what does the IMAX ENHANCED version of a streaming movie do for my regular old family room TV? Does it matter?
In: 5
It depends on your TV.
Basically, the “IMAX enhanced” version has more pixels at the top and bottom. So you can see more of the image than you would without the feature.
But that also means the “shape” of the picture is different. If your TV is designed to display the “normal” shape of the image, this picture won’t fit. So either the extra pixels need to be cut off, or it has to “shrink” the image so the width fits and you’ll see some extra black bars at the top and bottom.
That’s how “letterboxed” films worked when we had more square TVs than we do now. Movies use a picture that is much wider than it is tall, but TVs were in a ratio we called “4:3”, meaning it was only a little wider than it is tall. Today’s TVs are usually in a ratio we call “16:9”, meaning they’re almost twice as wide as they are tall. (But a lot of other ratios are possible and sold.)
ANYWAY, the way they fit that rectangle on a more square screen was to shrink the image and add black space at the top and bottom. If you had a small TV that wasn’t great, because everything was smaller. The alternative was “Pan and Scan”. This technique involved editing the film to “cut” the parts of the image that would fit out, trying to make sure the most important parts of the scene were visible. This was bad if you had a big TV, because it meant you were missing a lot of scenery or sometimes scenes had a lot going on and you’d just miss segments. (You can sort of see this in some old behind-the-scenes photos, sometimes the director’s monitor had lines on it helping them understand the differences between the widescreen and TV view of the picture.)
Same thing here. If your TV’s small, you might get a worse experience. Odds are the extra pixels at the top and bottom aren’t nearly as important as the pixels on the side that old “pan and scan” editing lost. If your TV’s bigger, it might not need to shrink the image *or* it might not make things harder to see.
Long story short: it’s mostly just a way for Disney to sound like they’re giving you a feature worth money that isn’t really worth much.
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