Vizio Cinemawide widescreen

[KTN Corp]

Costco is selling this 58" LED SmartTV. The website advertises the TV as a 21:9 ratio; wider than a conventional 16:9 widescreen. I bet that when it shows 16:9 programming, it is pillarboxed. I just saw a commercial that looks somewhat like the 1:85:1 ratio (usually used in newer Blu-ray releases and movie TV advertisements).

Anybody see this as the new widescreen ratio? How will ATSC and the other video delivery formats handle this "transition"? (Is there a provision in the ATSC standards for such a thing?) The 4:3 to 16:9 transition is barely halfway finished and now this pops up! Widescreen broadcasts took a while to appear and usually only after shooting episodes in HD. How long do you think it will take to transition into the 1:85:1 (or the 21:9) ratio? I'm expecting higher definitions of television to pop up in the next few years and probably will coincide with the aspect change.

BTW since this TV has 3D capability too, your thoughts about 3D TV becoming more mainstream especially on OTA TV?

 

[Darth_vader]

Are you sure that's a fullblown integrated receiver/display or just a display monitor with no receiver (tuner)? I could see a monitor like that mainly only being useful for content rendered in such an extremely wide aspect ratio (like discs of old Cinemascope material when the actual aspect ratio is accurately presented.) I can't even begin to imagine how useless it would be for broadcast material, especially 4*3 stuff. The way people tend to operate their existing 16*9 displays, this would take "stretchovision" to the extreme.

ATSC at present only supports up to 1920*1080 pels--a 16*9 aspect ratio. There might be a very slim probability that it'd be supported *maybe* under ATSC 3, due to the improved compression it'll allegedly provide, but therein lies the risk of breaking compatibility with the existing installed base of ATSC receivers.

I've never used any radio equipment around any of these LED widescreens before. How do they compare on AM/SSB long/medium/shortwave to all the noisy Plasma and LED screens found just about everywhere?

3D television: just a passing fad and a marketing gimmick that's really nothing all that special. Assuming a sizable market for the thing ever materialised to begin with, it's disappearing on QAM and D.O.A. on ATSC. It's just a very expensive fad overall, and one that couldn't possibly have been introduced at a worse time, economically.

At least nobody I've ever met has (or wants) it.

 

[SixtiesGuy]

3D television: just a passing fad and a marketing gimmick that's really nothing all that special. Assuming a sizable market for the thing ever materialised to begin with, it's disappearing on QAM and D.O.A. on ATSC. It's just a very expensive fad overall, and one that couldn't possibly have been introduced at a worse time, economically.

At least nobody I've ever met has (or wants) it.

3DTV: The 21st Century's answer to Quadraphonic Sound. Actually, that's not a fair comparison: at least quad sound yielded good results, and you didn't need to wear dim, headache-inducing glasses to use it.

 

[Darth_vader]

That, and discrete quad is still usable on present-day equipment (either wye the respective front and rear channel outputs to stereo, or use a second stereo amplifier to drive the rear channels.) Even some matrix quad records (SQ, I think) are still more-or-less reproducable on modern Pro Logic equipment!

30 years from now, I dare anybody to try and find a modern machine that will correctly (if at all) reproduce a 3D video recording made in 2013. 98.75% chance it won't happen.

 

[KTN Corp]

3DTV: The 21st Century's answer to Quadraphonic Sound. Actually, that's not a fair comparison: at least quad sound yielded good results, and you didn't need to wear dim, headache-inducing glasses to use it.

I would rather have Quadraplex instead of HD radio on those frequencies in an FM channel. Just where to put the quadraphonic pilot?

I saw the Vizio TV appear at Costco right after I bought my HDTV. The aspect ratio got my attention, and thought about future proofing, but realized I didn't want burn-in from the pillar box watching current 16:9 material. I avoid the few SD digital channels without the HD simulcast that I like because the pillar boxes might burn-in if constantly watched on that widescreen TV .

I mentioned the new HD resolutions since I bumped into an article about ultra high definition TV being received 2 km from the transmitter in Tokyo a few months ago. Starting to wish the US was on ISDB-T (or DVB-T) instead of the homegrown ATSC disappearing act.