Dolby is producing an LED backlit LCD display that is said to rival CRT monitors. This is what I find most interesting, though:

Power said the new display is not only a reference monitor, but an emulation device. “Once you’ve used our known grade-1 style reference mode for color-correction decisions, you can press a button and have it emulate your favorite consumer displays,” he said. “We can actually go beyond grade 1 and support P3 color space, so you can start to do work in the suite that you previously would have had to take into a more expensive digital-cinema-projector-equipped facility. We can do that right there on a single display.”

That sounds amazing. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but looks to be in the $35,000-$50,000 range.

Cinema 21:9 boasts a 56” screen that is shaped in the 21:9 aspect ratio, so movies in the 2.39:1 format completely fill the screen – exactly as you experience at the cinema.

Now, I’ve never seen a 2.39:1 film, I’ve seen 1.33, 1.66, 1.78, 1.85, 2:1, and 2.35 (if you want to go back to Cinemascope, then also 2.66). More than that, 21:9 actually comes out to 2.33, not 2.39. Though I’d guess they were rounding since 2.35 really equates to 21.15:9.

Now, while I’m a gadget-geek and this definitely piques my interest, I really have to doubt the appeal of a 2.35 (or 2.39 or 2.33, whatever it ends up being) screen. While it is clearly aimed at the “movie lovers,” how will people feel about watching HD content pillar-boxed? What about all the content that still is 4:3?  And moreover, since there is no HD standard that supports a native 2.35:1 aspect, will the device simply scale up and crop the stream (is the display actually 1920×817)? I have a feeling the display really doesn’t offer increased resolution, just a large, cropped 1080p display.

Call me a nay-sayer, but I just don’t see this catching on.

[via PromoMotion]