Philips 56-inch 21:9 3D TV's future is so bright we had to wear shades
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Sep 3rd 2009 7:30AM
posted Sep 3rd 2009 7:30AM
posted Sep 3rd 2009 7:30AM
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I think it's 21:9
I don't want 3D. Its ok once in a blue moon but not all the time. Also having to wear glasses over my normal glasses is just a pain.
i'm sure these will have both options, so if your tired of 3d you can switch it back to normal mode...
I don't wear glasses but some that I know do and I agree with you that it would be annoying wearing two pairs of glasses just to watch tv/movies. Maybe they'll start making prescription 3d glasses.
I won't mind it as long as it doesn't add to the price.
If it does, though, I'll be more than happy to buy the cheaper non-3D version until the tech doesn't cost me an extra limb.
Yeah, I mean who needs color TV? Black and white is just fine, thank you. HTML 5? bah, Give me Mosaic or some Lynx and I'm set.
I'm kidding, of course. I'm not sure how I feel about 3d as well. I still haven't seen a 3d movie in theaters though (at least not in the past 5 years).
I'm still waiting for a site using HTML5, or in fact engadget/blogsmith allowing /any/ kind of textformatting, even as simple as *bold* or _underlined_, in 2009. and onwards.
Waiting, but not holding my breath, and it's obviously not just engadget(blogsmith), many commentboxes either go overboard with options or have none at all, perhaps mozilla should help out with that too?
Anyway joking as if HTML5 is common might not be the best choice.
gmail chat uses *bold* and _underline_
I agree. I really don't understand what's with the push to 3D. It was gimmicky in the 60s and it's gimmicky now. Even if you can eliminate the glasses and headaches, it's going to take some convincing to get media producers to produce anything other than children's and b-horror/ sci-fi content. What's next? Is Sony going to try to revive smell-o-vision?
I'm going to skip the 3D thing and just wait for holodecks.
I say. Polarized contact lenses would be great...
I wonder if the person taking the pictures ever really thought that if he took a pic from behind the glasses, that we'd be able to see it in 3D too.
I don't think that would work.
Ignore my comment, I miss read what you wrote.
21:9 is going to be an epic failer to be honest. There isn't even anything in 21:9. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if it takes over like 16:9.
What, you mean other than every single major cinematic release to DVD for the past 5 years?
All of those have been in 16:9....
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image) :
"The most common aspect ratios used today in the presentation of films in movie theaters are 1.85:1 and 2.39:1"
Further down
"Wider ratios such as 1.85:1 and 2.40:1[1] are accommodated within the 16:9 DVD frame by additional black bars within the image itself"
This would be why, say, Lord of the Rings has a huge black bar on the top and bottom of my display (which is 16:9).
No, they haven't. They're definitely 21:9. If you see any letterboxing (black bars on the top and bottom) while watching something on a hdtv then that means it is not 16:9. If that letterboxing is pretty extreme and you are left with a long rectangle for an image, then the video is 21:9. There was a time when cinema screens were mostly 21:9, now it looks like we've come full circle!
Movies are definitely not 16:9 for the most part.
"There isn't even anything in 21:9"
Except for about a million feature films. Divide 21 by 9 and you get 2.33.
2.33:1 - look familiar? That is nearly the exact aspect ratio of films shot in anamorphic/scope, which is 2.39:1 (but still often referred to as 2.35:1. older standards and such, you know how it goes. kinda like how classic film shooters still use ASA instead of ISO. but I digress). The other film standard is 1.85:1 (non-anamorphic/flat), which is pretty close to 1.78:1 - which you may more commonly know as 16:9.
a 21:9 format television is fantastic, but it's Philips' fault for complicating the ratios in an attempt to simplify them. Oh well.
A 21:9 television is worthless, though. Either you're losing resolution on 16:9 content, or the 21:9 content is either windowboxed or zoomed in like in the "good old days" of watching a non-anamorphic DVD
WOW!?
Well, even though idont go crazy about the idea of a 3d display in my living room, i dont really think it will be a bad idea to have more ''fashionable'' glasses than these DAMN UGLY things.
All of the movies that you see in theaters, all your widescreen movies on DVD are in 21:9. That's why you still see letterboxes with all your DVDs. This TV removes the letterboxes and you get a full picture.
it definitely is 21:9 (the gallery name is wrong...)
Well depth perception willl likely improve games, as much as I may like to throw a grenade at CGI Ray WInstone I can't.
3D has a long way to go for perfection. It has no sense watching 3D when your eyes gonna hurt you all day.
The problem with these 3D glasses is that it is like wearing sunglasses in a dark room. I went to see "UP" with my kids and we wore the glasses they provided. Couldn't enjoy the movie because it was so dark with the glasses on. Why exactly do 3D glasses need to be so dark?
Also, I thought they had perfected the whole "3D without glasses" thing years ago?
They look like Real D 3D glasses. I watched 3d final destination with them, they only tone down the image a small bit
Try this: When you're taking a picture of a 3D image, pause the video and take one picture from behind each polarized lens. Then stitch the two images together with the right eye on the left and vice versa so we can cross our eyes and see what it's like. Though it will be a bit more uncomfortable than actually watching the screen, I suppose.
Please, oh PLEASE do not allow polarized glasses to go mainstream! That is 3D with compromise.
It's shutter glasses or some newer technology, none of this half asses cheap 3D crap.
This whole 3D craze recently just points out how distant the content providers have drifted from consumers. This is the entire reason these industries are starting to suffer. No one wants to see another 36 remakes of movies that have already been made or sitcoms translated poorly to movie format. It's no wonder movies that seem like they'd be sure fire-hits are flopping. It's not because we need some new sparkly technology. People just want to watch good movies. Yeah James Cameron thinks it's really cool and wants to force it on everyone, but the problem is no one really cares. 3D doesn't look right, looks different to different people, you have to wear stupid glasses and it already failed decades ago. Just because your studio got a few new multi-million dollar toys to play with, it doesn't mean anyone is interested.
That's odd, because as far as I (thought I) knew, Philips was the one to produce 3D TV's that you *didn't* need glasses for..?
we can put a man on the moon 40 years ago but we some how haven't gotten 3d without glasses readily available at the hands of the consumer yet. cmon why is our priorities so out of whack
All sorts of priorities have gotten "out of whack".
So, when exactly was the LAST time we put a man on the moon? And how much does it STILL cost to even get personnel into orbit, after 40 years of experience at it? They have problems with FOAM that falls off and damages the heat shielding?!?
Why do we STILL not have manned missions to Mars? We should have had a self-sufficient COLONY on the moon twenty years ago, not just this little station in our own orbit. Which is decaying because it's not even kept up properly, much less being advanced.
Politicians are more concerned with "global warming" - which isn't even happening, according to actual science - and "lowest-common-denominator" healthcare (Britain policy refuses 65+ people cancer treatment or any access to hospital intensive care; Canada "emergency room" 4-hour wait times let people die rather than get treated).
They might ought to be more concerned with getting us somewhere else should something serious actually happen here. What would we do if a large meteor came at us (like the movies like to predict)? Watch it hit us? We can't go anywhere else, and we don't have any defenses, antimatter-based or otherwise sufficient for a large target, or even delivery systems capable of hitting something like that.
come on! even the Jetson's didn't have to wear glasses for their 3-D tv, and that was a typical 1960's family.
Most movies are 1.85 (flat) or 2.35 (scope). Usually flat is for comedies, scope is for epics. Even if they vary a little that's how they get projected in the end.
So even on a 16.9 screen (1.77) a flat movie should have a LITTLE letter boxing, but they usually don't.
A 21.9 screen would pretty much display a scope movie perfectly, but a flat movie would have pillarboxes (black on the sides).
Perhaps this TV is in response to people who might buy an HDTV and still complain some movies are letterboxed? That's unavoidable if you're preserving aspect ratio.
In the camera Arri anamorphic is 2.35 and Panavision is 2.40
Most (if not all) of the prints and DIs are made 2.40 regardless if they were shot Arri or Panavision.
So anamorphic is really 2.40
the 21:9 tv is beautiful it makes my 47"lcd look like an old 4:3 tv.i would buy this in a heartbeat if the price is right.