I know some of you are into your home theater systems, so I'll pass along this tip. It sounds crazy, but I tried it last night and its pretty amazing. Basically, I read about it a few weeks ago on some home theater message board, and then forgot about it. Here it is: Rig some sort of mats to block out the blank parts of your screen when watching letterboxed DVDs. Yep, like black construction paper taped over the screen, seriously. The message board guys were talking about how it was the cheapest and best upgrade they'd ever done to their systems (of course, they went all out and spent $10 on custom cut black felt with velcro fasteners). Anyway, I forgot about it, but last night I was watching a flick and noticed that that those blank spots are really more "light black" than "black" and it reminded me of it. So I quickly just cut up a few pieces of dark green paper and taped them to the screen. With the lights out, it basically seemed to turn the TV into a a true widescreen, and the color/brightness contrast was unreal. Anyway, give it a shot, even though your wives will make fun of you...until they watch a movie with them. Funny anecdote: when I decided to try it, I asked my wife, "Do we have any black felt? But don't ask me what it's for...it's embarrassing." Her first response was: "You're not going to make a costume for the "Return of the King" premiere tomorrow, are you?" Hee hee. I said, "No, but it might be nearly as dorky."
Unfortunately, most consumer TV's or projectors don't do a very good black. So you can cover it (TV) or ensure the projector isn't projecting black onto a white surface (projector) and it really does make a big difference. I've never bothered on my system - my Sony Vega 27" has a decent black level to begin with, and it's only 27" - but it does help. Masking is certainly something I'm going to do in my "real" theater in my future house (early planning stages).
Jesus *#*#*#*#ing christ. Go do some exercise or help the poor. Your going to be asked about why you wasted time on *#*#*#*# like this when you go up to heaven... Well, I better get off the keyboard now....
Rough day oman? When we get to heaven time wasting crap like this is going to be on the bottom on the list of things any of us get grilled about. I guarantee.
...or, it's one of the things they make you do when you go to hell. Over. and over. and over. that, or making you scrape the last bits of salsa out of a jar with one of those huge tostito chips for all eternity, and making you start over every time the chip breaks. Ok maybe that's my OWN obsession.
Coming from someone with 3450 posts on an internet message board. To quote Tony Kornheiser...."Class-ic" Actually, oman. fuck you What were you doing to help the poor for the two years I was in the Peace Corps? Twit...
Kids don't make me pull this thread over. This happens everytime we talk about home theatre. Next year were staying home.
True enough. I do remember oman hijacking other threads in the past about home theater and such--I'd never participated before, but it just struck me as odd. Of all the "wasteful" things in the world to have a hang up about, home theater seems to be one of the most easily justified. I guess it's just his own little pet peeve. Weird. I mean heck, I waste a LOT more time and money (as does oman, I assume) watching a bunch of strangers in colorful shirts run around kicking a little ball. Is there a more trivial waste of time/money in the world than our collective obsession with professional sports?