Audio Video News

Most home theater fans acknowledge that masking of front projector screens can vastly improve image quality. Most screens, unfortunately, come with black masks fixed for either 4:3 or 16:9 images. Some screens with manual masking allow adjustment of the masks by hand—a useful, but cumbersome way to get the most from films shot in a variety of aspect ratios.

Properly masking a video screen to accommodate the different aspect ratios of DVD movies has previously been a challenge for systems integrators and home theater owners attempting to cope with differing aspect ratios found on today's DVDs (4:3, 16:9, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, and others). The problem is further complicated by the fact that most movies have a "framing error," which means the position of the projected image can vary from one movie to another, even for the same aspect ratio.

Kaleidescape, the company that created the first movie server for whole-house video entertainment, has announced a partnership with Stewart Filmscreen to fully automate the control of the ElectriMask screen masking systems. When installed with a Kaleidescape System, the motor-driven masking panels of a Stewart Filmscreen ElectriMask system "can be fully automated to precisely eliminate unsightly stripes or undesirable cropping of the image to maintain a picture perfect screen at all times," according to a mid-June joint press release.

The Kaleidescape System is claimed to be the first video source product to provide a solution for automating this process. With the Kaleidescape System, you simply select a movie and press "Play," and the masking adjusts automatically and precisely, ensuring that the movie will be viewed the way it was intended. System designers say that this "provides a superior viewing experience and an efficient installation solution for the systems integrator," made possible by Kaleidescape's patent-pending "Video Bookmarks." Each time a customer imports a DVD into his Kaleidescape System, its unique set of Video Bookmarks is automatically downloaded via the Internet from Kaleidescape's "Movie Guide" Service, along with other movie metadata such as cover art, factual data, and a synopsis of the movie.

Some of these Video Bookmarks are used during playback to generate "event cues" that are transmitted via the control protocol to the third-party control system. Whenever the aspect ratio changes during playback, the control system receives an event cue containing all of the information required to automatically readjust the screen masking. In order to provide accurate screen masking event cues for different movies, Kaleidescape has individually measured the true aspect ratio and associated framing error for each of the many thousands of movies in its Movie Guide Service, according to the announcement.

"We very pleased to be partnering with Stewart Filmscreen to provide an automated solution to this long-standing problem with the ease of operation of high-quality home theaters," said Michael Malcolm, chairman and CEO of Kaleidescape, Inc. "I believe that this Kaleidescape feature and Stewart's masking system will become essential to our mutual systems integrators and their customers,€� he added.

Kaleidescape has installed the Stewart Binary Reciprocal Intelligent Control (BRIC) digital motor control system in their Mountain View, CA corporate facilities to demonstrate, test and perfect the automated screen masking system; soon to be integrated with a premier "Director's Choice" model.

Stewart will shortly be unveiling a 6000 sq. ft. training facility at their headquarters featuring a seven-zone Kaleidescape System and several of their ElectriMask systems. The demonstration facility will be open to trainees, dealers, and installers, as well as interested consumers.