Film and video get along like  Bill O’Reilly and Al Franken. The two technologies never seem to match up. For decades, film has taken a wider, more rectangular shape, while video plays it relatively square.

To make rectangular film frames fit your squarish TV screen, studios can crop the image, in which case you lose part of the picture. Or they can add black letterboxing bars at the top and bottom of the image, in which case you waste a lot of your TV’s resolution reproducing the bars instead of real picture information.

QUITE A STRETCH The AutoScope process starts with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio image from a DVD or other source. A Runco video processor stretches the image vertically so the black bars at the top and bottom are eliminated, and active picture area fills the projector’s 1.78:1 aspect ratio DLP chips. The AutoScope lens then stretches the image again, but horizontally this time, restoring the picture to its original shape—only much larger than before. (Click image to enlarge)

The problem is not as common now that so many of us own widescreen TVs, but it still occurs with super-wide movies produced in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio—which is often referred to as CinemaScope, a 1950s trade name for the process that originally made these super-widescreen movies practical. The 2.35 number refers to the image width, the 1 refers to the height; thus, a 10-foot-high 2.35:1 screen measures 23.5 feet wide. To put the 2.35:1 aspect ratio in perspective, the standard widescreen movie ratio is 1.85:1, the ratio for wide-screen HDTV is 1.78:1, and the ratio for standard broadcast TV is 1.33:1. (Clcik image to enlarge)

Many of Hollywood’s hottest blockbusters are produced in 2.35:1; this group includes all of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, and the second and third Terminator movies. When these movies are shown on a standard widescreen TV with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, black bars appear on the top and bottom of the picture, and the image is smaller than with material produced in the 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 aspect ratios.

Runco, a company that specializes in high-end video projection systems for home theaters, wanted to give its customers the same dramatic, super-widescreen 2.35:1 presentation they enjoy in commercial theaters. So Runco decided to use the same technology theaters use to get that widescreen image: an anamorphic lens, which stretches images to make them wider. If you put a home video of yourself through an anamorphic lens, you will look really fat even if you’re on the slender side; Lindsay Lohan, on the other hand, would look normal.Film projectors for commercial cinemas have a lens turret; the projectionist spins the turret to select the correct lens. Knowing that placing a turret on a home video projector is not practical, Runco’s engineers placed the anamorphic lens on a motorized assembly. In about four seconds, the projector can switch from standard 1.78:1 widescreen to 2.35:1 anamorphic as an additional lens moves in front of the projector’s standard lens. A tiny conveyor belt mounted in an assembly atop the projector (or under it, if the projector is on a table) moves the lens.

Trick Lens
The AutoScope lens and video processing give super-widescreen 2.35:1 images a truly cinematic quality never before seen from DVD. (Click image to enlarge)

 
Runco calls the new feature AutoScope. It is currently available as a $12,995 option for the $39,995 VX-2c three-chip DLP projector, and will be made available for the higher-end VX-40d and VX-50d projectors.

Jim Burns, who works as a consultant to Runco, gives me a lengthy demonstration of an AutoScope-equipped VX-2 in the training room of the company’s Union City, Calif., headquarters. As I enter the room, I am taken aback by the size of the screen: It is 14 feet wide and 6 feet high, and it takes up most of one wall of the large training room. There’s barely room for speakers. I feel as if I am entering a studio screening room rather than a home theater.

Burns warms up the VX-2, cues the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom DVD, and touches a button on a remote to move the AutoScope lens into place. The super-wide screen fills with a sharp, vivid picture. And because the screen takes up so much of the wall, it has a theatrical presence I do not associate with home video projection.

Built Like A Tank
The mechanism that moves the AutoScope lens is made from heavy, machined aluminum parts for durability and precision. It’s not completely quiet, but that’s by design—Runco wanted customers to be able to hear that the mechanism is working. Two locking levers on the side release the lens for adjustment; according to Runco consultant Jim Burns, the procedure is simple for any installer to perform. (Click image to enlarge)

But how does Runco compensate for the “fattening” factor of the anamorphic lens? “The projector comes with a separate video processor, and the processor stretches the image vertically to eliminate the black bars,” Burns explains. “Then the anamorphic lens stretches the image horizontally, so the image comes back to the correct aspect ratio—but a lot bigger than it was before, and without the black bars.”

Why not just zoom out the projector’s original lens to fill the wider screen? “If you display the unaltered 2.35:1 image from the DVD, the projector will show those black bars,” Burns says. Thus, the projector will use only about three-quarters of the DLP chip to display actual picture, and the rest is wasted showing the bars. “With this method,” he continues, “we use the entire chip no matter what the aspect ratio of the picture is. When you show 2.35:1 with AutoScope, the picture is 30 percent brighter than it would be if you simply showed the image with black bars at the top and bottom. The contrast improves, too.”Technically, AutoScope does not improve the resolution of the image, but somehow it looks sharper. When Burns plays a high-definition D-VHS tape of Behind Enemy Lines, I’m surprised to see that the high-definition image is not dramatically better than much of what I see from DVD. Although many scenes from DVDs cannot match the high-def, the best scenes from top-notch DVDs like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King look every bit as sharp as the high-def material—even though I know a 2.35:1 image on DVD has only about three-quarters of the vertical resolution of a standard 1.78:1 image. I’m looking at a mere 360 pixels of vertical resolution, but I would never have guessed that had I not known. I guess stretching the 360 pixels out to 720 to fill the screen vertically gives the picture more apparent resolution. The quality of Runco’s video processing obviously has something to do with it, too.

Video Wall
Because the AutoScope process produces such a wide image, it can easily fill the front wall of many home theater rooms. (Click image to enlarge)

To switch to a standard 1.78:1 widescreen DVD, you simply touch a button on a remote control (or on a Crestron or AMX touchscreen) to move the lens aside. The picture will fill the screen top to bottom, but will fill only about three-quarters of the screen horizontally. Your installer can set up AutoScope so the lens moves away when you watch, say, your satellite receiver or cable box, then moves back into place when you switch to DVD. Burns recommends using a motorized side masking system to block off the unused parts of the screen. With these systems, black nonreflective fabric  moves in from each side. Such systems are used in commercial theaters and offered by most makers of projection screens for the home.

Anyone planning a high-end home theater must give  the AutoScope technology a look. Despite all the talk about higher-resolution DLP chips, I think this simple optical technology is the greatest video projection innovation of the last two or three years. After spending a morning with AutoScope, everything else seems second-rate to me.

Runco: 510.324.7777, www.runco.com