[Steve Rhodes]

We are building a house with a movie room with a 2.35:1 Cinemascope screen. What are my options using DirecTV for viewing films in their original (mainly 2.35:1) aspect ratio?

Do I look for ones in 1080p and those will be in the original ratio or what?

I know I can rent DVDs to accomplish this, but I wondered how I figured out what DirecTV has.

 

[MONSTERMAN]

Instead of getting bars on the top and bottom you will get them on the sides with cinematic 21.9 widescreen.

 

[HoTat2]

Instead of getting bars on the top and bottom you will get them on the sides with cinematic 21.9 widescreen.

True;

The format for all DIRECTV programming is either 4:3 (SD) or 16:9 (HD or for some locals in widescreen SD).

Even 2.35:1 (or greater) material whenever broadcast is letter-boxed into 16:9.

Therefore a 21:9 screen ratio will produce either a pillar or window box image for all programs.

 

[kpfleming]

You can get an outboard video processor (like the DVDO EDGE, which I have and love) to do high-quality reformatting of the video image to fit your screen, if the source material has been compressed into a 16:9 format (not cropped, of course).

 

[jimmie57]

Since DTV puts out the 16:9 ratio, I would think that this new, very expensive TV, that we are talking about would be the place that has the capability to make a 16:9 reformat to fit the 21:9 screen.
Most, if not all of the 16:9 ratio TVs have the ability to reformat a 4:3 signal to fit the 16:9 screen. Based on this fact,
I would dig more into the capabilities of the TV before taking a leap into this format. I would want to "SEE" it in action before taking the plunge.

Good luck with this.

 

[Carl Spock]

It isn't just DirecTV. Most movie studios reformat their films to 16:9 for broadcast. Paramount has done that with the Star Trek movies, just like Fox has done that for the Star Wars ones. If you get either series on Blu-ray, they are in their original aspect ratio.

 

[Steve Rhodes]

True;

The format for all DIRECTV programming is either 4:3 (SD) or 16:9 (HD or for some locals in widescreen SD).

Even 2.35:1 (or greater) material whenever broadcast is letter-boxed into 16:9.

Therefore a 21:9 screen ratio will produce either a pillar or window box image for all programs.

So when it says 1080p it means cropped to 16:9 1080?

I thought some of the direcTV shows were letterboxed on 16:9 hence would fill my screen.

 

[Steve Rhodes]

Instead of getting bars on the top and bottom you will get them on the sides with cinematic 21.9 widescreen.

We have motorized curtains, so we won't be seeing bars when watching 16:9

 

[jimmie57]

I found this article about one of the Cinemascope 21:9 TVs.
It tells a lot about how they work. This one puts a 16:9 picture on the right hand side of the screen and you can use apps in the space left on the left hand side.
http://www.electronichouse.com/product/details/xvt3d580cm_cinemawide_hdtv/

 

[Bill Broderick]

So when it says 1080p it means cropped to 16:9 1080?

I don't use DirecTV's PPV channels, so I can't comment on whether they air 2.35:1 movies in their original aspect ratio or not.

But, 1080p has nothing to do with aspect ratio. It just means that the video is using progressive scanning, rather than interlaced scanning, for a higher picture resolution.

 

[spartanstew]

We are building a house with a movie room with a 2.35:1 Cinemascope screen. What are my options using DirecTV for viewing films in their original (mainly 2.35:1) aspect ratio?

Do I look for ones in 1080p and those will be in the original ratio or what?

I know I can rent DVDs to accomplish this, but I wondered how I figured out what DirecTV has.

Any show broadcast in 2.35:1 (doesn't have to be 1080p, heck doesn't even have to be HD), will be designed to fit on a 16:9 screen (with the bars), just like the Blu Ray and DVD will.

You would solve that the same way you would with anything else, let the bars bleed off onto your border, or use your masking system.

 

[jimmie57]

I went thru the HBO, Showtime, Starz and TMCeHD and TMCXHD channels one at a time. There were 4 playing at that time. One of them had the LB mark after you pressed the Info button. On the guide there was no indication of the shape of the Movies.

 

[Steve Rhodes]

I went thru the HBO, Showtime, Starz and TMCeHD and TMCXHD channels one at a time. There were 4 playing at that time. One of them had the LB mark after you pressed the Info button. On the guide there was no indication of the shape of the Movies.

Good news! I too found 5 movies this evening being shown in their original 2.35:1 rather rather than the cropped 16:9 but more important I found a ton of 1080p uncropped 2.35:1 films on directv on demand as well as a dozen Moreno pay per view.

 

[CCarncross]

I find that most of the premium channels show the movies in their OAR, and I believe most of the PPV's do also.

 

[Beerstalker]

Showtime, The Movie Channel, and the Starz/Encore networks tend to respect OAR and will air movies that way when a proper transfer is available (for example if there aren't any 2.35:1 HD transfers of a movie available for a movie they are airing they will have to resort to using the 16:9 version instead).

HBO and Cinemax are the opposite. They want everything in 16:9, however some movie studios/filmakers have refused to allow them to air their material chopped down to 16:9 so in those instances they will relent and air the OAR version. I remember reading an article a while back about the director of one of the Oceans 11/12/13 movies having to go almost all the way up to the president of the station before he was able to get HBO to relent and show his movie in it's proper OAR.

Like the others said though, there are no true 2.35:1 sources at this time (at least not on Blu-Ray or pay TV). All of them are 16:9 sources letterboxed down and you will have to use a scaler and usually an anamorphic lens in order to zoom in the material and show it full sized. I'm assuming the installer making your theater room will know all this and get you set up properly though.

I'm hoping when the Blu-Ray folks come out with Blu-Ray 2.0 or whatever they call it when they move to 4K/8K they put in a system to allow anamorphic encoding for wider formats, or maybe just remove the restriction altogether and just let the movies be stored on the disc at whatever width they need to be to have the proper height. For example have 16:9 material stored as 3840x2160, 1.85:1 stored as 3996x2160, 2.35:1 stored as 5076x2160 etc. And then just have the players downscale/letterbox the material if they need to show it on a 16:9 screen.

 

[turls]

Showtime, The Movie Channel, and the Starz/Encore networks tend to respect OAR and will air movies that way when a proper transfer is available (for example if there aren't any 2.35:1 HD transfers of a movie available for a movie they are airing they will have to resort to using the 16:9 version instead).

HBO and Cinemax are the opposite. They want everything in 16:9, however some movie studios/filmakers have refused to allow them to air their material chopped down to 16:9 so in those instances they will relent and air the OAR version. I remember reading an article a while back about the director of one of the Oceans 11/12/13 movies having to go almost all the way up to the president of the station before he was able to get HBO to relent and show his movie in it's proper OAR.

Actually there is a little more to it than this. At one time, HBO/Cinemax also respected OAR and many older movies are still shown "as the Director intended". "Boogie Nights" is a prime example. I can use my zoom lens on my projector and get a great OAR image on my 2.35 Constant Image Height (CIH) screen, although actually I am wasting a lot of pixels vs an anamorphic image from a BluRay.

When it is a Sony 1000ES, it still looks great