I guess Cinerama had to continue on some how...

[Ed Gordon]

Yes, I did. Screen material is drapery blackout fabric, it's vinyl on one side with a fabric backing and a great 1.0 gain screen surface. Frame was constructed from 1x3 and 1x2 poplar, with the drapery fabric wrapped around it. Here's a photo showing the basics:

Vern, I used the same material to build my flat scope screen. Your curved screen looks more impressive than mine. Time for me to rebuild my setup. Getting the optimal curve into the the build would seem to be the greatest challenge.

[Vern Dias]

While my first experience with Cinerama was around 1956 or so (it took a while making it to Hawaii, where I grew up) at age 13 or so, my Dad was a theatre manager and I was no stranger to a projection booth. Most of the Consolidated Amusements theatres were equipped to the nines with 3 projector booths.

Waikiki Projection Room.jpg

As a side gig to my full time career (IBM) I did relief projectionist duty at three Cinerama theatres (Cinerama in Honolulu, Cooper in Denver and Minneapolis), all after the end of 3 strip and I suppose that curved screen experience never left my bloodstream. At 81 years of age, I still use my HT a lot and I still HATE black bars above and below the image. It's really nice to be able to show Ultra Panavision titles without those bars. In fact, the only two titles I have that require a slight side crop are "How The West Was Won" and "The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm" both of which on BD have an AR of 2.85:1. The lens stays in place and scaling to handle the various AR's (1.78:1, 2.00:1, 2.20:1, 2.40:1, 2.55:1, 2.76:1, and 2.85:1) are all done with PC's. I also still enjoy all the 3D titles I have.

[Ed Gordon]

...As a high school kid I sent a letter to the D-150 UA Corp in LA about buying the whole D-150 set up. D-150 had a local supply place in San Francisco on Golden Gate Ave. I guess they thought I was a movie theatre owner and they sent me a very nice ad cut out press kit with photos and literature. . I still have kept the cover letter and the D-150 install kit. My parents got mad at me ordering all these movie theatre information brochures. One of my first magazines I sent away for was BoxOffice Magazine It arrived every week and featured the 'Modern Theatre' section once a month. I still have many of these 1950/60 issues. They had a cut out post card you could send in for more information. I got a ton of things in the mail when I put 'Terry Theatres' in place of my name. My family thought I was crazy and they were worried movie theatre sales people would be ringing our doorbell. I should have gotten a PO Box. ...

Terry, your story reminds me of my youth. One day while riding my bike around downtown Seattle, I discovered "Film Row". On one city block there were all the major studios, theatre equipment vendors, and National Screen Service. From that point on I constantly bugged the adults with cars to take me there so I could bring there "garbage" back home. Posters, stills, film clips galore! My major score was three reels of the John Wayne movie, Jet Pilot..

When I talked my Boy Scout troop into showing movies in the auditorium of our school sponsor, I wrote a letter to National Screen Service and got a letter from them authorizing me to buy any advertising material I wanted. I still have those materials.

[Vern Dias]

Vern, I used the same material to build my flat scope screen. Your curved screen looks more impressive than mine. Time for me to rebuild my setup. Getting the optimal curve into the the build would seem to be the greatest challenge.

Yes, the key is to do the lens / PJ setup first. However, this really only works with a horizontal expansion anamorphic, and at shorter throws. Vertical compression anamorphics introduce a vertical bow.

However.... with the wonder of computers and open source software like warping shaders or products like the MadVR Envy ($$$) you could could actually conform the image to a curved screen without a lens.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

John Harvey had a very similar strip screen.in his home in Dayton. The difference was he had a complete Cinerama projection system and the films...

[Ed Gordon]

The only D-150 theatre I attended was at the UA 70/150 theatre in Seattle were they ran the Seattle premier of Star Wars:

This twin screen theater, which opened in 1969, was originally outfitted with the Dimension 150 process in the main auditorium and mono sound and a flat screen in the Cinema 70 auditorium. The original idea by United artists was that Cinema 150 would show Dimension 150 films and the Cinema 70 would be equipped for 70mm films. In point of fact, the Dimension 150 process used 70mm film but had amazing asymmetrical lenses for the left and right projectors, which were each over 2ft long. The lenses were manufactured by the Kollmorgen Company of Northampton, MA. The UA 150 was well known locally as the main theater that showed "Star Wars" for a year in 1977/78. The interior of the main auditorium was a large wooden framed roof with an equally massive screen.

In the mid-1990’s it was a second run house that had revival screenings on weekend midnights. UA let the theater get very run down and ultimately closed the doors in early-1992. It reopened on January 10, 1992 as 6th Avenue Cinedome. On February 5, 1995 UA reopened the theater as a discount house named Discount Cinema 150.

The theater was demolished in 2002 and the only thing remaining was the marquee (which has now also gone). An apartment complex is now on the site. “It’s a shame Paul Allen couldn’t have also saved this theater and restored it to it’s glory. Ironically it was just a few blocks from the restored Cinerama”.

Source: https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4370

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[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The funny thing about my first post comparing the twin domes to the Get Smart thing is that the twin domes in my picture were privately owned and located just south of Ogden, Utah. They were called Cinedome 70 Theaters. I have more photos of that place to post. That property is now a car dealership. But I did get two of the 35/70 Westrex projectors out of there. Another Westrex ended up in the Cinema 6 lobby. Last operator there was Cineplex.

[Ed Gordon]

Yes, the key is to do the lens / PJ setup first. However, this really only works with a horizontal expansion anamorphic, and at shorter throws. Vertical compression anamorphics introduce a vertical bow.

However.... with the wonder of computers and open source software like warping shaders or products like the MadVR Envy ($$$) you could could actually conform the image to a curved screen without a lens.

Vern, I am a JRiver user and found this on there forum:

Projector Anamorphic Lens Support

Over the years there appears to have been several requests for flexible anamorphic lens support in the JRiver forums.

This has been partially addressed, however IMHO, it still could use some additional flexibility.

As JRiver has become an outstanding video media player with great 3D and 4K HDR support, I would hope this can be evaluated once more. Addressing this would mean I could use JRiver media player exclusively and eliminate my existing collection of media players.

Here is my situation where the current support falls short:

I have a home theatre projection setup that uses an anamorphic lens with a 1.5x expansion factor, rather than the more common 1.33x. My curved screen has a 2.70:1 aspect ratio. Before anyone mentions it, the lens is a commercial Isco DLP lens with a diameter is 8", the depth is 6" and it weighs a good 25 pounds. So a sled is out of the question.

In addition, I maintain a constant image height for all the common aspect ratio standard's that have been used over the years.
(1.77:1 (TV), 1.85:1 (Academy Flat), 2.00:1 (VistaVision), 2.20:1 (Todd-AO), 2.40:1 (CinemaScope), 2.55:1 (Early CinemaScope), 2.65:1 (Cinerama), and 2.76:1 (Ultra Panavision).

MPC-HC, VLC, PotPlayer, and Zoom player all support the ability to create custom aspect ratios for all the above formats to maintain a constant height and the corresponding width to restore the original square pixels which eliminates any distortion on the screen.

JRiver is the single exception.

JRiver comes close, with it's advanced aspect ratio correction options, except for the omission of an additional option that could look like this:

Desired Aspect Ratio Correction ratio x.xxx : x.xxx (fill in the blanks with your desired values).

This would eliminate this issue forever, no matter what anamorphic lens expansion ratio or monitor was being used.

Alternately, although not the perfect solution, you could possibly add one more choice to the existing options: 1.78 (Widescreen 16x9) to 2.70 Display.

Ideally, if I could ask for the moon, 8) I would really really really like the ability to create multiple zoom presets accessible from keyboard hot keys with independent X and Y scaling values as is done in the other software mentioned above.

However, I think the i and o keyboard zoom options would be a totally acceptable solution to the issue once the proper anamorphic lens correction has been applied.

Thanks in advance for any consideration.

TV Dias AKA movieman

Source: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/ind...topic=124128.0