Widescreen movies in fullscreen format

Some people are just so accustomed to that format and completely reject the wide blacks bars at the top and bottom of the screen finding them distracting.

For some movies I do. I love it when a DVD has both: widescreen on one side of the disc, and fullscreen on the other.

It's just a different experience. So it depends on the movie!

I look for the widescreen version every time anymore. The full screen loses the energy of a shot, makes me less appreciative of the entire film.

Widescreen.

My parents own a video store, I just had this discussion with my dad a few weeks ago...there are still quite a few people that rent from them that want the full screen version, even though he has shown them the difference in side by side comparisons.

I have actually ended up buying the same movie twice because I bought the full screen version on accident the first time and lost the receipt.

,

wide screen for me

I've done that a few times too until it finally soaked in that you have to check. For so long, I took it for granted that it would be in widescreen. I mean, why wouldn't it be? Seeing favorite movies like "Gypsy" or "The Birds" in widescreen, finally, were momentous occasions, since I'd never seen them in the theatre. So much is missed when the film is formatted for a traditional tv. I agree with directors who say that films are butchered, damn near destroyed, in the process. Like colorization. If the film was shot in b & w, it was meant to be seen in b & w.

If it's shot in panoramic widescreen then that's damn sure how it was meant to be seen.

Fer sure, eoe.

I thought of this topic because Best Buy was running a sale on some DVDs that I wanted to get, one of which was Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit. I usually check online reviews of DVDs before I buy them in the store, just so I'm aware of any technical issues. One of the Amazon reviews specifically mentioned that, at the time the review was written, only the fullscreen version was available. Sure enough, when I went to the store, they only had the fullscreen version (I later went to a second store that had both the widescreen and the fullscreen). So I was lucky that I was alerted beforehand to the fact that there were two versions out there.


I thought about that too. I remember when congress held hearings on colorization (one of the good things that came out of those hearings was the designation by the Library of Congress of significant films for preservation), and even then I wondered why nobody was complaining about "pan and scan" versions of widescreen films. Really, has anyone seen a fullscreen version of Lawrence of Arabia or How the West Was Won? To me, that's a far worse thing to do to a film than colorization.

I have done a 180 on this subject. I have a 50" regular screen. For the longest time, I preferred the screen to be entirely filled, as the black bars really annoyed me.

Then I started getting movies from Blockbuster Online, and they often sent the widescreen versions. I really then began to appreciate the widescreen films. The differences are especially important in films with scenic views.

In the fall, we are probably going to get one of those Sony XBR2 sets. To make up what we will lose in the vertical by getting a widescreen, I think that we will be getting a 60" set! I have an old Zenith 19" set in the den, which just won't die. (It is about 19 years old). When it does, I will probably get a 26" widescreen.