Thinking about viewing distance

iljitsch · Mar 19, 2024

After I saw Christopher Nolan talk about immersion into a movie with IMAX and then saw Denis Villeneuve and Hoyte van Hoytema talk about making sure all the different aspect ratio versions of Dune correctly convey the filmmaker’s intent, my interest in viewing distances was rekindled.

The point of determining a viewing distance is of course to arrive at a desired image size from the TV/movie watcher’s point of view. I think the most natural way to do that is (horizontal) viewing angle. So sit close to a small screen or far from a large one. Or measure the distance between your seat and where you want to mount your screen, plug in an angle and calculate the size of the screen you need.

Rule of thumb: at arm’s length, your fist is about 10 degrees. For more precision, calculate along at home with this calculator. Below I’ll add distances in meters for a 165 cm (65") (16x9 4K) screen, as I have one and they are common.

Ok, here are some suggestions/recommendations that float around, often with hard to find actual sources:

(Be careful with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HDTV_viewing_distance, as it looks pretty old with many broken links and I think when it talks about angles it’s diagonal angles.)

From the NTSC days: 10 degrees horizontal viewing angle. I assume this is the minimum. Of course those screens are 4:3 and not 16:9 so make that 13 degrees for a 16x9 screen and we have to sit back 6 meters. Which is pretty close to what you need to max out the commonly used visual acuity figure of 1 arc minute (so 60 lines/pixels per degree).

The SMPTE recommends "a minimum" of 30 degrees. I find that confusing: is that a minimum number of degrees, or the minimum viewing angle width? Anyway, that would be 2.7 meters. Note that for full HD the visual acuity distance is 2.6 meters, but for 4K it’s 1.3 meters.

I hear/read different things from THX, but I believe for movie theaters they don’t want to go wider than 40 degrees (that would be the front row) or narrower than 26 degrees, with 36 being an optimum (2 / 3.2 / 2.3 meters, respectively in our example). But remember, that’s from the film days. Although first generation film has about 4K level detail, the distribution copies in theaters have much less.

I read somewhere that theaters are designed for 2 - 4 x the screen height., with 3 x the butter zone. At 16x9, the screen height is just a hair under the screen diagonal. So we’re now at 1.6 - 3.2 meters, with 2.4 the optimum.

But now IMAX. This is 60 to 120 degrees horizontally and 40 to 80 degrees vertically (for a close to 4:3 screen). So to reach that 120 degree goal you’d have to be 0.4 meters from the screen, i.e., have it on your lap... 80x40 degrees would be just about physically doable, though, at 0.8 meters. But remember, 4K at this distance looks about as sharp as SD. You may even start seeing the dreaded "screen door effect", where you see the black lines between the individual pixels.

So...

Somewhere between that 0.8 meters (half the screen diagonal) and 6 meters (3.6 x the screen diagonal) there should be a good place to sit and do our viewing.

I guess it comes down to immersion vs sharpness/clarity.

Immersion:

Apparently there has been research and it shows that, in general, a bigger screen means more immersion. This depends a lot on viewing angle, position and movement of the camera, though. For instance, Oppenheimer’s head filling that 80 degree IMAX screen could possibly be a bit too much, as such a view doesn’t match anything that happens in real life. And note that the point with IMAX is that you no longer notice the edges of the screen. So all the action must be fairly centered. And in an old school IMAX theater the screen extends low enough so the edge disappears behind the people sitting in front of you. (Digital IMAX is about 16x9 so the screen isn’t as tall relative to its width.)

Sharpness/clarity:

Now of course the purpose of viewing something is that you can actually see it. So I’d say something like the THX max distance for 26 degrees makes sense. That is not too far off the 32 degrees where HDTV reaches 1 pixel = 1 arc minute. Note though that video is pretty much never "pixel perfect" because that causes horrible aliasing when anything moves. The image is also routinely resized and processed, which also reduces sharpness. So that 26 degree viewing angle is probably still good enough to see all the detail that’s on the screen.

On the other hand, not maxing out your visual acuity is also not an immediate dealbreaker. In the real world, few things are super sharp, so a somewhat softer image is not immediately problematic. I find HD content, as long as it’s high quality, perfectly watchable at a 40 degree viewing angle. But not so much at 60 degrees.

At 40 degrees, the best SD content is still not too terrible. And at 40 degrees, 4K content already delivers a nice little kick.

Then again, I don’t find "scope" (the wider 2.39:1 aspect ratio rather than the regular 1.85:1 or 1.78:1 ~= 16:9 ratios) immersive at 40 degrees. So for 4K scope movies I have to move the coffee table out of the way and move my seat closer to the TV to really enjoy them. And then move everything back for watching the news...

Thoughts?

Baenwort · Mar 19, 2024

Since I can not subscribe to your newsletter I shall orange this thread and see what comes in future editions!

Negative Entropy · Mar 31, 2024

I’ll bite:

For a very large screen at home, I find about 1.3-1.6x the screen width to provide a very immersive experience for my favorite type of content w/o being too wide. This has been my experience across 2 different 1080p projector setups in 2 very different rooms (Approx 110-130” diagonal).

That said, my preferred type of content is not too “busy”. Eg 2001, Brazil, LOTR, Oppenheimer.

Something super “actiony” can get distracting at the near part of that range. Still fine at 1.5-1.75x width.

Whereas my living room setups have most seats at 2.5-3x screen width because other concerns dominate.

iljitsch · Apr 17, 2024

Speaking of how the 2.39:1 aspect ratio sucks...

WB decided to release to home video only 75% of Dune Part Two, and replace the other 25% with black bars. I.e., the blu-ray, 4k and downloadable releases are all of the 2.39:1 aspect ratio of the movie, while there are also OG IMAX 1.43:1, digital IMAX 1.90:1 and 70 mm 2.20:1 versions that were shown in theaters.

It's bad enough that movie makers choose to use the 2.39:1 aspect ratio in the first place (or 2:1 or anything else that produces black bars on TVs where most people end up watching these movies), but when you actually have the extra image data just throwing it away, that is just consumer-hostile.

I was planning to buy the UHD blu-ray but I'm skipping it. Maybe there will be a better release in the future. Or not.

cogwheel · Apr 18, 2024

iljitsch said:
From the NTSC days: 10 degrees horizontal viewing angle. I assume this is the minimum.

That's because back then TVs were tiny, and also because content on TV was very simplistic (mostly a couple people on a relatively simple set meant as just a backdrop).

iljitsch said:
The SMPTE recommends "a minimum" of 30 degrees. I find that confusing: is that a minimum number of degrees, or the minimum viewing angle width?

How are you defining "minimum number of degrees" and "minimum viewing angle width" such that they mean different things?

iljitsch said:
But now IMAX. This is 60 to 120 degrees horizontally and 40 to 80 degrees vertically (for a close to 4:3 screen).

IMAX was meant to have a physical presence, not just to be viewed. You'd need to look up and down to see everything, just like being in an actual place. This means IMAX really isn't a guide for what you should do for film, and arguably that IMAX is a bad fit for most theatrical films, as opposed to more documentary stuff.

iljitsch said:
Speaking of how the 2.39:1 aspect ratio sucks...

WB decided to release to home video only 75% of Dune Part Two, and replace the other 25% with black bars. I.e., the blu-ray, 4k and downloadable releases are all of the 2.39:1 aspect ratio of the movie, while there are also OG IMAX 1.43:1, digital IMAX 1.90:1 and 70 mm 2.20:1 versions that were shown in theaters.

It's bad enough that movie makers choose to use the 2.39:1 aspect ratio in the first place (or 2:1 or anything else that produces black bars on TVs where most people end up watching these movies), but when you actually have the extra image data just throwing it away, that is just consumer-hostile.

I was planning to buy the UHD blu-ray but I'm skipping it. Maybe there will be a better release in the future. Or not.

Human vision is pretty much 2:1 in terms of central field of view. 4:3 just wastes large portions of our range of vision, or makes us look up and down (which can easily lead to eye or neck strain).

Optimally, 2.4:1ish content should be sized per the vertical range of vision instead of horizontal, with most stuff taking place in the center 2:1 part (or slightly less, 1.8:1 center would probably work pretty well) of the screen and the extra 0.2:1 range on each side acting as immersion-boosting peripherals without much of any important content.

w00key · Apr 18, 2024

cogwheel said:
Optimally, 2.4:1ish content should be sized per the vertical range of vision instead of horizontal, with most stuff taking place in the center 2:1 part (or slightly less, 1.8:1 center would probably work pretty well) of the screen and the extra 0.2:1 range on each side acting as immersion-boosting peripherals without much of any important content.

If you wear glasses you have a center frame where you can see the image with both eyes, then extension on the side where only one eye, which is about 2:1. I can't sit too close to the screen in a cinema or a big chunk of screen would be blurry and need head movement to see clearly.

I don't mind ultrawide screens though, things on the side are less important usually, or black bars with 16:9 content, or non full screen during work, just logging and IM.

iljitsch · Apr 19, 2024

cogwheel said:
How are you defining "minimum number of degrees" and "minimum viewing angle width" such that they mean different things?

In my confused state I didn’t even get that far.

cogwheel said:
IMAX was meant to have a physical presence, not just to be viewed. You'd need to look up and down to see everything, just like being in an actual place. This means IMAX really isn't a guide for what you should do for film, and arguably that IMAX is a bad fit for most theatrical films, as opposed to more documentary stuff.

I agree with you that framing for IMAX needs to be different than framing for smaller screens. Then again, IMO scope is basically IMAX horizontally, just not vertically. There you also don’t want stuff to hug the sides of the screen.

But if you take that into consideration I think IMAX could be great for movies. Interestingly, the dome type IIMAX theater here in my city only shows documentaries. I really need to go again some time.

cogwheel said:
Human vision is pretty much 2:1 in terms of central field of view. 4:3 just wastes large portions of our range of vision, or makes us look up and down (which can easily lead to eye or neck strain).

Hm, n = 1 experiment:

To me it looks like each eye shows a roughly circular image. Combined, the two eyes give you a peripheral field of view that is wider than it is high. Not quite 2:1, I’d say, though. Especially when I raise my eyebrows.

However, the central field of view must be limited to what you can see with both eyes at the same time, IMO, and that is much, much narrower. (Especially if you have a big nose!)

As for strain: looking far to the left or right or up doesn’t feel comfortable, but down is much less of a problem.

cogwheel said:
Optimally, 2.4:1ish content should be sized per the vertical range of vision instead of horizontal, with most stuff taking place in the center 2:1 part (or slightly less, 1.8:1 center would probably work pretty well) of the screen and the extra 0.2:1 range on each side acting as immersion-boosting peripherals without much of any important content.

Yeah, that makes sense. And if you’re at 1.8:1, why not go to 1.787878(repeating):1?

This is the relationship between OG IMAX, digital IMAX and "scope":

As per your logic, that would result in the following home video 16:9 cut:

But for specific scenes where detail is less important, you could zoom out:

But what the Dune Part Two home video releases give us is this:

So you don’t get to see as much detail because everything is smaller, but you also don’t get to see the full environment because of the black bars. The pixels have been recorded and our HDTVs are ready to be lit up, but WB just can’t be bothered to do their part in the process.

Perhaps there are some people who prefer the scope version. I’m pretty sure that with all the Java stuff blu-ray players can overlay black bars as desired.

Note that all of this is different in movie theaters: here scope gives you more content in your sideways peripheral vision while maintaining the full height of the picture. (There’s probably still some loss of resolution, though.)

But note how a more squarish aspect ratio gives you options (the second vs the third image) while scope forces choices/compromises. Most stuff just isn’t that wide.

CatBus · Apr 21, 2024

iljitsch said:
It's bad enough that movie makers choose to use the 2.39:1 aspect ratio in the first place (or 2:1 or anything else that produces black bars on TVs where most people end up watching these movies), but when you actually have the extra image data just throwing it away, that is just consumer-hostile.

I don't know if this is how Dune works, but it has been the case with other movies. The wider theatrical release loses information on the top and bottom, but the taller IMAX versions lose information on the sides. If you were to create a sum of all image information in every release of the film, you'd get something that looked like a plus sign, with little notches cut out of the corners. Only the middle of the cross is present across all releases. Again, not sure if this applies to Dune, but be careful what you ask for when you want to see every pixel. Couldn't find a visual example with IMAX, but this widescreen/fullscreen comparison demonstrates the same concept.

IMO 1.78:1 is too narrow of an aspect ratio -- it's a home video compromise, not an ideal -- and I'm glad films are released with their theatrical aspect ratios. Although, as you said, things get complicated when there's more than one theatrical aspect ratio to choose from. Black bars are invisible when you watch with the lights off, so I really don't relate to wishing content filled the arbitrary proportions of my TV screen. Too many bad memories of seeing people watching 4:3 classic films like Casablanca all stretched out to 1.78:1, I guess.

iljitsch · Apr 22, 2024

CatBus said:
I don't know if this is how Dune works, but it has been the case with other movies. The wider theatrical release loses information on the top and bottom, but the taller IMAX versions lose information on the sides.

Yes, apparently this is how it works for Dune (2), too. I ignored that above because I didn’t want to add additional complexity to the point I was trying to make.

I find this a strange practice because this means that the IMAX screen that is much larger than a regular "scope" screen shows a smaller portion of the movie width-wise. That is not appropriate for IMAX, which is supposed to pretty much cover your entire field of view so the main action needs to be confined to the middle part of the screen to remain absorbable.

Unless I’m mistaken, there’s a close-up of Oppenheimer in the movie of the same name that pretty much takes up the entire 16x9 crop of the IMAX frame. In real life you’d have to touch noses to get such a view of another person’s face.

CatBus said:
IMO 1.78:1 is too narrow of an aspect ratio -- it's a home video compromise, not an ideal -- and I'm glad films are released with their theatrical aspect ratios.

The second point first: there are different versions of Dune 2 that are all "as intended by the director". So there was a choice here, and my opinion is they made the wrong one. You’re right that between those different versions the outer corners of the rectangle that covers them all are not included, but I’m pretty sure the cameras recorded those parts too, and I’m even somewhat confident that the visual effects also cover them as defining cross-shaped canvases is probably not worth the trouble.

So it should have been possible to release an "open matte" version of the movie(s) that cover the width of the scope version and then 12% extra above and below... and have a setting in the blu-ray menus to add your own black bars if you are so inclined!

Back to the first point: there is no magic aspect ratio that always works. I have a book on sky scrapers. It’s more than twice as tall as it is wide. Makes sense, no? Lawrence of Arabia, the desert shots are nice and wide. Also makes sense. Jurrassic Park. Good think it’s in flat (1.85:1) aspect ratio or those long-necked dinosaurs would have had to be tiny.

The more extreme the aspect ratio, the more it gets in the way for certain subjects. With scope, close-ups of faces are very difficult. You often see the frame cut through foreheads and even chins.

16:9 may be a compromise, but it’s a compromise that works: you mostly get what you want/need most of the time. Remember that before 16:9 we had 4:3 and 4:3 content on 2.39:1, or, more common: 2.39:1 content on 4:3 just can’t be made to work in a reasonable way. Especially in SD.

That widescreen 2001: A Space Odyssey DVD left me squinting at my CRT because there was just no detail. But now we have the glorious 50-year anniversary 4K version, that despite the black bars, delivers detail in spades.

CatBus said:
Black bars are invisible when you watch with the lights off, so I really don't relate to wishing content filled the arbitrary proportions of my TV screen.

Yes, OLED for the win, those black bars in and of themselves don’t get in the way. However, that’s 2 million pixels I paid good money for that are just sitting around doing nothing.

While at the same time, the sides of a scope frame are most of the time just filler. On my Apple TV it’s super easy to zoom the video so it fills the screen. But... now I have a 2844x1600 image fill my 3840x2160 pixels, which is not good.

In my ideal world, movie makers would do what was done for Dune 2 and provide several aspect ratio versions that are all compatible with the director’s and DP’s intent.

Then encode this on a UHD blu-ray such that the viewer can select which version they like so see, and each version is full resolution without upscaling. (For some versions this probably means downscaling is required.)

CatBus said:
Too many bad memories of seeing people watching 4:3 classic films like Casablanca all stretched out to 1.78:1, I guess.

Yeah, or what about widescreen content on a widescreen TV with black bars on all four sides...?

The easy solution there is to just completely standardize on 16:9. That’s the norm for TV and also for computer monitors these days, and close enough to cinema "flat" so get rid of that stupid 4096x2160 and 3996 × 2160 and just do 3840x2160 in movie theaters, too.

Kaiser Sosei · Apr 22, 2024

iljitsch said:
Then again, I don’t find "scope" (the wider 2.39:1 aspect ratio rather than the regular 1.85:1 or 1.78:1 ~= 16:9 ratios) immersive at 40 degrees. So for 4K scope movies I have to move the coffee table out of the way and move my seat closer to the TV to really enjoy them. And then move everything back for watching the news...

Thoughts?

iljitsch said:
iljitsch said:

Yeah, or what about widescreen content on a widescreen TV with black bars on all four sides...?

The easy solution there is to just completely standardize on 16:9. That’s the norm for TV and also for computer monitors these days, and close enough to cinema "flat" so get rid of that stupid 4096x2160 and 3996 × 2160 and just do 3840x2160 in movie theaters, too.

Click to expand...

It sounds like a bigger television would solve some of your issues.

I realize that is not always a possibility. I am fortunate enough to have a dedicated TV room which resolves a lot of issues.

The solution to letter and pillar boxed videos is to use the zoom function on either the player or the TV. I am assuming you are referring to older video/DVD's made during the transition to widescreen televisions. Unless you are prepared to go through the process of ripping and re-authoring the video, the TV will always see the black bars as part of the video. I find it easier to just hit the zoom function and almost always the picture fits perfectly on a 16x9 picture without cropping. This won't work on just pillar boxed or just letter boxed, those will always have black bars.

As for the aspect ratio, as long at the picture shows what the director meant to, I am happy. Sometimes the director transitions between aspect ratios to convey a different time period, like using 4:3 for a flashback during widescreen movie. The Lighthouse used 4:3 and black and white to convey an eerie claustrophobic feel. Would you have the transfer to disc change it to widescreen and color?

On a decent enough TV in a darker room, they disappear and all you see is the video. Directors have various reasons for the aspect ratio's they pick, and I don't think we should go back to the pan+scan, or the blatant cutting off of the picture to fit into a TV screen that happened to a lot of movies shown on TV. It feels like the same argument we've had during the transition to 16:9 for TV. To show a non 16x9 picture on a 16x9 TV is going to have black bars somewhere. How it's done can either show what the director intended, or it can butcher the video to "fit the screen".

If the picture is too small, get a bigger TV.

iljitsch · Apr 23, 2024

Ok, so my two main objections to the scope aspect ratio are lack of immersion relative to 16:9 at the same viewing distance and loss of resolution.

The former can be solved with a bigger TV. Or sit closer. Or, in my particular case: use the projector instead. The largest image I can get out of it currently is 2.5 x 1.4 meters. So that’s pretty large, although my wall is big enough to support something like 5 x 2 meters in scope. That would probably be a bit too much, especially considering this projector is HD, not 4K.

Interestingly, DVD solved the narrow vs wide content issue much better by allowing for anamorphic encodes. That way, a scope movie could be encoded as 3840x2160 and then either:

shrunk vertically to 3840x1600 on a 16x9 display
cropped to 2844x2160 and expanded horizontally to 3840x2160 on a 16x9 display
projected on a 2.39:1 screen using an anamorphic lens
expanded to 5120x2160 on a 2.39:1 display

But no. We just throw away millions of pixels. Ok, I think I’ve made my point here, so no need to go on and on.

Although I agree director’s intent in an important consideration, IMO it doesn’t automatically trump all other considerations. For instance, I love the clean look today’s digital cameras can produce. And there’s nothing wrong with a little film grain because that was part of the process in the 20th century. But directors that shoot with grainy film today, or even add film grain in post? I hate that.

(An interesting example is Ready Player One, which has grain in the real world but not in cyberspace. At least here it was used purposefully and some grain is still better than making eveything green like with The Matrix.)

I have no problem with 4:3 (or 1.66:1 or whatever) content on my 16:9 4K TV, as indeed the black bars don’t call attention to themselves (when using the projector they are very dark gray...) and either that content was shot that way back in the day, or it is a very deliberate choice.

But... I’m glad that they were able to release Friends in 16:9. I think this is because they used Super35 3-perf to save on film. Normally a film frame is four perforations high, which gives you 22x16 / 22x18.6 mm after accounting for the optical audio track(s). If you only advance the film three perforations per frame and no optical audio, you use 25% less film and you get 24.9x13.9 mm frames, so an aspect ratio of almost exactly 16:9. Now use the 4:3 portion for TV broadcast in the 1990s. And rescan in HD at 16:9 20 years later for the blu-ray release.

(Then again, watching a few episodes I do get the impression that there was actual action in the extra space on the sides... could some scenes be zooms of the 4:3 frame instead?)

As for the black-and-white vs color: my iTunes purchase of the movie Logan includes a black-and-white version of the movie in addition to the normal color version. Maybe the director prefers the B&W version but wanted to offer viewers a choice?

I don’t like the idea of colorizing content originally shot in B&W. One thing that is nice about old movies is that all the environments that you see are the real thing. Cities really looked like that back in the day. Adding artificial colors would detract from that.

About zooming in to overcome windowboxing (black bars all around): this was common with TV content during the transition from 4:3 to 16:9, but fortunately rarely necessary today. Too lazy to check if I have any DVDs with widescreen movies in letterbox, which would result in windowboxing on a 16:9 TV. But I do have all six seasons of a nice little BBC show from the early 2000s and after the first season they switched from 4:3 to 14:9, so that’s big black bars on the sides and small ones top and bottom. But I ripped those DVDs and re-encoded them without the black bars. Problem solved!

iljitsch · Apr 28, 2024

For anyone still watching this thread... this might be interesting:

Is Alien Vs Predator better in FULLSCREEN?

This is a 20 min Youtube video that shows stuff from the Alien vs Predator movie in 2.35:1 and open matte 4:3 side-by-side.

BTW, how is it possible that Sanaa Lathan never became a huge movie star??

Kaiser Sosei · Apr 29, 2024

The TLDR is the director used an Open Matte as was the style at the time because everyone still had 4:3 TV's and the widescreen version had to be made in the wider 2.35:1 aspect ratio. For most of us now that have widescreen TV's at 16X9 it looks like they somehow zoomed it and kept the width so you lose a lot of top and bottom stuff that shows in the 4:3 crop. Shortly through the video you come to the same conclusion as the narrator that 16X9 works better as both versions were a compromise to a format no one uses anymore.

Most of the movies I have are not 16X9 except for comedies and comedy adjacent. The vast majority are letterboxed. Anything made now for TV or "direct to DVD/Streaming" is in 16X9. We just have a ton of legacy video and some niche new stuff that is not either 16X9 or Scope. I would consider I-Max to be niche and most things are going to be shot in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1.

We are only a couple of decades from when 16X9 was decided on for televisions and it was a compromise. I would think anyone shooting now in open matte is going to give a 16X9 version, but maybe that is your point and it's a compromise because I-Max is at 1.43:1 and some of the top is cut off? I guess I'm just not clear on what the issue is?

To answer your question of immersion, I am on the low side of the "1.3-1.6x the screen width" and almost closer to 1:1, but maybe that is because most of my viewing is scoped material, and I am making up for the "smaller" picture. While 4K HDR video is awesome I would also include being able to have the sound side of the movie as well. A good 5.1 will get you most of the way there with how modern amplifiers can tweak your speakers for the room. I'm lucky enough to have an Atmos setup and if a 4K Blu-ray isn't giving me HDR and either Atmos or the DTS equivalent, what's that point? I'll just buy the regular Blu-ray.

iljitsch · Apr 29, 2024

Kaiser Sosei said:
Shortly through the video you come to the same conclusion as the narrator that 16X9 works better as both versions were a compromise to a format no one uses anymore.

I believe the Youtuber said the 4:3 version is better than the scope version. And there are definitely a good number of shots where the extra content that’s in the 4:3 version but not in the scope version that is relevant.

I’m thinking to some degree 2.39:1 is just too wide to get a decently framed shot in certain scenes. And also that scope is not the best aspect ratio for a story happening in claustrophobic spaces. But then, the Youtube algorithm conveniently served me up another video from the maker (whose channel is 100% Alien content!) comparing the original Alien in scope with the VHS pan&scan version.

Here, it’s obvious that director Ridley Scott and DP Derek Vanlint really know what they’re doing in often also claustrophobic spaces. The framing of many shots is brilliant, and the pan&scan is basically a hatchet job.

I’m now looking forward to seeing 12 Angry Men for the fist time, as I’ve heard the photography gets more and more tight and claustrophobic as tempers rise between the members of the jury. This one is in 1.85:1, although it is from 1957, the heyday of Cinerama and Cinemascope.

Kaiser Sosei said:
Most of the movies I have are not 16X9 except for comedies and comedy adjacent. The vast majority are letterboxed. Anything made now for TV or "direct to DVD/Streaming" is in 16X9. We just have a ton of legacy video and some niche new stuff that is not either 16X9 or Scope. I would consider I-Max to be niche and most things are going to be shot in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1.

You know, you’re right! Most of the "flat" movies in my collection are comedies or "comedy-adjacent". But note that even a good amount of stuff made for streaming (I think "direct to DVD" is no longer a thing) is wider than 16:9, which annoys me to no end. Even some Youtube channels have black bars.

And then there’s the just plain weird stuff such as La La Land in 2.55:1.

Kaiser Sosei said:
I would think anyone shooting now in open matte is going to give a 16X9 version, but maybe that is your point and it's a compromise because I-Max is at 1.43:1 and some of the top is cut off? I guess I'm just not clear on what the issue is?

There are two issues. I generally dislike 2.39:1 because with my setup, I get an image that is smaller than I like, and also, it doesn’t make full use of the available resolution.

Now that is not to say that I can’t enjoy scope content, but it seems to me that scope is wildly overused.

In the case of Dune 2 it gets worse because they chose to release the scope version for home video while there are taller versions available, such as the 1.9:1 digital IMAX version, or they could make a 16:9 crop of the 1.43:1 IMAX version.

Kaiser Sosei said:
To answer your question of immersion, I am on the low side of the "1.3-1.6x the screen width" and almost closer to 1:1, but maybe that is because most of my viewing is scoped material, and I am making up for the "smaller" picture. While 4K HDR video is awesome I would also include being able to have the sound side of the movie as well. A good 5.1 will get you most of the way there with how modern amplifiers can tweak your speakers for the room. I'm lucky enough to have an Atmos setup and if a 4K Blu-ray isn't giving me HDR and either Atmos or the DTS equivalent, what's that point? I'll just buy the regular Blu-ray.

But at such a close distance to the screen it’s hard to get the surround sound to work as it should... I also have an Atmos setup, with 5.1.2 and the height speakers don’t work so well sitting extra close to the TV. And the side speakers are then basically back speakers.

I’m looking forward to a future where you can have many more speakers and just place them where you want and the decoder software knows where each speaker is so it knows what part of each Atmos object to send to each speaker.

But with surround so much depends on the mix...

HDR can be great, it can be almost invisible, or it can ruin a movie. I forget which one, but one of the JJ-era Star Trek movies was so dark that even with my TV’s brightness cranked up all the way I just couldn’t see anything during the day. I had to wait until dark to barely be able to watch the movie.

It’s surprising how much HDR can come out of old movies shot on film.

A movie that I recently saw where I liked the HDR use a lot (they probably spent more on that than on the script! although some of the jokes are pretty good) was Totally Killer (on Prime Video). There are some scenes of Halloween celebrations outside and the colored lights look really nice without going over the top.

Kaiser Sosei · Apr 30, 2024

iljitsch said:
There are two issues. I generally dislike 2.39:1 because with my setup, I get an image that is smaller than I like, and also, it doesn’t make full use of the available resolution.

Now that is not to say that I can’t enjoy scope content, but it seems to me that scope is wildly overused.

In the case of Dune 2 it gets worse because they chose to release the scope version for home video while there are taller versions available, such as the 1.9:1 digital IMAX version, or they could make a 16:9 crop of the 1.43:1 IMAX version.

I think your first complaint is a matter of taste and can't really be discussed. You don't like it. Fair enough. I think your second complaint may be a miscommunication in terminology. You keep saying resolution, but a boxed picture still has the same resolution. There is visual space lost due to the boxing of the picture, but the resolution is the same. You count the black bars as unused resolution which I feel is not common?

As to IMAX, I have the UHD Batman trilogy and have no issue with how Nolan handled it with switching between the aspect ratios. Denis Villeneuve I am assuming decided to just do a scope version for his reasons. The people and the manufacturers have decided that 16X9 is what a TV aspect ratio is going to be, and Hollywood thinks 2:35:1 is the differentiator between a movie and watching TV. Cinemascope with its color and stereo sound was a response to get butts back in seats instead of watching a tiny 4:3 black and white TV at home. Ultimately you are fighting a lost battle. In Hollywood, Scope is for "Movies", and 16X9 is for "TV".

iljitsch · Apr 30, 2024

Kaiser Sosei said:
I think your first complaint is a matter of taste and can't really be discussed. You don't like it. Fair enough.

Right.

Kaiser Sosei said:
I think your second complaint may be a miscommunication in terminology. You keep saying resolution, but a boxed picture still has the same resolution. There is visual space lost due to the boxing of the picture, but the resolution is the same. You count the black bars as unused resolution which I feel is not common?

Well, if we lop off 13% of the scope image on each side and then encode what’s left as 3840x2160 rather than use 3840x1600 scope, then something that occupies 1000x1000 pixels in the scope version occupies around 1350x1350 on the full frame version, so more resolution.

Using an anamorphic encode would occupy the middle ground.

Kaiser Sosei said:
As to IMAX, I have the UHD Batman trilogy and have no issue with how Nolan handled it with switching between the aspect ratios.

Not seen those in a while (and I’m sooo over the super hero thing) but I don’t get what he was going for with Oppenheimer. 1 min 18 seconds in we get a shot of Oppenheimer’s face that fills 85% of the height of the 16x9 screen, with even half of his forehead cut off. So a face that occupies something like 50 degrees vertically of your field of view in IMAX. That’s insane and not appropriate use of IMAX.

I really don’t get the mixing of 70 mm 2.2:1 and 16:9-filling IMAX here. For instance, still in the first few minutes, Robert Downey Jr. walks through a door. The hallway shots are 2.2:1. Another guy opens a door, still in 2.2:1. Downey opens the other door, now in 16:9, and walks into the room, also in 16:9. Later in the movie Oppenheimer visits the girl in a hotel, and we switch aspect ratios for maybe not even a second for an establishing shot and then back.

That said, in general, aspect ratio switching doesn’t bother me. For instance in Tron Legacy or Top Gun Maverick, at least the action is in my preferred aspect ratio

even though the talky parts inexplicably aren’t, but I’m fine not being right up in the actors grills.

Kaiser Sosei said:
Denis Villeneuve I am assuming decided to just do a scope version for his reasons.

I’m not so sure. I’m thinking this is a studio decision. Villeneuve spent tons of loving care crafting various aspect ratio versions of the movie(s) and it seems unlikely to me that he prefers black bars over filling the screen with a version that would fill the screen (almost) completely.

Kaiser Sosei said:
The people and the manufacturers have decided that 16X9 is what a TV aspect ratio is going to be, and Hollywood thinks 2:35:1 is the differentiator between a movie and watching TV. Cinemascope with its color and stereo sound was a response to get butts back in seats instead of watching a tiny 4:3 black and white TV at home. Ultimately you are fighting a lost battle. In Hollywood, Scope is for "Movies", and 16X9 is for "TV".

Yeah, I have to give you that losing battle thing.

But I’m thinking the reason to shoot in scope is mostly because movie theaters tend to be optimized for that. The big question is: which gives you more image area: scope or flat. So either the screen opens up horizontally = scope is more. Or it opens up vertically = flat is more. I’m pretty sure the former is much more common. But with our 16:9 TVs, it’s the latter.

Jeff3F · May 1, 2024

One of the benefits of digital is flexibility of aspect ratio. I’m ok with ratio switching or directorial editorial artistic decisions. Avatar was in a non wide screen format and I never noticed until I did and I initially hated it because I thought it was an error or a management decision (like when iTunes changes the cover art for titles I own).

If the story is engrossing then I can’t even notice (like Avatar for a while). I have yet to watch Dune 2 digitally but will once price comes down to $20.

I do wonder if VR movies will gain access to IMAX aspect ratios, and I don’t mean the imax app where you have to purchase movies separately from the rest of the platform (Apple Vision Pro?).

CatBus · May 5, 2024

iljitsch said:
Then again, I don’t find "scope" (the wider 2.39:1 aspect ratio rather than the regular 1.85:1 or 1.78:1 ~= 16:9 ratios) immersive at 40 degrees. So for 4K scope movies I have to move the coffee table out of the way and move my seat closer to the TV to really enjoy them. And then move everything back for watching the news...

Thoughts?

Honestly it sounds like you're the target market for a CIH projection system. The idea behind wider aspect ratios is that they're MORE immersive at the same distance, not less. And they are... until they're on your TV. A CIH system would allow you to experience that immersion, as designed, in your home. i.e. a 2.39:1 image is simply a larger image than a 1.85:1 image, period. If it's not, the fault is in the display implementation, not the content.

iljitsch · May 6, 2024

As of the end of 2015 I had a system that worked pretty well for me: a reasonably sized LCD HDTV and an HD projector that would project an image above the TV. The projector could zoom out for scope and zoom in for 16:9, so effectively constant height. It will even detect scope and automatically zoom. So use the TV for casual viewing and the projector for the good stuff.

But then all of this was ruined in 2018... by a 4K OLED TV. With strong colors, perfect black levels and UHD resolution this blows both the old TV (which was swiftly donated) and the projector out of the water. The projector has been sitting in its original box for most of the past five years. And even when I overlook the lesser resolution, it doesn’t help that I moved to a place where it has to project over the width of the room rather than the length which limits the size of the image, and the room is quite bright, both due to outside light and internal reflections off of the walls and ceiling, so the difference in black levels between the OLED TV and the projector is enormous.

I guess I could make the room darker* and get a 4K projector. But guess what, bitching about the overuse of scope on a forum is much easier and cheaper!

In theory I could get a bigger TV. But then I’d have the rather insane problem that 16:9 content gets too large! My current 2018 LG OLED TV has several options to zoom in, but nothing to zoom out and add black borders around the content because otherwise the content is too big...

* Even now the sun doesn’t set until 21:17 and it’s not even summer yet. Then there is no time to watch a 2-hour movie between the moment the sun sets and midnight. And I have to think about the neighbors audio-wise beyond early evening.

Thinking about viewing distance

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