The World's Leading Home Cinema Conversion Lenses

True Widescreen Cinema Projection
Major motion pictures use the full performance of 16:9 projectors and become far more immersive	HDTV and smaller format movies still use the full performance of the 16:9 projector

Today's home theater projectors beautifully show the 16:9 aspect ratio of HD sports, documentaries, games, television programs and many small format movies - filling the height of a 16:9 screen for a wonderful multimedia experience.  Well, that 16:9 screen format basically means that its width is 1.78 times its height.  But movie lovers know that over 70% of all major motion pictures are filmed in the wider cinematic aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 - their width is 2.35 times their height.  This means to watch the most beautiful, dramatic and action-packed films of our time, they must be squeezed down to fit into the smaller 16:9 frame, leaving black bars above and below the image that diminish both your projector's ultimate performance and the truly dramatic experience these films represent.

Now you no longer need to make these sacrifices.  We've all seen how the largest commercial cinemas open up the curtains to reveal that really wide screen for our favorite motion pictures, delivering the full impact of what the director meant us to see and feel.  These cinemas do this by moving a special anamorphic projection lens into the projection beam to expand the image to fill the wider screen.  Panamorph pioneered the development of high performance add-on lenses for the home cinema industry, bringing the technology of commercial movie theaters into your own home.  Today the performance and value of our model UH480 lens has made it recommended by more projector manufacturers than any other lens. And its large, patented optics and convenient accessory components mean that even if you change projectors in the future the UH480 is probably the last lens you'll ever buy.  Easily integrated by your custom home theater installer, you can build a full True Widescreen cinema from scratch or even upgrade your older 16:9 projection system to this immersive format and join the fastest growing trend in the high performance home cinema industry.

Only 810 rows of pixels from today's 1080p projectors are used to show a 2.35:1 movie when it is squeezed onto a 16:9 screen.  The remaining pixels are turned off to produce the black bars, representing an amazing 518,400 pixels of lost resolution and brightness on every 2.35:1 movie watched!  So the first step to enhanced 2.35:1 performance is to electronically stretch the movie in the vertical direction to use all 1080 rows of pixels - an increase of 33% higher resolution.  We call this electronic vertical stretch Panamorph Mode I scaling and it is available either as an internal mode in some projectors or as a feature of most high performance external image processors.  Of course, by vertically stretching to get this increased performance the movie is no longer in its original aspect ratio. S o now the UH480 lens is placed into the beam to horizontally stretch the image to match the vertical stretch, returning the image to its original aspect ratio while retaining the 33% higher resolution. You've now effectively created a 2.35:1 image the same height as your original 16:9 image but also 33% wider.  The final step? Get a wider format screen to complete the picture!

Now you have the ultimate 2.35:1 imaging system. What happens to smaller format content?  There are two options. First, you can move the lens out of the way for non-2.35:1 content and turn off the Mode I scaling, basically converting your projector back to a 16:9 multimedia system again.  You are still using the full height of your 2.35:1 screen but leaving the far left and right regions blank or covered with curtains like a real commercial cinema.  The second option is that you can leave the lens in place and electronically squeeze any content that is not 2.35:1 in the horizontal direction - what we call Panamorph Mode II scaling.  This is very convenient and produces the same effect as moving the lens out of the way. The down side is that this option uses less horizontal resolution.  However, the visual difference between the two is not great because horizontal resolution is not nearly as important as vertical resolution (which is the same for either option).  The choice is yours!