Philips Cinema 21:9 HDTV Gets Price & Launch Date Comments

Surely buying a projector is the way to go at this sort of price! Oh well, shouldnt really concern myself anyway, i'd never be able to justify paying that sort of money on a TV!

This is an undeniably awesome looking pict-o-cube - but my major concern here is just where is the high definition 21:9 content coming from, and where are the devices configured to output at that AR?

Without that you'll have a hugely expensive set running everything with gigantic vertical borders at best, and frames stretched / zoomed to an unwatchable degree at worst.

Yea, all I need now is a house to fit it in ( 21:9 house perhaps?) and big enough to hide from her in door should I be foolish to get one LOL
I tend to agree with you the_dude2 a PJ like the JVC, is the real way to go. - Awesome kit. But, again like you its all mute.....

@life The Pioneer BDP-LX91 blu-ray player has a 21:9 anamorphic stretch mode.... for the bargain price of £1600.
I'd say any one with any sense would wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation 21:9 TV's for LED back-lights, 240hz and whatever else is coming up in future LCD's.

@Gordon / jopey - that's certainly news to me... This suddenly just became much more enticing.

I am going to hold you both personally responsible for my (lack of a) financial situation come year end.

@Gordon.
Would you care to explain the 21:9 from 16:9 by "clever pixel mapping" some time? - Maybe not here in the comments, but elsewhere? I can't get my head round how you stretch something without er, stretching it! On my pj you can use zoom /crop to adjust the ratio, but this is somewhat different -isn't it?

Surely, at the very least, the far edges ( of the 21:9) if remapped would show 'warping' when the edge content is more than say some grey /black or non detailed background.... I had an old Sony TV set that demonstrated this poor 'smart' stretch.

Just imagining the possibilites of playing Ikaruga on this at native resolution.

I saw a demo of this on a gadget show the other day, the pixel mapping isn't clever at all, it just puts a wide angle filter on it so the edges are stretched. and you should see how bad it makes 4:3 tv shows look. it's a cool idea, but not really practical in anyway unless you're rich enough to have a TV just for watching movies on

@Chocoa Seconded.
@gezrick - Aha! I thought it would be something like this. My Sony calls it `Smart` mode (& I think my old Philips called it `Panoramic`). You do get used to it; I had to have it switched on all the time on my old Philips Plasma to avoid uneven screen burn, although now I have a Sony LCD TV I watch everything `as intended by the director` (as they oft like to say in the industry). I would imagine 4:3 stretched in this way on a 21:9 telly would indeed look awful!

@gezrick - i thought it used some sort of pre-squeeze.

16:9 content -> pre-squeeze processor -> PQ processor -> stretch processor -> 21:9 display.

I have seen it myself and couldn't really see any stretching in the picture and as far as i understood it, 4:3 content was only stretched to 16:9 with vertical black bars.