[mathew_m]

100" Cinema Display?

If true it looks like Apple's ready to jump into the Home Theater front.

Biggest obstacle is that these things only work well in a dark room.

Could also mean we'll see a headless iMac/home entertaiment Mac soon as well.

Will it be hidef compatible though.

[Misanthrope]

Doubt it.

[gorickey]

Damn, I was hoping for an iMAX screen...afterall, it fits the "i" metaphor...

[benb]

That forum is hideous.

[Superchicken]

iMax haha... no

[mathew_m]

Why doubt?

You could even play Steve Jobs by setting up your desk next to the screen and running keynote.

DLP and LCD costs are low enough now that for the same price as a 20" Cinema Display you could have a front projector instead. It could even have a iPod like interface for displaying movies. Imagine how cool the iTunes visualizer would be on a 100" screen

Apple could do the same for home theater as it has for digital music.

As I said the biggest obstacle is that these things still need a dark room.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

LCD projectors never look that great.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by benb:
That forum is hideous.

I'd say the average poster's IQ over there is higher than here.

Problem I have with HT gurus is that they care more about the technology than the application. Witness how they all use the same scenes from The Fith Element or whatever latest Pixar movie to demo.

Wait a second. Jobs runs Pixar also...hmmm
Nah the guy probably cares nothing about movies.

Are we finally going to see some more real world uses for Pixlet?

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
LCD projectors never look that great.

Don't tell me you wouldn't get a chub out of watching Star Wars on an Apple branded 100" wide Cinema Display.

[mitchell_pgh]

1) That forum reeks of BS
2) 90% of the conversation is about projectors
3) 100" Cinima Display would be around $15,000 by Apple's pricing structure

[benb]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
LCD projectors never look that great.

I've seen some really fine ones lately. Fine enough to make me consider buying one.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
1) That forum reeks of BS
2) 90% of the conversation is about projectors
3) 100" Cinima Display would be around $15,000 by Apple's pricing structure

1) How does it reek any worse than this forum?
2) Its a technical forum. I agree its a lot of geek speak but I check it from time to time to catch up on the latest and greatest.
3) I'm not talking about a physical 100" Cinema Display. That would cost closer to a million dollars I would think. I'm talking about a lcd/dlp front projector capable of displaying an image 100" wide. This technology is available now for under 1K. You can get something really nice for under 2K.

Apple could release something like this at a $1299 price point. Include a rudimentary OS like the one found in the iPod. It could be used as a computer display (boring) or most likey for displaying movies d/l'd off the net via an iTunes like movie store.

With Pixlet you can compress a DVD quality movie down to 250meg. This digest size would make downloading movies feasible. With Steve Jobs' clout in the entertainment biz he probably could get Lucasfilm and others on board for the big unveiling. Trust me that there are enough Star Wars geeks out there that would purchase the thing if Lucas released the original trilogy on Pixlet. For copy protection you could incorporate something similar to iTunes. Movies would only be playable on 1 box. Sell them at $9 a pop. Same price as a movie theater but cheaper than buying the DVD.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by mathew_m:
Don't tell me you wouldn't get a chub out of watching Star Wars on an Apple branded 100" wide Cinema Display.

Well I have a widescreen 40 inch HDTV projection TV since 1999 that looks incredible. Star wars and all.

I don't see why Apple would make this thing though.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Well I have a widescreen 40 inch HDTV projection TV since 1999 that looks incredible. Star wars and all.

I don't see why Apple would make this thing though.

Yeah but I bet you wish you had a 100" screen.


I have the same set: A Toshiba right? Pretty nice but a bear to calibrate and move. Rear projection sets are going out. They still have the nicest picture calibrated but are totally not feng shui.

A lot of people probably said the same thing about the iPod originally.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by mathew_m:
Yeah but I bet you wish you had a 100" screen.


I have the same set: A Toshiba right? Pretty nice but a bear to calibrate and move. Rear projection sets are going out. They still have the nicest picture calibrated but are totally not feng shui.

A lot of people probably said the same thing about the iPod originally.

Not really. I rather have a 40" with perfect picture over a 100" with "meh" quality.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Not really. I rather have a 40" with perfect picture over a 100" with "meh" quality.

So have you even seen any of the latest FP's? RP's haven't come a long way but FP sure has. I agree that they don't have the contrast range that tube based tvs have but they are getting there. Let's just say that I don't plan on buying another RP ever again.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by mathew_m:
So have you even seen any of the latest FP's? RP's haven't come a long way but FP sure has. I agree that they don't have the contrast range that tube based tvs have but they are getting there. Let's just say that I don't plan on buying another RP ever again.

Plasmas look rather crappy unless they cost $20,000. I don't like the fact that they get burn in either.

The thing I hate about LCD projectors is that you can see the black line that separates each pixel and it doesn't have that nice smooth film look to it.

I am waiting for a OLED TV to replace my RP. It will be a few years but I can wait.

[brapper]

Originally posted by benb:
That forum is hideous.

agreed. garbage town.

[InterfaceGuy]

Originally posted by benb:
That forum is hideous.

If you sign up you can select a more subtle white design. Still can't get rid of all of the ads up top, though.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by brapper:
agreed. garbage town.

I'm sorry girls but we're talking about projector technology not whether this dress will match my shoes.

[Kenneth]

Projector.. great.

My dad will love it IF that's true.

White enclosure?

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Kenneth:
Projector.. great.

My dad will love it IF that's true.

White enclosure?

I simply don't see Apple branded projectors fitting anywhere in their future. Also, mathew_m thinks Pixlet is designed for some kind of new DivX... he couldn't be more wrong. Pixlet is designed for half def video compression without artifacts. People are misquoting the 6GB to 250 MB thinking that they are talking about DVD quality video. This simply isn't true. Read around...

This is pure bunk.

[residentEvil]

my LCD HD projection system looks great. is it the best? no. but it is better than just about everything out there when i bought it.

100"? too small. try 139"! (78 x 139) da-lite da-snap screen course my replacement bulbs are at/around $500 and go through one every 10 months or so.

[mathew_m]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:

This is pure bunk.

Sorry mitch but their ain't a whole lot of info out there regarding Pixlet. Nothing to de-bunk anything I've stated either.

The fact that it is artifact free is important for large screen viewing. A good scaler will take care of the resolution part.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by mathew_m:
With Pixlet you can compress a DVD quality movie down to 250meg.

Where are you getting this figure?

-s*

[Turias]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Where are you getting this figure?

-s*

Yeah, I thought that was dubious, too, until I found the following link:

http://homepage.mac.com/macsatin/C12...1/E1509052356/

[wdlove]

I'm just looking forward to an update of our current Cinema Display.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Turias:
Yeah, I thought that was dubious, too, until I found the following link:

http://homepage.mac.com/macsatin/C12...1/E1509052356/

I found this at www.apple.com/macosx/ :

High-end Video Codec
Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any 1GHz G4 or better Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary hardware.

That does in fact translate to a 6GB stream being compressed to about 250-300 MB.

HOWEVER: That goes for 6GB UNCOMPRESSED VIDEO.

Pixlet has absolutely nothing whatsoever with DVD playback/encoding/decoding. With DVDs, you are talking about highly compressed video material, and in that case, Pixlet is going to do just about squat. In fact, my own experimentation with DVD to QuickTime conversion (including Pixlet output from iMovie) bear this out quite well. Hardly any space saving whatsoever when working with previously compressed material.

-s*

[mathew_m]

Ok so using current Pixlet numbers it would still require roughly 22 GB to store the average movie. If Pixlet's native distribution is 1080i then you're talking about resolutions of 1920x1080. You can halve that and with a decent on board scaler achieve pretty nice results on a 800x600 projector. You're still talking about 11GB though.

I was just throwing Pixlet out there. Without seeing it in action I would still say its viable for distribution but just not for streaming....yet

[mathew_m]

Actually half of 3meg/sec would leave you at 1.5meg/sec which if you have broadband would be fine for streaming.

If you quarter it then you'd have .75meg/sec which is still 5gb but at a lower than DVD resolution. Uncompressed though. MPEG2 tends to fall apart at higher resolutions equally and when blown up to larger screen sizes. A lower rez image with the help of an awesome scaler might be better. Regardless it is better to keep it at whatever the native rez of the display device.

Maybe Apple will start displaying Pixlet movies in some of their stores for demonstration.

Has anyone seen the demo on Apples site? I can't find it even though I'm still running Jag.

[mitchell_pgh]

If Apple were to do that, they would go with MP4 over Pixlet. Pixlet is overkill for anything other then studio work.

[disectamac]

I think it fits in line with the whole digital movie thing. Make a movie, burn a movie on DVD, play it on a computer, why not have a real home like theater.

If its crap quality Apple wont' release it. If its great quality then why not?

Then again the rumor came about from a guy who thought it was Microsoft, now wait then Apple. It could be Amiga for all we know and there's also the possibility that his rumorish post might've just been to increase traffic in his forum.

I don't like the number 100". It's too rounded. Sounds made up.

[mathew_m]

What's wrong with 100"? It fits in with the original iPods "1,000 songs in your pocket" slogan.