Latest / CE Pro Podcast / CE Pro Podcast #181: Designing Immersive Entertainment Experiences, a CEDIA Expo 2026 Smart Stage Session

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CE Pro Podcast #181: Designing Immersive Entertainment Experiences, a CEDIA Expo 2026 Smart Stage Session · CE Pro Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_05: Hey folks, welcome back to the CE Pro Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_05: My name is Zachary Combo, your host and executive editor of CE Pro.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_05: Today we're bringing you right back to the CD Expo 2026 March Stage with a session all about designing immersive entertainment experiences and what it takes to create a truly engaging home theater from stunning visuals to high performance audio.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: I moderated this discussion along with Michael Cobb of Collabescape, Rob Buddy of JVC, Phil Holland of PHFX, and Juan Reyes of the AK Association.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: We explored the technology, design considerations, and best practices behind today's high-end home entertainment systems.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_05: This session was sponsored by Collabiscape, and let's get into it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_05: Alright, hey everyone.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: My name is Zachary Como.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_05: I'm executive editor of CEPro, and I'm super excited to introduce uh this panel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's gonna be fun.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: Uh designing immersive entertainment experiences.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: Uh immersive entertainment has evolved dramatically over the over the last decade.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_05: Uh today's displays are huge, uh they're getting bigger, they're brighter, they're more capable than more capable than ever.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh audio systems are becoming more sophisticated while also becoming easier to install.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but filmmakers continue to push boundaries.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: And so today we're gonna explore how all of these technologies come together to create truly immersive experiences.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_05: So let's uh go down the line, uh introduce yourself, and um explain your role in in creating immersive uh you know home entertainment experiences.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, my name is Phil Holland of PHFX.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I am pretty focused on creating immersive visual storytelling experiences.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: I work in features, and I also specialize in doing sort of experiential and exhibition content for some of the manufacturers here.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and a lot of my work has ended up in your homes one way or another.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, my name is Juan Reyes, and uh in person I am not out of aspect unlike my headshot back here.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: But um today I'm wearing multiple hats.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one is I am the executive director of the 8K Association, which is a global organization working around standardization, compliance programs, and then also working with SIMTI, where I am the chair of the Hollywood section, also an organization around compliance programs.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea there is we we create these standards, these criteria to make sure that you know whatever technology is being used on the immersive entertainment side, displays, source devices, content, you know, cables, that they all are meeting the same, you know, same compliance criteria so that there's no issues with the communication of the signal across the board.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_05: Uh just real quick, uh Phil and Rob, do you want to grow out grab one side of Juan and stretch him so he matches his hatch up?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_05: No, they need to put me up.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: Hi.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, I'm Rob Buddy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the national project manager for JVC.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um I've been working in industry for over 30 years, all with JVC.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm kind of liaison between the US and factory sales.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I handle product development, service, QC, so a variety of roles um in at JVC.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and my name is Michael Cobb.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm principal engineer for user experience at uh Kaleidoscape.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: We uh we build uh home theater movie players and servers and operate a movie service with the uh highest fidelity movie library in the industry.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And my role there is I work on user interface for our products uh and uh in particular on our mobile applications.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_05: Great.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_05: So now let's talk about what makes entertainment really immersive.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um so when when when people talk about the wow factor, uh it seems like that's defined differently uh depending on who you speak to.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_05: So let's go down the line and um you know from your perspective, you know, what creates that immersive experience from both an audio and a visual perspective?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um I coined a term a long time ago, uh early 2000s called the window effect, where the concept behind that is to eliminate some of the artifacts of a viewing experience that would take you out of watching anything.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that could have been image artifacts from a bad encode, blocky compression, uh seeing pixels.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh often sometimes the older televisions had large bezels.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't know if you guys remember, but we used to have TVs with like four or six-inch bezels all around them.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: So things like that, I found that the quicker you can strip those away, increase the quality of the picture as well as the sound, uh helps immerse people in the visual content in front of them.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, on our end, we are the the non-sexy part of immersive entertainment where we're working to define what exactly is immersive entertainment, what is the technology around it?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking about displays, when you're talking about brightness and HDR, what does that mean?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And making sure that you're creating commonality, you're creating, you know, what what does that signal mean?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: How does that work so that across the entire ecosystem from camera to source device to content to over the cable that everybody's speaking the same language so that people can take advantage of this immersive entertainment experience?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: So are you saying 8K is not sexy?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: 8K is very sexy.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is the sexiest thing ever.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the underlying part, that's not so sexy, but very, very important.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean for a truly immersive display, the technology needs to disappear from the image.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so you just see the the image.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're looking at it, you just see the image, you hear the audio, you don't see or hear any artifacts.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what's really important in an immersive display to me.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think from our standpoint, you know, we exist at the beginning of the chain.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um our our source devices touch everything else that that goes into producing uh the the experience for the user.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, our focus really, I like Phil's uh uh window effect uh description.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, our focus is on producing the content and the playback devices that can give you that window effect when it's paired with a high quality display, and also delivering like the lossless audio that gives you that artifact-free audio experience when you're playing it back on a good on a good system.
• 6:20
  unknown: Great.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: You now let's talk about how home entertainment has changed.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um 20 years ago, enthusiasts built dedicated home theaters.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um now we're seeing huge TVs, 100 inch uh plus, uh laser laser projectors, Dolby Atmos systems, uh multi-purpose media rooms which are on the rise, um, open living spaces.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um as home entertainment continues to evolve, how is that ecosystem from content creation and and mastering to displays and playback?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_05: How is that evolving to deliver a truly immersive experience?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um start with Rob.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so for HDR and dynamic tone mapping, um the standard, it's a standard out there now, so every display needs to have that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um customers want a really immersive display, and so you know the larger screens, the AT screens is really prominent in this market, and so I think that's gonna be coming down the future more and more larger screens.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: Phil, how how are audiences experiencing films differently today?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh my particular career trajectory is quite weird because I started working in features in the late 90s and I began dealing with 4K film scans when we were still doing standard definition.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: So I I knew the very big difference w between what we could achieve versus what audiences at home or even in theaters were experiencing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: Since then we've had the progress of 2K and 4K and 8K projection, immersive and uh emissive technologies.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: And then in the home, you know, we used to have CRTs that had a rounded screen, which was kind of interesting, and then we went to flat screen, and now we have these tremendous flat panels with lots of fascinating technologies, the most recent ones, you know, mini LED, QDO led, you guys pay attention.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but the cool thing, I I mentioned bevels earlier.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_04: What we've been seeing is people who used to be buying, say, a 55-inch TV or a 40-inch TV, because those bezels are gone, they're able to afford and purchase a 70-inch plus television.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: So we've noticed that there's been a trend of larger displays in homes, uh, even in apartments where space is a little bit of a premium, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_04: And we've obviously seen the adoption of 4K technology.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's quite special to see how that's emerged because there was a time when that was brand new, and we're probably close to a billion 4K televisions out there, if I had to guess by now.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and the same story is kind of happening with 8K, where it's a slow start and it's becoming more affordable.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: And the panel display in terms of color reproduction and image quality is so good.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I think people right now have access to seeing a higher standard of visual entertainment in the home than they ever had.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I think for people providing that, I think the audience does deserve it because they are at the end paying for it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, Juan, how is technology adapting to consumer behavior?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, consumers are are always wanting, you know, more and more capabilities.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: They go to the theater, they experience something.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: They go to an immersive, you know, entertainment venue like a like a sphere and they experience something.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so the technology has to advance around standards.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Rob, for mentioning standards and you know how how important those are.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Things like like HDR.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the HDR technology when it came out was to meet a need, and that was probably the most significant technological achievement to this industry, where all of a sudden you've got this dynamic range that you've never had before.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But in addition to that, not only do you want that dynamic range, but the consumers wanted more color.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you went from the 709 specification to the 2020.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we're talking standards, which SIMTI has worked to develop, you know, over many, many years.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So now you have this capability where the technology at home in many cases can exceed the capabilities that you can get in a theater.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can get you know wider color gamut, you can get brighter brights, you've got displays now that can get up to about 10,000 nits in some cases, which you could never get in the theater, and something you never had available to you know in the past.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just on the video side.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we also have to think about audio, whereas before, you know, we went from you know stereo to 3.1 to 5.1 to 7.1, and now we've got you know immersive spatial audio, 7.1.4, and beyond.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So consumers are are demanding more, and the nice thing is that this industry and the technology is advancing to be able to deliver that to them.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, Mike, yeah, yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: So same question, you know, uh what are you guys seeing in terms of the demand from customers?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think you you uh you stated it well in the in the question originally.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we've seen an evolution where maybe the focus previously was on a dedicated theater room.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: We still see a lot of dedicated theater rooms and they're a fantastic experience, but people are installing systems in less of a special purpose space, maybe it's uh it's a media space, or maybe it's just part of the living space, and part of the technology that um uh Rob and and everybody else has talked about, you know, that that facilitates that.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: But um then from you know where we sort of fit into that picture is you have these beautiful high brightness displays, you can have you know concealed audio that does uh great uh surround uh object immersive audio, and then the the next piece, the last piece is delivering that content that that actually delivers that experience to people, takes advantage of that technology and delivers them um an exciting and interesting, enjoyable movie watching experience with high fidelity picture and and high fidelity audio.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, uh just a follow-up question.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um for for folks who don't know Klidescape and and maybe they're still using like an Apple TV or something.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you know, what's what's that uh conversation like to educate them about just what they're missing?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the well, it's an interesting conversation.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I think there are two elements to it.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, really the elements are picture and sound.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um on the picture front, it's a little bit more of a subtle story, honestly, because um, you know, if you're casually viewing something, you might not immediately see the differences.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: But certainly there are compromises whenever you are delivering content that's highly compressed, um, that is being uh optimized not so much for the viewing experience, but for the sustainability of the service that has to deliver that content over the internet at scale.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with Kaleidoscape, the content that we deliver is optimized for the viewing experience.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the ways that we accomplish that is we download the movies to our systems in your home so that then it's playing back locally, which means that we can deliver a movie file that exceeds the size of even a uh you know, like a 4K Blu-ray disc.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in some cases, greatly exceeds the size of a 4K Blu-ray disc, which means that we can give more bits to the picture, get better motion, better color.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other missing, the other piece that I mentioned is you know, there's there's also audio.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And this is actually one of the easiest things to demonstrate to someone because all of the streaming platforms are streaming lossy compressed audio.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Even if they're delivering Atmos, it's a lossy version of Atmos.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're delivering uh losslessly compressed audio.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is something that assuming you have reasonable speakers, you can hear immediately.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so when you play that in the home, you you get a really terrific experience that you know I think uh somebody was telling me it was George Lucas, uh maybe someone will correct me, said like, you know, audio is 50% of the experience, so you don't want to you don't want to skimp out on that part of the experience either.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, um walking around the show floor, you guys are seeing some gigantic screens.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um who can hear the bass right now?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_05: You can hear some people partying over there having a good time.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um so you know, does does that make delivering great entertainment harder?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh go to Rob, um you know what challenges emerge once customers move beyond 100 inches?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean once the customer gets above a hundred inches, the screens are increasing in size.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: We're seeing screens now normal 150 inch diagonal and up to 200 inches.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: So as you get larger, you're gonna have to move to an ALR or ambient or uh acoustic screen, sorry.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then that will give you that will allow you to put the speakers behind the screen and have the full experience where you don't even notice the speakers or see them because they're actually behind the screen, and that vol the volume and the voice is all coming out directly at you.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: But the brightness, the contrast, that's really going to show up in that kind of image.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: So uh Phil, on the filmmaker side, you know, how are how are you involved in the evolution of entertainment technology?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_05: You know, what what differences are you seeing?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm uh a little bit of an unusual story of a filmmaker who's worked pretty closely with manufacturers to help develop even uh some of the technologies that we have.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and this really started at the emergence of the 4K televisions coming to market, where I thought it would be pretty cool instead of showing people time-lapse demo videos at some trade show, because not many of us sit down and just watch time-lapse at the end of the day when we come home.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I wanted to produce more cinematic imagery because we had the ability to do so, and it wasn't even on anybody's radar back then to do so.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um so over the years, some of the interesting things I've noticed watching people see work in 4K and 8K, especially in good viewing situations, is very quickly people are quiet and very quickly immersed in the picture.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: And from my perspective, one of the things I like to do, a little bit more of a filmmaker thing, but I'm a composition nut.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: But with a lot of my sort of aerial landscape cinematography and things like that, I also like to focus on microcompositions.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_04: And when I go around to stores and things and watch people at different trade shows to see what they enjoy, I've noticed kids love picking out the small details.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: And the adults tend to like to just capture like the grandness of something.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_04: And then when it comes to a more scripted type of content, like a film or something like that, it's more of the layers and textures that people are satisfied from.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: There's a a demo film showing at Kaleidoscape and JVC right now, and it's really interesting seeing what people are picking up on that film because it starts off with a bunch of shortcuts, and we end on some very long takes, and you can see people's eyes move around the frame in a very sort of pleasing way.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and it's fun to watch because you can see that by putting a little bit more effort into the content, there is definitely something that the audience does respond to.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: Great.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, Juan, what challenges do technologies like 8K solve when it comes to these rising expectations?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, as you're getting into bigger screens, their need for more pixels is where things come into play.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as Rob said, you're starting to see screens, you know, 150 inches and even larger.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So things like your AK projectors would be like perfect for that.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, pair that with Kaleidoscape's new Strato K 8K player, and you've got you know an extreme amount of resolution to really fill that screen and provide the consumer with a much more immersive viewing experience.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that is even though depending on how close you are, you'll be able to see more of that detail.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But really, when you're looking at a screen that big with that many pixels, it almost becomes more of an emotional experience, very vivid.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're there, it's almost like 3D, even though it's not.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where you know high resolution like that on these large screens really helps to provide a more immersive viewing experience.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, just comment on the the size of screens.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_05: I saw a uh 100-inch TV in the in a in a booth, and it's it looks small.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_05: They're starting to look small.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um, let's go to Mike.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, with the with the investment consumers are making in in their home theaters, you know, uh talk about the content source and and why it's kind of quietly become the weakest link.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think um I would I would think of it maybe less as the weakest link and more as the point of highest leverage.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, it is the it is the opportunity to make everything else in the system shine and the opportunity to provide the best possible um uh signal to the the big screens, to the audio that we talked about earlier.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you put in you know a beautiful 150-inch uh uh uh 8k projection screen and you feed it with a DVD player to pick an extreme example, you're not gonna have a great experience.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's that's really kind of where our focus lies is on making the whole system really uh deliver to the greatest cape of its capabilities.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just to add to that real quickly, is on the on the content side, the whole you know, creative intent of that content.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you understand what I'm talking about, Phil, is like when you're filming something, you know what you see, and you want to be able to deliver that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure that this entire chain down to the player and the projector or the display is is following that creative intent, using standards, using all of these different bits and pieces from the entire ecosystem to maintain that creative intent and deliver an amazing experience.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, uh Phil, is it common for other filmmakers to be, you know, that involved in the development of all these technologies we're talking about?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: Not at all.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um there's probably a variety of reasons, but there's usually a pretty big wall.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um either through some of the technical things being too technical or probably not the point of focus for anyone's career.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_04: I have a background in theatrical mastering, and you know, just to kind of make a nod to Kaleidoscape here, in my world we have a 16-bit uncompressed master.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's how I create most of my content.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's a gigantic file size that you're never going to get in home.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's just it's just massive.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: From there, we make our cinema level DCPs, and then you also might get a mezzanine video file like a ProRes or similar.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_04: From there, you get into disk media like 4K Blu-ray.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_04: And that's where Klidescape is filling the gap right now, is somewhere between a theatrical delivery and master and disk delivery, because as of right now, there is no 8K disk delivery standard.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things that a lot of people don't know about with UHD 4K Blu-rays is it's compressed to fit the file size limitations on the disk.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: So there's concessions being made, and I really like their strategy because they're taking less concessions from any quality drops and actually focusing on the quality for people who like that.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_04: And recently, with their newest technology, they're doing 4K 444 chroma sub sampling in the home.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_04: That's pretty cool.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_04: And 8K for people who have 8K televisions.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: And when you get to the streaming score.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Services, you're looking for something that's optimized for delivery bandwidth over a great deal of customers who might be just exploring a Wi-Fi connectivity that's pretty low end, and then have 50 other devices connected as well.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: So I really like these different tiers, and everyone's experienced good quality at this point somewhere.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: You know, walking around here, there's really good quality stuff.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_04: You'll go home and see something that was probably slightly lesser, and you're gonna go, why?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: What can I do to improve that?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't think a lot of filmmakers are in the position or space to work with companies to get to the bottom of those conversations.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_05: Well, they gotta come to CD Expo.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_05: That's what they gotta do.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um speaking of CD Expo, we are here, it's it's you know, a dealer-centric show.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um and you know, these are the guys that are designing these incredible um home entertainment systems.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, what what's the one ecosystem element dealers often underestimate?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um go to Rob.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: What's the one what someone is?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, uh what's the one ecosystem element dealers often underestimate?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm saying probably the screen is probably the biggest as far as projection.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_05: You would say that.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: What's that?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_05: You would you would say that, Mr.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_05: JVC.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: But the screen is a huge factor in when you're doing projection.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: So you really have to match the screen to match the projection and room and everything involved, the audio and everything.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: And most dealers don't really think about that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: They just think, oh, I'm gonna throw up a screen, throw up a projector, and that's gonna be it.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: But it really does take away from a beautiful image if you don't have the right screen.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Phil.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, as some of the people here learn today, uh, I've made a free tool online that helps you plan what display size is appropriate for a room and a viewing experience.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I really like that optimal viewing range where the best seats in the house are.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I'll just spoil it for everyone.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, somewhere between a horizontal field of view of 40 to 60 degrees is very cinematic.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: 40 being pretty much the cinema that you would expect, and 60 degrees being more of an IMAX-like experience where you get a little bit more image around the periphery.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_04: And I would really not have anything uh narrower than 35 degrees, that's too far away from my perspective, and a lot of testing, like thousands of people.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's crazy how much work has gone into this.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so yeah, I think the screen's overlooked for the room, and I know firsthand that a lot of dealers are trying to move a specific television one way or another without the consideration.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: When you see someone go into a store or even on an on-site visit, they don't measure anything.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_04: Where's the couch?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_04: Where are you sitting?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: How much space do you have, and how much are you willing to invest in terms of the real estate of a display in that room?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_05: And and Juan, what about standards and interoperability?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, what are dealers missing there?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for that and from the you know, the dealer installation, you know, that it's not important.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: The part that's important is making sure the installation gods are on your side when you're putting in these large implementations.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: But no, from a standards perspective, they are there to help with interoperability.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many factors that go into installation.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, another one of my hats is interoperability testing for another organization, and you're dealing with, you know, is this the right HDMI port?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Does it support the right speed?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have it set correctly?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: What's the name of the setting I need for this particular port?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is it high speed?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is it 600 megahertz?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it ultra deep color?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those factors.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Am I using the right cable?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is the length too long for the installation that I'm doing?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of factors that I think the dealers have to think about and consider.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And even by going through all of that, you're still gonna get those WTF moments where you powered up and you've got a black screen or you've got audio and nothing going on, and what's going on?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the standards and specifications are there, those at the 8K Association and SIMT, you know, designed to help you with that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're not magicians, we can't solve all those problems, but at least they're there that to help you through that process.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna go off script is another dealer question.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um for dealers with with customers that aren't necessarily movie boss, they aren't autophiles, aren't it aren't Cinephiles, what's what's how do you explain to them the difference between an Apple TV, uh Clyde Escape, and and just the the fidelity that they're missing?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_04: Whoever wants to answer, go ahead.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, for me it's really nice because I have an 8K television in my home, and it's pretty easy for me to load up pretty much the best you can get with that uncompressed master, as well as what we can stream currently.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I actually do relatively think from a price to performance ratio, I think what streamers provide is pretty good.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I think where Kaleidoscape sneaks in is for people who want better and know that there's better out there, uh, specifically when it comes to resolution and color fidelity.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um and that will also probably be echoed in the quality of the ENCODE, meaning it will be a higher bitrate without as many concessions being made.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so that's something you can kind of A B in my room, you know, and that's fun for people to see that difference.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: I've had dozens of directors over who have never experienced 8K at all over the years, and that's been like one of the weird, guilty like pleasures I've had in my life.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's filmmakers I grew up working with or admiring, and having them with their jaw on the floor experiencing what could happen if they are producing content at a higher level is quite satisfying.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: As well to experience it.
• 27:45
  unknown: Thank you.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I would just uh I would add on to what fill what Phil said, you know, from uh because you posed the question as as if you're a dealer with that kind of customer, and what we really encourage is for for dealers who are trying to make that case, let uh give them give them that experience.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let them let them A B.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we that we do a lot actually, uh that we encourage dealers to do is uh to have what we call a puppy dog system, which is easier with our current products because our players have storage in them now, so you can have a selection of movies on them.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can hand a hand a player to a customer, say, take this home for the weekend, maybe even better, go home with them and set it up so that you're sure it's set up right, and then let them live with it for you know a weekend or a week and really experience what the what the difference looks like.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and then the the case in a lot of in a lot of cases, you know, i it it it it sells itself.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, let's let's I'm sorry, did you?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I just wanted to add one note.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean most people, consumers don't see production level or any broadcast level pictures, so they don't know really what the quality is.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: But their quality is so good that once they see it, they want to achieve that.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I know a home theater really wants to be at.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_05: So uh so let's talk about why we're here.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Cloud Escape uh recently introduced the uh 4K cinematic with Strat OK.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so so Mike, um and uh if you guys haven't seen it, please go check it out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's not a technical technical term, but it's friggin' awesome.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um so rather than focusing only on on high res, uh you you guys focused on improving today's 4K experience.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_05: Uh can you tell us why?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um the the the new product that we released a couple of a couple of months ago, our StratOK player, is an 8K capable movie player.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge with with that right now is although 8K assets exist in movie theaters, in in sorry, in movie studios, they have not had a a distribution method to deliver 8K content.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so those assets, while they exist, they're not in a form that's ready to be delivered to the home.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: We expect that to happen, but we recognize that there's going to be a a period, a kind of a bridge period.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the capabilities of that hardware gave us the opportunity to do something uh exciting that allows people who have 4K systems today to experience uh an improvement in quality that they can get just by changing the player.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we developed is a new 4K format that's playable on StratOK only.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's called 4K Cinematic.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what we've done is we've gone back to the mezzanine files that Phil mentioned before that we have from the movie studios that originally have this 444 color.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: They have full color information for every pixel as opposed to what digital video to date has been, which has been quarter resolution color.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: You have full brightness information, but only one in four pixels has has color.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: We built this new format to deliver the full color information for every pixel.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: So especially when you're looking on a large screen uh projection system, you're getting the benefit of that extra color information, and it makes things look more lifelike.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: It just it it it it the the picture you get back to the back to Phil's window effect.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's more like looking through a window.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we uh I think it was earlier this week or late last week, uh delivered our 300th 4K cinematic movie, which was Toy Story 5, and uh our aim is to add you know many hundreds more uh films in 4K Cinematic.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, the other the other piece of actually there's two other pieces really quickly, because that player is able to play 8K content, all of its internals are built around the demands of that format, which means that we can kind of swing for the fences with 4K, we can deliver, we can give more bits to the 4K in code, so we can get better motion, we can get better fine detail simultaneously with motion.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so you get again, you know, a picture that holds together better even in some of these big action sequences, even when you're viewing it larger.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, lossless audio, um, which we we are we were already doing and very much uh will continue to do.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: Right, right.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: Please.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, something uh sort of a preview of things to come.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: From my personal perspective and professional experience, everything I've filmed 2016 onward, we've been making 8K masters.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: The public just hasn't been getting them.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_04: But more recently, you've seen a few studios exploring, remastering some of their popular films uh with an 8K master.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: And right now, 8K kind of industry-wide is being viewed as archival format.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: I hate using the word future-proof or the term future-proof, but it's it's kind of where we're at where you're gonna see bigger momentum swing to that area with more titles getting that love.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_04: There's a few out there already, and now there's more ability to get those in the home.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's going to be a growing trend that's gonna ramp up a little bit quicker, I think, personally.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if I can just just add to that, where you know the 8K Association at recent you know events at NAB, we had some of the studio members, you know, on the panels talking about how they're really looking at you know scanning more and more of their content in 8K.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're seeing things in you know in the press where studios are remastering things in 8K, taking advantage of as much resolution they can out of that film as possible.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: So little by little, you are starting to see more and more of that 8K content coming out, especially, you know, since we gotta throw the word AI in there here somewhere on this panel, you know, a lot of the cost around mastering in 8K has to do with a lot of that cleanup.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: With a lot of these AI capabilities, that's going to help take care of a lot of that cleanup and bring that price down.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And once we have that, we're gonna see more of these 8K masters making their way out in out into the market.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, uh really real quick.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: I was talking to um Taylor earlier at the at your booth.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think you said you guys are in almost 60 home theater installations on the show floor, and I haven't personally seen a uh home theater without Cloud Escape in it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um so everyone here knows Cloud Escape, I I would imagine.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_05: So for folks who haven't seen the the StratOK, you know what differences will they actually see compared to the previous generation?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think let's focus for a minute on 4K cinematic, because I think 8K, the difference is is fairly obvious.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: You see, you know, you see a sharper, clearer, higher resolution picture.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: 4K Cinematic, it's really more about sort of uh lifelike image.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um I t I tell people, you know, when I when I first got the uh one of our prototype Strato K players um at home, I took it home, I hooked it up to my system, I have a 4K projection.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um the first movie I watched was Sinners.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, beautiful film.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the the thing that I immediately noticed, I was watching it, and there's a scene early in the movie where they they stop in like a cornfield and they're having this discussion, what are they gonna do?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the the the textiles in the in the the clothing that the characters were wearing just had this incredible sort of level of realism to them.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually did go back, I like loaded up our regular 4K and I was sitting there but swapping between two players.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you do it on a on a still frame, you can see the difference, but it's not it's not like you know bashing you over the head with it.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: But when you watch it as a moving image and you just really experience the film, you have this sort of sensation of wow, this is like this really looks more like life.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_04: Something I can add to that directly, I talk to you know the audience as well as filmmakers, and when you have that level of color fidelity, we're all looking at images a little bit closer than the average person.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_04: We're all pixel peepers.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_04: But the way I like to describe it is that nuance and that tonal and color uh variety that you have is something you don't necessarily actively notice, but you do feel it.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: And it's one of these really peculiar things when you watch like a period film and they're wearing corduroy, there's just something that is there that you can't really explain, and then you re-watch it, just like you were saying, oh, that looks really good.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_04: It feels lifelike.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_04: And that's that's where it is.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's you you can actually feel that.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_04: And it is a little bit if you want to tie that audio sort of thing, if you feel the audio, something is almost unmeasurable, like you feel like the you're at a live performance.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of how that is.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_05: Please go ahead.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, on just when I saw the Strad OK a couple weeks ago, the depth of the image was unbelievable.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I've never seen a depth like that out of a four-gate image before.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: And just from the color, it was hard to believe that it almost had a 3D effect.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: So just the last part to add, because I I gotta put in my piece on all of this conversation as well.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I talked earlier about creative intent, and obviously you on the filmmaker side, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we get to sometimes take a look at the the uncompressed images, which is which is amazing, all of that color, all of that detail, and delivering it to the home, there are little elements, pieces of that that that get lost.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the way to to try to maintain as much of that is these higher bit rates, is the more color.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, right now, with what you have done with the 4K cinematic, that is probably the closest you can get to that uncompressed version of what you know what's being created.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, really maintaining that that creative intent is what you guys have delivered.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, great job with that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_05: So let's talk about preparing for tomorrow or future proving.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um let's go let's go to Phil.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_05: Let's pick on Phil a little bit.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um so yeah, what for what do filmmakers need to do to prepare for AK?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um the future is really interesting right now because there's a lot of things moving forward.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's kind of what I recommend people when they're buying a new computer, buy the best quality monitor you can afford.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um if I had to really hammer down some like tech points, I recommend buying a screen with a 60 to 120 hertz refresh rate.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that just opens up the door for you know 24, uh, 30, even 60 frames playback.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of the TVs actually hit the color metric that you guys are doing with Cinematic 4K now, which is fantastic.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so the real question there is what technologies do you enjoy?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Are you an OLED post person, QD OLED, mini LED?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_04: The panel technology is so much better than it was last decade, the previous decade, and uh affordable, honestly.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_04: You can really explore the concept of what a home theater experience is for you.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_04: That might be just a really premium auto audio setup with a 4K screen.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: That might be a bigger screen in you know 4K or 8K with a kind of you know, you don't need 22-1 in home, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_04: You could do like a 7-1, which is very attainable.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and it's just a balancing act.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: And once you do that, everything you have in terms of delivering your content to that new setup is very enjoyable.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: Whether you you know host you know, hospitality, you know, barbecues, whatever, and people are watching something on that screen, when you tend to it, it's it's really cool.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: So I would say invest what you can comfortably afford in, but also evaluate what you have that you don't necessarily like.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_04: I like getting critical about those previous decisions, like, why do what do I not like about my current TV?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_04: What do I go for next?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I usually, you know, the trade shows are always good to go to because you can walk around and literally see all the TVs that are available to you.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: You can go to a store, you know, stores will run deals on things and they'll try to sell you something, but approach it all with a very open mind and go, oh, I like that.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_04: Why do I like that?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I like the contrast.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's no there's no grayness to the shadow detail.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_04: That's a very common one.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_04: Color reproduction is huge for me.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_04: You know, creator creative intent is massive in our industry.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I always like recommending televisions that have filmmaker modes as well.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_04: So there you go.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Juan.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for that, I'm gonna put on my standards ads and talk about the importance of as new technologies are being developed and created to make sure that everybody's you know talking the same language.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a matter of taking all of these companies, developing new technologies, herding all the cats to try to get them together to define even just you know what are what's the terminology being used with this new technology, what are the capabilities of this technology in a very detailed specification standard so that it can be uniform and implemented properly across anybody that's going to implement this technology.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it could be a very involved process.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen ours go, you know, in a standards meeting where people are fighting about should I use the word should or shall, just defining one piece of technology.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, going through that is necessary to make sure that the technology is standardized so anybody who uses this new technology is using it the same to help guarantee some of that interoperability from device to source, content, et cetera.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, Rob, what about you know projectory manufacturers like JVC?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_05: What what you know what's what are you guys doing to prepare for 8K?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we're preparing for the future.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we have a native 8K projector at the time.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're going, you know, we're gonna go beyond that to 16K.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I see that technology developing, you know, with JVC, you know, for a far time.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, really, I think a future for a future person is the AVR is the main hub or the brains of home theater.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that technology has to develop to handle the audio and the video processing need to make a system.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_05: So and Mike, of course, what are we doing on the uh on the content delivery side?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think this is this is why we're so excited about Strat OK, really, is looking forward to the future.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've we now have a platform that can deliver 8K content as it becomes available, but it's also a platform that makes the 4K systems that everybody has in their home already today look better.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a it's a perfect kind of bridge to the to the future.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can start with uh a Strato K today and not change anything else and get an immediate improvement, and then you have laid the groundwork for uh expanding at some point into an 8K display, standards compliant, of course, um and uh uh unlock more of that capability over time.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, from sort of the standpoint of the of the content provider as a as a provider of uh the movies that play on our systems, um, you know, our our focus right now is on it it's kind of on two fronts.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're working on licensing 8k content uh that we'll be able to deliver on on StratOK.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, we have you know thousands of movies uh in 4K that we have the uh original mezzanine files for, and we can generate those 4K cinematic files uh as time goes on to deliver improved versions of those movies that uh that people can enjoy.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, if they're existing Kaleidoscape customers, they get those 4K cinematic movies um at the same price as a regular 4K movie, and if they already own the 4K movie and they upgrade to a Strat OK, they can just download the 4K cinematic version.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's a very, very exciting time for us.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_05: Great, thanks very much.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um let's bring it home.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_05: Let's get one sentence from each of you.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, if someone's building an immersive home entertainment system right now, what's the single most important investment they can?
• 44:00
  unknown: Make.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_04: If anyone here says anything other than the display, it will shock me.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_04: The television.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_04: Or projector if you have that type of desire.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to sort of mirror that a little bit and say larger screens with high quality images and spatial audio.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to go with the screen.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: So the screen is a biggest factor.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because you pick out the screen and it's going to stay in your system for a long time.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll I'll be predictable and uh and say that it it it's really about the content.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um you want to have the best you want to I I I I agree with with both of you.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic audio, beautiful screen, but you wanna you wanna make those both perform at their best, and that's where uh that's where the content is is key.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_04: The greater picture is the sum of all of its parts, right?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's what's really going on.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh any any uh questions from uh from you folks?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: Your thoughts about viewing geometry on big screens in residential, let's say dedicated theaters in either the flat or scope format?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh really fascinating topic that I'll even take beyond that.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I've seen a lot of customized displays.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh scope for anyone who doesn't know.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_04: Every one of our televisions pretty much or computers are 16 by 9 aspect ratio.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_04: Scope is 2391, that's cinematic widescreen for most people.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_04: And some people do set up their theaters and stuff at home for that.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the weirder things that's happened, mainly because uh monitor manufacturing companies have explored curvature.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and there actually are theaters that have curved screens.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: I'm more of a flat screen guy, which is weird, uh, but it's because I know where to sit.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_04: And that's really important.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: There are lots of opportunities for dome projection and changing the geometry for that, uh, if that's what you're referring to.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: Oh.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you're okay.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, in terms of the viewing geometry, like the dimensions, yeah.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: Generally what I go with is horizontal field of view as the measuring aspect ratio.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so design to where you can sit, hold your arms like that where you want the edges of your screen, and that's where you start with that.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_04: And then you can pretty much say, I want a you know, X amount wide screen.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_04: But the thing I'll make a comment about is planning just a ultra wide format like that, you will have less headroom.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_04: And a lot of productions explore uh narrower aspect ratios for lots of reasons.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: 16 by 9 yeah, horizontally wider horizontally, but you'll lose out night.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_04: 16 by 9 was created.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_04: I I was there.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I may not look ancient, but I was there in the ancient days.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh was designed to basically hold all of the common cinematic aspect ratios, like 185, which almost all of us have forgotten about.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: But Jurassic Park is famously 185 if you guys remember that film.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um 16x9 holds a lot of native content.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: 2391 fits in it nicely, and you get the letterbox.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_04: And then for people who do things like IMAX filmmaking with the more portrait-like aspect ratios, you get the pillar bars.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or they change it on the fly, right?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, some films.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_04: I think one of the I'm generally a fan of not changing aspect ratios, but there's a film called Grand Budapest Hotel, and what they chose to do was change the aspect ratios for different eras in the film, and I think that was the one instance where I was like, oh, that's clever, it's not taking me out of the picture.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: There are some films by really popular filmmakers that I adore where they just suddenly have this crazy different aspect ratio, and you're like, oh, cool, you shot in a different format that doesn't look like the last five shots nor the next five shots, but okay.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would just add to that in answer to your question that it's a it's a personal preference in a lot of cases, too.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are people who like to sit very close and really like fill the field of view, and I I personally find that uncomfortable.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when I designed my theater, I spent a lot of time, a lot of ridiculous amount of time, going to movie theaters, figuring out where in the movie theater uh is where I naturally gravitate to, where I sit, and then taking measurements.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of geek I am.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: I landed at I landed at 40 degrees.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's how I built my theater.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody else may prefer 45, 50 degrees.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you're a a theater designer, I think that's an exercise to uh to do with the client and give them something that you know they're gonna really enjoy.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that is uh all the time we have.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so let's give these guys a round of applause for staying up here.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you, Zach.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Go check out Cloud Escape's booth.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Zach.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, swing by actually just to touch on something that was mentioned earlier with all of the film scanning that's going on.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Swing by our booth, because one of the demo clips that we're showing on Strad OK is an 8K scan from a uh a scene from 2001.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Phil was actually involved in producing that that scan, and um it is uh it's really cool to see you know a 65mm print scanned in 8k.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: So come on by.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_05: That was that was incredible.