Happy7User
New member
There is a thread going round where someone describes losing hours to the Interstellar IMAX sequences on a flatscreen, and it reminded me of the one argument the TV side wins outright.
Those expanded ratio scenes fill a 16:9 panel completely, edge to edge, and the switch in and out is the whole effect the format was built around. On a scope screen it goes the other way. Either you letterbox the IMAX material inside the width you have, which throws away the extra height that was the entire point, or you mask and zoom per scene, which nobody is doing mid film with guests in the room. Mine is 2.35:1 and every time one of these titles changes ratio I get reminded that the most expensive thing in the room is the wrong shape for it.
It is not only Nolan any more either. More discs ship with variable aspect ratio presentations, and the streaming version sometimes differs from the disc, so you do not always know which one you are watching until the bars move.
I am not selling the projector. For a 2.40:1 film on a proper screen there is no contest and there never has been. But when people ask why anyone with a dedicated room still keeps a large TV elsewhere in the house, this is a genuine part of the answer, and it is getting more common rather than less.
For those of you running masking on a scope screen, has anyone automated ratio switching in a way that actually survives a film that changes it a dozen times?
Those expanded ratio scenes fill a 16:9 panel completely, edge to edge, and the switch in and out is the whole effect the format was built around. On a scope screen it goes the other way. Either you letterbox the IMAX material inside the width you have, which throws away the extra height that was the entire point, or you mask and zoom per scene, which nobody is doing mid film with guests in the room. Mine is 2.35:1 and every time one of these titles changes ratio I get reminded that the most expensive thing in the room is the wrong shape for it.
It is not only Nolan any more either. More discs ship with variable aspect ratio presentations, and the streaming version sometimes differs from the disc, so you do not always know which one you are watching until the bars move.
I am not selling the projector. For a 2.40:1 film on a proper screen there is no contest and there never has been. But when people ask why anyone with a dedicated room still keeps a large TV elsewhere in the house, this is a genuine part of the answer, and it is getting more common rather than less.
For those of you running masking on a scope screen, has anyone automated ratio switching in a way that actually survives a film that changes it a dozen times?
