20 Jan 2006

THE LOEWE DOWN ON LCD TV VIEWING


Here’s my Herald review of the Loewe set I mentioned previously that I was reviewing. I must say I was pretty impressed but at $6000, you’d expect nothing less.

The one thing I constantly think about when I’m watching such good quality high-end LCD sets, is how they break the mystique of cinema. The Bourne Identity, which is a high budget, slick-looking movie on my 24 inch Panasonic, looks pretty crappy on the 32 inch Loewe. It’s like the difference between watching programming from the US in the NTSC format and British programming formatted in PAL.
The latter is much clearer and better quality, but decidedly garish and stark as well. I wonder what the increased clarity and crispness of these new screens will mean for film making. And with all the new screens in native 16:9 widescreen, are film makers going to exploit the format to re-interpret the rules of film making, as the playwright turned director David Mamet suggests in this Guardian column.


No comments: