Philips "Carousel" short shows what you're missing without Cinema 21:9 and Ambilight
By Richard Lawler 
posted Apr 16th 2009 1:12PM
posted Apr 16th 2009 1:12PM
posted Apr 16th 2009 1:12PM
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I wouldn't mind living in that place.
What kind of a jackass has a chaise for a couch?
Got neck cramps buddy?
It looks like he set up shop in a hallway.
Anyways, that TV does look quite nice...
Where's all of the wires?
Shhhh.... they didn't want me to say anything about that but the wires are really not their. It works on the power of your imagination.
Obviously, the wiring is all behind the tv. That is why the sound doesn't work, but the tv does. haha!
Im sorry unless that TV is 100" that wide view is just to small .. To much wall around it
Is that really how a 7.1 should be setup?
Not at all
Here is the link to the website: www.philips.com/cinema
Unless you're only ever going to watch 21:9 content, this is a bad solution. A 16:9 screen is a good compromise between 4:3 and ultra-mega-widescreen, this is not. Actually, if you're that concerned, you should have a light-controlled room, a projector and one of those projector screens that can crop the top and bottom so that no excess light reaches them.
A 21:9 TV is simply not worth it, unless you WANT 4:3 content to be super small.
This is called CIH (Constant Image Height), and it works the same as your local cineplex. That is, the picture will always be the same height regardless of aspect ratio, but the wider that source material, the wider the picture. Plenty of people have been doing them with home front projectors and anamorphic lenses. Screen masking also becomes simpler as the screen is only masked on the sides.
I made a response with lots of math that explains that for the same height as a 52" diagonal 16:9 screen, a 21:9 would need to be 64". That's way more expensive, and provides no benefit for anything less wide than 16:9.
For some reason, my original reply didn't show up, and I don't feel like doing the math again. Suffice it to say that once you get into the price and horizontal size range that a screen with a 64" diagonal would be, it becomes more worth it to buy a projector instead of an ultra wide screen.
Checkout that Stealth Nighthawk F-117 Fighter by the back speakers. Cool.
Check out that Stealth Nighthawk F-117 Fighter by the rear speakers. Cool.
Barely anyone in America would want that thing in their house. When 16:9 HDTVs are flourishing, Philips rolls out with this and says, "Hey your HDTV just isn't wide enough. You need a wider TV!" Big deal! Europe can keep that stupid TV as it's not going in my bedroom! Soon Philips will make an even wider TV that'll go on the wall or sit on the shelf of any room wide enough.
Yea but for 16:9 you will have black bars on the side. Its a nice TV but after forcing people to go from 4:3 to 16:9 you want us to make a jump to 21:9!? Not going to happen until ALL MOVIES are filmed in 21:9. Some of my widescreen movies have black bars, some don't and the ones that don't fit so nice on the 16:9 screen. Personally I think the 21:9 TV is too narrow as the 4:3 TV was too square, the 16:9 TV offers wide screen and size. Again we have widescreen, anamorphic widescreen, letterbox, its annoying, I would like Hollywood or the world organization of motion pictures or whatever the hell its called to work in tandem with Television companies and decide on one freaking format for the next 100 years lol. Resolution can go up, but keep the damed size the same. I do prefer the 21:9 but no not yet, I am not sold. But I would be sold on 21:9 way before I am sold on 3D TV's and movies, I don't want to wear glasses just to watch a 3D movie, 3D is not that important to me.
Movie directors intentionally choose different aspect ratios. This allows much more room for creative choices. It would not be a good thing to make them all use the same aspect ratio. Take a film class, and maybe you'll understand.
What a pointless product. There isn't a consumer delivery medium that supports this aspect ratio, so there's nothing to play on it. Even if you had a widescreen movie in a 16:9 letterbox, you'd have to blow it up to fill this screen, and that's going to look like crap.
Unbelievable.
Actually, 21:9 is equivalent to 2.35:1 aspect ratio that many movies are shot in.
Yes, the movies are shot in that aspect ratio. But they aren't delivered that way on any consumer format. At best, they're letterboxed in a 16:9 frame, which, again, would require zooming in and losing a lot of resolution.
The web demo provides these details:
"Coming soon, the world’s first truly cinematic TV that perfectly matches the original 2.39:1 movie format used by directors. Over 60% of DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies support the 2.39:1 movie format. That means no more annoying black bars on this ultra widescreen TV. No picture loss. Just movies the way the director wanted you to see them. As our top of the range TV, Cinema 21:9 offers a 56 inch ultra wide screen with Ambilight Spectra 3 and Perfect Pixel HD Engine to maximize the cinematic feeling. Plus with Net TV you can enjoy some of the best websites tailored to fit your TV."
This would be a nice feature... for plasma! LCD picture quality is still not up to plasma, so I would not be interested in the set unless Philips (or someone else) were to produce a 21:9 plasma model.
Their biggest 21:9 TV is less tall than a 52" 16:9 TV. That means that everything except super wide content is going to be SMALLER than on quite a few 16:9 TVs.
Wow, their own advert shows how idiotic their decision not to include a bottom mounted ambilight is.
I just want to see an idiot throw some 4:3 content on there and use stretch.
Having seen it at a Philips dealer training I do have to say it's impressive with Blu-ray. It looked far less interesting with an Xbox 360 playing some games.
However, 4:3 images are stretched to 16:9, so you have a two nice black bars to the sides when watching 4:3 images. 16:9 ofcourse is stretched to 21:9, which looked very odd.