It's hard to blame someone for that. The good news there is that theyre buying DVDs in widescreen, even if they aren't watching them in the way the director intended them to be seen. If they're buying widescreen movies then a time will come when they can watch them in proper OAR, or close anyway, when all the stupid 4:3 sets are off the market and they have to buy a new TV. I have a rear projection widesreen set and it's fairly common knowledge among videophiles that you have to take care pertaining to image burn-in for the first 300 or so hours of use. Therefore on many DVDs not widescreen enhanced I have to resort to either a slight zoom or expand of my picture. Do I like it? Nope, but I'm certainly going to do so for the next several months rather than ruin my purchase....and yes, there are LCD and plasma WS sets on the market where this is not a concern. There are also alot of wealthy members here in the forum who would be quick to tell others less fortunate to spend more money. I'm an average guy making an average income and when it comes to a purchase such as this I spend what I can in proportion to what I earn, not twice that amount.

There are some great titles on that list IMO.

One enouraging thing I've noticed in the last few months comes from as simple a place as my local rental store. They're the only game in town and have a huge base of customers.....on any given night it's a struggle getting in and out of their parking lot. I try to stop right after work on tuesdya release dates if I know there is something that has just hit the street I'd like to watch. They tend to get 50-60 copies of the bigger releases, and the FS/WS ratio seems to be split right down the middle. I can walk in and see 25 of their 30 WS copies of Troy already off the shelf at 3 in the afternoon, but that number is reversed on the FS end. People are changing their viewing habits and sooner or later numbers like that make their way to the manufacturers.

There are LOTS of movies released here in pan and scan only. Remo has been brought up in this thread several times. Yeah, if I want to I can order the Japanese or Korean widescreen version of Remo from another region, but thats not the point. The point is, I shouldn't have to spend more money and order from another country to get the widescreen version.....that apparently was offered as an official release to other countries by MGM but not the country the movie was made in! I can't walk into Best Buy and have a choice in the US, and I should be able to buy any DVD release in its OAR regardless of the title.

^^^ Here's the problem, Josh Hinkle -- this is what I mean by the "lowest common denominator" -- people just buying anything they can find and the studios get those BIG sales numbers for 4:3 stuff and decide that other than major releases, they don't need to worry about 16:9 so much because people will buy anything as long as it's on a shiny disk.

And, although hifisapien is belaboring the point a bit (since I don't think that members of DVD Talk really are going to change the present industry terminology), I have begun to see packaging marked "16:9 Full Screen", which requires a double-take at first and then is clearly what he's talking about.

And then there are still those stupid top/bottom black bars on my 16x9 TV watching the LOTR:Return of the King DVD. :lol:

(There are more than 2 aspect ratios, but yes, Fullscreen/Widescreen don't really mean anything)

I forgot to mention, there are a lot of 4:3 non-letterboxed DVDs of a films that are the absolute best version to get, like just about every movie ever made before 1953 because those are all 1.37:1 or 1.33 :1 original aspect ratios. Other than those though, I much prefer either letterboxed 4:3 DVDs for aspect ratios between 1.37:1 and 1.78:1 and of course anamorphic 16:9 DVDs for aspect ratios 1.78:1 or greater.
the hifisapien

I didnt say there were only two aspect ratios of films or DVDs, I said there were two aspect ratios of Video display screens, the old 4x3 and the new 16x9.
the hifisapien

I never bought too many VHS, mostly because I was cheap. I had, actually still have a number of vhs stuff taped off TV in the 6 hour mode, which I should probably just pitch.

Yup loads of the dvds mention are in WS in another region, why just shop from R1 I can never understand that, I shop anywhere the dvd is best, and most the time it isnt america!

Fullscreen will always sell as long as there are people like this in the world:

(Review of LOTR 12 disc DVD Triology)

"If you're a fan of the Lord of the Rings, then this item is a must have. It isn't simply stuff that was left out because it doen't have any relevance to the movie, in this case it's stuff that was left out to make the movie shorter. But if you've read the book then you'll know that there are a lot of things that were probably required to better explain the story but wasn't put in the final film. Therefore, the extra scenes are worth seeing.

Also, this collectors set has the return of the king extended dvd with over 45 extra minutes- And you wonder if these movies can get any better... well there's ony one way to find out.

The ony disappointing thing about this is that it's in widescreen format only... personally i'd wait for the full screen editions."

-ohbfrank-

Where was this review taken from? yeah the guy who wrote this is pretty dumb.

Just a user review at Amazon.

Um... Are there really people out there who take Amazon user reviews seriously?

The youth group kids came over to watch Christmas movies last month and someone accidentally put in the FS disc of Elf. I stopped the movie and put the WS disc in and when they realized what I was doing, they started complaining about black bars and not seeing the whole picture, etc. I began to educate them and, if the movie hadn't started again, they would have gotten a full presentation of the benefits of WS, but I let it slide for the sake of watching the movie.

It's coming though . . . they're going to learn . . . http://www.mindspring.com/~boycekb/i.../BatThreat.gif

Not sure if you are addressing me or just asking a general question. I wasn't taking it as a "serious" review. I was saying this was an example of a person who will keep fullscreen releases in production (by buying them).

Just a general question, namlook. I'm sure the people who write them take them seriously!

I don't take the reviews seriously per se, but I will skim through them when thinking about buying a book or cd. I don't really use them for movies as I rarely buy a movie unseen. You can't really take any one of them seriously, but it is usefully to look at them as a who. If 75% or so of them are positive or negative, that's a decent indication of the quality of the item.

I was a serious VHS buyer and I didn't like movies like Innerspace and The Karati Kid 3 because they were only released in letterbox. The thing that changed me to liking widescreen was when they rereleased Star Wars Special Edition in theaters. When I saw it compared to the full screen VHS, I sold my set real fast. This was when dvds were just coming out. Then I started buying nothing but widescreen dvds. Curse the studios that only make full screen versions when it was shown in widescreen in theater.

Hi darkhawk . . . welcome to DVD Talk . . . sounds like you'll fit in just fine. :D :up:

First, Thanks
and second, it took awhile, but I had finally got my brother and his son to see the difference

I was going to post this question here, but I thoght it was off topic and would get more attention as it's own thread:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5704324#post5704324

The link doesn't work right....
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5704324

The Devil buys fullscreen ;)