Television is boring in so many ways, and yet at the same time is the most ubiquitous technology that pervades humanity with about 1.8 billion sets in use. With so many televisions out there, it is really surprising that there is so little video format diversity.

Basically every television made currently is a 16:9 ratio panel that since the year 2000 has replaced the 4:3 ratio sets that were made since the 1950's inception of mass production TV.

Philips made a foray into a 21:9 ratio TV with their excellent 56 inch LCD Ambilight product ten years ago. As a business we were fiercely enthusiastic about this TV and it was simply a joy to watch movies on it. The Philips combination of 21:9 aspect ratio, ambilight, and excellent scaling circuitry on its extended 2560 x 1080 resolution LCD panel, made watching the Blu Ray movies of the time bliss.

Sadly consumers were not not in the least bit bothered by it ...

They didn't buy any. We sold a couple to some particularly high research level individuals but it never got any traction in the real marketplace.

In desperation the distributors bought the price down form $8995 to $5995 ... and people still didn't buy them.

TV consumers are very conservative. Everybody has a TV and we are all afraid to buy something different.

 Yet they are acronym susceptible.

I still flinch if I hear the words "3D TV" and the echo of "is it digital mate?" from showing the general public the first production Plasma screens at Homeshows can still cause me to wake up in a sweat ...

Get the TV tech in four letters or less right in your advertising campaign and the world will beat a path to your products door.

But only if the screen is the same shape rectangle as every other TV.

When you go to a proper cinema you will note that there is not a fixed aspect ratio... Historically the aspect ratios of movie playback vary from 1.85:1 to 4:1 with most contemporary movies being screen in 2.35:1 or 2.85:1.

Note how in the above image showing the different aspect ratios used over the past century or so that the movie "Napoleon" in the widest aspect ratio of 4.0:1  was made in 1927 ...

True cinema enthusiasts building their own theatres have always been prepared to accept different aspect ratio playback as part of the experience and we have available a number of screens that can adjust their aspect ratio to optimise the playback of a particular movie in a projection system.

Christopher Nolan movies usually change the aspect ratio several times during a single screening. He uses this to great effect in his movie that are noted for their awesome cinematography. "Batman - The Dark knight" remains a reference demonstration of cinema as much for it's fabulous cityscape imagery and the absolute best bad guy of all time played by Heath Ledger.

I sometimes muse that Heath Ledger became so immersed in his role that it destroyed him. I could watch his version of Joker forever. 

Such a loss to humanity's art when he left us ...

...

Above is the new Sony pro series 100 inch Television (model FW100BZ40J if you wanted to know) that is now available for residential installations. At $25K its actually a pretty good deal. If you have a very large well lit space this panel goes to 940cd/m2 brightness and is a cool option for everyday TV.

This getting to be perhaps the final expression of big screen TV consumerism in the traditional format. In the same way that the Ford Mustang GT5000 is perhaps the last fling of the giant V8 rear wheel drive trad American "sports" car before the new age of smarter leaner and faster electric vehicles sweeps them aside.

There have been some interesting trade announcements this week that proffer some hope that television as we know it may be breaking free of this prison of aspect ratio. The most innovative and one that hearkens to "Back to the Future" style TV is this prototypical LG device pictured above utilising VLED direct diode wall screen technology. this is being suggested in packages up to 32:9 aspect ratio.

When OLED technology was being incepted into the market some ten years ago it was suggested that it's ultimate expression would be "wallpaper TV" ... 

Meanwhile ... I rather think of the above as a dystopian nightmare of a world where the Television has actually conquered humanity and we now worship it as the primary god in our small lives ... pictured above we have the 325 inch LG Television prototype in a typical lounge room of the late 2020's. I believe I have seen a similiar set in Mr Burn's mansion on The Simpsons ...

Of course the real nightmare of TV is not so much the hidebound display technology, which as an enthusiast I actually think is generally wonderful, but the content that now dictates so much of our culture and lifestyle. Perhaps we should let Tom Jones have the final say ...