'IMAX Enhanced' Promises Highest-Quality Image, Sound Experiences For Home Theater Setups (audioholics.com) 84
Audiofan writes: Just when we thought Sony learned their lessons from past formats DOA, they are at it again this time by teaming up with IMAX and select partners to certify the "IMAX movie experience" for home theater setups. Will Sony be on the losing side against already established Dolby Vision and HDR10 or will they leverage IMAX's immersive picture and sound quality on top of these other technologies? This smells like a format war or at the very least more consumer confusion. The new certification and license program from IMAX and DTS will give what they say to be the highest-quality image and sound experiences for home theater. "IMAX and DTS [as well as partners Denon, Marantz, Sony, and Paramount Studios] aren't clear as to whether this will be significantly different from DTS:X immersive 3D sound other than to say, 'The DTS:X codec technology (is) integrated in home audio equipment to deliver an IMAX signature sound experience,'" reports Audioholics. "To be accepted into the program, leading consumer electronics manufacturers will design top-of-the-line 4K HDR televisions, A/V receivers, sound systems and other home theater equipment to meet a carefully prescribed set of the highest audio and video performance standards, set by a certification committee of IMAX and DTS engineers and Hollywood's leading technical specialists."
The report notes that the program will use an IMAX post-production process "to digitally re-master content to produce more vibrant colors, greater contrast and sharper clarity," as well as "deliver an IMAX signature sound experience."
The report notes that the program will use an IMAX post-production process "to digitally re-master content to produce more vibrant colors, greater contrast and sharper clarity," as well as "deliver an IMAX signature sound experience."
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Plenty of money to be had, as long as there are still some younger folks left in these western nations who still have good hearing.
Isn't that the truth. The worst scam I ever saw was a brick being sold to audiophiles with the claim it would improve sound quality if you put it on top of your amp.
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Well it probably reduces the sound of it shaking on the ground.
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The worst scam is whatever cables Monster Cable is currently selling.
Not really. At least the cables that Monster is selling are just over priced cables that actually function as such. This company [machinadynamica.com] should probably be pictured right next to the definition of modern snake oil.
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I..is that a parody site? It must be?
No, sadly, it is not a parody. But I can understand why you would think it is. It certainly does look as such.
Overpriced does not equal fraud (Score:2)
The worst scam is whatever cables Monster Cable is currently selling.
Monster Cable products are overpriced and often wildly over engineered but they are generally of solid quality and do what they represent. QED they are not a scam in the legal sense of the word. They just aren't good value for money for most people. Their marketing and sales tactics tend to prey on ignorance, insecurity, and credulity of their customers but they aren't actually misrepresenting what they are. It's just that what they are provides minimal to no value added over much cheaper alternatives f
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Most of us needs glasses to see 20/20 but we are getting higher resolution displays with pixels too small to see. Remember when Apple touted its “Retna” display. On the iPhone 4? They are still upping the resolution.
The same thing with sound. We can detect the difference however it is on an unconscious level, it just feels more emersive and real.
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it just feels more emersive and real.
immersive
Videophiles (Score:3)
Audiophiles don't care about new surround formats. Quite a few won't touch anything digital with a 10 foot pole. Some will *maybe* go in for multichannel SACD, but that's it.
Naw, this is geared toward people who buy a new receiver every time a new surround format comes out. Most audiophiles also won't touch a receiver with a 10 foot pole.
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Trolling (Score:2)
Yes, because audiophiles are literally the only group on the entire planet who are absolutely consistent in their opinions across the entire grouo.
They aren't consistent about much, but they are consistent in their dislike of most surround formats.
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Audiophiles don't care about new surround formats. Quite a few won't touch anything digital with a 10 foot pole. Some will *maybe* go in for multichannel SACD, but that's it.
Naw, this is geared toward people who buy a new receiver every time a new surround format comes out. Most audiophiles also won't touch a receiver with a 10 foot pole.
My interpretation is that most audiophiles are interested in music and optimize their system for stereo, not surround sound. It's the home theater and movie buffs who are interested in these new formats. You can argue that the home theater crowd are included in the term audiophiles, but the traditional meaning slots these into separate groups.
The only time I buy a new receiver is when a new video format is released. For example, from 720p to HD to 4K. In regards to sound, I find that dolby 5.1 serves my
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I don't run video through my receiver. The only advantage is, you can see the receiver menu on the TV, but that isn't worth the extra lag and fragility. If you really need to see the receiver menu then temporarily route the video through it or use a separate display. You don't need to do this at 4K.
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Quite a few won't touch anything digital with a 10 foot pole.
That's a Luddite, not an audiophile.
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's me with a barely-HD projector on an 8-foot white projection screen, with the audio coming out of it in what might as well be mono sound because the directionality makes no difference (i.e. the thing making the sound in the movie isn't off to my left, it's just on the left of the screen most of the time, which is... in front of me, and the box making the sound is behind me anyway), streaming the videos off my phone over a ChromeCast via a 4G connection on a "SD-only" package.
And you know what? It's not just as good as any cinema... it's better. Because an 8-foot screen from a sensible distance away (the calculator I found says 17 feet) fills your vision just the same while also offering a res that they'd need 8-16K or greater on an humongous screen to match, and most cinemas aren't that.
People also forget that "1080p" is really "2 Megapixel". 4K might be "33 Megapixel" but there is no way in hell it's 10+ times better, or that you can see 10 times more detail at any sensible distance.
Sorry, but cinema is dying in my country. Too expensive. Empty most of the time. Too much upselling and ads. No technical incentive to watch it compared to buying even the cheapest of projectors.
US and German cinemas are very different though. (Score:1)
All the shit are telling me about cinemas... from loudly talking during the movie over throwing popcorn, bright phone screens and crying babies to dirty seats ... none of that is the case here in Germany, and AFAIK most of Europe. Our cinemas are squeaky-clean, well-climatized, and everybody is quiet and behaving unless it fits. (E.g. things that are a plus and part of the experience, like everybody in the room gasping or laughing at the same scene.)
Our problem and only reason people are going to the cinema
Exaggerating the problems (Score:2)
All the shit are telling me about cinemas... from loudly talking during the movie over throwing popcorn, bright phone screens and crying babies to dirty seats ... none of that is the case here in Germany, and AFAIK most of Europe. Our cinemas are squeaky-clean, well-climatized, and everybody is quiet and behaving unless it fits.
By and large people behave themselves in movies here in the US. The people that are complaining are mostly just looking for reasons to not go and are exaggerating the scale of the problems that do occur. I go to probably 5-10 movies per year at a variety of theaters and it's pretty rare (read almost never) to have another patron severely disrupt the experience. Heck lately my local theaters have been upgrading the seats and other amenities to pretty comfy options too. The few times someone has gotten ou
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Our cinemas are squeaky-clean, well-climatized, and everybody is quiet and behaving unless it fits.
And don't forget, you can have a beer with your movie.
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none of that is the case here in Germany, and AFAIK most of Europe.
Same in Canada.
Where do these whiners live?
Re:Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And you know what? It's not just as good as any cinema... it's better. Because an 8-foot screen from a sensible distance away (the calculator I found says 17 feet) fills your vision just the same while also offering a res that they'd need 8-16K or greater on an humongous screen to match, and most cinemas aren't that.
Sorry, but this is bogus. What matters is pixels per degree field of view. If your projector is 1920x1080, and it's giving you say 120 degrees horizontal field of view at your viewing distance,
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To me cinema was never about the movies.It was more about have an experience with friends. When I was younger, we would go with some people, watch it and talk about it over a few beers (Europe, differ drinking age)
When I was younger, a movie was just two hours of drinking time wasted. If you want crap to talk about, just watch the TV.
No social life (Score:2)
No kidding ... my 55" TV with surround sound and my leather recliner to me are far more interesting and comfortable than going to a damned cinema.I haven't seen a movie in a theatre in years, and likely never will again.
So what you are saying is that you have no friends and rarely leave the house. You be you but I prefer to be a bit more outgoing in my social life.
Here's a tip - it's not actually about the movie or the sound. It's about time with people you care about. Don't take it so seriously.
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Plus if the movie sucks, we can switch to something e
Mostly Correct, some nits (Score:3, Interesting)
1080p -- 2 Million Pixels, 4K -- 8 Million pixels, 8K -- 33 Million pixels.
4K is for the most part way overkill for most movies. I watch most of my stuff in 720p (1 Million pixels) as it is very, very superior to SD or DVD on my tablet. On my 8 foot projection screen 1080p makes a visible but not dramatic upgrade from 720p. That said, some wide screen movies would be better on a wider screen and we are throwing away some of our 2 Million pixels on letter-boxing. When Blu-Ray came out they should have h
Why 4K or 8K (Score:2)
4K is really sweet for programming and browsing and having multiple windows in general.
I find it nice for home movie watching too. Yes you generally can see the difference between 1080p and 4K in many cases because the limit of your ability to perceive resolution is greater than the resolution of 1080p. I have both 4K and 1080p versions of The Martian and on my 65inch TV I can see there is a difference between the two from my couch 12-15 feet away. I have to get close to see all the detail of 4K but I can tell there is a difference from further away. Details pop out enough to be noticeab
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4K is really sweet for programming and browsing and having multiple windows in general.
I find it nice for home movie watching too. Yes you generally can see the difference between 1080p and 4K in many cases because the limit of your ability to perceive resolution is greater than the resolution of 1080p. I have both 4K and 1080p versions of The Martian and on my 65inch TV I can see there is a difference between the two from my couch 12-15 feet away. I have to get close to see all the detail of 4K but I can tell there is a difference from further away. Details pop out enough to be noticeable.
If you want to argue that the difference between 1080p and 4K for general home movie watching is strongly into diminishing returns I would certainly concede the point in most use cases. 4K is better but it's not even close to the improvement from the old SD to 1080p. You really have to be pixel peeping to notice in many cases.
You are not seeing the difference between 1080p and 4K per se, but rather technical details of the video codec. 4K discs generally have HDR (high dynamic range) , WCG (wide color gamut)., and 10 bits per color band (BD is 8 bit). HDR deals with contrast: brighter brights, darker darks, increased contrast. These things make a huge difference, even if you can't discern individual pixels.
Pixel resolution (Score:2)
You are not seeing the difference between 1080p and 4K per se, but rather technical details of the video codec.
While I'm sure you are correct that the codec plays an important role, I'm not confused about what I'm seeing. I definitely can see the greater resolution and thanks to some digital image related jobs I had a few years back plus the fact that I do a lot of hybrid photography I know what I'm looking at better than many. One of my hobbies is wildlife photography and I could show you the same image at 1080p and 4K on the same screen and unless your vision is terrible you'd be able to see there is extra detai
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It's not just as good as any cinema... it's better.
Any cinema you frequenty maybe. Some of us don't go to $5 gooey seat shitboxes. Some of us frequenty Dolby Cinemas for quality that is unparlleled by any option you every have access to regardless of how big your buget may be.
People also forget that "1080p" is really "2 Megapixel". 4K might be "33 Megapixel" but there is no way in hell it's 10+ times better, or that you can see 10 times more detail at any sensible distance.
Detail? Who is saying just detail? The difference between a 1080p stream and a 4K HDR10 stream presented on a system that meets the requirement of Rec2020 is not 10 times, I agree. It would be more like 20 times better. Resolution is a laughably small part of the changes to video displ
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London.
Yeah, that little tin-pot town with 8 million people in it and no cinemas...
Where it costs GBP15 per adult ticket, minimum, in the out-of-town ones.
Theatres from Vue, Cineworld, Odeon. Yeah, those three franchises that own over 75% of all the cinemas in the country.
The particular one I use actually states on their website:
"Sony 4K Video"
"All screens are fitted with Dolby 6.1 surround."
But hey, that's just my local 11 screen 3000-plus seat cinema. Others in the area may vary - there are a dozen with
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London.
Yeah, that little tin-pot town with 8 million people in it and no cinemas...
Yep. You're perfectly right. I've been there your cinemas are shit puny little things crammed into what little space was available in the city. About the best I've seen was the BFI down in Waterloo and even that is pretty damn shit by IMAX standards. Population size/density doesn't mean you get good stuff.
"Sony 4K Video"
"All screens are fitted with Dolby 6.1 surround."
Wow. so ... early naughties era technology? I hope you weren't quoting those stats as something good because that is probably about the minimum expectation for a cinema these days.
You assume I'm riffing. I have access to some of the best cinemas in the country, including IMAX showcases, just a short Tube ride away. And I'll tell you that I'd prefer a projector in a living room.
No sorry I assumed you we
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Because ALL the things you're favouring (colour gamuts, HDR, Dolby, etc. etc. etc.) really mean nothing to me whatsoever
Damn!
Why didn't you tell us you were blind?
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London.
Well, that explains a lot.
I wouldn't want to be trapped on a deserted island with a bunch of Londoners, let alone a small theater.
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It's not just as good as any cinema... it's better.
I'm happy for you that you are happy with your projector, but personally I don't enjoy having the wall defects mixed in with my video, or the deformations in the projection screens. And I don't want to be forced to turn the lights out to watch video. And I don't agree that your video quality is better or as good as a 4K or 8K monitor. But I am happy for you that you believe that.
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1) Get proper walls. I mean, seriously.
2) Projector screens are just fine... secure them to the wall, pull them down and tie them off properly. Don't stick them on a wobbly tripod.
3) If in doubt, even 75" touchscreens are "affordable".
And the "lights-out" thing is nonsense.
I know... because I spend my life in schools where every classroom is a projector or a huge interactive touchscreen. They operate in broad-daylight, with south-facing windows, onto white and reflective surfaces, and operate just fine.
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[projectors] operate in broad-daylight
Yah, no. They operate with hugely reduced contrast, that is a physical fact. In simple terms, when ambient light is high they look washed out. Light emitting displays do not suffer from this to nearly the same extent. Surely you know this.
Perhaps you do not know that 65" 4K displays are cheap now, I can't see anybody going for less than that with a new purchase unless it is for a tiny room or desktop. I see a 75" TV on Amazon right now for $1K. Even 80" displays are not really expensive. With that, I just d
Learned their lesson? (Score:2)
Sony had a lot of format losses, But a lot of successful ones too. Even for the losses they made money from many of them.
8K TVs are coming this is already behind the curve (Score:1)
https://www.engadget.com/2018/... [engadget.com]
What's more it's going to be a long long time for old content to be upgraded.
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In my expereince, even when original high quality (70mm/IMAX/etc.) filmstock was available and still in good condition, there have still been some pretty poor quality cash-grab Blu-ray releases of the original, and I don't see this being any different. Additionally, a lo
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which might not be a bad thing if it means Hollywood leaves the classics alone.
May Ted Turner burn in hell for colorizing the greats of noir.
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[1] For those that don't know, "Film Noir" is not so much a genre like "Sci Fi" or "Fantasy", despite often being referred to as such, but quite literally wha
smells (Score:5, Informative)
>"This smells like a format war or at the very least more consumer confusion."
To me, this smells like typical marketing crap.
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My wife's MKX has THX sound, and it is truly amazing. But in the living room we make do, somehow, with Paradigm, Harman Kardon, and a no name sub.
And my living room would not support an upgraded sound system, it's the wrong shape/materials, and ain't worth it. Maybe a superior screen, some day.
Not a format/tech... (Score:3)
Sounds to me more like a marketing program disguised in techo-babble, which would compete with THX, .
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It think the author is wrong in thinking this involves some new format/tech (HDR10/DV/DTS). Sounds to me more like a marketing program disguised in techo-babble, which would compete with THX, .
I think you're right. I think the author is also confusing the new VESA DisplayHDR certifications with the format HDR10.
THX (Score:2)
Is THX even revelant these days? I noticed theaters aren't using them like the famous Chinese theater in HollyWEIRD. :/
don't most high end home stuff dtsx & dolby at (Score:2)
don't most high end home stuff have dtsx & dolby atmos? and can do more with firmware updates?
I'm on to Sony now (Score:2)
It doesn't matter to me anyway. My home has been Sony free for 10 years and I will never allow another Sony product into my home.
Open Standards ? (Score:3)
So what are the open equivalents
right now the display standards are being locked in and you want something 8K :
Hybrid Log-Gamma
HDR10+ (supported by apple TV and Samsung/LG)
for audio its about the number of speakers and position... both DTSX and Atmos are BROKEN for home setups they do not enforce the placement or provide guidance strictly so its pretty much pointless...
can someone please just release an open standard for meta data with 22.2 audio which prescribes exactly what to do when downmixing ?
thanks then we will be without the marketing BULL
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So what are the open equivalents
right now the display standards are being locked in and you want something 8K :
Hybrid Log-Gamma HDR10+ (supported by apple TV and Samsung/LG)
for audio its about the number of speakers and position... both DTSX and Atmos are BROKEN for home setups they do not enforce the placement or provide guidance strictly so its pretty much pointless...
can someone please just release an open standard for meta data with 22.2 audio which prescribes exactly what to do when downmixing ?
thanks then we will be without the marketing BULL
As far as sound goes I'd argue, and I have built several home theaters, that acoustic design of the room is the most important single thing. I've seen people with $30k of stereo equipment in a living room and it was pretty crappy. I've built theaters with much more modest equipment with the room properly treated acoustically and it just sounded a lot better than the much, much more expensive setup.
Part of this is that no amount of treatment and equipment can completely "fix" a really bad room. Better, cert
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both DTSX and Atmos are BROKEN for home setups they do not enforce the placement or provide guidance strictly
The point of DTSX and Atmos to be placement independent and for the final system to be characterised in place. That's the whole reason they moved to an object based recording standard relying on a processor to determine the final output to the speakers. The processor can place the object in the correct location based on the characteristics of your setup without the sound designer ever having to mix to a set of constraints determined by optimal speaker positioning.
Or are you talking about something else?
Snakeoil for people with more money than sense (Score:2)
IMAX at Home is a Joke (Score:2)
I just saw 2001 in IMAX a couple weeks ago, and there's no way you're going to duplicate that at home. The sound was awesome, the image filled my peripheral vision, and it was just an incredible experience. Again. Same inscrutable mad computer, same unknowable ending. But... if you try to duplicate that sound at home, you're going to have your neighbors complaining about the "noise" for 3 doors down the block in each direction, assuming you can get the audio gear to do it anyway. I don't think my P
And the target audience is... ? (Score:2)
If you've already built a home theater, you almost certainly did so because you don't care about the "IMAX experience" nearly so much as you value your privacy and personal space. I would not-so-humbly cite myself as an obvious example: I have a decent 1080p projector throwing 110" on the wall (no screen -- just a light blue-gray painted room) with a mid-range Bose 5.1, and my primary media driver is a simple AppleTV 3 -- not even the latest model. I think it's actually a decent setup; it certainly meets my
wrong targets (Score:2)
I'm building a home cinema, so this is a current topic.
Speakers are icing on the cake. 5.1 or 7.1 oder Dolby whatever - that is not what matters. A good screen matters, and good soundproofing matters. I'm still fighting with that last, still have too much echo in the room. The effect on sound quality is dramatic, and no amount of whatever tech will solve that, I just need to figure out how to best stop the sound waves from bouncing around.
But low-tech isn't so hip, so no headlines.