Anamorphic Widescreen - The Answer To Improved Projector Resolution

How adding an anamorphic lens will improve the resolution of your home cinema experience.

If you've visited your local cinema recently, you'll notice all the big budget movies are shown in a screen format that's wider than your 16:9 widescreen television at home. It's been like this for years and when these films are transferred to DVD, sometimes they chop the sides off to make it fit your television shape, or the DVD player produces black bars at the top and bottom of your screen to show it in the original anamorphic widescreen presentation. We love watching movies in this wider screen format - after all that's why we built a home cinema in the first place, right ?!

The real problem however is that your home cinema projector, which for a 4K model has 8,294,400 pixels, is wasting around 20% of its' pixels which are just blanked out to reproduce those annoying black bars at the top and bottom of your picture. That's where anamorphic screens and lenses come in. By installing a WIDER screen in your cinema room (2.4-1 ratio instead of 16:9) and adding an anamorphic lens in front of the projector lens, you can ensure that EVERY PIXEL of your projector is being used to create the image on your screen. That means you'll be benefiting from increased brightness levels and increased detail. The anamorphic lens will stretch out the image horizontally to fill the wider screen, without any black bars top or bottom and as you're now seeing every pixel that your projector can possibly use, the pixel structure is much less evident compared to standard viewing.

Overall you can expect a much more engaging and natural cinematic experience, with smoother tones and sharper details. If you thought 4K UHD was good, you'll be amazed how much more information and detail can be retrieved from your favourite discs. And if you're also watching regular 16:9 widescreen sources, such as your older DVDs or streaming movies then there are some clever "stretch" modes available in most projectors that will seamlessly stretch the edges of the image out so you can avoid those black bars permanently. Once you see anamorphic widescreen in action, you won't want to settle for anything less.

We supply and install anamorphic screens from a variety of well known manufacturers, from curved screens, to acoustically transparent solutions, even screens with automated masking systems and 4k/8k ready fabric weaves. Our preferred 4k lens solution is the Panamorph Paladin and while they don't come cheap, they will ensure you get the ultimate home cinema experience with a picture that will be the envy of your friends and family. Panamorph have a great website where you can read some great articles that explain how anamorphic lens and screen solutions work in the home - well worth a read ! https://www.panamorph.com/4k-ultrawide-the-new-home-cinema-format/