"The Game" - What is the problem with this dvd?
 

The widescreen version is actually on the pan & scan side of the disk -- but that was only irritating. The "widescreen" movie is only a narrow strip on my 65" RPTV. That sucks. I can't get this thing into an aspect ratio that looks even remotely correct. I tried two players, a Panny rp62 and a Mintek. Is this thing flagged wrong or something? Is there any way to get this to play correctly?

It's nonanamorphic so treat it like a 4:3 movie to get the correct AR.

I don't know, it plays fine on my TV as it is anamorphic and all

Jericho are you sure? I don't own it but every search I do lists it as 2.35:1 letterbox and none of them say it's anamorphic. I also thought this was one of the reasons everyone is waiting on a SE of this title hoping that they would make it enhanced this time.

It shows up as anamorphic on my TV, that's all I know (unless I just fooked something up)

The US Version is definetely non-anamorphic.

I know first hand I have played this movie on a widescreen tv. It is not anamorphic, different tv's handle this in different ways, some TV's detect this and display it properly but for the most part you will have to play with 4:3, 16:9 settings on your dvd player and/or your TV

Wasn't there a re-release of this a couple of months ago? It could be that the re-release is anamorphic and the original wasn't.

I used to have the US release. It was definately NON-anamorphic. I bought the French release because of that. If the new version is Anamorphic I would dump my PAL Fr disk for an NTSC US disc in a heartbeat.

Lookie what I found: http://www.davidfincher.net/news0028.html

Allthough the back cover doesn't say anything about it being anamorphic:

http://www.dvdplanet.com/productimages/back/25578.jpg

I guess you're right. I don't recall this happening before. My version is definately letterbox (non- anamorphic) and my television doesn't handle it very well. I finally got a reasonable looking ratio althought now the subtitles are cut off. All the more reason to buy only anamorphic disks (which I try to do anyway). Thanks for the help.

DVD Review was wrong - "The Game" has never been anamorphic on DVD, even though it's been packaged by three different studios over the years.

I have also played this movie on a widescreen TV. In fact I'm playing it now and the thing is anamorphic. I don't know what to say. I decided to throw in a non-anamorphic disc (Deep Impact)just to make sure I wasn't crazy. And sure enough Deep impact is NOT anamorhpic. But The Game is coming across in widescreen anamorphic glory. I don't know what to say. For the record I have the Polygram release

Well if there are two different versions out there Easy must have the NON anamorphic version to get the results he's seeing.

Off the box of my Polygram release:

Widescreen version presented in a "letterbox" widescreen format preserving the 2.35:1 "Scope" aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition.

The Universal says the same thing.


I don't know. I don't know much about this scope and anamorphic stuff. :)

Some discs are flagged so that they'll stretch the non-anamorphic picture to fill a widescreen TV's picture, though the disc is not anamorphic. I started a discussion a while back on this, as my copy of The Thing was doing the same thing that your copy of Game was doing...

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that before. To my knowledge all my other non-anamorphic DVD do not do this, although I've never bother to check every single DVD. Would be a nice feature if they all did it.

I guess I cvan never really know if a thing is anamporphic from the simple TV test w/o changing the settings.

I have the Polygram release and it is non anamorphic. How do I know? If you set the DVD player to 16:9 mode the picture does not stretch. It is the same size on both 16:9 mode and the 4:3 letterbox mode.

Re: "The Game" - What is the problem with this dvd?
 

The lack of any extras.

But that's the thing, my DVD player is on 16:9 mode and it fills the screen (widescreen TV) unlike what I thought most non-anamorphic DVDs did. I guess Donnacha One is right though, as it acts like the Thing and acts like it is anamorphic wo the extra reesolution.

Wait a minute Jericho. You said it fills your screen but it shouldn't. The film is 2.35:1 so you should have black bars even on a widescreen TV unless you're zooming it in either with the player or the TV.

Yes. Unless he has a version that is different from the polygram version that the rest of us have.

Jericho: BTW the polygram disc has Fullscreen on the flip side. Are you sure you played the widescreen side?

Well yes it has small black bars on the top and bottom. When I said it fills my screen, I mean the full width. Non-anamorphic DVDs usually have black bars on the sides and top and bottom on my TV, which is why I said that.

Yes I am sure I played the widescreen side, as I also have a widescreen TV.

I want the Criterion LD ported to dvd!

Not wanting to stray to far from the main subject of this thread but why are you getting black bars on the sides of nonanamorphic discs? I don't know what TV and player you're using but if the player is set to output to a widescreen TV then even they should fill your screen's width but the height would be distorted and the black bars top and bottom would be larger than thet should be.

Actually that how is used to be under my old player, which was a Toshiba 2109. But since I got my Panny RP-91, it comes across that way. Of course all I have to do is change the settings on my TV from full to a different picture size to enlarge the picture.

But under my current settings, all anamorphic DVDs look as they should and all 4:3 stuff comes out 4:3 with black bars only on the sides. I'm not too technical, but the player is basically reading the non-anamophic DVDs as 4:3 except the bars are encoded in (as per non-anamorphic).

Gotcha.