Only 810 rows of pixels from today’s 1080p projectors are used to show a 2.35:1 movie when it is squeezed onto a 16:9 screen. The remaining pixels are turned off to produce the black bars, representing an amazing 518,400 pixels of lost resolution and brightness on every 2.35:1 movie watched! So the first step to enhanced 2.35:1 performance is to electronically stretch the movie in the vertical direction to use all 1080 rows of pixels - an increase of 33% higher resolution. We call this electronic vertical stretch scaling and it is available either as an internal mode in some projectors or as a feature of most high performance external image processors. Of course, by vertically stretching to get this increased performance the movie is no longer in its original aspect ratio. So now the UH480 lens is moved into the beam to horizontally stretch the image to match the vertical stretch, returning the image to its original aspect ratio while retaining the 33% higher resolution. You’ve now effectively created a 2.35:1 image the same height as your original 16:9 image but also 33% wider. The final step? Get a wider format screen to complete the picture!
Now you have the ultimate 2.35:1 imaging system. What happens to smaller format content? There are two options. First, you can move the lens out of the way for non-2.35:1 content and turn off the Mode I scaling, basically converting your projector back to a 16:9 multimedia system again. You are still using the full height of your 2.35:1 screen but leaving the far left and right regions blank or covered with curtains like a real commercial cinema. The second option is that you can leave the lens in place and electronically squeeze any content that is not 2.35:1 in the horizontal direction - what we call scaling. This is very convenient and produces the same effect as moving the lens out of the way. The down side is that this option uses less horizontal resolution. However, the visual difference between the two is not great because horizontal resolution is not nearly as important as vertical resolution (which is the same for either option). The choice is yours!
Higher brightness. Higher resolution. Greater impact. No black bars. All this with literally thousands of movies representing some of the greatest cinematic works of our time. Make your home theater into a true cinema and feel the drama the director intended you to feel.
The Enhancement Process Achieving a true home cinema is not just about larger, more perfectly framed major motion pictures. It also results in 33% more resolution and a 25% increase in brightness.
Standard 2.35:1 image from a 16:9 projector showing black bars of unused pixels
The 2.35:1 image is first vertically stretched electronically to use all the pixels from a 16:9 projector
The image is then horizontally stretched using the UH480 Lens, restoring the original aspect ratio while using all the available pixels.