NEWS: Kaleidescape's New Cinemascape Aspect Ratio Management Feature!

[Mr.Poindexter]

Kaleidescape Delivers Ultimate 2.35 Widescreen Experience
Enjoy your 2.35 Theater without Mode Switches or Lens Movements

INDIANAPOLIS, IN; CEDIA EXPO - September 7, 2011 - Kaleidescape, Inc., the market leader in movie servers, today announced CinemaScape, optimizing the viewing experience in 2.35 projection home theaters. Until now, switching between aspect ratios usually required a mode switch and movement of an anamorphic lens. CinemaScape eliminates this disruptive glitch by performing the necessary video processing.
"Now it's a fluid and seamless experience when I'm exploring my collection of movies," said Eric Schmidt, Founder and President of Sound and Vision in Willowbrook, IL. "With the Kaleidescape System I can jump around instantly, reliving memorable scenes and watching songs from different concerts, and with CinemaScape the experience is even more spectacular."
The Kaleidescape System's award-winning onscreen user interface can now take advantage of the entire 2.35 screen. The result is a movie covers view with twelve more movies, and a movie list view that shows the title, actors, director, genre, year of release, MPAA rating and runtime all at once.
"2.35 screens are found in most of today's high-end home theaters, including 26 of the 29 projects contending for the 2011 Electronic Lifestyles awards," said Michael Malcolm, Founder, Chairman, and CEO. "CinemaScape provides an unrivaled experience for these installations, with seamless transitions between content of different aspect ratios and a user interface that takes advantage of the entire screen."
CinemaScape will be demonstrated in an immersive theater setting in booth #2629 at CEDIA EXPO 2011 in Indianapolis, IN from September 8-10, 2011. It will be included in a KEAOS software update during Q4 2011, which will be distributed automatically to Kaleidescape Systems via the Internet.
For more information, please visit www.kaleidescape.com.

 

[nineball]

Kaleidescape Delivers Ultimate 2.35 Widescreen Experience
Enjoy your 2.35 Theater without Mode Switches or Lens Movements

INDIANAPOLIS, IN; CEDIA EXPO - September 7, 2011 - Kaleidescape, Inc., the market leader in movie servers, today announced CinemaScape, optimizing the viewing experience in 2.35 projection home theaters. Until now, switching between aspect ratios usually required a mode switch and movement of an anamorphic lens. CinemaScape eliminates this disruptive glitch by performing the necessary video processing.
"Now it's a fluid and seamless experience when I'm exploring my collection of movies," said Eric Schmidt, Founder and President of Sound and Vision in Willowbrook, IL. "With the Kaleidescape System I can jump around instantly, reliving memorable scenes and watching songs from different concerts, and with CinemaScape the experience is even more spectacular."
The Kaleidescape System's award-winning onscreen user interface can now take advantage of the entire 2.35 screen. The result is a movie covers view with twelve more movies, and a movie list view that shows the title, actors, director, genre, year of release, MPAA rating and runtime all at once.
"2.35 screens are found in most of today's high-end home theaters, including 26 of the 29 projects contending for the 2011 Electronic Lifestyles awards," said Michael Malcolm, Founder, Chairman, and CEO. "CinemaScape provides an unrivaled experience for these installations, with seamless transitions between content of different aspect ratios and a user interface that takes advantage of the entire screen."
CinemaScape will be demonstrated in an immersive theater setting in booth #2629 at CEDIA EXPO 2011 in Indianapolis, IN from September 8-10, 2011. It will be included in a KEAOS software update during Q4 2011, which will be distributed automatically to Kaleidescape Systems via the Internet.
For more information, please visit www.kaleidescape.com.

Forgive my naivety here but I'm not sure I understand the implications of this announcement. Aspect ratios have been a common complaint for just about forever when it comes to ease of use. I have a CIH curved screen 2.40 and a sony 200 projector and a panamorph lens. I also have an Anthem D 2v in the mix. Is K saying that I will just leave the lens in place and it will do all the heavy lifting? This looks like there will have to be a reconfiguration of all the 'parts' of the video chain to take advantage of this new facility but certainly worth it if it is. But am I expecting too much and misinterpreting the release?

Peter

 

[cinelife]

Is K saying that I will just leave the lens in place and it will do all the heavy lifting? This looks like there will have to be a reconfiguration of all the 'parts' of the video chain to take advantage of this new facility but certainly worth it if it is. But am I expecting too much and misinterpreting the release?

Peter

That's exactly what they are saying. As you know (I'm a CIH guy as well) when we happen to have the AR set (in the PJ) at 2.35/2.40, and then call up the OSD, we lose part of the image (this is just one factor). This new feature eliminates those issues (and others). The best part of the new feature in my opinion is that we will now be able to have a properly viewed OSD including ALL of the "List" view elements on the screen. No more scrolling to the right to see additional info. The covers also fill out the 2.35 in proper AR, looks great.


Jim

 

[JerryL]

Jim what about when you want to move the lens out of the way for native 1.85, 1.78, 1.33 stuff?

 

[TomBarnett]

Here's a video of CinemaScape in action at CEDIA EXPO:

If the inline video above doesn't work in your browser, here's a link to it on YouTube:
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Dy_aD4x_M"]CinemaScape for 2.35 - Kaleidescape at CEDIA 2011 - YouTube[/nomedia]​

JerryL: With CinemaScape you leave the lens in position for all content, including 1.33, 1.78, and 1.85. The M-Class player processes the video and outputs an anamorphic 1080p image. The lens stretches it horizontally. This provides a number of key advantages:
* No lens movement at the beginning or end of movies, scenes, songs, etc.
* No mode switches
* The same amount of light per square foot on the screen at all aspect ratios


Tom Barnett
Kaleidescape, Inc.

 

[JerryL]

Thanks Tom. I hope there is the option to skip this new feature. I think it will be helpful for many people. But I have an automated lens and I prefer to be native as often as possible. I know the lens robs some light (all lens do) so I have different presets in my processor and my system will pick the proper preset.

I think thats a great thing to offer people as a choice, I just hope I can opt out of it.

 

[cinelife]

Jim what about when you want to move the lens out of the way for native 1.85, 1.78, 1.33 stuff?

Sorry Jerry, I missed this, but I see Tom B. already answered your question.


Jim

 

[Croptop]

Thanks Tom. I hope there is the option to skip this new feature.

CinemaScape can enabled or disabled on a per player basis.

 

[JDS]

I confirmed I'm only getting 2.75 Mbps

Luxury... I dream of 2.75Mbps. On an advertised 20Mbps service I achieved an actual download average of 2.32Mbps. The limit for me is the copper cable which is a long way for the nearest exchange. Fibre optic is slowly rolling out but I am not holding my breath.

I have a city centre "bolt-hole" which has the option of a 100Mbps service which is advertised a unlimited. I intend to upgrade many of my Dvd movies to BR in the near future. If the K BR store becomes available to me I might relocate my server for a while and order them all at once. A few hundred BR movies would be a good test of "unlimited download".....I will check the small print!!

 

[cinelife]

Luxury... I dream of 2.75Mbps. On an advertised 20Mbps service I achieved an actual download average of 2.32Mbps. The limit for me is the copper cable which is a long way for the nearest exchange. Fibre optic is slowly rolling out but I am not holding my breath.

I have a city centre "bolt-hole" which has the option of a 100Mbps service which is advertised a unlimited. I intend to upgrade many of my Dvd movies to BR in the near future. If the K BR store becomes available to me I might relocate my server for a while and order them all at once. A few hundred BR movies would be a good test of "unlimited download".....I will check the small print!!

100 Mbps, now that would speed things up! It's difficult to accept 2.75 as a luxury.


Jim

 

[lawder]

JerryL: With CinemaScape you leave the lens in position for all content, including 1.33, 1.78, and 1.85. The M-Class player processes the video and outputs an anamorphic 1080p image. The lens stretches it horizontally. This provides a number of key advantages:
* No lens movement at the beginning or end of movies, scenes, songs, etc.
* No mode switches
* The same amount of light per square foot on the screen at all aspect ratios

So, just so I'm clear - CinemaScape will allow me to keep the lens in AT ALL TIMES, and it will internally adjust the aspect ratio based on the aspect ratio of the content being played? A number of integrators I've talked to are under the impression this only impacts the Kaleidescape menu, but it sounds to me that this will apply to all content on K servers, is that right?

 

[brodricj]

I wonder how the heavy duty video processing to do all this in the M-player would compare to, say, an outboard box like a Lumagen Radiance. I still prefer that all the heavy duty video processing be done in the video processor as much as possible.

Quite frankly this capability in the M-Class comes as a complete surprise to me because I thought the on-board hardware was so taxed doing what it already does that there was no processing power left to do audio bitstream decoding to LPCM.

 

[JerryL]

lawder, Im just making discussion here but my guess is you are correct and the system will work based upon the content metadata (is it 2.35 or 1.78, 1.33 etc).

brodricj, Im with you on that. However, I don't think the processing necessary for this is too difficult and you can still run it through a processor to improve picture quality. You make a good point about resources but what if the audio decoding requires a whole lot more and this stretch doesn't require all that much.

Im very curious to play with this and decide for myself. I'll post up my findings. My expectation is that I'll discover that once again Kaleidescape has delivered but its worth the exercise to make my own opinion.

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

Quite frankly this capability in the M-Class comes as a complete surprise to me because I thought the on-board hardware was so taxed doing what it already does that there was no processing power left to do audio bitstream decoding to LPCM.

Perhaps they have a video processing chip doing the video scaling and has the ability to do this while they might not have the CPU power in the main processor to do the LPCM conversion? I mean, they don't do the audio decoding with the video GPU, do they?

 

[Croptop]

So, just so I'm clear - CinemaScape will allow me to keep the lens in AT ALL TIMES, and it will internally adjust the aspect ratio based on the aspect ratio of the content being played? A number of integrators I've talked to are under the impression this only impacts the Kaleidescape menu, but it sounds to me that this will apply to all content on K servers, is that right?

Correct. When CinemaScape is enabled on your player and you have a projector with an anamorphic lens equipped, the anamorphic lens is left in at all times regardless of aspect ratio. The player outputs a vertically stretched image and the lens is used to horizontally stretch the image to the correct aspect ratio.

 

[iansilv]

OK my OCD is kicking in on this... can anyone give specifics on how this is configured? Is there a place to put the the native aspect ratio of your projector, your lens, and screen so it can all work together to make sure the exact AR is displayed correctly? I do not have such a setup, but the scenario I am imagining is one where the screen with the masking panels fully retracted is a 2.40 AR and the lens in place is sending out a full-panel projector image from 1.78 to 2.40. So would K's cinemas cape implementation "know" this, and adjust it covers display accordingly? So its 2.35 format signal would actually have a sliver of black on each side coming-out of the projector so the lens would blow it up and it would be 2.35?

 

[iansilv]

Also- when a movie has an AR of 2.4, is it really 2.4 that makes it on to the disk, or is everything rounded to 2.35? For example: Batman Begins is 2.35, Casino Royale is 2.40...

 

[cinelife]

Also- when a movie has an AR of 2.4, is it really 2.4 that makes it on to the disk, or is everything rounded to 2.35? For example: Batman Begins is 2.35, Casino Royale is 2.40...

2.35 is 2.35, and 2.40 is 2.40 (there are also older films (like Ben Hur) that were shot in a special "Camera 65" which was a 65mm print later converted to 70mm to be used with an anamorphic lens to produce a 2.76 :1 AR!!!!).

Whatever AR is on the disc is what will appear on the screen, there is no conversion to 2.35. My screens tend to be 2.37 because of the A-lens I use, but I just ordered a Stewart Cinecurv AT screen in 2.40 native. This screen will mask horizontally all the way to 1.33 (1.33, 1.66, 1.78, 1.85, and 2.35) automatically based on the metadata's listed AR (and programmed with the Stewart BRIC controller). Fun stuff.


Jim

 

[JerryL]

Im a big fan of that screen- its what Ive been using for some time now.

 

[cinelife]

Im a big fan of that screen- its what Ive been using for some time now.

I know, that's why I ordered it, you're MY beta tester.....(You're also my Mr. Jones.)



Jim