The type of person who buys FS.
 

You know, I just got an idea about what type of person who buys FS DVDs. With the few threads popping up about 'educating people about WS vs FS', I think some discussion would be interesting to come to a conclusion about who buys FS thinking that it's the preferred version.

I think this phenomennon goes back to the days of VHS. Specifically for those people who rarely bought a commercially produced VHS movie. Or those who tended to rent rather than buy, and those who were content with recording stuff off 'HBO' or the equivalent.

I got my first VCR for Xmas back in 1986. It was a 2-head front feed mono Sylvania. Decent machine for the time. All we had was a 19" mono, but dual speaker Zennith TV. The set-up was adequate. However, with my VCR, I got a commercially produced copy of Star Trek III. I watched the hell out of that tape. Well this great copy got me to buy commerically produced tapes and I continued strong until 1998 and then just got a few later through 2001 when FH's Dune was released. When WS VHS got started around '95 or so, I attempted to convert most of my older collection to WS VHS.

But anyway, my point is that getting the Star Trek III tape gave me a fascination with film and buy the time I switched to DVD in 2001, I had a pretty decent, but not huge collection of commerical tapes, plus a buttload of blank tapes filled with 3-4 movies in SLP mode taped from HBO.

But it's those people who never bought VHS movies and mostly rented that are probably the ones today who when they do buy DVDs, buy the FS because that's the only format they know from the VHS days when WS was only a delicacy, so-to-speak.

Does that make sense? I'm not putting down anybody here, I'm just trying to deduct who these people are who buy FS and think that's the right (or "full") version.

Whaddya think? Good theory?

I never bought VHS because it was fullscreen.

I switched to dvds in 2001, i was like 13 then. At the time i didnt like dvd at all because it was widescreen and the black bars annoyed the hell out of me. I only bought FS dvds, then a year later WS dvds grew on me and i started liking the ws versions better, even though i had no idea that they actually were better in the first place. I educated my parents about FS dvds, and to this day i only own 1 dvd that is FS, and its star wars clone wars... sadly, i dont want to toss it. Lol.

you're kidding right?

Somebody needs to take "Cool" out of "Cool New Member" ;)

Fullscreen... ::Shivers::

when I first started buying DVDs, they didn't offer some of them in full screen, so I bought some of my favorites in wide screen. at first the black bars annoyed me, but I got over that and I've since replaced most of my full screen DVDs with wide screen ones. my wife still insists on getting most of her movies in full screen. I've tried to educate her, but that's like talking to a brick wall, so I gave up. oh well, she'll figure it out when I buy a wide screen tv next year.

People that buy fullscreen are the same people that shop at Wal-Mart and drive trucks with bumper stickers that say "I got this truck for my wife its the best trade I ever made".

I bought two full screen movies today. Action Jackson and The Wraith. ONLY because they were $5.88. They are two movies I've been looking for for a long time. And because I dont know if they come in widescreen. I know, I'm a very very stupid person for doing it but shit it's only 12 bucks.

To me its all about educating people. Back in the old days when I was buying VHS, I'd never heard of widescreen and thought full screen was the norm. After a friend showed me the difference, I could never go back.

I didn't buy or rent VHS and only will buy WS DVDs. I think I remember reading up on everything DVD related, back in 1999, before I started purchasing so that affected my decision.

Like Dean Kousoulas said, somebody needs to remove "Cool" from "Cool New Member"

Where's a pic of that T-shirt when we need it?

A 2 inch tv?

Right next to the bumper sticker that says "what do you say to a woman with 2 black eyes? nothin', you told her twice already."

Well I just found out that the only release of Action Jackson was in full screen. Whew. I feel a lot better now. ;)

Well I suppose if I had a 2 inch TV, I would go foolscreen too. After all, you want to get as much of the picture as possible on such a small screen ;)

I think some of the reason has to do with ignorance and some of it has to do with the TVs people own. Many if not most average people with small 4x3 TVs will prefer to watch full screen rather than widescreen even when they know they are losing so much of the picture because their tiny screen looks even smaller with widescreen.

Believe it or not, I was converted to widescreen when I bought my very first DVD in 6th grade: Yellow Submarine. The illustration MGM had demonstrating the benefits of widescreen over fullscreen coverted me. My dad has recently started to come around and see the benefits of WS over FS (especially seeing that we both own WS portable players).

I guess you could say these people who buy Fullscreen movies are somewhat..."narrow" minded?!

I know.
That was horrible. :brickwl:

fullscreen
 

I remember back in the video days when I used to rent I had no conception whatsoever about widescreen. I cam remember seeing the occasional movie with black bars and probably assumed like most people that you were losing picture.

But oddly enough it was when my local video store starting passing me pirate vids that I became aware of widescreen. (I hasten to add that I was young back then, and have never indulged in pirate DVD's).

Often when the movie started, it was in widescreen with black bars, but suddenly they would "zoom in" to lose the bars, and you actually saw how much picture you were losing.

That was a bit of an eye opener, and used to really annoy me.

I'm glad that, as in every FS-WS thread, the discussion of people who prefer full-screen has devolved from an honest attempt at understanding into wife-beating, hillbilly stereotype.

Because Fullscreen is far far better sometimes thats why! I decide from comparing both versiions, 99% of the time it is the Widescreen as theres no other option anyway.

But I just got the Fullscreen Remo Williams dvd as it looks far better than the Widescreen.

Fullscreen

http://img114.exs.cx/img114/7658/remofullscreen3vs.jpg

Widescreen

http://img114.exs.cx/img114/1553/remowidescreen0vy.jpg

I know which I prefer, and dont go on about what the director wants, he isnt here watching it!

I used to watch fullscreen too...remember watching Air Force One on DVD on the fullscreen side. Then I read about the difference between widescreen and fullscreen and never looked back.

The pictures above are not a good example of the difference between widescreen and fullscreen.

Yes the above isnt, as most films are definalty widescreen only, but theres the odd films which I like fullscreen more. Not loads but a handfull out of the 1000 I have, which isnt many, but theres still the odd ones here and there :) and dismissing them and saying Fullscreen is not on is pointless as most people doing the dismissing probibly havent actually seen both versions anyway.

I never bought VHS like I buy DVD, and most of my VHS collection moviewise has been replaced. When I got my DVD player I asked the clerk at a Suncoast "do all DVD's only come in widesceen?" because I too was narrow minded. I VERY quickly started to love and prefer widescreen but I think I also got used to the quality of DVD and widescreen. I have Episode 1 on VHS WS and it just didnt look right quality wise. Plus WS wasnt available as easily as it is on DVD. But what I think is funny is that the people who buy FS will eventually get a widescreen TV and think its broken!!!

I really dont know where people get the theory of FS is more. And I dont know how in the 80's my grandfather (rip) who loved movies so much knew all about widescreen and taught me at around 7yrs of age that ws was the better of the two and he would always gripe about fs, remember how back in the days movies would intro with ws then it would flow into fs? he would always complain about that saying WHY!!?? i want the ws. God bless that man for teaching me then, ive always preferred ws to fs since.

To me, if there is a WS option, I'll take it, but if its only FF and no alternative in the forseeable future, then I'll bite the bullet and get it. So far this hasn't happened a lot.

Well, in that case, Remo is obviously shot "open matte". And the WS version is actually a cropped image.

In fact, the LOTR movies have a little bit more information on the top & bottom than the WS version, but are missing a buttload on the sides. There was some screenshots of the Fellowship that illustrated this comparison.

In my experience, people who prefer Pan-n-scan seem to believe that the black bars in a widescreen version are covering up movie that they should be seeing, and so they're missing out on something. In fact, of course, it's exactly the other way around.

In comparing a 2.35:1 in widescreen versus pan-n-scan, I've used the following arguments:

Would you cut off the top and bottom inch of a new paperback book, just so it could fit in your hand/pocket/purse easier? And do you think you'd understand the plot just as well without those two inches?

Are you happy if the beer bottles in your six-pack are only filled 2/3rds of the way? You shouldn't mind that missing beer - the rest tastes just as good.

Would you care if your new videogame doesn't play the first and last two levels, although the game was originally made with those levels? The other levels work fine...

When you put it in those terms, most people seem to get the idea.

The thing is its all odd, I wont go into it again, but UK TV 1.85.1 versions are best, more info than dvd or fullscreen, but need to burn em to dvd :) still its different for most films I guess.

I'm a bit more anal than that. There are movies I won't buy because they aren't anamorphic widescreen. (Of course, when the OAR is 4:3, then it's not an issue.) But if the OAR is WS, then I always look for the 16:9 indication. I don't have a 16:9 TV yet, but when I do, I want to have as few non-16:9 titles as possible. I think I only have 3 right now. Tango & Cash, Marked for Death, and Volcano. That last one is strange because Volcano was one of those movies Fox released in those VHS clam shells in WS. Same thing with True Lies. And that too isn't 16:9.

Yeah, I think the OP was on target, as well as a later poster. It's a combination of people who got used to FS on VHS and TV and people with small 4:3 TV's that would rather have the screen filled than have black bars on there already tiny screen.

Personally, I've never tried to convert anyone other than a couple of friends. I couldn't care less what random people do, as long as its not affecting me. And I've never had to pass on a DVD in 6 years of having a player because somethign I wanted was only available in FS, so these people aren't affecting my options.

I've known about widescreen since well before the age of DVD's, and no, I never got into buying VHS. I'm not entirely sure how I was first exposed to it. I think it was that one of our PBS stations used to very occasionally show movies letterboxed. There was never a time when I didn't like it.

I can't imagine how people think that the letterboxing is actually covering up part of the picture. Why on earth would there be a format that covers up part of the picture, leaving empty screen? It makes no sense. Why do they think people would want to watch movies that way?

I have a good friend who is quite intelligent and generally has good taste. He prefers widescreen, but it doesn't bother him if a movie is fullscreen. He says he's watching for the story, not analyzing the picture. He seems to see cinematography as a minor, and disposable, art, all the while putting me down a bit for being too anal and not caring about the story.

I think people just get used to seeing P & S on TV and via rentals and accept that as the way that movies should look. How I somehow got exposed to widescreen in the 80's and never went through a period of minding it is probably the real mystery.

I'm always shocked by threads like this, because they all boil down to the same thing. 50% of the people are completely unable to understand why anybody could prefer fullscreen, the other 50% all tell the story that they used to prefer fullscreen until somebody educated them.

Come on, folks, just look at a regular, 1.33 TV. Of *course* there are going to be people who think the image should fill that screen and haven't learned what letterboxing actually does. Especially when you factor in that studios fueled that for twenty or thirty years (the cynic in me assumes that they deliberately did pan-and-scan at first to make sure that people would be missing out on something when watching movies on television, since 2.35 was created in response to television) by not even bothering to release anything in widescreen at all. Then you factor in the fact that, in the vast majority of recent movies, the widescreen version *does* crop picture out. Sure, those 'Remo Williams' screenshots aren't a great example, but the point is just that open matte became a standard because people didn't want to release shitty pan-and-scan versions of their movies.

I mean, I think fullscreen is bad, and pan-and-scan is often unforgivable, but, at the same time, I don't blame the consumers for accepting the only format movies were available in for many decades. In fact, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much the masses have embraced widescreen, even though the stores themselves lag behind and point to outdated information to justify ordering as many fullscreen discs as they do.

I honestly think most people really don't give a shit if a movie if fullscreen, and I really dont blame em. Most people dont take film so seriously like alot do here, and its just a two hour distraction from life for them.

I don't agree with your theory, I think people just believe that FULLscreen is full, and widescreen is just annoying, with black bars.

Back in the days when VHS was the only choice, I had no idea that a "full screen" movie had been altered. I don't think I became aware of it until they started putting the message, "This movie has been altered from its original format. It has been formatted to fit your screen.", on the backs of the boxes and on screen before the movie.

Here's a better example of WS vs. FS from Horrordvds.com. They reviewed a Japanese laserdisc of THE MONSTER SQUAD (which preserved the 2.35:1 aspect ratio), and compared two shots from the Japanese LD to the fullframe US LD.

Widescreen Japanese LD:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-...ld_cshot1l.jpg

Fullscreen US LD:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-...ld_cshot2l.jpg

Here's their second example.

Japanese LD:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-...ld_cshot3l.jpg

US LD:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-...ld_cshot4l.jpg

I bought a FS DVD this week (Yours, Mine and Ours). I didn't want to, but...
- It was only $7.50
- Its only available in FS
- It was filmed in 35 mm, so the DVD may be open-matte.
- Most importantly, my wife really wanted it.

When did Remo come out in any format other than pan & scan? To my knowledge, P&S is all that has ever been available in region 1 ........

Same here and as you say, it's rare. I won't bypass the movie altogether. I'll settle for what I can get and hope that it will eventually see a release in OAR.