhood line, "I'm rubber and you're glue": Call me crazy or not a true home theater afficionado - it'll bounce off and stick to you.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I agree but I’m not the one calling out people as Joe Sixpack or saying people that spend many thousands of dollars buying the best high end equipment and building custom viewing spaces have a corner on calling their spaces a HT and have a lock on what they call perfect presentation.
> I would point out again that the AVS HT of the decade does not use CIH. Is the owner a Joe Sixpack. I guess that award should be the Home sports bar of the decade award.


Where did someone say that if you aren't using CIH you are a Joesixpack? I'm not seeing it.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> I don't call my setup anything it's not, but I reject all attempts to say that what I'm doing in showing Film A violates the intent of the maker of Film A for how it should be shown, since I'm showing it in its full glory.
> 
> Find me a quote from the maker of a 1.85:1 film saying that their film should not be shown any taller than a scope film - don't bother with quotes from the maker of any other film about how films other than their own should be shown.
> 
> *The maker of Film B has no right to say anything about how Film A should be shown, and neither do the fans of Film B.*
> 
> What I object to is the insistence by the adherents of Constant Image Height that since the makers (and some fans) of scope films want scope films to be bigger than anything but IMAX films, the showing of non-scope, non-IMAX films (a category into which they insist on lumping contemporary IMAX films) should be scaled down in size to accommodate these folk's insistence that scope should be bigger by restricting their height to that of scope films.
> 
> Once again, the purpose of this thread is to propose alternative approaches to the display of films, and the advantages and disadvantages of differing approaches.
> 
> I present my method of borderless projection of theatrical films allowing all films to be shown as large as possible, and I say its advantage is that it preserves flexibility by not degrading any film's presentation for the benefit of another film.
> 
> CIH adherents discount the value of flexibility and present as the advantage of CIH that scope is _supposed_ (according to scope adherents - not anyone else) to be biggest and "true IMAX" (by which they mean the original IMAX format - which is no longer used) is so rare that it's not worth accommodating the needs of that format in the design of a theater (some are even so extreme as to say that no home theater is big enough for a true IMAX screen), so it's perfectly fine with them to just shave off anything above and below the scope frame - what they call the "scope safe" area. And VAR films, in their opinion, should never be made.
> 
> Essentially, they _advocate_ degrading any images that are not scope, by shrinking or cropping them it to fit their screen.
> 
> To quote the old childhood line, "I'm rubber and you're glue": Call me crazy or not a true home theater afficionado - it'll bounce off and stick to you.


Your objection to how theatrical ratios are intended to be shown vs. one another by filmmakers and the industry is noted. 

You continuing to post that a scope screen "degrades" or "shrinks" content will not make it true. But feel free to keep doing it.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I want IMAX to expand vertically beyond scope because at the same width it _is_ taller. Period.


The whole point of this conversation is that I'm asking you why you'd project them the same width.



> I don't do anything to reduce the size of scope films. They're in the widest class of films on my wall, along with 1.85:1 films, since using the projector's digital zoom is feasible on those films.
> 
> Complain to the _filmmakers_ if you think their films should be as tall as 1.85:1 films. I _can't_ make them any bigger. Period.


And we're back to you complaing about how terribly size limited you feel your room is.

I have asked you a hypothetical question: What if you had no size limitations? What if you lived on a ranch in Montana and were building an outdoor screen with an unlimited budget, giving you literally miles of space in every direction to work with? What aspect ratio would that screen be, and why?


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Your objection to how theatrical ratios are intended to be shown vs. one another by filmmakers and the industry is noted.
> 
> You continuing to post that a scope screen "degrades" or "shrinks" content will not make it true. But feel free to keep doing it.


When you change your projector's zoom level in showing a non-scope film, to make it small enough fit onto a scope screen, you are shrinking it. You - and scope filmmakers - may think it is appropriate to shrink non-scope films, but that doesn't mean you're shrinking them.

If you instead crop off material above and/or below the scope frame to make it fit onto the screen, you are degrading the image. You may think it's fine to engage in such degradation, but that doesn't mean you're not degrading it.

Just the facts, man. You're the one in denial. The opinions of the scope community do not override the reality of what they do to display non-scope materials.


----------



## bud16415

Philnick said:


> I don't call my setup anything it's not, but I reject all attempts to say that what I'm doing in showing Film A violates the intent of the maker of Film A for how it should be shown, since I'm showing it in its full glory.
> 
> Find me a quote from the maker of a 1.85:1 film saying that their film should not be shown any taller than a scope film - don't bother with quotes from the maker of any other film about how films other than their own should be shown.
> 
> *The maker of Film B has no right to say anything about how Film A should be shown, and neither do the fans of Film B.*
> 
> What I object to is the insistence by the adherents of Constant Image Height that since the makers (and some fans) of scope films want scope films to be bigger than anything but IMAX films, the showing of non-scope, non-IMAX films (a category into which they insist on lumping contemporary IMAX films) should be scaled down in size to accommodate scopers' insistence that scope should be bigger by restricting their height to that of scope films.
> 
> Once again, the purpose of this thread is to propose alternative approaches to the display of films, and the advantages and disadvantages of differing approaches.
> 
> I present my method of borderless projection of theatrical films allowing all films to be shown as large as possible, and I say its advantage is that it preserves flexibility by not degrading any film's presentation for the benefit of another film.
> 
> CIH adherents discount the value of flexibility and present as the advantage of CIH that scope is _supposed_ (according to scope adherents - not anyone else) to be biggest and "true IMAX" (by which they mean the original IMAX format - which is no longer used) is so rare that it's not worth accommodating the needs of that format in the design of a theater (some are even so extreme as to say that no home theater is big enough for a true IMAX screen), so it's perfectly fine with them to just shave off anything above and below the scope frame - what they call the "scope safe" area. And VAR films, in their opinion, should never be released on home video in their original VAR format.
> 
> Essentially, they _advocate_ degrading any images that are not scope, by shrinking or cropping them to fit their screen.
> 
> To quote the old childhood line, "I'm rubber and you're glue": Call me crazy or not a true home theater afficionado - it'll bounce off and stick to you.


If we go way back to the day I started my PIA thread it was exactly what you are saying. I didn’t know Phil then but I was inclusive of his likes in the idea I brought forward then.

The idea was to showcase all methods of presentation and try and understand all methods and then armed with that knowledge develop a personal presentation method that suited your desired needs and fitting it into the room you are dealt.

I don’t have to feel Phil’s method of Josh’s method or even Rob Hahn’s method suits my need to respect that their methods suit their needs best.

I have seen a 1000 people buy a projector and a matching 16:9 screen only to find when fully immersive for the 16:9 they felt a little cheated watching scope movies. I have also seen many 1000’s of people get a 16:9 screen do CIW and never complain about anything, just being happy they have a massive image that is beautiful to watch and as big as their rooms can handle.
Then there are some that want something in between or like myself want a variety of needs filled.
I never once tried to disparage any one method of presentation anyone felt was best for them, but likewise I discouraged anyone assuming what was best for them means it is best for someone else. I would rather help someone find what they want rather than tell them what I think they want.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I have asked you a hypothetical question: What if you had no size limitations? What if you lived on a ranch in Montana and were building an outdoor screen with an unlimited budget, giving you literally miles of space in every direction to work with? What aspect ratio would that screen be, and why?


I don’t know about Phil but if I was in Montana and had a limitless budget to build any size and AR screen I wanted I would make it 16:9 and as wide as I would like to watch 2.76:1 movies.
given a 16:9 projector


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> When you change your projector's zoom level in showing a non-scope film, to make it small enough fit onto a scope screen, you are shrinking it. You - and scope filmmakers - may think it is appropriate to shrink non-scope films, but that doesn't mean you're shrinking them.
> 
> If you instead crop off material above and/or below the scope frame to make it fit onto the screen, you are degrading the image. You may think it's fine to engage in such degradation, but that doesn't mean you're not degrading it.
> 
> Just the facts, man. You're the one in denial. The opinions of the scope community do not override the reality of what they do to display non-scope materials.


Nope, no denial from me. I'd refute that point by point, but it's already been done. Enjoy cropping actual material from 1.85:1, watching IMAX the same as any other content and shrinking wider AR films to fit your screen.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I don’t know about Phil but if I was in Montana and had a limitless budget to build any size and AR screen I wanted I would make it 16:9 and as wide as I would like to watch 2.76:1 movies.
> given a 16:9 projector


It's your choice. As long as you're aware of pros and cons and that's what you want, enjoy.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> The whole point of this conversation is that I'm asking you why you'd project them the same width.
> 
> And we're back to you complaing about how terribly size limited you feel your room is.
> 
> I have asked you a hypothetical question: What if you had no size limitations? What if you lived on a ranch in Montana and were building an outdoor screen with an unlimited budget, giving you literally miles of space in every direction to work with? What aspect ratio would that screen be, and why?


I don't consider my room size limited. I'm very happy with my setup. It's your objections that I object to, which are why I consider you a troll in your own thread. (I'm not interested in setting up a drive-in movie theater.)

My objective in showing any film is to feel that I'm there on the scene - and that means showing the film as big as I do, with the width and height being whatever results from that. 

I have no interest in your objective of keeping image height constant to suit the preference of scope film fanciers that their films should be bigger than other films.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> I have no interest in your objective of keeping image height constant to suit the preference of scope film fanciers that their films should be bigger than other films  in accordance to the filmmakers intent for standard theatrical ratios.


Fixed that for ya.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Nope, no denial from me. I'd refute that point by point, but it's already been done. Enjoy cropping actual material from 1.85:1, watching IMAX the same as any other content and shrinking wider AR films to fit your wall screen.


Maybe I should create a bingo card for false statements by the scope contingent.

At 1.85:1 the vertical crop from using the digital zoom would be about 2% (1% top and bottom), well within the area that cinematographers avoid using because they expect overscan to crop off more than that amount. 

Since CIH fans are willing to crop off (or seek out a crop by the filmmaker) of up to 33 1/3% of the vertical image of non-scope films, you're way out of bounds with that comment.

I certainly don't shrink scope films but show them as big as my projector can in my room, at maximium zoom, and you know that, so your second point is just "counter-factual" - to put it politely. 

BINGO!


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Philnick said:
> I have no interest in your objective of keeping image height constant to suit the preference of scope film fanciers that their films should be bigger than other films in accordance to the filmmakers intent for standard theatrical ratios.​
> Fixed that for ya.


Which filmmakers? That's the rub - you only pay attention to the intent of scope filmmakers. You've yet to show me one quote from the maker of a non-scope film saying their film should be shown no taller than a scope film.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Maybe I should create a bingo card for false statements by the scope contingent.
> 
> At 1.85:1 the vertical crop from using the digital zoom would be about 2% (1% top and bottom), well within the area that cinematographers avoid using because they expect overscan to crop off more than that amount.
> 
> Since CIH fans are willing to crop off (or seek out a crop by the filmmaker) of up to 33 1/3% of the vertical image of non-scope films, you're way out of bounds with that comment.
> 
> I certainly don't shrink scope films but show them as big as my projector can in my room, at maximium zoom, and you know that, so your second point is just "counter-factual" - to put it politely.
> 
> BINGO!


Only if we get to do one for you too!

Glad to see that you cropping out picture information is OK because you say so.

I assume you're talking about scope safe IMAX here. So how exactly do you reconcile this being what is seen in scope theaters with it being an awful thing? You realize this version of most shifting AR films is usually seen far more often than the IMAX presentation right?

Nope nothing counter factual about shrinking a film that is intended to be wider at the same height to be a fraction of both it's intended vertical and horizontal immersion and saying your compromising its intended presentation.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Which filmmakers? That's the rub - you only pay attention to the intent of scope filmmakers. You've yet to show me one quote from the maker of a non-scope film saying their film should be shown no taller than a scope film.


All of them. Nope not paying attention to a subset and never have.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> When you change your projector's zoom level in showing a non-scope film, to make it small enough fit onto a scope screen, you are shrinking it. You - and scope filmmakers - may think it is appropriate to shrink non-scope films, but that doesn't mean you're shrinking them.


Your perspective on this continues to be completely backwards. We are not shrinking non-scope films. We are enlarging scope films to maintain the same scale as those non-scope films. This does not diminish 16:9 or 1.85:1 in any way.

Scope films are artifically shrunken to a smaller scale on home video due to the limitations of the formats. Zooming them up to Constant Image Height corrects that problem.

Any home video format - whether disc or broadcast or steaming or anything else - is just a container used to hold movie and TV content. The fact that modern home video is authored in a 16:9 container is a matter of technical convenience, not an indication that 16:9 was meant to be some ideal Golden Display Ratio for all media. 2.35:1 movies are compromised by forcing them into that smaller container.

When watching a movie, I value the content, not the container. 



> If you instead crop off material above and/or below the scope frame to make it fit onto the screen, you are degrading the image. You may think it's fine to engage in such degradation, but that doesn't mean you're not degrading it.


No one is advocating the unilateral cropping of all 16:9 or 1.85:1 content. Cropping is *only *appropriate for the small selection of IMAX VAR movies, which are explicitly photogaphed for the purpose of being cropped to 2.35:1 in all venues other than IMAX. Watching them in scope on a 2.35:1 screen recreates their presentation on all regular cinema screens. They are not degraded when you do this. They are made specifically with this in mind.



Philnick said:


> Which filmmakers? That's the rub - you only pay attention to the intent of scope filmmakers. You've yet to show me one quote from the maker of a non-scope film saying their film should be shown no taller than a scope film.


Most filmmakers have shot in both aspect ratios at one time or another, varying the photographic format depending on the needs of each project. Very few directors shoot only in 1.85:1, especially in recent decades where the entire industry has strongly favored 2.35:1.

You say you want to honor the intent of 1.85:1 filmmakers - except when those same filmmakers shoot their next movie in 2.35:1, at which time their intentions don't matter anymore and you'd rather just ignore them.


----------



## bud16415

Josh told me once that when a flat film is shown in an IMAX venue it is shown full screen. How is that different than what Phil is suggesting?
Is there an outpouring of filmgoers complaining about this presentation?


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Josh told me once that when a flat film is shown in an IMAX venue it is shown full screen. How is that different than what Phil is suggesting?


I don't agree with that practice either. 

True IMAX photography is composed differently than a standard 1.85:1 movie. The camera is pulled back further from the subject, and human faces are centered much lower in the frame, leaving a great deal of unused headroom above them. This is the proper way to utilize IMAX's greater screen size.

Tight close-ups, as are common in regular "flat" photography, are extremely rare if not non-existent in real IMAX photography. When you blow up a standard 1.85:1 movie like The Avengers to IMAX proportions, close-up shots like this one can be disorienting for viewers who can't see the whole face at once and aren't sure where to direct their gaze.










This is not how IMAX is meant to work.

IMO, the IMAX Corporation has diluted its brand by allowing movies like this to play on its screens and calling it an "IMAX Experience."


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> . . .
> Glad to see that you cropping out picture information is OK because you say so.


So it's ok for you crop off _a third_ - 33 1/3% - of the vertical image of a variable aspect ratio film or a "scope safe" IMAX film - but I'm doing something wrong by cropping off 2% - less than 1/16th as much?


jeahrens said:


> I assume you're talking about scope safe IMAX here. So how exactly do you reconcile this being what is seen in scope theaters with it being an awful thing? You realize this version of most shifting AR films is usually seen far more often than the IMAX presentation right?


I couldn't care less what the shrinking proportion of commercial theater operators who use scope screens do. Their rooms are height challenged - not my problem. I seldom go to commercial theaters - too expensive and frequently incompetently run.


jeahrens said:


> Nope nothing counter factual about shrinking a film that is intended to be wider at the same height to be a fraction of both it's intended vertical and horizontal immersion and saying your compromising its intended presentation.


Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I've said repeatedly that I show scope films as large as my projector can show them. Your and Josh's persistence in saying I'm shrinking scope films - simply because I'm _not_ shrinking other films to match their height, the way you and Josh would - just means that you have no qualms about flat out lying.


jeahrens said:


> Philnick said:
> Which filmmakers? That's the rub - you only pay attention to the intent of scope filmmakers. You've yet to show me one quote from the maker of a non-scope film saying their film should be shown no taller than a scope film.
> 
> All of them. Nope not paying attention to a subset and never have.


Non-scope films are a _very large_ subset, nowhere near insignificant - and according to Josh, they're mostly made by the same people who shoot scope, who shoot both ways.

I'm still waiting - and I expect to wait forever - for you to produce a quote from anyone who made a non-scope film saying that its projected height should be no greater than a scope film.

I've dared you to produce such a quote many times now and have seen none. Simply saying that shooting other films in scope means they want their non-scope films to be shown smaller than possible is nothing more than you attributing your beliefs to them.

That's why I keep demanding an explicit quote, which you have been unable to provide.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> So it's ok for you crop off _a third_ - 33 1/3% - of the vertical image of a variable aspect ratio film or a "scope safe" IMAX film - but I'm doing something wrong by cropping off 2% - less than 1/16th as much?


Just pointing out that you're ok with degrees of cropping. If you're fine doing it, cool.



Philnick said:


> I couldn't care less what the shrinking proportion of commercial theater operators who use scope screens do. Their rooms are height challenged - not my problem. I seldom go to commercial theaters - too expensive and frequently incompetently run.


Of course you don't, it invalidates your point. Height challenged premium theaters? Gotcha. Such a shame they didn't consult you to get the "real story" on theatrical presentation.



Philnick said:


> Liar, liar, pants on fire.


Boy I'm not sure how I will deal with this crushing counterpoint.



Philnick said:


> I've said repeatedly that I show scope as large as my projector can show them. Your and Josh's persistence in saying I'm shrinking scope films - simply because I'm _not_ shrinking other films to match their height, the way you and Josh would - just means that you have no qualms about flat out lying.


You show them how you've chosen to with a CIW presentation. Theatrical presentation standards exists. You trying to say it's all lies to justify your choices doesn't erase that.



Philnick said:


> Non-scope films are a _very large_ subset, nowhere near insignificant - and according to Josh, they're mostly made by the same people who shoot scope, who shoot both ways.


You completely missed the point. I'm not paying attention to a subset because I'm paying attention to all of them. The only ratios I don't present as close to possible as they would be in a theater are IMAX. And newsflash you don't do any better with IMAX either.



Philnick said:


> I'm still waiting - and I expect to wait forever - for you to produce a quote from anyone who made a non-scope film saying that its projected height should be no greater than a scope film.
> 
> I've dared you to produce such a quote many times now and have seen none. Simply saying that by shooting other films in scope means they want their non-scope to be shown smaller than possible is nothing more than you attributing your beliefs on them.
> 
> That's why I keep demanding an explicit quote, which you have been unable to provide.


Go back and click the links posted earlier and read the quote from Cameron. It's all there.

Look I don't care that you have and love your CIW setup. As I said earlier we both have chosen our compromises and seem to be happy with them.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I'm still waiting - and I expect to wait forever - for you to produce a quote from anyone who made a non-scope film saying that its projected height should be no greater than a scope film.
> 
> I've dared you to produce such a quote many times now and have seen none. Simply saying that shooting other films in scope means they want their non-scope films to be shown smaller than possible is nothing more than you attributing your beliefs to them.
> 
> That's why I keep demanding an explicit quote, which you have been unable to provide.


And where is your explicit quote from the director of a 1.85:1 movie saying that they want it to be projected larger than 2.35:1?


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> And where is your explicit quote from the director of a 1.85:1 movie saying that they want it to be projected larger than 2.35:1?


You're the one with the burden of proof on your assertion that non-scope films should be restricted in projection to be no taller than scope films.

Until I see a retraction of the assertion that I'm shrinking scope films (since you've always known that I'm showing them as large as possible in my setup), I'll continue to be riled up.

The dogmatic assertion that reducing the magnification of non-scope films to not exceed the height of scope images is _not_ shrinking them - and that not doing so amounts to shrinking scope films that are being shown as large as possible - reminds me of Humpty Dumpty's assertion that a word means what he wants it to mean - and we all know what happened to him. And the Kingsmen won't be able to help.

"That's glory for you!"


----------



## Philnick

PS I've never been so done with you guys and your dishonest style of argument, deliberately misrepresenting what others say. You clearly have no shame.

The only reason I'm going to continue to post here is to protect innocent newbies lured in by your deceptively-neutral thread title from your anything-but-neutral propaganda.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I don't agree with that practice either.
> 
> True IMAX photography is composed differently than a standard 1.85:1 movie. The camera is pulled back further from the subject, and human faces are centered much lower in the frame, leaving a great deal of unused headroom above them. This is the proper way to utilize IMAX's greater screen size.
> 
> Tight close-ups, as are common in regular "flat" photography, are extremely rare if not non-existent in real IMAX photography. When you blow up a standard 1.85:1 movie like The Avengers to IMAX proportions, close-up shots like this one can be disorienting for viewers who can't see the whole face at once and aren't sure where to direct their gaze.
> 
> View attachment 3237463
> 
> 
> This is not how IMAX is meant to work.
> 
> IMO, the IMAX Corporation has diluted its brand by allowing movies like this to play on its screens and calling it an "IMAX Experience."


I know you don’t agree with the practice.

Can you show me somewhere that a director or cinematographer has came out and spoke against the IMAX practice of showing their flat work larger than they intended?

IMAX is a pretty big deal at least a lot bigger deal than Phil’s Theater or Bud’s Theater. I would think there should be quite an outrage among the movie professionals allowing IMAX to do this or if IMAX is doing this without permission there should be complaints of them ruining the experence of watching the movie where viewers don’t know how to direct their gaze.

To answers @jeahrens question if the above directors condone and see nothing wrong with IMAX showing their flat movie the size of IMAX and have not complained can we then say these directors are more than ok That Phil does the same.


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> You're the one with the burden of proof on your assertion


Well, isn't that awfully convenient for you? You can make up any assertion of your own you want, and the burden is always on _me _to disprove it? 



> The dogmatic assertion that reducing the magnification of non-scope films to not exceed the height of scope images is _not_ shrinking them - and that not doing so amounts to shrinking scope films that are being shown as large as possible - reminds me of Humpty Dumpty's assertion that a word means what he wants it to mean - and we all know what happened to him. And the Kingsmen won't be able to help.


Start with as large a 16:9 image as you want, then add more width. That's how CIH is supposed to work. There should be no "shrinking" involved. This has been stated and restated literally hundreds of times in this forum.

That you believe your room is too space-limited to make this work is your own problem to deal with, not a flaw in the concept of Constant Image Height. I have asked you multiple times what you would do if you had no space limitations. 

Frankly, I think your moaning about an 11-foot-wide wall being too "width limited" to do CIH is a little ridiculous, but to each their own.



Philnick said:


> The only reason I'm going to continue to post here is to protect innocent newbies lured in by your deceptively-neutral thread title from your anything-but-neutral propaganda.


Wow, you're a real champion of the people, aren't you? Let's everyone give a big round of applause to the Hero of AVS for saving newbies from the evil CIH Boogeyman.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> To answers @jeahrens question if the above directors condone and see nothing wrong with IMAX showing their flat movie the size of IMAX and have not complained can we then say these directors are more than ok That Phil does the same.


The IMAX dome downtown shows scope and flat distorted, does anyone think that is how the filmmaker wanted it? I doubt they give much thought to how the small number of IMAX theaters handle their non-IMAX work. Do you think they choose scope to be the same width and 80% the vertical immersion of flat? I don't. The links I posted earlier don't show it that way. The quotes from directors don't indicate it.

The question should be do they want their IMAX material shown with more impact than flat? And that answer is yes.


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> IMAX is a pretty big deal at least a lot bigger deal than Phil’s Theater or Bud’s Theater. I would think there should be quite an outrage among the movie professionals allowing IMAX to do this or if IMAX is doing this without permission there should be complaints of them ruining the experence of watching the movie where viewers don’t know how to direct their gaze.
> 
> To answers @jeahrens question if the above directors condone and see nothing wrong with IMAX showing their flat movie the size of IMAX and have not complained can we then say these directors are more than ok That Phil does the same.


When you project any regular movie onto an IMAX screen at IMAX sizes, then what's so special about real IMAX movies? 

Answer: Nothing.

The IMAX Corporation made a business decision to expand their market share by playing regular Hollywood movies on their screens. From a financial perspective, they made the right call and have seen considerable growth. 

The downside of this, however, is that they have also devauled their own original IMAX format in the process. As it was designed, the whole point of IMAX was to provide an experience significantly different from regular movies. That's no longer the case.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> When you project any regular movie onto an IMAX screen at IMAX sizes, then what's so special about real IMAX movies?
> 
> Answer: Nothing.
> 
> The IMAX Corporation made a business decision to expand their market share by playing regular Hollywood movies on their screens. From a financial perspective, they made the right call and have seen considerable growth.
> 
> The downside of this, however, is that they have also devauled their own original IMAX format in the process. As it was designed, the whole point of IMAX was to provide an experience significantly different from regular movies. That's no longer the case.


I understand that and you are likely correct.

That doesn’t answer the question of why do directors not speak out and why do fans seem to enjoy it?

You are adamant about proper presentation at home where the only person watching is the person who likes it that way. Where is there outrage in the public from people about IMAX doing it wrong? In fact people are paying more to see the presentation done wrong. Do you know of any directors coming out and saying I made a fantastic flat movie under no circumstances would I want you to watch it in an IMAX theater. No people are OK with seeing it larger than normal, paying extra to do it, writing glowing reviews after doing it, and no directors are complaining.

What should we believe? 

As a side note how are they devaluing their product but doing better in the process?


----------



## Philnick

You've probably heard of King Canute, who took his throne down to the seashore and, before his assembled people, ordered the waves not to roll in.

Unlike King Canute - who staged that demonstration to show his people that his powers were limited - you seem to think that you can command IMAX not to let the money roll in by showing everything large on their big screen.

You just don't get the joke.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I understand that and you are likely correct.
> 
> That doesn’t answer the question of why do directors not speak out and why do fans seem to enjoy it?


Directors know that once the film leaves their hands it's going to be shown in all manner of ways other than what they intended. You aren't hearing them complain about this any more than you are about the commercials in a commodity flat multiplex being shown larger than their wider format film shoved into a narrow container. A lack of complaint does not equal an endorsement



bud16415 said:


> You are adamant about proper presentation at home where the only person watching is the person who likes it that way. Where is there outrage in the public from people about IMAX doing it wrong? In fact people are paying more to see the presentation done wrong. Do you know of any directors coming out and saying I made a fantastic flat movie under no circumstances would I want you to watch it in an IMAX theater. No people are OK with seeing it larger than normal, paying extra to do it, writing glowing reviews after doing it, and no directors are complaining.
> 
> What should we believe?


It's interesting you think the general public has an idea what constitutes IMAX. Since you are self professed fan of the format, shouldn't you be interested in protecting what makes it unique and not endorsing it being turned it just a big way to watch TV or flat content? If that were to gain real traction then true tall format IMAX will die and digital IMAX will be nothing special at all.



bud16415 said:


> As a side note how are they devaluing their product but doing better in the process?


Josh already answered that.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Directors know that once the film leaves their hands it's going to be shown in all manner of ways other than what they intended. You aren't hearing them complain about this any more than you are about the commercials in a commodity flat multiplex being shown larger than their wider format film shoved into a narrow container. A lack of complaint does not equal an endorsement
> 
> 
> 
> It's interesting you think the general public has an idea what constitutes IMAX. Since you are self professed fan of the format, shouldn't you be interested in protecting what makes it unique and not endorsing it being turned it just a big way to watch TV or flat content? If that were to gain real traction then true tall format IMAX will die and digital IMAX will be nothing special at all.
> 
> 
> 
> Josh already answered that.


I am a fan of IMAX and I don’t think the connection is made that IMAX is now no longer an immense 1.44:1 screen showing nature movies from super huge film format. They have reinvented and re-branded into a mainstream Hollywood product in terms of motion pictures. Yes they talk about their taller frame size than scope, but that is really a small amount of their focus on the total theater experence you get from them.

I don’t know how much is truth and how much is BS with their IMAX enhanced system that allows this added immersion in their theaters. Like all theaters no one forces you to sit in the closest seats.

They are providing a service and the people going there each cast a vote of approval when they buy a ticket.
Saying it is out of the directors hands once the movie is made is silly. Don’t you remember the outcries when pan and scan was ruining movies. Same when they started adding color to B&W. This movie has been formatted to fit your screen.


----------



## Philnick

This comment has been formatted to fit your thread.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I am a fan of IMAX and I don’t think the connection is made that IMAX is now no longer an immense 1.44:1 screen showing nature movies from super huge film format.


Why is its biggest supporter still shooting in that format then?



bud16415 said:


> They are providing a service and the people going there each cast a vote of approval when they buy a ticket.
> Saying it is out of the directors hands once the movie is made is silly. Don’t you remember the outcries when pan and scan was ruining movies. Same when they started adding color to B&W. This movie has been formatted to fit your screen.


Umm no, directors don't have any control over where their films are distributed. So not silly. Factual.

Nope not like color at all. Color offered something B&W didn't. If IMAX turns into a large screen for 1.85:1 or TV then it has nothing unique. A theater owner could simply not pay the IMAX royalty, build a big flat screen and profit.

Now did you have anything to add germane to the topic of this thread?


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> . . .
> Umm no, directors don't have any control over where their films are distributed. So not silly. Factual.
> 
> Nope not like color at all. Color offered something B&W didn't. If IMAX turns into a large screen for 1.85:1 or TV then it has nothing unique. A theater owner could simply not pay the IMAX royalty, build a big flat screen and profit.
> 
> Now did you have anything to add germane to the topic of this thread?


Directors may not have direct control over display of their films, but unless they've signed agreements not to say anything, they could still make public statements on the subject.

I consider it quite germane that IMAX theaters are showing 1.85:1 films filling their screens, much larger than I could, and affecting many more people. You don't like my method of display, which affects only me and my friends and the folks I recommend it to here - but my method of display is nowhere near as huge and affects nowhere near as many people as an IMAX theater. 

Wouldn't it be a better use of your time, instead of chastising me and the piddling number of people I can affect, to start picketing your local IMAX theater criticizing them for displaying films not in keeping with professional standards, or if that's too much trouble, at least going to online review sites like Yelp to say that?


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Why is its biggest supporter still shooting in that format then?
> 
> 
> 
> Umm no, directors don't have any control over where their films are distributed. So not silly. Factual.
> 
> Nope not like color at all. Color offered something B&W didn't. If IMAX turns into a large screen for 1.85:1 or TV then it has nothing unique. A theater owner could simply not pay the IMAX royalty, build a big flat screen and profit.
> 
> Now did you have anything to add germane to the topic of this thread?


As to Nolan still filming in 1.44:1 using IMAX film process there is nothing wrong with that. It is the artistic medium he wants to use and by all standards it still is as good or better than anything else out there. IMAX is evolving as a company and of course anyone can shoot wider and taller with any medium they want and simulate IMAX framing and that has been my point for a long people are doing it and it looks great on big TVs and it also looks good projected. IMAX is not just about their AR they are about a level of quality. I have shown you dozens of non motion pictures media some shot with GoPro or even cell phones some from drones that are every bit as immersive friendly as IMAX1.89 movies. Just as broadcast sports are done.

It is really absurd to think IMAX is fearing becoming just big TV. Every movie company out there is in direct competition with just TV. There are dozens of streaming companies making movies that will never see the big screen and their quality and end product is no different than what you see as a motion picture intended for the big commercial theater screen.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee there is nothing no longer all that special or different between motion pictures and TV and TV is a 16:9 medium most people by a far shot watch TV over projection and most people are not disturbed by watching something shot as wide as scope and having the top and bottom of their TV screens filled in and not blacked out. There is great spectacular movies being made and TV equally as spectacular, there is also crap made for both venues.
If anything IMAX was smart for picking a motion picture AR to be filmed wide and fit into a 16:9 box. What is the downside for them.


----------



## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Directors may not have direct control over display of their films, but unless they've signed agreements not to say anything, they could still make public statements on the subject.


They make statements about what AR they choose and why. They're not going to sway the money side of the distribution.



Philnick said:


> I consider it quite germane that IMAX theaters are showing 1.85:1 films filling their screens, much larger than I could, and affecting many more people. You don't like my method of display, which affects only me and my friends and the folks I recommend it to here - but my method of display is nowhere near as huge and affects nowhere near as many people as an IMAX theater.
> 
> Wouldn't it be a better use of your time, instead of chastising me and the piddling number of people I can affect, to start picketing your local IMAX theater criticizing them for displaying films not in keeping with professional standards, or if that's too much trouble, at least going to online review sites like Yelp to say that?


I don't dislike your method of display at all. I simply don't feel it's the best choice for a home theater primarily used for film viewing. About the only time I ask people about screen aspect ratios is if they are in the design phase. If they primarily game and watch TV with film being less of a priority, I generally tell them a CIW setup (like yours) is probably the best route. If they want more of a compromise, then a 2.00:1 ratio is a great in between. If film is their main focus, then scope is easily the best choice.

I really don't care what IMAX theaters do or don't do. If a film has IMAX content I go to the IMAX theater. If it doesn't I go to Flix because the food and beer is better. The non-IMAX screens at the IMAX theater are scope and so are the screens at Flix. So may as well go to the place with better amenities. I've never honestly seen either the Dome or standard IMAX show flat content at IMAX levels, it's usually a portion of the screen. But I'm sure it happens to keep the lights on.


----------



## dschulz

Philnick said:


> I consider it quite germane that IMAX theaters are showing 1.85:1 films filling their screens, much larger than I could, and affecting many more people. You don't like my method of display, which affects only me and my friends and the folks I recommend it to here - but my method of display is nowhere near as huge and affects nowhere near as many people as an IMAX theater.


It's worth noting that most of those movies screened at IMAX in 1.90 are 2.39 everywhere else, which implies that the directors believe that Scope is larger than Flat and IMAX larger still. Otherwise they'd be Flat everywhere. There was nothing stopping Denis Villeneuve from shooting Dune as a Flat movie, but he expanded the frame to widescreen and then expanded it again for IMAX.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> As to Nolan still filming in 1.44:1 using IMAX film process there is nothing wrong with that. It is the artistic medium he wants to use and by all standards it still is as good or better than anything else out there. IMAX is evolving as a company and of course anyone can shoot wider and taller with any medium they want and simulate IMAX framing and that has been my point for a long people are doing it and it looks great on big TVs and it also looks good projected. IMAX is not just about their AR they are about a level of quality. I have shown you dozens of non motion pictures media some shot with GoPro or even cell phones some from drones that are every bit as immersive friendly as IMAX1.89 movies. Just as broadcast sports are done.
> 
> It is really absurd to think IMAX is fearing becoming just big TV. Every movie company out there is in direct competition with just TV. There are dozens of streaming companies making movies that will never see the big screen and their quality and end product is no different than what you see as a motion picture intended for the big commercial theater screen.
> 
> Time to wake up and smell the coffee there is nothing no longer all that special or different between motion pictures and TV and TV is a 16:9 medium most people by a far shot watch TV over projection and most people are not disturbed by watching something shot as wide as scope and having the top and bottom of their TV screens filled in and not blacked out. There is great spectacular movies being made and TV equally as spectacular, there is also crap made for both venues.
> If anything IMAX was smart for picking a motion picture AR to be filmed wide and fit into a 16:9 box. What is the downside for them.


So nothing to add on topic. Got it. I'll look forward to your thread on TV and it's relevance to film and commercial theaters.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> So nothing to add on topic. Got it. I'll look forward to your thread on TV and it's relevance to film and commercial theaters.


The topic in case you forgot is should I or shouldn’t I do a CIH method of presentation at home. If the question was should commercial theaters that are not IMAX do CIH that would be a different discussion.

At home yourself included you do not exclusively watch just motion pictures intended for commercial venues only. You watch other things including streaming TV. I really don’t anyone in today’s world that only watches movies on their projection HT, but I’m sure there are some.
When you open up the topic to everyone’s HT some even have large TVs now and not projectors are we to assume people with a 16:9 85” TV should employ some kind of scaling and never view the top and bottom of their screens except for a few IMAX movies or better yet show then scope safe. No one is going to do that. Why would you then expect everyone with a projector would do that. Try telling someone with an 85” TV that Game of Thrones should be viewed with black bars on 4 sides as to not spoil the grandness of Star Wars and see what they say.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> The topic in case you forgot is should I or shouldn’t I do a CIH method of presentation at home. If the question was should commercial theaters that are not IMAX do CIH that would be a different discussion.
> 
> At home yourself included you do not exclusively watch just motion pictures intended for commercial venues only. You watch other things including streaming TV. I really don’t anyone in today’s world that only watches movies on their projection HT, but I’m sure there are some.
> When you open up the topic to everyone’s HT some even have large TVs now and not projectors are we to assume people with a 16:9 85” TV should employ some kind of scaling and never view the top and bottom of their screens except for a few IMAX movies or better yet show then scope safe. No one is going to do that. Why would you then expect everyone with a projector would do that. Try telling someone with an 85” TV that Game of Thrones should be viewed with black bars on 4 sides as to not spoil the grandness of Star Wars and see what they say.


If you've sized your CIH setup correctly, TV and 1.85:1 films, should be filling your desired vertical field of view and look fantastic.

A 16:9 TV has no flexibility and is CIW, so it has no relevance. If TV is your main priority, then you probably aren't interested in this topic and would prefer a CIW 16:9 screen. Or you would just buy a TV.


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## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> Try telling someone with an 85” TV that Game of Thrones should be viewed with black bars on 4 sides as to not spoil the grandness of Star Wars and see what they say.


I imagine they'd say, "Sure does suck about Star Wars being shrunken like that. I do really like Star Wars too and I wish there was something I could do about that."


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> I imagine they'd say, "Sure does suck about Star Wars being shrunken like that. I do really like Star Wars too and I wish there was something I could do about that."


I liked your post but you stopped to soon. Then you should tell them it didn’t shrink Star Wars you just need to sit closer so Star Wars fill your vertical FOV as you like and then GoT with black bars on 4 sides will be correct also and if you watch one IMAX expander a year use your whole TV screen.

It is simple what is different about an 85” TV and a 100” projected image like many people have. There is no difference in fact I remember when people were happy to project an 85” image.
My point is not to say there is anything wrong at all with CIH, just that there is also nothing wrong with variable presentation. The capability to do CIH at home with a TV is very possible. TV makers could easily make a setting to do it even. The fact is no one would want it. Just like no one wanted TV with 2.4:1 AR screens. I don’t think it is because people don’t like watching movies on TV if that was the case everyone wouldn’t be paying Netflix every month. Just like given the choice between Marvel movies being streamed IMAX or scope 9 out of 10 will take IMAX.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I liked your post but you stopped to soon. Then you should tell them it didn’t shrink Star Wars you just need to sit closer so Star Wars fill your vertical FOV as you like and then GoT with black bars on 4 sides will be correct also and if you watch one IMAX expander a year use your whole TV screen.


No he really didn't. No one would do what you're saying and this isn't relevant to the thread. This is just more noise.



bud16415 said:


> It is simple what is different about an 85” TV and a 100” projected image like many people have. There is no difference in fact I remember when people were happy to project an 85” image.
> My point is not to say there is anything wrong at all with CIH, just that there is also nothing wrong with variable presentation. The capability to do CIH at home with a TV is very possible. TV makers could easily make a setting to do it even. The fact is no one would want it. Just like no one wanted TV with 2.4:1 AR screens. I don’t think it is because people don’t like watching movies on TV if that was the case everyone wouldn’t be paying Netflix every month. Just like given the choice between Marvel movies being streamed IMAX or scope 9 out of 10 will take IMAX.


If you asked the average viewer I would bet the majority of them have no idea what IMAX does or doesn't do they just know that more of their screen is filled. And we know from the Pan and Scan era there is a depressing amount of people that want it filled at all costs. At least this isn't that. Your 2.40:1 TV tangent has been covered elsewhere. Please get back on topic. If anyone wants to prioritize their TV viewing there are much better places than this thread.


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## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> If anyone wants to prioritize their TV viewing there are much better places than this thread.


Just to note that if anything CIH is more useful than ever for TV viewing, as the streaming model of widescreen content has started bleeding over into broadcast shows. Very satisfying to watch Superman & Lois (which is shot using vintage Panavision glass) or Stranger Things in a CIH setup.


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## Philnick

Sorry @jeahrens, but what @bud16415 said was just an extension - intentionally absurd to be sure - of the CIH dogma to TV screens.

Why should a 1.85:1 or 16x9 film be allowed to be any taller than a letterboxed scope film just because they're being watched on an 85" TV screen?

After all, according to Josh, the actors' heads should still be kept the same size.

Logicians call this type of argument _reducto ad absurdum__ -_ making clear that an argument is fallacious by pushing it to its logical extreme, showing that reduces it to an absurdity_._


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> Sorry @jeahrens, but what @bud16415 said was just an extension - intentionally absurd to be sure - of the CIH dogma to TV screens.
> 
> Why should a 1.85:1 or 16x9 film be allowed to be any taller than a letterboxed scope film just because they're being watched on an 85" TV screen?
> 
> After all, the actors' heads must be kept the same size.
> 
> Logicians call this type of argument _reducto ad absurdum__ -_ making clear that an argument is fallacious by pushing it to its logical extreme_._


A TV is a fixed device, by it's nature it has no flexibility. It has no relevance to this thread because of this. If someone builds a home theater around a TV they are accepting a CIW presentation. Which is fine if that's their preference.


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## dschulz

Phil, you are making the case for CIH. If I am going to the trouble of designing a room and choosing a screen, why would I pick the same 16:9 screen shape that compromises Scope in the same way as a TV? The whole point here is to view content in its native AR without black bars.


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## Philnick

@dschulz Humpty Dumpty is back! You're saying that a projection system that shows scope films as large as the projector can throw it from the maximum throw distance possible in the room is "compromising" scope simply because it _doesn't_ compromise its presentation of 1.85:1 and 16x9 by shrinking them to match.

Sorry, words do not mean just what you want them to mean. That didn't work for Humpty Dumpty and it won't work for you, not even if you pay them extra. (The link is to Alice in Wonderland's encounter with Humpty.)

Josh recently said


Josh Z said:


> Your perspective on this continues to be completely backwards. We are not shrinking non-scope films. We are enlarging scope films to maintain the same scale as those non-scope films. This does not diminish 16:9 or 1.85:1 in any way.
> 
> Scope films are artifically shrunken to a smaller scale on home video due to the limitations of the formats. Zooming them up to Constant Image Height corrects that problem.
> . . .
> When watching a movie, I value the content, not the container.


The last sentence in that post is indefensible - actually, all of it is, but I'm focusing on that last sentence right now. Anyone who "values the content, not the container" would not insist that content in different containers be forced into a homogenized presentation that shrinks some content so as not to exceed other content's size. That is precisely valuing one sort of container over others, and devaluing content in those other containers.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> Just to note that if anything CIH is more useful than ever for TV viewing, as the streaming model of widescreen content has started bleeding over into broadcast shows. Very satisfying to watch Superman & Lois (which is shot using vintage Panavision glass) or Stranger Things in a CIH setup.


Lets keep us straight I’m the proponent of sizing a screen if you must have a screen for CIH+IMAX at a minimum, but my method of presentation is a form of (Variable) I call PIA personal image area. I originally called it perfect image area but changed the name because Mr. jeahrens couldn’t get past the word “perfect” even when I pointed out perfect means something different to each of us based on our personal understanding of perfect. In short there is no universal perfect.

I agree with you on how TV is changing our perspective. Digital media is also a factor of change. I believe it should be part of this conversation as do you and Mr. jeahrens keeps reminding me to stay off the TV topic as it has no place in this discussion. To extrapolate using Phil’s reducto ad absurdum premise and take this back to say the early days of TV and the golden age of scope presentation 1960. We didn’t view what was TV quality anywhere close to movie quality and we wouldn’t in our wildest dreams to have expected I Love Lucy at 640x480 to stack up favorably shown CIH against Spartacus shot 35mm horizontal. I love Lucy was intended to be seen on something like a 25” CRT TV from maybe 10’ away. That was TV of the time and it would have looked awful up there in a motion picture theater CIH. Well times have changed and this stuff that is not motion picture in some cases has equaled or bettered what is now motion picture quality and much of it is way better than what some of the 1960 motion picture quality was. It is at least good enough for the connoisseurs here to recommend it be given CIH motion picture status. That’s a pretty good jump IMO.

How are we to believe something that was never intended to make it to the big screen is worth of the big screen CIH treatment? It is because we feel it is, and we try it and it is ok to watch that way and maybe it is wonderful to watch that way. We made a “personal” choice that it was “perfect” for us. Then we are recommending others do the same.

I find it really odd that Mr. jeahrens tells me TV is a fixed device and anyone using a TV is doomed to CIH presentation and the directors of modern TV knowing full well that almost everyone watching a show they make will watch it on this fixed device, and despite that they shoot it in wider frame knowing it will have these black bars you admit people want to avoid.

There are always black bars when you have a fixed screen CIH folks just get them on the sides is all. The only people I know of that have no concern about black bars are people like Phil and me that have stealth screens where we don’t predetermine a size or AR to fill. In doing that we only deal with the image size and AR not a screen size and AR. This concept once tried explains itself to the viewer and for what ever reason is imposable to explain to anyone on the forum as I have tried 100s of times with no one grasping the concept. So we keep it our little secret. Phil uses his stealth area much different than I do, but we get equally good results.

So now I must contemplate if I’m welcome to talk about the pros and cons of projector presentations. I’m told enough I’m off topic in everyway I view the subject. I don’t want to be canceled.


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## jeahrens

Philnick said:


> content in different containers be forced into a homogenized presentation that shrinks some content so as not to exceed other content's size. That is precisely valuing one sort of container over others, and devaluing content in those other containers.


Huh.. this is exactly what you do with anything wider than 1.89:1. Which is let's see is roughly 50% or more of the content out there. And you don't treat IMAX as intended either.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> The last sentence in that post is indefensible - actually, all of it is, but I'm focusing on that last sentence right now. Anyone who "values the content, not the container" would not insist that content in different containers be forced into a homogenized presentation that shrinks some content so as not to exceed other content's size. That is precisely valuing one sort of container over others, and devaluing content in those other containers.


Dude....

Dude..... !

DUDE.... ?!?!

WTF do you think we're talking about here? The cognitive dissonance in every word you write is staggering.

You don't want to force content into a container that shrinks it... unless that content is a scope movie, which you absolutely want to force into a container that shrinks it. Your logic in this is completely baffling.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> So now I must contemplate if I’m welcome to talk about the pros and cons of projector presentations. I’m told enough I’m off topic in everyway I view the subject. I don’t want to be canceled.


Bud you have an entire thread you can expound on about your vision for presentation. Anyone can go read it there. You were correctly called out calling this vision "perfect" as many have differing opinions. I've never hid or deflected that my own setup has compromises that others may not want. Filmmakers aren't making films with TV in mind. You have a passion for film and I respect that, but these tangents are just adding noise.


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> Bud you have an entire thread you can expound on about your vision for presentation. Anyone can go read it there. You were correctly called out calling this vision "perfect" as many have differing opinions. I've never hid or deflected that my own setup has compromises that others may not want. Filmmakers aren't making films with TV in mind. You have a passion for film and I respect that, but these tangents are just adding noise.


Again the title is should I or shouldn’t I do CIH.

What you are telling me is if I have information supporting (should) I’m welcome to give it. If I have information on (Shouldn’t) I’m welcome to give that in a different thread.

I didn’t start a thread titled (Why you shouldn’t do CIH) and then tell everyone that likes CIH they are off topic and go to a different thread. I started a thread inclusive and combining all methods of presentation including CIH and it was for the most part overtaken by “noise” as you describe it here.
You are correct about one thing filmmakers are not making movies with TV in mind. I will add TV show makers are not making TV shows with commercial theaters in mind. If your HT is coping a presentation method used in commercial theaters then stop showing 2.0:1 TV like it was a motion picture.


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## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> Huh.. this is exactly what you do with anything wider than 1.89:1. Which is let's see is roughly 50% or more of the content out there. And you don't treat IMAX as intended either.


There you go again! I'm not shrinking anything - but you are. I'm showing everything as large as I can and not forcing anything into a smaller presentation to advantage some other aspect ratio.

You, however, _do_ insist on shrinking 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 to be no taller than 2.35:1 - and you accuse me of "shrinking" scope because I don't shrink anything else to give scope an advantage in size. 

Since I've explained all this you many times in the last day or two, you can't plead ignorance - you're simply lying.

I show IMAX as large as I can like anything else. I'm sorry if you don't think that anything less than a stadium sized screen qualifies. That's your loss, not mine.


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Dude....
> 
> Dude..... !
> 
> DUDE.... ?!?!
> 
> WTF do you think we're talking about here? The cognitive dissonance in every word you write is staggering.
> 
> You don't want to force content into a container that shrinks it... unless that content is a scope movie, which you absolutely want to force into a container that shrinks it. Your logic in this is completely baffling.


By what logic do you call showing scope as large as my projector can, which is 11' 4" wide by 4' 10" tall, "forcing it into a container that shrinks it"? Your logic in that is more than baffling - it's simply _absent!_

If you can't follow what I'm saying, you are lacking in basic reading comprehension and shouldn't be giving anyone advice about anything.

My refusal to shrink anything cannot be construed as shrinking your favorite thing.

This is beginning to feel like dealing with a wounded animal, from the way you're lashing out so illogically.

Is your pride so fragile that losing an argument leads you to act like this?


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## dschulz

Phil, Bud - if you _want_ to show 16:9 material extra, extra large that's perfectly fine. To get to the thread title, that's a reason to _not_ go CIH.

What the CIH advocates are trying to convey is that if you go CIH Flat material is not any smaller than it ought to be, because of the way movies are composed and photographed. Your vertical immersion is the same in Flat and Scope. Actors take up the same amount of space onscreen in Flat and Scope. Just because you _can_ project a larger Flat image (as Phil does) doesn't mean you _should_ or _must_ and in fact if you do not you are perfectly respecting the creative choices made by the filmmaker. If you _want_ to make it larger (and thus not go with CIH) that is fine! But your preference for a super large image doesn't mean CIH is off base; it's a well-optimized system for showing everything apart from VAR IMAX titles and content with subtitles in the letterbox bars. And the advantages CIH gives you in terms of optimizing speaker placement behind the screen, and overall sightlines, outweigh those disadvantages thus far IMO. YMM, obviously, V.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> Phil, Bud - if you _want_ to show 16:9 material extra, extra large that's perfectly fine. To get to the thread title, that's a reason to _not_ go CIH.
> 
> What the CIH advocates are trying to convey is that if you go CIH Flat material is not any smaller than it ought to be, because of the way movies are composed and photographed. Your vertical immersion is the same in Flat and Scope. Actors take up the same amount of space onscreen in Flat and Scope. Just because you _can_ project a larger Flat image (as Phil does) doesn't mean you _should_ or _must_ and in fact if you do not you are perfectly respecting the creative choices made by the filmmaker. If you _want_ to make it larger (and thus not go with CIH) that is fine! But your preference for a super large image doesn't mean CIH is off base, it's a well-optimized system for showing everything apart from VAR IMAX titles and content with subtitles in the letterbox bars. And the advantages CIH gives you in terms of optimizing speaker placement behind the screen, and overall sightlines, outweigh those disadvantages thus far IMO. YMM, obviously, V.


The key words are "ought" "super large" and "well-optimized."

The belief that a system is well-optimized though it deliberately sacrifices the ability to show popular formats like VAR and 1.9:1 IMAX as large as the projector could - by deliberately installing a screen shorter than the projector can fill - is a contradiction in terms. It may be optimized for scope films, but sacrifices best presentation of almost as many films as it advantages - while it would be easy in most home theaters to avoid making that sacrifice by just using a taller screen.

So this unnecessary sacrifice of non-scope films' best presentation is rhetorically-justified by the use of "ought" to say this is proper, and calling "super large" (a term that every generation of theaters has used to pitch its premier rooms) presentations that don't follow CIH doctrine.

Let's look at the advantages of CIH you cite:

1) "Optimizing speaker placement behind the screen" My image is as wide as I can make it, and I end up with a few feet on either side of the screen to place my speakers. Even if I had to place my speakers behind the screen - which I _wouldn't _want to do because it could adversely affect both the sound and the picture - using a taller or shorter screen would have no effect on this. (I have room for my center channel speaker under my full-size image.)

2) "Optimizing . . . overall sightlines" Again, how does screen height affect this? I've often heard home theaters being called "caves," but does yours have stalactites or stalagmites between your seat and the screen that can block your ability to see a full-size screen?

If that's all you've got, l'm unimpressed. About the only argument for a scope screen that I'm accustomed to seeing is masking off black bars - but that's a matter of properly matching one's screen's gain to one's projector's contrast and using movable masking when necessary - not of permanently masking the screen and thus sacrificing proper presentation of about half of the available theatrical material.

I could also imagine that scope fans could see the black border of a taller screen as an implicit subliminal putdown of a scope film across its center ("Puny god!" - as the Hulk said of Loki after beating him up at the end of _The Avengers_). And that's why I have _no_ border on my screen area - no film is subjected to such implicit criticism.


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## fatherom

This thread has become silly. Everyone is deeply entrenched, everyone is talking past each other, and no one is understanding the other's way of explaining things. That's not even accounting for all the false things that are being said. LMAO. Not sure if I'm still entertained by all this, or deeply frightened.


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## dschulz

Philnick said:


> The key words are "ought" "super large" and "well-optimized."
> 
> The belief that a system is well-optimized though it deliberately sacrifices the ability to show popular formats like VAR and 1.9:1 IMAX as large as the projector could - by deliberately installing a screen shorter than the projector can fill - is a contradiction in terms. It may be optimized for scope films, but sacrifices best presentation of almost as many films as it advantages - while it would be easy in most home theaters to avoid making that sacrifice by just using a taller screen.


The only film presentations that are suboptimal in a CIH system with a Scope screen are:

a) Ultra Panavision titles (all ten or so of them), which need an even wider screen
b) IMAX titles, especially the VAR ones, which are usually Scope on their home video release anyway; maybe two dozen titles that would be better suited for CIH+IMAX? 
c) Scope films with subtitles in the letterbox bar

The other 10,000 films and TV shows I may want to watch are all perfectly accommodated by a Scope CIH system



> 1) "Optimizing speaker placement behind the screen" My image is as wide as I can make it, and I end up with a few feet on either side of the screen to place my speakers. Even if I had to place my speakers behind the screen - which I _wouldn't _want to do because it could adversely affect both the sound and the picture - using a taller or shorter screen would have no effect on this. (I have room for my center channel speaker under my full-size screen .)


I am absolutely starting from a presumption that a great home theatre has an acoustically transparent screen with the LCR speakers behind the screen. And masking. These are baseline assumptions for me, before getting into choosing screen geometry.



> 2) "Optimizing . . . overall sightlines" Again, how does screen height affect this? I've heard of home theaters being compared to caves, but do you have stalactites or stalagmites between your seat and the screen that can block your ability to see a full-size screen?


Keeping vertical immersion for both rows of seating between 2x and 3x screen height, or as near to that as I can get. CIH means that target vertical immersion stays constant irrespective of the aspect ratio of what I'm watching. 



> About the only argument for a scope screen that I'm accustomed to seeing is masking off black bars - but that's a matter of properly matching one's screen's gain to one's projector's contrast and using movable masking when necessary - not of permanently masking the screen and thus sacrificing proper presentation of about half of the available theatrical material.


I don't care for the black bars even at Dolby Cinema, with their light-controlled rooms and million-to-one contrast ratio projectors. I still see them, I'm still annoyed by them. A properly masked screen that matches the AR of the content I'm viewing is non-negotiable for me.


----------



## Philnick

dschulz said:


> The only film presentations that are suboptimal in a CIH system with a Scope screen are:
> 
> a) Ultra Panavision titles (all ten or so of them), which need an even wider screen
> b) IMAX titles, especially the VAR ones, which are usually Scope on their home video release anyway; maybe two dozen titles that would be better suited for CIH+IMAX?
> c) Scope films with subtitles in the letterbox bar
> 
> The other 10,000 films and TV shows I may want to watch are all perfectly accommodated by a Scope CIH system
> 
> I am absolutely starting from a presumption that a great home theatre has an acoustically transparent screen with the LCR speakers behind the screen. And masking. These are baseline assumptions for me, before getting into choosing screen geometry.
> 
> Keeping vertical immersion for both rows of seating between 2x and 3x screen height, or as near to that as I can get. CIH means that target vertical immersion stays constant irrespective of the aspect ratio of what I'm watching.
> 
> I don't care for the black bars even at Dolby Cinema, with their light-controlled rooms and million-to-one contrast ratio projectors. I still see them, I'm still annoyed by them. A properly masked screen that matches the AR of the content I'm viewing is non-negotiable for me.


Respecting your preference for CIH presentation of 1.85:1 films at the same height as scope, a taller screen with movable masks that can be put aside for categories b) and c) of the films you admit would be suboptimal on a scope screen would give you the flexibility to watch them not-suboptimal, and the masks could be moved closer together to optimize category a) Ultra Panavision films - unless you have enough zoom (and room) left to get wider at the same height, in which case you could make the screen wider as well as taller, and use side masking for scope as well as for things narrower.

You want an acoustically-transparent screen with the speakers behind it. Nothing stops you from making the screen taller. If you put the speakers behind the Ultra Panavision / scope portion of the screen, no position of the masks would block the sound.

As to seating distance as a multiple of screen height, you wouldn't have to change anything, just base it on the scope height. After all, IMAX is supposed to taller than you're comfortable with, right?

So for scope, your theater would as it is now, but you'd have the flexibility to make the screen taller or shorter (or maybe even wider) to cure the sub-optimal presentation of the other films.

What would you lose this way?


----------



## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Respecting your preference for CIH presentation of 1.85:1 films at the same height as scope, a taller screen with movable masks that can be put aside for categories b) and c) of the films you admit would be suboptimal on a scope screen would give you the flexibility to watch them not-suboptimal, and the masks could be moved closer together to optimize category a) Ultra Panavision films.
> 
> You want an acoustically-transparent screen with the speakers behind it. Nothing stops you from making the screen taller. If you put the speakers behind the Ultra Panavision portion of the screen, no position of the masks would block the sound.
> 
> As to seating distance as a multiple of screen height, you wouldn't have to change anything, just base it on the scope height. After all, IMAX is supposed to taller than you're comfortable with, right?
> 
> So for scope, your theater would as it is now, but you'd have the flexibility to make the screen taller or shorter to cure the sub-optimal presentation of the other films.
> 
> What would you lose this way?


What you have just described is CIH+IMAX, which all of us here have said is a fine approach for those who have the inclination and the wall space to accommodate it.

It is you, however, who has vehemently argued against CIH+IMAX, on the basis that any concession to the CIH portion is unacceptable, and that 1.85:1 movies _NEED _to be projected as large as IMAX, absolutely no compromises allowed under any circumstances ever.

So which is it, Phil? Do you finally acknowledge that a standard 1.85:1 movie is not the same thing as IMAX, and ought to be displayed differently? Or do you still insist that 1.85:1 movies must be the largest thing projected in your home theater at all costs?


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> The only film presentations that are suboptimal in a CIH system with a Scope screen are:
> 
> a) Ultra Panavision titles (all ten or so of them), which need an even wider screen
> b) IMAX titles, especially the VAR ones, which are usually Scope on their home video release anyway; maybe two dozen titles that would be better suited for CIH+IMAX?
> c) Scope films with subtitles in the letterbox bar
> 
> The other 10,000 films and TV shows I may want to watch are all perfectly accommodated by a Scope CIH system


I think you missed Academy films that make up a large percentage of what I watch. I believe it was you that posted some high end venues that like me feel they should be taller as well.


----------



## dschulz

Philnick said:


> Respecting your preference for CIH presentation of 1.85:1 films at the same height as scope, a taller screen with movable masks that can be put aside for categories b) and c) of the films you admit would be suboptimal on a scope screen would give you the flexibility to watch them not-suboptimal, and the masks could be moved closer together to optimize category a) Ultra Panavision films - unless you have enough zoom (and room) left to get wider at the same height, in which case you could make the screen wider as well as taller, and use side masking for scope as well as for things narrower.
> 
> You want an acoustically-transparent screen with the speakers behind it. Nothing stops you from making the screen taller. If you put the speakers behind the Ultra Panavision / scope portion of the screen, no position of the masks would block the sound.
> 
> As to seating distance as a multiple of screen height, you wouldn't have to change anything, just base it on the scope height. After all, IMAX is supposed to taller than you're comfortable with, right?
> 
> So for scope, your theater would as it is now, but you'd have the flexibility to make the screen taller or shorter (or maybe even wider) to cure the sub-optimal presentation of the other films.
> 
> What would you lose this way?


Nothing other than the elegant simplicity of 2-way rather than 4-way masking. If my front wall was large enough, and my budget allowed, I'd do exactly this (and thanks Bud for the reminder that it'd also be useful for Academy ratio films). It's just that the amount of content that needs this treatment is pretty small, and so it's a low priority.

As an aside, my own home theatre is extremely modest by the standards of everyone involved in this discussion - I live in an apartment, with a home theatre in the living room, so not even a dedicated room. 60" plasma TV, fairly decent 5.1 system. But I have been fortunate in my career to have spent a _lot_ of time in professional screening rooms, post houses, studio theatres, various cinemas public and private around LA, ultra-high-end home theatres, and I always take note of what I like and don't like about various rooms. I have always gravitated towards the CIH rooms that epitomized the widescreen experience, and so take that into account when I do sketches of my planned "someday" home theatre.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> What you have just described is CIH+IMAX, which all of us here have said is a fine approach for those who have the inclination and the wall space to accommodate it.
> 
> It is you, however, who has vehemently argued against CIH+IMAX, on the basis that any concession to the CIH portion is unacceptable, and that 1.85:1 movies _NEED _to be projected as large as IMAX, absolutely no compromises allowed under any circumstances ever.
> 
> So which is it, Phil? Do you finally acknowledge that a standard 1.85:1 movie is not the same thing as IMAX, and ought to be displayed differently? Or do you still insist that 1.85:1 movies must be the largest thing projected in your home theater at all costs?


I attempted to set forth a setup that would be flexible enough to work both for CIH adherents and for those like me who would still watch everything large.

My objection is to foreclosing one's options by installing a screen that makes films other than scope showable only by cropping them or reducing their magnification to fit within a fixed scope-shaped frame.

The key element is to install a screen that can accommodate anything your projector can put out. I did that by painting my entire wall with screen paint. Masking adds complexity that I avoided by using a low gain screen and a projector with deep blacks.

How you use your large screen is up to you. Experiment with different magnifications for non-scope films to see what you prefer.

Just don't close off your options in advance with your choice of screen.


----------



## beaRA

fatherom said:


> This thread has become silly. Everyone is deeply entrenched, everyone is talking past each other, and no one is understanding the other's way of explaining things. That's not even accounting for all the false things that are being said. LMAO. Not sure if I'm still entertained by all this, or deeply frightened.


I've felt this over the past several pages too. My hope is that both sides can come to acknowledge the valid points made by the other. I'd encourage all to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the pool. Keep in mind this is not an argument of morality. Right and wrong will be evaluated based on an individual's priorities.


----------



## Philnick

beaRA said:


> I've felt this over the past several pages too. My hope is that both sides can come to acknowledge the valid points made by the other. I'd encourage all to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the pool. Keep in mind this is not an argument of morality. Right and wrong will be evaluated based on an individual's priorities.


That's precisely what I've done in my two most recent posts. Now if folks will agree that by not shrinking any films I'm not shrinking scope films, we'll be all set.

My mother used to have an expression: "If you say A, I'll say B."

In my last two posts I've said A - will Josh say B?


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> Again the title is should I or shouldn’t I do CIH.
> 
> What you are telling me is if I have information supporting (should) I’m welcome to give it. If I have information on (Shouldn’t) I’m welcome to give that in a different thread.
> 
> I didn’t start a thread titled (Why you shouldn’t do CIH) and then tell everyone that likes CIH they are off topic and go to a different thread. I started a thread inclusive and combining all methods of presentation including CIH and it was for the most part overtaken by “noise” as you describe it here.
> You are correct about one thing filmmakers are not making movies with TV in mind. I will add TV show makers are not making TV shows with commercial theaters in mind. If your HT is coping a presentation method used in commercial theaters then stop showing 2.0:1 TV like it was a motion picture.


All I'm saying is make a succinct point if you have one. The tangents on TVs and such aren't relevant. No one is saying don't post. But this thread doesn't need to be turned into PIA thread part 2. It's probably already been derailed to the point that it no longer has any usefulness.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I think you missed Academy films that make up a large percentage of what I watch. I believe it was you that posted some high end venues that like me feel they should be taller as well.


The question would be if that is an artistic choice or simply dictated by the space.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> I attempted to set forth a setup that would be flexible enough to work both for CIH adherents and for those like me who would still watch everything large.


Congratulations, you have just "invented" something that has already been widely discussed in this forum for years and years.



Philnick said:


> That's precisely what I've done in my two most recent posts. Now if folks will agree that by not shrinking any films I'm not shrinking scope films, we'll be all set.
> 
> My mother used to have an expression: "If you say A, I'll say B."
> 
> In my last two posts I've said A - will Josh say B?


I don't think you're shrinking 2.35:1 films, Phil. I think you're over-magnifying 1.85:1 films and treating them as if they were IMAX when they're not.

Now I'd like you to acknowledge that I'm not "shrinking" 1.85:1.


----------



## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Congratulations, you have just "invented" something that has already been widely discussed in this forum for years and years.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think you're shrinking 2.35:1 films, Phil. I think you're over-magnifying 1.85:1 films and treating them as if they were IMAX when they're not.
> 
> Now I'd like you to acknowledge that I'm not "shrinking" 1.85:1.


Given your preferences for presentation, you're not shrinking 1.85:1 in your theater. 

Given my preferences, having to fit such films - which are wider heirs to the "Academy" format - into a scope frame when I can easily show them larger, would be shrinking them in my theater.


----------



## Josh Z

Again with the myth that Academy films are meant to be taller than scope, which flies directly in the face of every piece of documentation about the development and installation of CinemaScope.

And now you're asserting that all 1.85:1 movies are "heirs" to that Academy format? Where are you pulling that nonsense from?


----------



## dschulz

Josh Z said:


> Again with the myth that Academy films are meant to be taller than scope, which flies directly in the face of every piece of documentation about the development and installation of CinemaScope.
> 
> And now you're asserting that all 1.85:1 movies are "heirs" to that Academy format? Where are you pulling that nonsense from?


The Academy itself, which uses CIH at the Goldwyn for Flat and Scope, bumps up the masking to run Academy ratio films a little taller than Flat & Scope. We don't have to be dogmatic, here. I wouldn't design a theatre around a desire to do that, but if I had such a theatre I probably would enlarge Academy films a tick or two.


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## jeahrens

fatherom said:


> This thread has become silly. Everyone is deeply entrenched, everyone is talking past each other, and no one is understanding the other's way of explaining things. That's not even accounting for all the false things that are being said. LMAO. Not sure if I'm still entertained by all this, or deeply frightened.


Unfortunately this thread isn't doing anything but providing a comment tennis match and isn't answering questions for anyone that may or may not seriously want to know something about what it's intended to address.

I'm not sure if there is a lack of understanding or an unwillingness to attempt to understand. Standard theatrical ratios don't exist in a vacuum. Directors choose these ratios fully understanding their presentation vs. one another. Does that mean that this is something that must be followed when setting up our own rooms? No it doesn't. Though a big part of the problem in this thread is pretending that they don't exist.

The first thing anyone approaching their room should figure out is what do they want out of the room and what can it support? The room is a system. No one should look at the wall and say I have X amount of space to fill, so that's what my screen should be. That can be what you end up with, but it shouldn't be the start.

There's about 3 main aspect ratios I've seen employed over the years and each has pros/cons.

The first is a 16:9(17:9), also referred to as Constant Image Width (CIW) setup. Generally the most common. It's very easy to setup and supports the widest variety of projection hardware. In my opinion this is the most ideal setup for folks whose main focus is TV, sports and console gaming with movies being less of a concern. The main downside to this setup is films that are shot in wider aspect ratios are constrained horizontally and shrunk vertically. Which is in opposition to how they are intended to be shown by the filmmaker. Unless the owner is doing something special for IMAX, it's no better or worse necessarily than the other 2 main presentation methods.

The second is of course 2.35:1/2.40:1, referred to as Constant Image Height (CIH). A very close second in room counts I've visited over the years. A CIH setup requires a screen of the appropriate aspect ratio and a projector that has lens memory or anamorphic lens support (and the lens). This is primarily for a room that is built around movies first in my opinion. This allows wider aspect ratio films to expand horizontally as intended by the filmmaker and encompass more of the viewers field of view. Films shot in ratios like 1.85:1, 1.37:1 should be sized vertically the same as they would be on a 16:9/CIW setup so no loss in immersion is experienced. IMAX is generally no better or worse than a CIW setup, since it's occupying the same space it would on a CIW setup. The main cons are the entry price for a projector that supports the format, though it's certainly not terribly expensive.

The third is 2.00:1. Often referred to as the "Netflix" ratio it offers a sort of middle ground to the first 2 options. It decreases the loss of immersion you have with wider material. It's a very good option. The downsides are that it's difficult to find a screen to simply buy in this ratio (meaning you have to customize it) and you would need a projector with the same lens memory capabilities that CIH requires. This is very appealing to folks who mostly fit into the CIW category, but want to put more emphasis on film presentation.

Another option I see is called CIH+IMAX. I've never encountered it in person, but owners have posted this setup. This is a very large 16:9 screen (almost all IMAX is cropped to 1.78:1) that employs at least 2 way masking (if not 4 way). The upper and lower masks are in place for any non-IMAX material replicating a CIH experience. When showing IMAX, the upper and lower masks are removed approximating as best we can the IMAX experience at home. Remember this is NOT showing 1.85:1 or TV content the same height and immersion as IMAX.

So that gives an idea of what you may want, then next question is what does the room support. You want to make sure you take into account the sight lines from the seating area (no one wants to uncomfortably tilt their head to view the screen), speaker setup and brightness targets.

A common issue that people seem to have with setting up their space is "I only have X amount of space I can't do AR Y". People tend to forget that perceived size of the image is a function of both it's physical size and how far you are from it. it's usually something like "I think CIH makes sense, but I only have around 9' of width why wouldn't I just do a 16:9 screen that wide?". It's a good question, but it's only looking at the physical dimension of the wall and not the room as a whole. The root problem with this approach is we all have a preferred level of vertical immersion. If you set that room up with the 9' CIW screen your seating is going to be setup to where that narrower aspect ratio height is the 100% vertical threshold. Wider and wider films are filling less and less of your vertical field of view with this approach. To where scope is about 80% of your vertical field of view and not any wider. So what can you do? Again the room is a system. Nothing dictates filling the space, but you also don't want your experience to be diminished. So the other factor you have to work with is distance. That 9' wide CIW setup would give you a 61" height. Say you decided that a seating distance of 12.5' was comfortable for that 16:9 screen. That's about 2.5x the screen height to where your seating is. A 2.35:1 of the same width gives you a height of 47". So if you take that same ratio you would move your seating to about 9.5-10' to keep that same level of vertical immersion you had with the narrower screen. Now you've kept your immersion level for narrower films intact and will experience wider content with a lot more immersion.

That's just an example. There's a lot of other factors. You probably want to take into account target brightness with HDR which makes very large screens an issue. You want to make sure the room acoustics aren't compromised by having speakers to close to the floor/ceiling or wall. You want to pair the projector with an appropriate screen type (generally negative gain for low contrast projectors and neutral or positive gain for high contrast projectors). Sightlines are important too. All of those things can heavily influence what you end up with in your particular space.

And at the end of the day you may simply prefer one setup to another. And you should certainly implement and enjoy your preference in your room. If anyone is slogging through this thread and actually curious about this, hopefully that will at least give some perspective on what you may or may want to consider. Though it may seem like these choices are lines in the sand due to the back and forth, I really don't give a crap if I visit a friends house who's made a choice that's different than mine screen wise. I'm happy to chat about amps or screens or speakers or any other equipment if they want to, but at the end of the day it's all about enjoying the hobby.


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> The Academy itself, which uses CIH at the Goldwyn for Flat and Scope, bumps up the masking to run Academy ratio films a little taller than Flat & Scope. We don't have to be dogmatic, here. I wouldn't design a theatre around a desire to do that, but if I had such a theatre I probably would enlarge Academy films a tick or two.


I would genuinely be curious if that is construction limitation or artistic choice. Of course I think Academy looks just fine with a CIH setup and anytime I've gone to a theater to see them I've viewed them with the same height as scope or flat (not that many theaters bother to show them unfortunately).

Actually this is one area I think we're truly blessed to have a home theater. I never got the chance to watch Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seven Samurai, The War of the Worlds, The Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series or The Thin Man movies (and many more I'm forgetting) in a theater. So this is as close as I can get to enjoying these on a big screen.


----------



## dschulz

jeahrens said:


> I would genuinely be curious if that is construction limitation or artistic choice. Of course I think Academy looks just fine with a CIH setup and anytime I've gone to a theater to see them I've viewed them with the same height as scope or flat (not that many theaters bother to show them unfortunately).
> 
> Actually this is one area I think we're truly blessed to have a home theater. I never got the chance to watch Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seven Samurai, The War of the Worlds, The Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series or The Thin Man movies (and many more I'm forgetting) in a theater. So this is as close as I can get to enjoying these on a big screen.


It's artistic choice. The Goldwyn has 4-way masking & could present most any content at most any size.

It has been interesting to see a couple of Academy ratio films lately. Joel Coen's Macbeth was Academy. Robert Egger's The Lighthouse (which I saw at the Academy oddly enough) was, frustratingly, 1.19:1. I wish the post supervisors would put their foot down and tell the directors to stick with standard theatrical ratios, oddball ratios give the projectionists headaches.


----------



## jeahrens

dschulz said:


> It's artistic choice. The Goldwyn has 4-way masking & could present most any content at most any size.
> 
> It has been interesting to see a couple of Academy ratio films lately. Joel Coen's Macbeth was Academy. Robert Egger's The Lighthouse (which I saw at the Academy oddly enough) was, frustratingly, 1.19:1. I wish the post supervisors would put their foot down and tell the directors to stick with standard theatrical ratios, oddball ratios give the projectionists headaches.


Heh I wondered if The Lighthouse caused any headaches with it's unique choice. Still need to watch that one. It looks like an incredibly intense character film. Both Dafoe and Pattinson look to be at the top of their game.

Thanks for the clarification. It's always interesting to learn new things.


----------



## Josh Z

dschulz said:


> It has been interesting to see a couple of Academy ratio films lately. Joel Coen's Macbeth was Academy. Robert Egger's The Lighthouse (which I saw at the Academy oddly enough) was, frustratingly, 1.19:1. I wish the post supervisors would put their foot down and tell the directors to stick with standard theatrical ratios, oddball ratios give the projectionists headaches.


1.19:1 was a common ratio in the silent era before Academy 1.37:1 was standardized.

Most movie theaters today don't bother with masking. For that matter, most don't bother with projectionists either. Any director making a movie narrower than 1.85:1 today has to expect it to be projected with black pillarbox bars on the sides, unmasked.


----------



## bud16415

beaRA said:


> I've felt this over the past several pages too. My hope is that both sides can come to acknowledge the valid points made by the other. I'd encourage all to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the pool. Keep in mind this is not an argument of morality. Right and wrong will be evaluated based on an individual's priorities.


I pretty much summed up my thoughts on this subject on page 1 of this thread post # 6.

I would suggest anyone wanting to know my thoughts go back and read that post.

As far as I can tell only one person read my post and I got one reaction.
The point of this thread is really unknown to me. On the surface it would seem it was to seek ideas on how a very good method of presentation might be made better or how maybe some peoples individual needs might conflict with this method of presentation. In actuality I think it was the same old thing again where people using this method like to school others who adapted away from it why they are wrong in doing so. I have pointed out where some of the best of the best million dollar home theaters here on AVS have chose other than CIH presentation and of course those people knew what they wanted and are not to worried about educating the masses on what they may like. I sometimes wonder if Christopher Nolan has a HT in his house? My guess is he does, and wouldn’t it be fun to know what kind of presentation he employs. Or for that matter all of the top directors and cinematographers. I bet a lot of them have scope screens.


----------



## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> 1.19:1 was a common ratio in the silent era before Academy 1.37:1 was standardized.
> 
> Most movie theaters today don't bother with masking. For that matter, most don't bother with projectionists either. Any director making a movie narrower than 1.85:1 today has to expect it to be projected with black pillarbox bars on the sides, unmasked.


I had always thought 1.33 was the silent AR and later sound was added cut it down to 1.375. The 1.19 was in between the two and was used a short time for sound.

1.19:1 Aspect Ratio: Available Films? -


----------



## Josh Z

bud16415 said:


> I had always thought 1.33 was the silent AR and later sound was added cut it down to 1.375. The 1.19 was in between the two and was used a short time for sound.
> 
> 1.19:1 Aspect Ratio: Available Films? -


In the earliest days of filmmaking, there were no standards. A number of manufacturers developed proprietary film gauges that would only work with their own cameras and projectors. If you wanted to see a particular movie, you had to go to a theater equipped with that brand of projector. This gave them exclusivity.

Eventually, the industry rallied behind 1.33:1 as the "Academy Ratio" standard for silent, which was later amended to 1.37:1 with the introduction of sound.


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## Vern Dias

bud16415 said:


> I had always thought 1.33 was the silent AR and later sound was added cut it down to 1.375. The 1.19 was in between the two and was used a short time for sound.
> 
> 1.19:1 Aspect Ratio: Available Films? -


That is correct.

When the optical sound track was added to the early silents, the image width was reduced and shifted to one side to make room for the sound track while the image height remained the same with very narrow (to non-existent) frame lines.

This resulted in the 1.19:1 AR.

Shortly after, the image height was also reduced by increasing the vertical dimension of the frame lines, resulting in the standard 1.37:1 aspect ratio.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> It's artistic choice. The Goldwyn has 4-way masking & could present most any content at most any size.
> 
> It has been interesting to see a couple of Academy ratio films lately. Joel Coen's Macbeth was Academy. Robert Egger's The Lighthouse (which I saw at the Academy oddly enough) was, frustratingly, 1.19:1. I wish the post supervisors would put their foot down and tell the directors to stick with standard theatrical ratios, oddball ratios give the projectionists headaches.


I’m just curious and I have my opinion but would like to ask others. In today’s world of digital image gathering and display are any of the ARs of the past film era really of any relevance beyond historical at this point?
Sure we have all these theaters of old sized for the standards and a lot of the new ones seem to not mind if the image fits or not. No projectionist, no masking and all that. Why not 1.2:1 or 2.5:1?


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> I’m just curious and I have my opinion but would like to ask others. In today’s world of digital image gathering and display are any of the ARs of the past film era really of any relevance beyond historical at this point?
> Sure we have all these theaters of old sized for the standards and a lot of the new ones seem to not mind if the image fits or not. No projectionist, no masking and all that. Why not 1.2:1 or 2.5:1?


It really seems like most of the people playing with "odd" ratios are doing so between TV and the widest common film ratio. I see a lot of 2.00:1 and some 2.20:1 and 2.10:1. The Lighthouse is the only recent film I can think of that went really narrow (I think the filmmaker was quoted as saying he wanted it to feel very claustrophobic) and I can't think of any streaming shows going narrower than 16:9. There are still Indie films trickling out in Academy and The Artist was the last major studio release I can think of in the format. Just to calm down any thoughts this is pro or con one presentation method or the other, it's not intended to be. Just what I've seen. 

Hollywood doesn't seem to be losing much of it's grasp so 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 are still the most prevalent ARs and it seems like streaming platform films that have theatrical releases are conforming to this for the most part. If commercial cinema should die out then I feel things will get a lot more varied. But that doesn't seem like it's likely to happen any time soon. But who knows for sure?


----------



## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> I’m just curious and I have my opinion but would like to ask others. In today’s world of digital image gathering and display are any of the ARs of the past film era really of any relevance beyond historical at this point?
> Sure we have all these theaters of old sized for the standards and a lot of the new ones seem to not mind if the image fits or not. No projectionist, no masking and all that. Why not 1.2:1 or 2.5:1?


The American Society of Cinematographers was very insistent that DCI include Flat and Scope specifically in the digital cinema standards, and I don't see that changing. Commercial cinemas are, alas, abandoning masking but they do still choose either a Flat (CIW) screen or a Scope (CIH) screen, and occasional alternate ratio or VAR pictures notwithstanding I think the status quo of mainstream theatrical releases being one ratio or the other will stand fast. 

On the home media side I think it's safe to say that the 16:9 container is now an entrenched standard, and everyone is going to feel free to pick any ratio they like and simply letterbox or pillarbox to pad out to 16:9. The 2.00:1 sort-of-widescreen seems to be fast becoming a de facto standard for prestige TV.


----------



## Josh Z

jeahrens said:


> I can't think of any streaming shows going narrower than 16:9.


Master of None (Netflix) switched to 4:3 for season 3. The first two seasons were 2.35:1.
Five Points (Facebook Watch) is portrait layout 1:1.78 for season 2.

Several series use variable ratio formats that include some scenes narrower than 16:9.

Homecoming (Amazon) is 1:1 / 16:9.
Loki and WandaVision (Disney+) are both 4:3 / 16:9 / 2.35:1.


----------



## bud16415

dschulz said:


> The American Society of Cinematographers was very insistent that DCI include Flat and Scope specifically in the digital cinema standards, and I don't see that changing. Commercial cinemas are, alas, abandoning masking but they do still choose either a Flat (CIW) screen or a Scope (CIH) screen, and occasional alternate ratio or VAR pictures notwithstanding I think the status quo of mainstream theatrical releases being one ratio or the other will stand fast.
> 
> On the home media side I think it's safe to say that the 16:9 container is now an entrenched standard, and everyone is going to feel free to pick any ratio they like and simply letterbox or pillarbox to pad out to 16:9. The 2.00:1 sort-of-widescreen seems to be fast becoming a de facto standard for prestige TV.


Thanks to both of you for answering.

I also see the 2:1 taking off and it seems quite odd to me for TV as here it is talked about as a wider AR and it is wider but in reality on a 16:9 TV nothing is wider it is just going to be physically shorter and less immersive as if TV isn’t for the most part less immersive than cinema.

So do you think there is more going on as to how we perceive a “wider AR” regardless of size. When I see a 2.35 image even way under immersive on a TV I feel a cinematic content. Do you think 2:1 is trying to portray that feeling without giving over too much immersion and screen space? That’s the only thing I can think of.

Bringing this back around to on topic. When I used to do CIW and maybe it was more like Phil’s version of presentation. Yes 2.35:1 one was smaller, while at the same time still pretty big as it is FP after all. But the AR alone of 2.35:1 displayed the magic of a cinematic image regardless of size.
Thinking back to those days in my old 4:3 HT I quite often showed a 45 minute 4:3 original IMAX movie like say The Amazon. Followed by a scope movie. The disparity in height is huge when going between 1.33:1 to 2.35:1, but I never once had anyone mention the scope movie being too short or too small they seemed to flow naturally together.


----------



## jeahrens

Josh Z said:


> Master of None (Netflix) switched to 4:3 for season 3. The first two seasons were 2.35:1.
> Five Points (Facebook Watch) is portrait layout 1:1.78 for season 2.
> 
> Several series use variable ratio formats that include some scenes narrower than 16:9.
> 
> Homecoming (Amazon) is 1:1 / 16:9.
> Loki and WandaVision (Disney+) are both 4:3 / 16:9 / 2.35:1.


I haven't seen any of those. Though the Marvel stuff is on our list. I think Fett will probably come first. Just not enough time to fit everything in it seems like.


----------



## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> Thanks to both of you for answering.
> 
> I also see the 2:1 taking off and it seems quite odd to me for TV as here it is talked about as a wider AR and it is wider but in reality on a 16:9 TV nothing is wider it is just going to be physically shorter and less immersive as if TV isn’t for the most part less immersive than cinema.
> 
> So do you think there is more going on as to how we perceive a “wider AR” regardless of size. When I see a 2.35 image even way under immersive on a TV I feel a cinematic content. Do you think 2:1 is trying to portray that feeling without giving over too much immersion and screen space? That’s the only thing I can think of.
> 
> Bringing this back around to on topic. When I used to do CIW and maybe it was more like Phil’s version of presentation. Yes 2.35:1 one was smaller, while at the same time still pretty big as it is FP after all. But the AR alone of 2.35:1 displayed the magic of a cinematic image regardless of size.
> Thinking back to those days in my old 4:3 HT I quite often showed a 45 minute 4:3 original IMAX movie like say The Amazon. Followed by a scope movie. The disparity in height is huge when going between 1.33:1 to 2.35:1, but I never once had anyone mention the scope movie being too short or too small they seemed to flow naturally together.


I don't know what the thought process is behind using what in the film world would be a wider aspect ratio for something predominantly viewed in the confines of a 16:9 TV. The framing itself must have an appeal or perhaps there are more opportunities to view it outside of TV than I would think there would be. I do think 2.00:1 is potentially trying for a more cinematic feel without losing too much screen real estate on a TV. But that's just an opinion.

I've not really concerned myself much with how choices made for TV will impact what presentation I would choose for a home theater. Most of the streaming TV material could be be considered "wider" than 16:9, which may make a 2.00:1 or 2.35:1 theater more appealing. But since it's predominantly viewed in a 16:9 world, a case could be made that is a fine choice as well. I really don't have a strong opinion either way.

You have a vastly different experience than the HT enthusiasts I was friends with back in the 90's. Everyone I knew of tried very hard to get a hold of Laser Discs and Widescreen VHS to escape the awfulness of Pan and Scan 4:3 (that's not Academy films obviously). All of us lamented the thin sliver of the picture we got on our 32-50" 4:3 sets but it was the best we had. When I got my first 56" 16:9 Toshiba analog set, everyone was ecstatic that we were finally getting something more cinematic. Once we all got better jobs and projection became more affordable things just progressed from there. But I didn't know anyone in the hobby that wasn't happy to kick 4:3 to the curb.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I don't know what the thought process is behind using what in the film world would be a wider aspect ratio for something predominantly viewed in the confines of a 16:9 TV. The framing itself must have an appeal or perhaps there are more opportunities to view it outside of TV than I would think there would be. I do think 2.00:1 is potentially trying for a more cinematic feel without losing too much screen real estate on a TV. But that's just an opinion.
> 
> I've not really concerned myself much with how choices made for TV will impact what presentation I would choose for a home theater. Most of the streaming TV material could be be considered "wider" than 16:9, which may make a 2.00:1 or 2.35:1 theater more appealing. But since it's predominantly viewed in a 16:9 world, a case could be made that is a fine choice as well. I really don't have a strong opinion either way.
> 
> You have a vastly different experience than the HT enthusiasts I was friends with back in the 90's. Everyone I knew of tried very hard to get a hold of Laser Discs and Widescreen VHS to escape the awfulness of Pan and Scan 4:3 (that's not Academy films obviously). All of us lamented the thin sliver of the picture we got on our 32-50" 4:3 sets but it was the best we had. When I got my first 56" 16:9 Toshiba analog set, everyone was ecstatic that we were finally getting something more cinematic. Once we all got better jobs and projection became more affordable things just progressed from there. But I didn't know anyone in the hobby that wasn't happy to kick 4:3 to the curb.


Well I had a 120” 4:3 screen for the IMAX classics and that yielded a 110” 16:9 and a 104” 2.35:1 screen in the basement HT. Given I had a 36” Sony 4:3 CRT upstairs that quite a few people a few years before were impressed with and a few friends had those rear projection huge boxes that I was never overly impressed with the PQ on. Everyone I had come down after I had the projector running playing something demo oriented, jaws would drop when they saw the size even at 104”.

I also hated the altered formatted movies. Around 2000 DVD were taking hold and things got better with the play this side for theatrical version.

I never felt bad about letting go of 4:3 for 16:9 as a TV format I was as glad as you it was behind us. Projection was a different case for me as 4:3 was a selection and one I still might make if the industry made anything that fit the bill in that AR. I saw 4:3 as doing everything I needed with a 104” and 110” scope and 16:9 image and the bonus was I had the option for doing the 1.44 IMAX movies and my photography work and any thing else I wanted a massive 6’ tall. I also used the projectors extra height to move scope movies up and down anyplace on the screen. I had two rows back then with a small riser and playing a movie higher with digital shift when the second row was filled was handy.

I guess looking back I had some of my same philosophies back then.
The other interesting thing my old 4:3 projector did is it had a CIH mode built into it only it did CIH between 16:9 and 4:3. It worked perfect for the carryover 4:3 TV not making it IMAX size without having any zoom method.


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## jeahrens

IMAX being a documentary format never really entered into anyone's consideration back then that I can recall. People were impressed with nice and large 4:3 back when that was all we had. But no one missed it in the home theater crowd once we could move on. It was not a format anyone loved (at least not amongst the HT fans I knew). Projection was so rare that I never saw a setup before DLP hit the sub $5k price point.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> So do you think there is more going on as to how we perceive a “wider AR” regardless of size. When I see a 2.35 image even way under immersive on a TV I feel a cinematic content. Do you think 2:1 is trying to portray that feeling without giving over too much immersion and screen space? That’s the only thing I can think of.


I think that's exactly it: filmmakers think of widescreen as more cinematic, so those making prestige television gravitate towards it. I think Netflix encourages 2.00:1 rather than 2.39:1 because so many of their customers are viewing on laptops, tablets or even phones, and letterboxing the image too much makes the image too small overall. 2.00:1 is a nice compromise that provides a widescreen look without sacrificing too much screen area. 

It works out well for CIH application, because although the container remains 16:9, the widescreen composition is larger rather than smaller - the filmmakers don't reduce the amount of headroom, they add to the picture area to the sides. So if you have a Scope screen you can project Stranger Things or Foundation in a gratifying large image and enjoy that larger widescreen composition. 

A minor aside - I am fascinated to see how anamorphics are being used or not used for widescreen TV. Since the camera sensors are growing out to 6k or even 8k, it's perfectly possible to shoot with spherical lenses and simply crop to a widescreen composition, but they are often using anamorphic lenses anyway to keep all the artifacts that, consciously or not, we associate with widescreen filmmaking. I even read how with Wonder Woman 84, which was shot with spherical lenses due to the desire to have an IMAX release, the filmmakers in post went back and added some subtle image distortion and chromatic aberration to make it look as though it had been shot with anamorphic lenses!


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## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> IMAX being a documentary format never really entered into anyone's consideration back then that I can recall. People were impressed with nice and large 4:3 back when that was all we had. But no one missed it in the home theater crowd once we could move on. It was not a format anyone loved (at least not amongst the HT fans I knew). Projection was so rare that I never saw a setup before DLP hit the sub $5k price point.


I think you were doing projection a few years ahead of me. I was active in it to a degree as I had a friend that was always trying to be on the cutting edge and paying a lot to be there. He even built a projector from a kit using a Sony TV to drive it and it produced a so-so image about 60” in a pitch black room. He also was playing with the big 3 gun CRTs. By the time I started DLP was coming on strong and fairly affordable and IMO the first time some really spectacular results could be had on a workingman’s paycheck.
I remember inviting a guy from the office over as he was interested in FP and wanted to see what he thought. He brought his wife hoping if she saw it she might let him build a HT. I started off playing A River Runs Through It (1992) and she rattled off a string of expletives describing what she thought in a good way. The next day he was still apologizing for her excitement. I told him I never saw anyone more excited watching a guy land a fish. Not only did she approve she had him projector shopping the next day. Most people don’t get excited like that anymore about FP and unfortunately they are exposed to business projectors in schools and work from first grade on and expect that poor bright room PQ and are not willing to take the time to do FP correctly and there is a simplicity to buying and hanging a flat panel on the wall. Even size doesn’t excite this new generation, at least a lot of them. I call it “generation iPhone”.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> I think that's exactly it: filmmakers think of widescreen as more cinematic, so those making prestige television gravitate towards it. I think Netflix encourages 2.00:1 rather than 2.39:1 because so many of their customers are viewing on laptops, tablets or even phones, and letterboxing the image too much makes the image too small overall. 2.00:1 is a nice compromise that provides a widescreen look without sacrificing too much screen area.
> 
> It works out well for CIH application, because although the container remains 16:9, the widescreen composition is larger rather than smaller - the filmmakers don't reduce the amount of headroom, they add to the picture area to the sides. So if you have a Scope screen you can project Stranger Things or Foundation in a gratifying large image and enjoy that larger widescreen composition.
> 
> A minor aside - I am fascinated to see how anamorphics are being used or not used for widescreen TV. Since the camera sensors are growing out to 6k or even 8k, it's perfectly possible to shoot with spherical lenses and simply crop to a widescreen composition, but they are often using anamorphic lenses anyway to keep all the artifacts that, consciously or not, we associate with widescreen filmmaking. I even read how with Wonder Woman 84, which was shot with spherical lenses due to the desire to have an IMAX release, the filmmakers in post went back and added some subtle image distortion and chromatic aberration to make it look as though it had been shot with anamorphic lenses!


In this regard IMAX 1.89 isn’t changing a thing out of the scope movie except it is changing the shape of the box the movie is in. If the box itself is important to the feeling the director is trying to get to and that shape has a bearing on us making the connection to a cinematic experence, then why make the IMAX version at all. IMAX can show a scope movie just fine and they can insist on their high standards of PQ and audio.

On the same note if the impact is the total immersion of IMAX AR then cutting it down to scope is a loss of that. It can go both ways I guess.
A large part of why I do variable is all movies for me don’t improve with increased immersion. Both scope and flat some do and some don’t and the ones that don’t seem perfectly cinematic in their ARs.


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## dschulz

bud16415 said:


> In this regard IMAX 1.89 isn’t changing a thing out of the scope movie except it is changing the shape of the box the movie is in. If the box itself is important to the feeling the director is trying to get to and that shape has a bearing on us making the connection to a cinematic experence, then why make the IMAX version at all. IMAX can show a scope movie just fine and they can insist on their high standards of PQ and audio.
> 
> On the same note if the impact is the total immersion of IMAX AR then cutting it down to scope is a loss of that. It can go both ways I guess.
> A large part of why I do variable is all movies for me don’t improve with increased immersion. Both scope and flat some do and some don’t and the ones that don’t seem perfectly cinematic in their ARs.


This is all a little bit subjective and those involved are under NDA and are not talking, but here's what's happening as nearly as I can tell:

1) Some movies are made for IMAX, but shot so that non-IMAX experiences are also great. I'd put in this category most everything shot with IMAX 15/70 film cameras, or anything obviously framed with IMAX in mind - the Nolan oeuvre, Dune, etc.

2) Other movies are made principally for "regular" theatrical release, but as some stage the filmmakers decide to also do some extra work to make the IMAX version special. A great example of this is Eternals; after principal photography was complete, but the movie was still in post, Chloe Zhao was invited to IMAX for a screening of Dune. She was so impressed by what she saw she went back to her VFX team and asked if they could re-render some of the movie in full-frame IMAX

3) Other movies are made with nary a thought to the IMAX presentation, but because IMAX has deals in place with the major studios, and can represent as much as 15% of the global box office, a decision gets made to prep an IMAX version along with the other special versions - Dolby Cinema, China Giant Screen, Cinionic Giant Screen, ScreenX, ICE, etc. These are the films that may get shown simply letterboxed Scope on IMAX screens.


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## Philnick

Josh Z said:


> Master of None (Netflix) switched to 4:3 for season 3. The first two seasons were 2.35:1.
> Five Points (Facebook Watch) is portrait layout 1:1.78 for season 2.
> 
> Several series use variable ratio formats that include some scenes narrower than 16:9.
> 
> Homecoming (Amazon) is 1:1 / 16:9.
> Loki and WandaVision (Disney+) are both 4:3 / 16:9 / 2.35:1.


_Loki_ and _WandaVision_ both intermixed scenes seen on old TV sets - _WandaVision_ in particular, the first several episodes of which were modeled on specific old TV sitcoms, including _The Dick VanDyke Show_ (shot in black and white and performed live before a studio audience using the exact same crude special effects techniques) and _The Brady Bunch_, complete with theme songs and credit sequences.


Spoiler: Spoiler



The show ultimately revealed that Wanda had remade a whole town in the image of her favorite childhood TV shows to deal with the death of her lover, who she reconstituted as part of her denial of reality - and the whole thing was seen on TV by agents outside the town who tried to intervene.


So of course there were 4:3 segments.


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## Philnick

I can't believe that the forum's software censored the last name of one of the most famous comedians, substituting asterisks for the entire word until I reposted it without the space between it and his middle name!


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## fatherom

Philnick said:


> _Loki_ and _WandaVision_ both intermixed scenes seen on old TV sets - _WandaVision_ in particular, the first several episodes of which were modeled on specific old TV sitcoms, including _The Dick VanDyke Show_ (shot in black and white before a studio office using the exact same crude special effects techniques) and _The Brady Bunch_, complete with theme songs and credit sequences, ultimately revealing that Wanda had remade a whole town in the image of her favorite childhood TV shows to deal with the death of her lover, who she reconstituted as part of her denial of reality - and the whole thing was seen on TV by agents outside the town who tried to intervene.
> 
> So of course there were 4:3 segments.


Glad I watched WandaVision already, otherwise you would've ruined the entire premise for me.


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## Philnick

@fatherom I'm of two minds about the idea of "spoilers" - on the one hand they do give away surprises, but on the other hand, a well-crafted show, like a well crafted piece of writing, is deeper on a second time through, when you know about what's coming and can see the subtle hints that the writer gives, and the thematic echos.

I still avoid giving important plot twists away when showing something to a friend for the first time, however.

Maybe I should go back and hide much of that post with a spoiler tag.

UPDATE: Done.


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## bud16415

dschulz said:


> This is all a little bit subjective and those involved are under NDA and are not talking, but here's what's happening as nearly as I can tell:
> 
> 1) Some movies are made for IMAX, but shot so that non-IMAX experiences are also great. I'd put in this category most everything shot with IMAX 15/70 film cameras, or anything obviously framed with IMAX in mind - the Nolan oeuvre, Dune, etc.
> 
> 2) Other movies are made principally for "regular" theatrical release, but as some stage the filmmakers decide to also do some extra work to make the IMAX version special. A great example of this is Eternals; after principal photography was complete, but the movie was still in post, Chloe Zhao was invited to IMAX for a screening of Dune. She was so impressed by what she saw she went back to her VFX team and asked if they could re-render some of the movie in full-frame IMAX
> 
> 3) Other movies are made with nary a thought to the IMAX presentation, but because IMAX has deals in place with the major studios, and can represent as much as 15% of the global box office, a decision gets made to prep an IMAX version along with the other special versions - Dolby Cinema, China Giant Screen, Cinionic Giant Screen, ScreenX, ICE, etc. These are the films that may get shown simply letterboxed Scope on IMAX screens.


I agree with your thoughts on this and I agree IMAX is a tool to be used to whatever degree the directors passion for it leads them. Doing it just for the sake of doing it goes against my grain or just doing it as an after thought almost to cash in on IMAX sales is just playing into LieMAX mentality that is out there.

I wonder if you have noticed similar as I have in the making of scope movies. I sometimes watch an entire Romantic Comedy or Comedy shot in scope and during the whole movie I find my self distracted by the total non use of the scope area and it is almost like the director felt compelled to shoot in scope like it was an attempt to add something cinematic to the high priced actors he has. But in the end there is at least for me a feeling of nothing being better about it. I sometimes wonder if it is an attempt at flat-safe or TV-safe filming.
When I watched Tenet it was the first Nolan movie I watched where quite a bit of the IMAX stuff didn’t really do anything for me. Kind of the same way some scope movies feel.


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## R Harkness

Ha. These threads and debates continue to live!

I, and my *Variable Image Size system*, laugh and throw mockery at your puny CIH systems! 

12 years on and I continue to feel setting up a variable image size system (screen covering most of my screen wall, size adjusted by remote controlled 4 way masking, using zooming to size the image)...is among the best choices I made. I continually appreciate it. My image goes as wide as I'd want it to go (120" wide...no desire for wider), and still allows me all sorts of flexibility to play movies the height and size I want, based on the source quality, type of movie, amount of immersion I want, or just how I'm feeling at the moment. My son and I watched Under Siege (1:85:1) at a much more immersive size than if I'd stuck with CIH, and last night I watched the old 4:3 AR movie The Body Snatchers at a much larger and immersive image size as well.

I actually finally sold my Panamorph UH480 last year. I hadn't used it in ages. I only bought it to allow me to eek out that last couple inches of screen width in my room (so 120" wide to 125") but I just found I virtually never used it, it was a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, and so off it went.

All true...but all kidding aside, I still think CIH is really cool too.

** slinks away to return 5 years later with another comment**...


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## bud16415

R Harkness said:


> Ha. These threads and debates continue to live!
> 
> I, and my *Variable Image Size system*, laugh and throw mockery at your puny CIH systems!
> 
> 12 years on and I continue to feel setting up a variable image size system (screen covering most of my screen wall, size adjusted by remote controlled 4 way masking, using zooming to size the image)...is among the best choices I made. I continually appreciate it. My image goes as wide as I'd want it to go (120" wide...no desire for wider), and still allows me all sorts of flexibility to play movies the height and size I want, based on the source quality, type of movie, amount of immersion I want, or just how I'm feeling at the moment. My son and I watched Under Siege (1:85:1) at a much more immersive size than if I'd stuck with CIH, and last night I watched the old 4:3 AR movie The Body Snatchers at a much larger and immersive image size as well.
> 
> I actually finally sold my Panamorph UH480 last year. I hadn't used it in ages. I only bought it to allow me to eek out that last couple inches of screen width in my room (so 120" wide to 125") but I just found I virtually never used it, it was a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, and so off it went.
> 
> All true...but all kidding aside, I still think CIH is really cool too.
> 
> ** slinks away to return 5 years later with another comment**...


C-ya in five. Keep enjoying.


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## jeahrens

Not that it's terribly topical, but I wanted to update the thread with something I learned. The D+ IMAX is not cropped to 1.78:1 like the disc based IMAX has been. So that's a positive for D+ and something I hope the other studios do as well. They'll probably still chop 1.43:1 IMAX, but at least some of the content is making it to us unscathed.


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## fatherom

jeahrens said:


> Not that it's terribly topical, but I wanted to update the thread with something I learned. The D+ IMAX is not cropped to 1.78:1 like the disc based IMAX has been. So that's a positive for D+ and something I hope the other studios do as well. They'll probably still chop 1.43:1 IMAX, but at least some of the content is making it to us unscathed.


Seems like more recent stuff is not being cropped to 1.78:1, which is nice:

Tenet
MI: Fallout
Disney+ Marvel movies
others I'm sure I'm forgetting


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## jeahrens

fatherom said:


> Seems like more recent stuff is not being cropped to 1.78:1, which is nice:
> 
> Tenet
> MI: Fallout
> Disney+ Marvel movies
> others I'm sure I'm forgetting


Tenet in the review I read shows 1.78:1, but MI says 1.90:1. I can't honestly recall if Tenet was 1.78:1 or not when I watched it (review could be wrong). I do need to re-watch that one. Definitely promising.


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## Philnick

The benefit of 1.90:1 for me is that it matches the shape of my projector's imagers, so I can use the projector's toggle to do a digital zoom on the 1.78:1 input signal to 1.90:1 to use the whole 17x9 area of the imagers (instead of 16x9), for more light and a larger picture.

I use that for anything 1.85:1 and wider (the amount of vertical image shaved off when zooming 1.85 to 1.9 is about 1% top and bottom - much less than the area cinematographers know may be shaved off by overscan along the line).


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## fatherom

jeahrens said:


> Tenet in the review I read shows 1.78:1, but MI says 1.90:1. I can't honestly recall if Tenet was 1.78:1 or not when I watched it (review could be wrong). I do need to re-watch that one. Definitely promising.


Oh, yeah, I was thinking wrong about Tenet. It is in fact 1.78:1 in the IMAX scenes.


----------



## Josh Z

jeahrens said:


> Not that it's terribly topical, but I wanted to update the thread with something I learned. The D+ IMAX is not cropped to 1.78:1 like the disc based IMAX has been. So that's a positive for D+ and something I hope the other studios do as well. They'll probably still chop 1.43:1 IMAX, but at least some of the content is making it to us unscathed.


Disney+ actually offers both CIH and VAR options for streaming these movies. You can pick which one you want. The choice is found under the "Versions" menu.



> Tenet in the review I read shows 1.78:1, but MI says 1.90:1. I can't honestly recall if Tenet was 1.78:1 or not when I watched it (review could be wrong). I do need to re-watch that one. Definitely promising.


Tenet was shot with IMAX 15/70 film, with a 1.43:1 camera negative. The Blu-ray and UHD are cropped to 16:9. 

The climax of M:I-Fallout was shot with IMAX digital cameras, which have a native sensor ratio of 1.90:1. Nothing is cropped from that.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> Seems like more recent stuff is not being cropped to 1.78:1, which is nice:
> 
> Tenet
> MI: Fallout
> Disney+ Marvel movies
> others I'm sure I'm forgetting


Not sure what you mean. Tenet _is_ cropped down to 1.78:1 from the original IMAX 15/70 1.43:1. 

There's been a pretty consistent trend that movies shot on 15/70 are cropped to 16:9 on home video, while those shot digitally stay at their native 1.90:1.

The only exception to this is Zack Snyder, who had Batman v. Superman remastered with the IMAX scenes pillarboxed at 1.43:1. He also had his director's cut of Justice League reformatted to 4:3 so that he could pretend it's IMAX even though that one wasn't shot with IMAX cameras at all.


----------



## fatherom

Josh Z said:


> Not sure what you mean. Tenet _is_ cropped down to 1.78:1 from the original IMAX 15/70 1.43:1.
> 
> There's been a pretty consistent trend that movies shot on 15/70 are cropped to 16:9 on home video, while those shot digitally stay at their native 1.90:1.
> 
> The only exception to this is Zack Snyder, who had Batman v. Superman remastered with the IMAX scenes pillarboxed at 1.43:1. He also had his director's cut of Justice League reformatted to 4:3 so that he could pretend it's IMAX even though that one wasn't shot with IMAX cameras at all.


I responded over an hour ago correcting my mistake about Tenet.


----------



## Josh Z

fatherom said:


> I responded over an hour ago correcting my mistake about Tenet.


Fair enough. Still, the only movie with IMAX scenes (real IMAX, not pretend IMAX) presented in the full 1.43:1 is Batman v. Superman.


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## bud16415

Josh Z said:


> Fair enough. Still, the only movie with IMAX scenes (real IMAX, not pretend IMAX) presented in the full 1.43:1 is Batman v. Superman.


All the original IMAX 1.43 nature and science movies were first released in 1.43:1 AR for the home market.


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## jeahrens

bud16415 said:


> All the original IMAX 1.43 nature and science movies were first released in 1.43:1 AR for the home market.


I think it's just documentary vs. Hollywood film in what Josh is saying.

I mainly just wanted to clear up that my thinking that modern IMAX is generally cropped isn't the case. And that's a good thing.


----------



## bud16415

jeahrens said:


> I think it's just documentary vs. Hollywood film in what Josh is saying.
> 
> I mainly just wanted to clear up that my thinking that modern IMAX is generally cropped isn't the case. And that's a good thing.


All modern IMAX shot in 1.43 is cropped to 1.78 for BD. Then some people like to crop that down to 2.35. As far as modern 1.89 IMAX that comes on BD un-cropped, but many like to then crop it to 2.35. No side cropping though as far as I know.


----------



## Philnick

jeahrens said:


> IMAX being a documentary format never really entered into anyone's consideration back then that I can recall. People were impressed with nice and large 4:3 back when that was all we had. But no one missed it in the home theater crowd once we could move on. It was not a format anyone loved (at least not amongst the HT fans I knew). Projection was so rare that I never saw a setup before DLP hit the sub $5k price point.





bud16415 said:


> I think you were doing projection a few years ahead of me. I was active in it to a degree as I had a friend that was always trying to be on the cutting edge and paying a lot to be there. He even built a projector from a kit using a Sony TV to drive it and it produced a so-so image about 60” in a pitch black room. He also was playing with the big 3 gun CRTs. By the time I started DLP was coming on strong and fairly affordable and IMO the first time some really spectacular results could be had on a workingman’s paycheck.
> I remember inviting a guy from the office over as he was interested in FP and wanted to see what he thought. He brought his wife hoping if she saw it she might let him build a HT. I started off playing A River Runs Through It (1992) and she rattled off a string of expletives describing what she thought in a good way. The next day he was still apologizing for her excitement. I told him I never saw anyone more excited watching a guy land a fish. Not only did she approve she had him projector shopping the next day. Most people don’t get excited like that anymore about FP and unfortunately they are exposed to business projectors in schools and work from first grade on and expect that poor bright room PQ and are not willing to take the time to do FP correctly and there is a simplicity to buying and hanging a flat panel on the wall. Even size doesn’t excite this new generation, at least a lot of them. I call it “generation iPhone”.


When I set up my first basement theater around 2002, it was in the days when 480p instead of 480i was the big deal and hobbyist websites were testing DVD players on their deinterlacing abilities. It came out that one manufacturer (Phillips, I think) had gotten a deal on previous-generation Farjuida deinterlacing chips (forgive me if I've misspelled that) and had put them in their base model, so I got one and fed its output to a Dell portable DLP projector designed for PowerPoint but capable of 480p.

That baby definitely needed masking, as it surrounded the image with a 10% grey box! Nailed matte-black artist's cardboard to the wall to frame the image, hiding the grey surround.

That was fun - until the dust settled on the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war. Bought my first Blu-ray player and a Panasonic PT-AE2000 1080p LCD projector in 2008 - which I used for many years, though I upgraded Blu-ray players a few times to improve music-handling!

Upgraded to 4K and my JVC in the fall of 2019 after I had to rebuild my theater due to renovations in the basement, which left me with a higher ceiling and thus the ability to throw a larger image and add ceiling-hung speakers for Atmos and DTS:X.


----------



## bud16415

Philnick said:


> When I set up my first basement theater around 2002, it was in the days when 480p instead of 480i was the big deal and hobbyist websites were testing DVD players on their deinterlacing abilities. It came out that one manufacturer (Phillips, I think) had gotten a deal on previous-generation Farjuida deinterlacing chips (forgive me if I've misspelled that) and had put them in their base model, so I got one and fed its output to a Dell portable DLP projector designed for PowerPoint but capable of 480p.
> 
> That baby definitely needed masking, as it surrounded the image with a 10% grey box! Nailed matte-black artist's cardboard to the wall to frame the image, hiding the grey surround.
> 
> That was fun - until the dust settled on the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war. Bought my first Blu-ray player and a Panasonic PT-AE2000 1080p LCD projector in 2008 - which I used for many years, though I upgraded Blu-ray players a few times to improve music-handling!
> 
> Upgraded to 4K and my JVC in the fall of 2019 after I had to rebuild my theater due to renovations in the basement, which left me with a higher ceiling and thus the ability to throw a larger image and add ceiling-hung speakers for Atmos and DTS:X.


I think a lot of us started off in and around the 480p era of projection or at least 720p. I started in between the two.

Those resolutions were amazing at the time I remember threads talking about soft focus and screen textures to help ease the lack of resolution a little and let us watch a bit more immersive. As resolution went up so did immersion. IMAX theaters with their huge film size gave us a glimpse into the future and a goal to shoot for with better resolutions coming down the pipeline.

It is not that I didn’t totally enjoy my XGA theater it is that I enjoyed my 720p theater a little more and the 1080p a little more as it got us closer or even to our desired max immersion.
When I had my XGA theater everyone seemed to like the immersion I liked and I liked it because it was as close as I could sit given the resolution and others liked it because that was their comfortable level of immersion or a mixture of both. Now we are at a place where immersion has no or little constraints for most people. So it is logical it should be adjustable both on a personal level and on the quality of the media being played level.


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## Josh Z

Philnick said:


> Farjuida deinterlacing chips (forgive me if I've misspelled that)


Faroudja.


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## beaRA

Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd share my personal findings. Buying a projector right now is nearly impossible, but I borrowed a cheap one to play with screen sizes in my room while I wait. I used the opening fight scene of Eternals on Disney+ to develop impressions for different scope widths vs the IMAX presentation.

For my part, I found that I got a similar sense of immersion from a scope presentation as wide as possible for the room (~132") compared to the IMAX presentation as tall as possible for the room (~63"). Reducing the scope width to 120" wide made it too small for my preference.

My girlfriend actually felt that the 132" wide scope presentation was too big, but the 63" tall IMAX presentation was still comfortable. Turns out, she is more disoriented by the extra image in her horizontal periphery than vertical. She probably would have been fine with the 120" scope width, but a compromise of 126" brought it into her comfort zone.

So between a wide-as-possible scope screen not meeting my IMAX expectations and her discomfort with the extra width, we've landed on more of a CIA setup. A 126"Wx63"H 2:1 AR screen maximizes the screen area for our room limitations without making it uncomfortably wide for her.

Edit: I make no claims as to the transferrability of our impressions or screen choice.


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## dschulz

Thanks for the report! I'm curious, are you planning on using masking or are you happy with the image onscreen with a little bit of letterbox or pillarbox bars?


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## bud16415

beaRA said:


> Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd share my personal findings. Buying a projector right now is nearly impossible, but I borrowed a cheap one to play with screen sizes in my room while I wait. I used the opening fight scene of Eternals on Disney+ to develop impressions for different scope widths vs the IMAX presentation.
> 
> For my part, I found that I got a similar sense of immersion from a scope presentation as wide as possible for the room (~132") compared to the IMAX presentation as tall as possible for the room (~63"). Reducing the scope width to 120" wide made it too small for my preference.
> 
> My girlfriend actually felt that the 132" wide scope presentation was too big, but the 63" tall IMAX presentation was still comfortable. Turns out, she is more disoriented by the extra image in her horizontal periphery than vertical. She probably would have been fine with the 120" scope width, but a compromise of 126" brought it into her comfort zone.
> 
> So between a wide-as-possible scope screen not meeting my IMAX expectations and her discomfort with the extra width, we've landed on more of a CIA setup. A 126"Wx63"H 2:1 AR screen maximizes the screen area for our room limitations without making it uncomfortably wide for her.
> 
> Edit: I make no claims as to the transferrability of our impressions or screen choice.


I wish more people would do exactly what you did and the way you did it getting all the primary viewers to weigh in and testing on a open area to learn what they like.

If you are like me on the occasions you watch a scope movie alone you could go for the wider image and when you watch with her limit it to her comfort zone. This is no different than if you both went out to a movie you might sit back a few rows from where you might like to sit alone.

I find some content really gets enhanced for me when shown more immersive and some isn’t as fun pushing the limits. Has a lot to do with the style of movie and the action involved.
Watch a few more and include an Academy AR movie. Her tastes may also change with some time also.


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## beaRA

dschulz said:


> Thanks for the report! I'm curious, are you planning on using masking or are you happy with the image onscreen with a little bit of letterbox or pillarbox bars?


TBD based on the performance of the Epson LS12000. The temporary projector absolutely needs masking. My current thought is to have manual masking for scope, but don't bother for 2:1 and narrower.


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## beaRA

bud16415 said:


> I wish more people would do exactly what you did and the way you did it getting all the primary viewers to weigh in and testing on a open area to learn what they like.
> 
> If you are like me on the occasions you watch a scope movie alone you could go for the wider image and when you watch with her limit it to her comfort zone. This is no different than if you both went out to a movie you might sit back a few rows from where you might like to sit alone.
> 
> I find some content really gets enhanced for me when shown more immersive and some isn’t as fun pushing the limits. Has a lot to do with the style of movie and the action involved.
> Watch a few more and include an Academy AR movie. Her tastes may also change with some time also.


Yeah that definitely makes sense. I'm erring on the side of "bigger is better" since I can always mask down for comfort. Going bigger later involves another very expensive purchase.


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