VIZIO XVT3D580CM HDTV: Stand Back, Wide Load!
by Jarred Walton on June 27, 2012 2:33 PM ESTVIZIO has announced their new XVT 58” HDTV, the first ultra-widescreen HDTV to hit the US market, is now available for purchase. Sporting a 21:9 (2.33) aspect ratio that matches up nicely with the 2.35 AR used on most major films, the greatest benefit of the XVT is that you’ll no longer have to deal with black bars at the top and bottom of your HDTV when watching the latest widescreen content. How important you find such a feature will depend in a large part on how you use your HDTV, naturally, as broadcast 16:9 AR content will result in black bars on the left and right of the display. But there are other uses for such a wide screen, of course.
Besides being wider than normal display—the XVT sports a native 2560x1080 resolution—the new HDTV also includes other modern features like VIZIO’s Theater 3D functionality (four pairs of lightweight passive 3D glasses are included), SRS StudioSound HD, built-in WiFi, and smart TV technologies. That last item is perhaps the best example of what you might do with the added width when viewing 16:9 content, as VIZIO supports Internet Apps in a column on the left side of the screen that can be used for checking scores, tweeting, or other web-browsing activities—all while still watching HDTV.
In related news, Sigma Designs announced that many of the features of VIZIO's new CinemaWide display come via Sigma Designs' HiDTV Pro platform. VIZIO states that the HiDTV Pro “delivers outstanding picture quality and functionality”, and Sigma Designs returns the compliment stating, “We're thrilled that an industry leader like VIZIO is taking Sigma's HiDTV Pro platform to production.”
The VIZIO XVT3D580CM is currently available exclusively on VIZIO.com with a limited time pricing of $2499 (down from the initial $2799 target). I'd expect the displays to eventually show up on retail shelves, if you're willing to wait.
Source: VIZIO Press Release
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ShieTar - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link
The intended purpose would be to watch 21:9 movies on it, which would not be delivered in 1920x1080. Of course they may be coming from old material, with less than 1080 vertical resolution, in which case there still would be scaling. And I have to agree with you, scaling is implemented badly (read bilinear) in almost all monitors around. Not all of them though, specifically the few Quad-Full-HD TVs come with rather impressive scaling capabilities. Of course they absolutely have to, as they can't even digest their full resolution through the connectors that they offer.somedude1234 - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link
"The intended purpose would be to watch 21:9 movies on it, which would not be delivered in 1920x1080".If they're being delivered on Blu-Ray, then the maximum resolution available is 1920x1080, correct? In that case your bottleneck for a greater than 16:9 aspect is the 1920 available horizontal pixels. So the number of vertical pixels that will actually be used for the video image in a 21:9 movie that's delivered on a Blu-Ray will be something in the neighborhood of 822.
In order to display this movie full-screen on a display with a native resolution of 2560x1080, you have to apply a scaling factor of ~1.3X.
Here's a sampling of the actual resolutions for some of my 1080p rips:
1920x800
1920x816
flyingpants1 - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
That's correct, Blu-ray content will be scaled up. However, scaling is not such a big deal, provided the scaling hardware inside the TV is very good.In case anyone was wondering, this TV has 2,764,800 physical pixels, roughly 75% more than 16:9 1080p set of the same width would have inside its 21:9 viewing area. While adding more pixels won't magically increase the quality of the content, they may make the picture less grainy when sitting closer to the screen due to a higher pixel density.
Here's what confuses me, 2560x1080 gives an AR of 2.37:1. The article claims the set is AR 2.33. Neither of these will display 2:35 content perfectly..
johnsmith9875 - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link
Its bad enough that HDTV noobs always use the stretch feature to fill the screen when viewing 4:3 content. People look 4 feet tall and weigh 200 pounds withit enabled.With a 2.33:1 screen it will make everybody look like dwarves now.