I honestly could see Apple doing just that. I mean: why settle for an Apple TV when they can just sell you the more expensive Mac Mini with a tvOS (Front Row?) option instead?
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tvOS 18.2 Beta Adds Support for 21:9 Projector Aspect Ratio
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Remember people, this is for projectors only. Don’t expect to lose the black bars on your 32:9 ultra wide monitor.
I'd prefer that. I have a Mac mini as a media server and an Apple TV to stream to my TV. Having Front Row back would eliminate a device. While we are at it, add a USB DVD/Bluray drive to it and that would get rid of another device. My entertainment center would be that much cleaner looking.
whats the difference - its a cable connected to the apple TV and you change the settings on the apple TV? Is this assuming a 16:9 output still but removing bars and stretching vertically (for projector to unsqueeze with a suitable lens)?
if they're going to all that trouble why not actually add 21:9 and 32:9 monitor support too?
Once again, it’s for projectors. Not Monitors. No one should be watching movies on their monitor anyways.
You do. For projector people, you need a particular kind of anamorphic lens to make use of this feature (unless you have one of the less than 1% projectors with a native 12:9 panel).
Irony: Those lenses tend to cost several thousand dollars, and the projectors they are used with ALSO cost several thousand dollars. You know what those projectors already have built in? This same SQUEEZE feature being rolled out in the Apple TVos meaning, this is pretty useless for people with anamorphic 21:9 setups.
Yeah, I was excited when I heard about this. I could leave my projector zoomed optimally for 21:9 content on my 21:9 screen, and the Apple TV would format everything to fit within the center 21:9 area of the image like subtitles, or even pillar box 16x9 content, which would be AWESOME.......
....but no. This is completely useless for that. And completely unneeded for people with anamorphic sense setups since the projector itself can already do this squeeze.
No there have been a couple of prototypes with 21:9 panels but almost none.
Heck, it's barely for projectors. Let me put it this way: If you are already running an anamorphic lens or likely to, chances are VERY HIGH that your projector already has the processing to do what this new feature is doing (squeeze the image, ready for expansion for the lens).
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Swing and miss.
I've been using a 21:9 monitor with my 2010 Mac mini for the last five years.
We're at the end of 2024, it's about time Apple started to support 21:9 and higher because in my humble opinion 16:9 is the new 4:3. For a company so proud and so quick to ditch old technologies before the rest of the world is ready, I'm honestly surprised the iMac is still using 16:9 displays.
We're at the end of 2024, it's about time Apple started to support 21:9 and higher because in my humble opinion 16:9 is the new 4:3. For a company so proud and so quick to ditch old technologies before the rest of the world is ready, I'm honestly surprised the iMac is still using 16:9 displays.
For everyone wondering how this actually works and why it’s beneficial (including the people incorrectly stating it’s not if you have a projector with an anamorphic lens attachment): the entire purpose of this is to render the tvOS interface in a 21:9 aspect ratio. The issue currently with 21:9 projection screens is that nearly every projector has a 16:9 imaging chip. There are two main ways to solve the problem of wanting to project onto a 21:9 screen:
1. Zoom the projector to fill the width of the screen and let the black bars bleed off the top and bottom. Most people with home theaters have a black velvet frame around the screen and a dark painted wall behind it, so the extra projected light from the black bars isn’t noticeable.
2. Zoom the projector to fill the height of the screen and stretch the 21:9 video frame (excluding the black bars) to fill the height of the 16:9 imaging chip. Then, use a separate anamorphic lens in front of the projector lens to stretch or “desqueeze” the projected image horizontally to fill the 21:9 screen. This retains the maximum brightness and sharpness the projector is capable of since you’re not “wasting” pixels or light that would be bled off the screen with option #1.
In either case, the issue is when the content onscreen switches aspect ratios. If you’re looking at 21:9 content framed to fit a 21:9 screen and then go back to the tvOS interface which is 16:9, the top and bottom portions of the interface are cut off with option #1 or stretched and distorted with option #2. In both cases you need to change a lens profile on the projector which physically adjusts the lens(s) to display 16:9 content properly on the 21:9 screen (with black bars on the left and right). This is a slow process and can take 30-60 seconds, which is quite annoying every time you switch between watching video and the UI.
Apple has now solved this problem by allowing the UI to be natively rendered at 21:9 (and similar) aspect ratios. This means that the projector can be set to the configuration needed to display 21:9 content and never changed, and the UI will fill the screen without anything being cropped off or distorted. Additionally it’s likely tvOS will also reposition subtitles since traditionally with option #1 they would be off the bottom of the screen in the space the bottom black bar is.
1. Zoom the projector to fill the width of the screen and let the black bars bleed off the top and bottom. Most people with home theaters have a black velvet frame around the screen and a dark painted wall behind it, so the extra projected light from the black bars isn’t noticeable.
2. Zoom the projector to fill the height of the screen and stretch the 21:9 video frame (excluding the black bars) to fill the height of the 16:9 imaging chip. Then, use a separate anamorphic lens in front of the projector lens to stretch or “desqueeze” the projected image horizontally to fill the 21:9 screen. This retains the maximum brightness and sharpness the projector is capable of since you’re not “wasting” pixels or light that would be bled off the screen with option #1.
In either case, the issue is when the content onscreen switches aspect ratios. If you’re looking at 21:9 content framed to fit a 21:9 screen and then go back to the tvOS interface which is 16:9, the top and bottom portions of the interface are cut off with option #1 or stretched and distorted with option #2. In both cases you need to change a lens profile on the projector which physically adjusts the lens(s) to display 16:9 content properly on the 21:9 screen (with black bars on the left and right). This is a slow process and can take 30-60 seconds, which is quite annoying every time you switch between watching video and the UI.
Apple has now solved this problem by allowing the UI to be natively rendered at 21:9 (and similar) aspect ratios. This means that the projector can be set to the configuration needed to display 21:9 content and never changed, and the UI will fill the screen without anything being cropped off or distorted. Additionally it’s likely tvOS will also reposition subtitles since traditionally with option #1 they would be off the bottom of the screen in the space the bottom black bar is.
Apple has painted itself into a corner with their Mac pricing policy. The chip that would make sense in a gaming console would be one with a high GPU core count, and they are using those to ask high upgrading prices on the Macs. Would be difficult to charge those prices on the Macs, if an M4 Max was sitting in a 500USD gaming console.
Have you actually watched the video of how the new feature works. It does NOT adapt the menu or ATV interface to a central safe 21:9 space. All the options SQUISH the video from the sides, in anticipation of an anamorphic lens on the projector (or unsure pixels and scaling on a 21:9 flat panel, I suppose).
So people using the zoom method will still be losing the top and bottom of the ATV interface. Really. Give it a try and see if you can choose any option that will work. I walked through each one and none do because they are doing a squeeze to the image. Which is great for people with an anamorphic lens, but useless for those of us without.
Of course, people with an anamorphic lens probably have a projector that does the squeeze already, so about the only thing this new feature does is..... maybe make the geometry of the menu system look a little better? Maybe force the subtitles to be in the picture area? That's great but pretty meager in terms of a feature set.
What would be better? Having the Apple TV constrain (with accurate geometry) the image to the central 21:9 area of a 16:9 frame, ie, how many many people with a 21:9 screen actually use their projector -- zoomed out and the tops and bottoms of the image getting cut off. Alas, none of the settings in this new feature do that. Which is a missed opportunity.
Here is another user with the same finding: https://www.avsforum.com/posts/63632341/
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Depends on the Blu-ray. Some have the video feed encoded in the actual aspect ratio of the film, with no baked in bars.
Appears even less useful that we thought.
Unless you ONLY use an Apple TV in your system, you can't really use this new feature at all. Why? It doesn't make sense to do this processing in the ATV, since then every other source will look wrong....since most anamorphic lens systems would have a universal stage for the squish, ie, a video processor, or the projector itself, but you couldn't use those AND the AppleTV widescreen setting at the same time since you'd be duplicating processing. So this new feature only really works if ALL your video sources have this feature or if the ATV is your only source. Otherwise you need to keep this off so you can do the squeeze in the projector itself (or in a single video processor elsewhere in the chain.)
And of course nothing in this helps people with a 21:9 screen who do NOT use an anamorphic lens.
Hopefully they add some options for people who do not have an anamorphic lens but who do use a 21:9 screen.
Because it sure looks like they have done the heavy lifting in terms of development already. This could be AWESOME.
I have around 500 of them and I've never seen this. They're always a 1920x1080 (16:9) image with black bars padding the picture out to the correct ratio. The sole exception is ones that are in 1.78:1 directly, which is typically made-for-TV content (or, occasionally, cinema content with some of the picture cropped, which is even worse). I've never seen a Blu-ray that's actually encoded in a different aspect ratio.
Since some of the examples in the video were of streaming Disney / Marvel movies, maybe there is encoding hope.....or maybe the ATV is smart enough to see the black bars and "ignore" them, ie, not consider them part of the movie.
So many aspects still to be worked out or at least explicated it seems.
I hope to see something like these options added (mock up screen) for people not using an anamorphic lens. A user on AVS put this together.
Though I will admit that the “fit 16:9 inside letterbox” option would limit the utility to CinemaScope and to 16:9 content, and leave out the aspect ratios in between like the ever popular streaming choice of 2.0:1 or things like 2.2:1 in Kubricks 2001 A Space Odyssey, so a black bar detection option might be ideal.
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Not completely.
This new feature seems like a niche (anamorphic lens users) within a niche (who don’t use any other sources). Almost like a personal pet project for a particular Product Manager in Cupertino.
So for that person, I’m guessing they will be thrilled.
Works great with the Alienware DW3423DWF - one just needs to manually set the HDMI input to 21:9 and not automatic. The 21:9 selection removes the squeezed in look caused by putting the Apple TV in 21:9 mode.
So far, only Apple TV+ content scales properly. Everything else needs the apps to be updated to show 21:9 content correctly.
So far, only Apple TV+ content scales properly. Everything else needs the apps to be updated to show 21:9 content correctly.
What do you mean? 2.35:1 content from ATV+ and Apple Movies shows up with black pillar box bars on the sides, preserving the original aspect ratio of the content, on a 32:9 display.
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