This TV Backlighting System Fucked Me Up. This is opulence. Suddenly, there is extra light blasting from behind my TV screen, making a day glow title sequence positively atomic. The Dream. Screen, a backlighting system thats designed to make your TV viewing more immersive, is a luxury that I absolutely dont need. This is opulence. Suddenly, there is extra light blasting from behind my TV screen, making a dayglow title sequence positively atomic. The DreamScreen, a. Ever notice how Christopher Nolans movies Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige feel like an anxiety attack Well, maybe thats overstating things a bit. But. In theory, the supplementary lights change color based on the pixels on the TV screen for an immersive theater experience. In practice, its an overstimulating, distracting, nauseating novelty, and I cant get enough of this shit. What is it A group of LEDs on the back of a television that make viewing more immersive. Like. Those lights are very pretty. No Like. It can be really distracting and there are a lot of wires. Im a fan of the Phillips Hue wireless LED lights, and find the ability to change the color of my room with my phone delightful. Dream. Screen, loosely based on the original Philips Hue adjacent Ambilux television, works in the same vein, so I was keen on it. I do a lot of stupid things to entertain myself, like acquiring a 5. Divx Movies Dvd "Futurama" A Clone Of My Own ' title='Divx Movies Dvd "Futurama" A Clone Of My Own ' />Samsung television with a gimmicky curved display. Dream. Screen seemed like an upgrade. I was naive. I didnt realize how much I could loathe and love one product. Depending on what kind of TV you have, the kit costs between 1. HD or 4. K, and the size of your screen. The setup is a small feat in and of itself. There are chunky LED light strips to tape to the back of a TV, differently spaced depending on the size of your tv theres a guide. Theres a smartphone app that works with your wi fi to download and set up. Then you need to plug your video source into the video input of the round HDMI splitter, and plug the output into your TV. There are also two optional sidekick lights for extra glow 6. This thing takes up three fucking outlets. Get ready for a wire rat king. You do get the bigger, brighter TV the products website promises, but the lights dont exactly extend the screen space they sometimes echo, and sometimes compliment the colors of pixels around the very edges of your screen, sending rays of color from behind your television across your walls in time with whatever is on. In the case of a dramatic explosion, this is all very sensible, as a good part of your wall will look onfire. It really shines with material intended to be trippylike whatever the hell that was in episode eight of Twin Peaks The Return above, or that psychedelic 2. A Space Odyssey sequence. The more you give itpink and blue neons, deep redsthe more you get. But it can be confounding in undramatic sequences, with bright blurry bits of clothes and other immovable objects echoing off screen, like dislocated fuzzy chunks. Daylight and black and white sequences result in a bright bluish white screen halo. Letterboxing also presents an obvious, chasmic problemgaps. I want to emphasize the visual loudness of this thing. Even at the lowest brightness, without the two sidekicks, the Dream. Screen is really bright. I like to watch movies in complete darkness and concentrate on the screen. With the Dream. Screen, the entire room is illuminated, including the dirty laundry in the far corner that Im trying to ignore. Say youre the type of person with serious respect for cinematography. The screen bleeding out of the frame in blurry puddles every which way might not be what the cinematographer intended. Despite and because of its flaws, this truly is an accessory of visual excess. Theres also the products weird health benefits claim that it reduces digital eye strain. The claim cites a single 2. TV not hurt your eyes so much. But the study also says that these results are modest and sometimes even the opposite. Speaking from personal experience, staring into a significantly brighter TV area is the oppositemy eyes ache after a while. So I wouldnt take this study very seriously. Where Dream. Screen really shines is gaming. I sit closer to the TV while I game and my focus is more sharply drawn to specific sections of the screen. This position allows the peripheral edges of the game space to blend with the Dream. Screen light extensions and Im significantly more immersed, just as Dream. Screen wanted. When Im not watching the entire screen, the patchiness of Dream. Screens illumination isnt a big deal. Its also more dynamic because more is happening faster, so its swishing around me. Thats neat. For most everything else, its immersive, but kind of like watching TV wasted is immersive. Youre going to get pulled into the light. Youll want to squint. Your eyes might skid. You might ask yourself, do I really need to do this Am I enjoying itWhy am I doing this Excess and novelty are perfectly good reasons to try something. Getting overwhelmed and bored is a great reason to stop. Until then, the trick is getting used to something completely unnecessary. Awhile back, I saw Wonder Woman in 4. DX, which is extra 3. D, with moving theater seats and effects. For two hours in the theater the seat jostled me back and forth and gently spit water into my hair. It was completely unnecessary. But now I wonder, how am I supposed to watch another movie again without steamy, bumpy smell o visionI wasnt even sure I liked 4. DX, but Im going back, obviously. Maybe I want to be thrown around. Maybe Ill always want a bigger, brighter TV. Maybe I want to be perpetually overstimulated by entertainment technology. Maybe I want bright lights strapped to the back of my TV, for extra explosions. Nothing in life is perfect. A lot of the things arent even good. I think this thing is bad, but also good. No one really needs it, but its awfully easy to get used to. When I dont use the lights, I miss them. Sometimes Ill even put them on the ambient setting when Im doing something else. Like rainbow. Or fireplace. Twinkling in the background. Completely fucking with my head. READMEIt takes up to three outlets. Its really bright and dramatic. Best for really bright and dramatic sequences in movies and games. Great for gaming and explosions, not so much for movies you respect. How much youll like it really depends on your definition of immersive. Easy to hate, hard to leave. The Uncanny Sound Illusion That Creates Suspense in Christopher Nolans Movies. Ever notice how Christopher Nolans movies Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige feel like an anxiety attack Well, maybe thats overstating things a bit. But the director does have a knack for creating an unnerving degree of tension. Turns out hes using a little bit of musical magic to do it. The magic is actually a science based audio illusion called a Shepard tone. Named after psychologist Roger Shepard, a pioneer in our understanding of spatial relation, the effect sounds like an infinitely ascending or descending scale. The tones are constantly moving upwards or downwards, but they never seem to reach a pinnacle or nadir. This is accomplished by stacking scales on top of each othertypically one treble scale, one midrange, and one basswith an octave in between, then playing them in a continuous loop. A Shepard tone is sometimes referred to as the barber pole of sound. You can even see the similarity, when you hear it and look at the spectrum view of a Shepard tone. Dont listen to this too long, or you might lose your mind Anyways, Christopher Nolan just loves this. With longtime collaborator Hans Zimmer, the acclaimed director has used a Shepard tone in almost every one of his films in the last decade. He even writes his scripts to match the effect. In a recent interview, Nolan explained how he used Shepard tones in his newest film, Dunkirk The screenplay had been written according to musical principals. Theres an audio illusion, if you will, in music called a Shepard tone and with my composer David Julyan on The Prestige we explored that and based a lot of the score around that. Watch Rugrats Go Wild! Free Online here. And its an illusion where theres a continuing ascension of tone. Its a corkscrew effect. Its always going up and up and up but it never goes outside of its range. And I wrote the script according to that principle. I interwove the three timelines in such a way that theres a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity. So I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. Knowing this, you gain a deeper understanding of films like Interstellar, Inception, and The Prestige. It also explains why these films seem somehow inconclusive. A Shepards tone creates a conflict that cant be resolved, just like Nolans plots. Digg, Business Insider.