I have noticed that a lot of new fox dvds do not say anamorphic widescreen anymore. Does this mean they no longer find it necessary to or they're not 16x9? I've noticed this on the Bond rereleases among other titles.

I think in Fox's case, they just don't find it necessary since it's now the norm. But I also have many random columbia/tristar releases, as well as some from other companies that do not list anamorphic but are. Except there's no rhyme or reason to it--a certain modern release from whatever studio will not list anamorphic, but ones before it and subsequent releases that came out afterward from said studio will once again designate 'anamorphic'. Very random and very odd. One example would be some of Columbia's earlier 'flipper' releases like Sex, Lies and Videotape--with widescreen on side a and fullscreen on side b--no 16x9 listed. I stayed away from these for a long time assuming they weren't anamorphic--then came to find out the widescreen side is.

Is this the case with The Abyss rerelease that just came out on June 5th? Can anyone confirm this? I remember this being talked about in a thread somewhere but never found out the answer.

non-anamorphic for The Abyss again

It's non-anamorphic but they put anamorphic on the back

http://images2.dvdempire.com/gen/movies/1319457bh.jpg

^Those bastards did it again.

Updated my thread about this deception
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=503003

Yeah, scared the crap out of me when I saw that on The Mrs. Doubtfire SE I snagged. Luckily it was anamorphic, but if they're still releasing titles non-anamorphic like the repackaged Abyss, they should keep the note on.

The new bare-bones release of "The Great Escape" simply says "widescreen" -- anyone know if it's anamorphic?

It is, but it lacks all of those sweet-ass extras.

Didn't hear about this release, when did it come out? Have a UPC? If it is mislabeled, I'd like to list it in my thread:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=503003

Funny they didn't seem to think so for the Star Wars OOT

I'm only seeing the old single disc release on Amazon and DeepDiscount. The new one has near-identical cover art to the 2-disc release and goes for $10 everywhere I've seen it.

The Star Wars movies were listed as 4:3 Letterbox Format.

This is true, but I was referring to Alkaline's post where he mentioned that Fox thinks its unnecessary, as its the norm now (which it is). I thought it was funny that they recognize that "its the norm now" so much so that they don't find it necessary to indicate it on many packages, but not enough so to provide an anamorphic version of the above mentioned films.

Macho King recently purchased the steelbook 2-disc Die Hard and was a little bummed that the contents were identical to the 2001 5-Star release. And there is no mention of Anamorphic Widecreen on the box either. Simply 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Macho King talks in 3rd person... so 10 years ago....

ooooooooh yeah!!!! DIG IT!!!

I was a little miffed when I received a couple of recent M-G-M war titles and they were not listed as "anamorphic widescreen." Fortunately, they are 16x9.

This new labelling policy kinda sucks since M-G-M has released and re-released non-16x9 widescreen DVDs in the recent past (as well as Fox with The Abyss, apparently, as noted above, but that issue has persisted because that cut was created for LD? I think that's the case, but I haven't seen that movie since I rented the VHS years and years ago and I admittedly haven't been paying very close attention.)

If you can, please update my thread with those titles, so we can keep track of these packaging errors. Thanks!

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=503003

Just picked up the Platoon steelbook from Fry's. Didn't see any mention of it and was wondering. Guess they just stopped listing.

I will update that thread, but it may now prove a little ambitious since it appears that all Fox (including M-G-M) titles are now omitting "anamorphic" from the grid on the back on the cover on widescreen titles. This labelling change appears to have happened sometime this year.

"Anamorphic" is included on the grid on the Bond Ultimate Edition titles in the four box sets (although the initial post in this thread suggests that the single movie versions omit this designation.) However, the three widescreen titles in the Ernest Hemingway Film Collection are 16x9, but only noted as "Widescreen" on the grid.

I don't think I noticed the Hemingway titles were missing the designation when I bought that set since I had no expectation that Fox would put out a non-16x9 widescreen title; M-G-M, on the other hand, has a history of inconsistency regarding 16x9 formatting of widescreen titles on DVD. I'm not sure if I've purchased any other recent Fox or M-G-M widescreen titles this year.

On the topic of MGM/Fox DVDs, does anyone know if the new Priscilla DVD is anamorphic?

Maybe I don't know anymore what's going on at Fox.

i just picked up Idiocracy and That Thing You Do, both Fox, both released relatively recently, and both designated as 16x9 (via "Anamorphic") on the back cover grid.

I'll assume that both are 16x9, though I haven't verified that this is the case.