I went to Blockbuster yesterday to rent a DVD, but every one they had was in Fullscreen. What the hell, why wouldn’t they have any in Widscreen who the hell runs that place.
More and more widescreen TV’s and being sold every day. I have to hope that in the near future (5 - 10 years) there will be as many or more widscreen TV’s then the others. and then Blockbuster will have to reorder most of their DVDs so people will rent from them.
Even before I had by current TV I still never rented a Fullscreen dvd.
Does anyone here still prefer full screen over wide. If so, why?
From what I’ve read, there is still the misconception that since your entire TV screen isn’t full of movie, you are getting ripped off. Even though the opposite is true.
I will always buy the widescreen where available (even though I don’t own a widescreen TV).
I hope you have other rental places than Blockbuster. They truly suck.
hijack:/
If you have a fullscreen, you’ll have a better viewing experience with a fullscreen DVD. But sometime in the next few years you’ll probably buy a widescreen.
So if you’re gonna BUY DVDs, buy a widescreen DVD. If you’re gonna RENT a DVD (and you still have a fullscreen at home), rent a fullscreen DVD.
even on a fullscreen TV I cant stand watching a movie that isnt in widescreen. To much of the movie isnt being seen. all movies made for the theater today are filmed to be watch in the correct aspect ratio. if you crop out the sides of the image it becomes much more difficult to understand what you are looking at, especially if there are any action in the movie.
Try watch The Fellowship of the Ring in fullscreen, when the action start you wont know what the hell is going on.
Yeah, I wouldn’t really agree with that either. Unless you have buckets of money sitting with you at home. Then by all means go out and buy a kick-ass home theater system.
I think we should side-skip the issue on whether or not a certain format is better than another. There are many instances where a full-screen version is actually giving you MORE picture than the widescreen. (Look it up sometime. The issue is far from clear cut.)
When I first met my current roommate, he told me he couldn’t stand watching widescreen movies. The little black bars just bugged him too much. I explained to him the reasons behind them, and now he prefers widescreen. But I’d wager most people who rent movies would agree with his original thoughts on the “black bars”.
Most people view movies as silly entertainment, and don’t really care that much how they see it. For them the letterbox format would be an annoyance. And they are still the majority when it comes to RENTING. It’s a renter’s market.
Me, I go with whatever format was originally intended.
Are you referring to films that are matted? Or is that just the simple fact that “black bars aren’t picture”, even if the black bars allow for original edges to be shown?
My mom prefers it when they watch a movie in her bedroom because she has a 19 inch TV and the widescreen makes them too small.
Me I don’t agree at all. I will only buy widescreen DVDs (except for 1 Disney FLAF that I chocked on having to buy, damn my collector instinct) and if my TV was smaller I’d just sit closer. I hate the idea that I’m missing some of the scene.
I also bought widescreen DVD’s long before I got my widescreen t.v. I also take any VHS movies that people buy as presents for my children back to the store and pay the difference to get the DVD version.
You know, once you get burned once you vow NEVER to lose sight of where technology is headed. Damn beta vcr’s.
Titanic is a good example of a feature that was shot in full screen 35mm, matted into widescreen for theatrical exhibition, but transferred to DVD in full screen. Thus in this case the full-screen DVD has more imagery, not less. Or as some said, lots more hats and shoes.
There are lots more examples of films that were shot in full screen but matted to widescreen for theatrical exhibition, but another off the top of my head is the musical Godspell. The double-sided DVD has both the matted and full-screen versions, and you can see that tops and bottoms had to be cut off to create the widescreen version.
I should have clarified my original post recommending buying widescreen but renting fullscreen if you have a 4:3 TV.
There is more than one type of widescreen TV image. The most common is achieved through a “letterbox” framing. You get the whole picture on a 4:3 TV, at the expense of of significantly reduced image size. Most 16:9 TVs have a zoom function to stretch this across the full screen.
The other type is “anamorphic widescreen”, in which the entire height of the image is used. On a 4:3 TV, the image looks horizontally squeezed and significantly distorted, even though you do indeed get the full image in the 4:3 picture.
On a 16:9 screen, Anamorphic widescreen is substantially better than letterboxed widescreen.
So I SHOULD have said, “If you have a 4:3 TV, rent a fullscreen rather than an anamorphic widescreen”. AFAIC, a letterboxed DVD IS a fullscreen format. Afterall, the image is recorded to be completely viewable on a 4:3 screen. The only TRUE widescreen format is anamorphic.
Er. DVDs that are encoded to make use of 16x9 screen (anamorphic) do not display any differently on a regular 4:3 television than a non-anamorphic encoded DVD. In both cases, you’ve got black bars.
You have bars on the sides, not on the top and bottom. Or at least I do, when I switch between aspect ratios on my TV. In 4:3 mode I have bars on the sides, and the picture fills the screen in top to bottom, and looks squished in horizontally. In 16:9 mode, there are no bars at all, the whole screen is picture and it looks great.
Oh, more than that. Many times in nude scenes I’ve seen the actors’ naughty bits at the bottom of the screen on home video versions. In theatrical prints of the same movies, the top and bottom of the frame would have been matted to create a widescreen effect – and hid the naughty bits.
In such movies, the cameraman has a widescreen rectangle etched on his viewfinder to indicate what the theatrical print will include after the print is matted in the lab.
Well, it does if you have your DVD player set up wrong. The picture will look like normal, lovely, delicious letterbox if you set the “TV Type” in your DVD player’s settings to “4:3 Widescreen” (or whatever the equivalent is on your player) when it’s hooked up to a regular 4:3 TV. If the TV Type is set to “16:9”, you get the funky, elongated picture you describe from anamorphic DVDs.
Reason (in case anyone cares): anamorphic widescreen DVDs have “extra” lines on them. On a 16:9 TV, these extra lines fill out the picture and make it look a lot sharper while filling the entire screen, without zooming. When you set your player for “4:3”, your player basically strips out every fourth line. This reduces the vertical size of the picture, which still looks just fine on all but (perhaps) the most humongous and ultra-sharp of TV sets. If your player is set for 16:9, but it’s hooked up to a 4:3 TV, all those lines make the picture look stretched.
Anyway, we’re missing something important here: the intent of the filmmakers. The image on a fullscreen movie has been reframed, usually by some dweeb in the editing room, NOT the director. Thus, you get some awkward framing, back-and-forth cuts when characters converse from opposite ends of the screen, and so on. I’d rather watch the movie the way the director wanted it to be seen, with the full width of the scene intact and no extra hats and shoes.
You’re missing the point of my example. Titanic was not shot in widescreen. It was shot with full frame. The widescreen effect came only later in the lab, where the theatrical prints were black matted at the top and bottom of the frame to create a widescreen effect.
And full screen on the DVD is the way that director James Cameron wanted. There is no pan and scan on the DVD because none is necessary: it was not shot in widescreen. On the DVD of Titanic you are seeing not only the full width of the original image, you are seeing tops and bottoms of the frame that were matted out for theatrical prints.
I bet you’re wrong. I’ve NEVER seen a feature film shot in 4:3, and I was a film projectionist for many years. It may well be that the DVD transfer was done for 4:3 and not for 16:9. But the original film was most certainly not shot for a standard (4:3) TV format.