Philips gives Cinema 21:9 HDTV a price and release date

by Darren Murph posted Feb 20th 2009 at 6:04PM

We'd already heard during a UK preview show that Philips' Euro-only Cinema 21:9 HDTV would be priced around £3,000 when it launched sometime this Spring, but now we've got some more official details to share (and only half of it is good). So, the good news -- we're told that this behemoth will start shipping "as soon as June." The bad? The 56-inch ultra-widescreen panel will run you €4,000 ($5,045). Don't bother turning your head, that's just your wallet over in the corner wailing.

[Via Register Hardware]

Gallery: Philips gives Cinema 21:9 HDTV a price and release date

Filed under: Displays, Philips, LCD

Tags: cinema 219, Cinema219, global, hdtv, lcd, lcd hdtv, LcdHdtv, philips, price, release date, ReleaseDate, uk, ultra widescreen, UltraWidescreen

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highly Ranked

Ken @ Feb 20th 2009 6:14PM

'Corner'

And that is a LOT of money...like 1080p projector, nice screen, and curtains.

Neutral

Ben @ Feb 20th 2009 6:17PM

Note to self: Must resist buying, strange but increasingly appealing, not even true 2.39, TV-Set. Full-HD Projector with variable screen much more feasible... Must resist buy...

Highly Ranked

mehrad @ Feb 20th 2009 6:40PM

Is it just me or is that guy wankin it?

Neutral

harm @ Feb 20th 2009 7:02PM

It's not just you. It's probably both of you.

Neutral

RockinOscar @ Feb 20th 2009 8:36PM

fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap i spent so much fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap

no, he's not touching himself at all.

Neutral

L3 @ Feb 21st 2009 12:07AM

Thank you for your post.

I cried.

Lowest Ranked

wabread @ Feb 20th 2009 7:20PM

i dont care the price!
wen im married and i have my own games room..
i want this tv in ther!!
i want the cinema experience.. im sure the price will drop in what... 3-4 yrs??
btw my 1st ever post :D
i luv engadget its 1 of the websites i HAVE to browse as soon as i hav logged onto the net. :D

Highest Ranked

Raptor007 @ Feb 20th 2009 7:59PM

There aren't any game consoles that support this aspect ratio, and probably only a rare few PC games that would look right.

Neutral

gmikem @ Feb 20th 2009 8:53PM

Now if I only had a house with 360 degrees of ocean views...

Neutral

Raptor007 @ Feb 20th 2009 7:58PM

Cool idea, but...

* Aren't there 16:9 screens of the same width that you could get for a much lower price?

* What about 4:3 content? There's no way it could look watchable.

* What about 16:9 content that fills the screen? As far as I know, there's no "anamorphic" cinema widescreen, so the black bars of cinema-ratio movies are stored in a 16:9 picture. (I could be wrong though.) Either way, all Blu-ray players output 16:9 signals. So this means the TV will have to assume everything is meant to be cropped.

* They had damn-well better be using 1920 horizontal pixels (maybe 1920x824) so we don't have to scale the HD picture.

Neutral

Christian Wolff @ Feb 21st 2009 10:17AM

The screen has a native resolution of 2560x1080, which means you can watch your 16:9 and 1.85:1 1080p content without scaling. For 2.35:1 content at 1080p, it currently needs to upscale from about 1920x810 to 2560x1080.

Hopefully there will some day be a 64:27 aspect ratio extension to encode movies anamorphically on 1080p, then it would only have to be horizontally upscaled from 1920x1080 to 2560x1080.

Highly Ranked

kcmurphy88 @ Feb 20th 2009 8:19PM

Some idiot will buy this and put everything in stretch-o-vision.

Neutral

Kinger @ Feb 21st 2009 10:33AM

ha ha ha
that sounds like something my parents would do. Watch 4:3 stretched on this thing.
Imagine how fat the heads would be during the news...

Neutral

IseWise @ Feb 20th 2009 9:25PM

I bet they market this to people who have more money than brains.

Neutral

IvanIker @ Feb 23rd 2009 6:52AM

Paris Hilton will watch her home mades on this before releasing it.

Neutral

JeffDM @ Feb 21st 2009 6:55AM

Maybe this is good if you mostly watch Cinemascope or similar ultra wide movies. With regular HDTV, you're going to crop the image or deal with pillar boxing. I hope this doesn't get widely accepted in the market. I'm not going to put up with a new broadcast standard any time soon.

Neutral

KennethN @ Feb 23rd 2009 4:02AM

Why are Mfg sending their goodies first and some cases "only" to European and Asian continents? What wrong with folks in North American getting the likes of Cinema 21:9 or 2:39? 16:9 with black bars doesn't work for me.

Neutral

TVS TELEVISIONS @ Feb 23rd 2009 5:16PM

Man oh man. Isn't that a thing of beauty. Almost makes me want to add it to TVS TELEVISIONS inventory, but that's a lot of frito's to give up.

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