Natural Born Killers - Which DVD is widescreen?
 

I recently bought this NBK DVD (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=glance&n=130). Not sure if there are fullscreen and widescreen versions of the DVD with this cover, but one of the features on my particular box says "Letterbox presentation" but neither fullscreen nor widescreen is on it.

When played, bars do appear on the top and bottom of the screen but the frame is restricted to a "fullscreen" presentation on my widescreen TV. Can anyone help me find out which NBK Director's Cut DVD is widescreen? Thanks a lot!

The disc you have is non-anamorphic widescreen. "Widescreen" as a term on dvds does not guarantee an anamorphic transfer. As far as I know, the only dvd of Natural Born Killers that has an anamorphic transfer is the R-rated Warner Bros edition.

Letterboxed and widescreen mean the same thing. If you want a dvd that is mastered to take advantage of a widescreen TV, you need to look for the terms like "Anamorphic widescreen" or "Enhanced for 16:9 televisons"

Thanks for the speedy help, Bugg!

Anamorphic, to be sure, means that it will have both a widescreen presentation and it will automatically fit itself so that it fills all of your widescreen TV, correct?

Because I'm really not that much of a stickler between the anamorphic and non-anamorphic widescreen, and this just seems to be a fullscreen presentation. I have the Stay DVD, and I remember that being only widescreen and it did spread across the whole widescreen TV but there were still black bars at the bottom. This NBK DVD has bars and it is only in the middle of the screen.

Yes and No.

An anamorphic transfer should fill a widescreen TV from side to side, but depending on the aspect ratio of the movie may still have black bars on the top and bottom of your screen.

I guess that last things to ask are:

- in terms of the DC DVD of NBK, is there only one version as far as you know?

and

- should non-anamorphic widescreen DVD at least fill a widescreen DVD from side to side?

Thanks again.

You should be, provided that you have a 16x9 monitor. Anamorphic really makes a big difference, especially if the film is 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio. Once you get used to Anamorphic, there's really no other way to go.

You can learn a lot by spending a little time poking around here: Ultmate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen

No. Non-anamorphic widescreen - aka letterboxing - is designed to show a widescreen movie on a 4:3 screen. On a correctly set up 16:9 TV the result is what you have seen: it fits the entire image, black bars and all, into a 4:3 area in the center of your screen. You should be able to use a zoom button to fill more of your screen, but that will degrade the image quality somewhat.

That is why people raise such a fuss when something is released non-anamorphic.

Thank you, kitkat. That just about answers my question. And thanks to BN2K for the guide.

So in terms of the DC of NBK, non-anamorphic widescreen's the only way to go?

Yes...Trimark released the DC and they're now owned by Lions Gate. So hopefully LG will rerelease the film eventually in 16.9 IF they still hold the rights too it that is. Since if I remember correctly, Stone owns the rights to that version and that's how it got released(since Warner wouldn't release NC-17/unrated versions). So if LG doesn't hold the video rights anymore,Stone might own them.

But after seeing the DC,there is no way I could go back to the R version 16.9 or not.

I felt the same way, so I sought out the R2 version which is BOTH Anamorphic & the DC: NBK R2

Of course, you will need a region-free player, or be able to upgrade your existing player to region-free, and then there's the 4% PAL speed up, but that's a whole different thread! -eek-