all dvds can be made in widescreen and no more pan and scan will be needed

the only thing the movie industry has to do is automatically set the movie to play with zoom on the dvd player that way joe six pack will be happy and for the movie buffs, all we have to do is choose an option to play normal

this will solve the issue of buying the wrong aspect ratio movie and the movie industry can save money and dvds will become cheaper since they only have to put out one edition instead of two

Pan & Scan isn't simply zoomed in on the picture. It will scan left and right across the widescreen image to try to pick up the most important parts of whatever is onscreen at the time (which is why there are the unnatural looking pans from side to side). Just having the DVD player zoom in (which some can't do anyways) would have you just watching the center of the frame so you would miss everything on the sides of the frame, making it even worse than P&S is.

I think that last part is debatable.

Yeah, as if anyone who wants the sides hacked off cares if it pans.

Well, other than the fact that there is nothing in the DVD spec to automatically play the disc with zoom on the DVD player, you have the problem with movies with an aspect ratio greater than 1.78:1. These will still have black bars-they'll just be smaller.

So....zoom in on a 2:35 image that has two people on the extremes of the frame talking to each other ... rather than panning and scanning from one to the other as they speak, we could now stare at EMPTY SPACE for the duration of the scene ..... does anyone actually think this is BETTER?

The only solution to the pan-and-scan problem is to do away with it.

Like it or not this is exactly what is happening on English digital tv. The full screen version is a stb generated cut out of the ws version.

But they don't seem to notice.

There is no solution. Never has been and never will be. TV and Movie film are two different formats.

Buy a display that can display the movie film properly and have the original aspect ratio of the movie as created. Want to watch TV, fine. That is not feature film watching.

There is a feature already available: "pan 'n' scan on-the-fly". If a DVD has this feature, and the player is set for 4:3 Full Screen, the movie will play in pan 'n' scan. I'm not sure if it just zooms in on the middle of the picture, or if the disc can be flagged to actually pan. Of course, this would only owrk properly for true pan 'n' scan. Open matte transfers would be problematic.

The solution is buy a WS TV or don't bother with WS DVDs or digital TV.

What do I care? I'm going to be watching the widescreen version

Or... they could just stop producing pan&scan dvds alltogether. Look at Europe. We don't have any pan&scan dvds over here, except for the really crappy low budget transfers, and noone cares since they don't have a choice. They've learned to live with it.

I don't really see the need for fullscreen. Some of the general reasons why it exists is because Walmart demands it and because Joe Six Pack demands it. But widescreen still sells better and is higher on the sales charts! Some of the best-selling DVDs (well, since last year atleast) are widescreen only. So apparently if fullscreen isn't available, people just buy widescreen. Walmart may be giving studios some pressure but what the heck? Family films like the Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and this summer's Pirates of the Caribbean are widescreen only DVDs, so I don't get it.

Is there really that much demand for fullscreen?

Without Fullscreen we have one less thing to moan about and laugh at J6P for.