Most custom installers pride themselves on being able to offer their clients the true cinema experience at home. In fact, many use that very line when trying to sign potential new clients.

But just because you say you can do something, doesn’t mean you can.

Often there are variances, whether large or small, that can dilute the at-home experience. And for the amount of money that your clients are spending, close enough isn’t good enough.

A lot of suppliers and manufacturers claim to have the answer, but how do you separate the fact from the fiction?

Well if a supplier is using the same technology they use in the film making process, you can be sure it’s on the right path.

This is the case with Panamorph’s anamorphic lens systems, distributed in Australia by Herma Technologies.

“A major issue with the current method of projection are the two black bars that appear on ‘widescreen’ displays,” says Herma Technologies managing director Carlinea Williamson.

“You sell a 16:9 panel as ‘widescreen’, but when you show the majority of movies on it you get the two black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. If you want to use the entire geometry of the panel space, you have to distort the image and people become unfeasibly tall and thin.”

Carlinea explains that an anamorphic lens allows a projector to scale the projected image to the correct geometry, remaining true to the popular 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Simply put, the aspect ratio is the shape of the picture and is represented as a relation of its width to its height. In other words, a picture that is twice and wide as it is tall has an aspect ratio of 2:1.

Aspect ratios are often expressed as a fractional representation where the height is always 1.

The 1.33:1 ratio was used by almost all motion pictures up until the mid-1950s. But it was then adopted by television and is still in use today in CRT television sets. This was when it became 4:3.

The introduction of TV in the 1950s was seen as a serious threat to the profitability of cinemas. As a result the motion picture industry started seriously developing widescreen aspect ratios that were designed to lure people away from their almost square, 4:3 television sets and draw them back into the theatres, where they could get an immersive widescreen experience they could not get at home.

Enter the anamorphic lens. An anamorphic lens horizontally squeezes the light coming into the camera so that a panoramic widescreen image could be stored on what was essentially a square film frame. The resulting image on the film frame was then distorted, with everything compressed horizontally and stretched vertically. The distorted image could then be horizontally expanded by an anamorphic lens mounted on a projector, eliminating the vertical stretch. The result is a properly displayed widescreen image.

“An anamorphic lens is all about seeing movies as the director intended. The anamorphic stretch of the lens increases your picture by 33% in width, but your movie size jumps a massive 80% and the black bars disappear,” Carlinea says.

In order to use an anamorphic lens to replicate the cinema experience at home, you will need to install:

• An anamorphic lens;
• A digital front projector;
• A scaler/video processor (may be built into the projector)
• A projection screen – 2.35:1 for constant height systems, 16:9 for constant width systems.

For all anamorphic lens installations it is essential that the projector lens be centred on the screen in the horizontal plane. Further, horizontal lens shift must be zeroed out or centred, otherwise keystone distortion will occur.

Vertical lens shift is acceptable, but it should be noted that the use of horizontal lens shift can cause geometric distortion when combined with an anamorphic lens.

“It’s really in the planning. If you get the planning right then the installation is significantly easier,” Carlinea says.

“It is important to understand is that there are two types of installation – you can either have a fixed lens installation, which means the lens is always in front of the projector, or you can have a moveable lens, which means the lens goes in and out of play in front of the projector.

“That’s important because the moveable lens gives you the best result in all circumstances. It means that when you’re in 2.35:1 mode you have the lens directly in front of the screen but when you’re back in 16:9 mode it moves out of the way but leaves all the brightness and pixels in place.”