My older brother was watching Transformers stretched recently on his HD set. And yes,he knows all about widescreen and stuff. But he tells me "My tv formats everything to fit the screen!" and even buys 'fullscreen' dvds sometimes thinking there is no difference on his new set.

So no,I don't think it'll ever change!

i work at walmart and i was curious whether widescreen is gaining any ground on full screen so i looked it up on the system.

on new releases, when theres a choice between widescreen and fullscreen, full is still outselling wide 2 to 1. so as long as this is happening, walmart will definitely be keeping fullscreen stocked.

There's no point in buying widescreen because I don't have a widescreen tv. For people with regular tvs, it doesn't matter if you have a widescreen DVD or not, it all comes out the same. See, it's simple, why can't people get that through their head.

Is this a sarcastic joke post?

I've never had a problem buying a widescreen DVD at Wal*Mart or Target.

So, if more of their customer base buys fullscreen, that leaves more widescreen for us. I don't see what the problem is.

Hey, cut him some slack... he has peripheral vision loss. He also wonders why the Last Supper was such a big deal, considering it only involved four people.

..and i'd go as far as to say that about the majority of the employees that usually work the Electronics departments at these stores. Their absolute stupidity and lack of knowledge about the products they sell...well it just blows my mind. Being a DVDTalker should be a pre-requisite for working in Electronics at Wal-Mart or Target...

I do the majority of my DVD-purchasing at Wal-Mart and Target, because they have the best prices and the best deals. The only time I've been unable to find widescreen is when I was trying to pick up Shrek 2 for my daughter. An employee informed me that children's movies at Target are all fullscreen, since "corporate feels that kids don't care about widescreen". Maybe so, but I do!

Interestingly, my WM it's the opposite. Normally the shelf is full of FS while the WS DVDs are all gone... Of course, maybe that WM has a stack of FS titles in the back and bring more out and they just don't have as many in WS.

well played.

Actually, my Grandmother is the only one who’s actually listened to me and after showing her the differences she’ll never buy a DVD in fool screen, unless (with most older TOD titles) it's the only option.

This is as big or perhaps far bigger a problem than the whole full screen/widescreen debate ever was. Roger Ebert just wrote an article about it that rings all too true. My widescreen TV came defaulted to stretch the picture. I suspect most do. How many J6P are ever going to change that setting? As Ebert states, most of the TVs he sees out in the wild are stretching the picture, probably because they're defaulted to. Even worse, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, many people prefer to see the picture stretched rather than see the black or gray bars. I have met them myself. I never even imagined it could be as bad as people buying a full screen DVD and stretching it to fill their screen until I read it in this thread. The stretch issue is something you are going to be hearing about for many, many years and I think it will become even more frustrating than the full screen/widescreen issue has been.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...NTARY/70925003

Not to mention since the introduction of widescreen TVs, the term "full screen" is a complete misnomer. It doesn't fully fill the screen of those TVs. You can't even put the blame on consumers at this point. "Full screen" is now nothing more than blatant false or misleading advertising.

I don't think Wal-Mart will ever stop selling Fullscreen crap because their image is 'Family Friendly' but don't know if I can say the same for Target though. Seems like they would stop but don't know.

The problem then becomes if most people buy fullscreen, why should Walmart buy as many widescreen copies to sell. I have noticed that alot of their catalog (6.88, 9.88 etc) titles are fullscreen only, in store anyway. There are many titles that they sell for a decent price that they just dont offer the widescreen version.

well, thats the other issue. i dont know the ratio of what is stocked, only sold. once the widescreens are gone, i dont see them getting replenished very often, so youre left with all fullscreen on the racks. in the case of HOT FUZZ, al the widescreens were gone in a few days and now all that is left is fullscreen.

would walmart sell more wide if they were available? probably not but it might be interesting to see the results.

I'm thinking that the amount of fullscreens on the shelf is simply because the tide is changing...or more people are getting the actual point of OAR and, combined with their new overly expensive television setups, are going after them first and leaving the fullscreens to people who simply don't care.

You know, it's one thing when people buy 16:9 tv's and stretch the picture because they don't know better, but what really bugs me is when you go into a store and look at the televisions for sale and they have them set this way! How in the *$%* can you demonstrate the quality of a tv when you are looking at a horrible picture that's smooshed down and stretched out. Amazing.......

My 10-year-old daughter didn't like widescreen when she was only a few years old. It didn't take long to educate her on the benefits. Anytime we saw something on TV, I would point out things like, "You notice how you hear that person talking, but you can't see them on the screen?" Or, "You notice how the camera has to keep moving back and forth so you can see what they're looking at?" Didn't take long at all. Completely baffles me how some people would rather deal with that crap than black bars.

It was a big problem when a lot of people here were rushing to Wal-Mart to get the special bonus disc with Hot Fuzz. A lot of Wal-Marts didn't even get in widescreen versions.

To be fair though, at least with the plasma sets there's the possibility of burn-in. This is a high risk if they're left to display black bars on the sides constantly, especially if they're set with the brightness/contrast up high and they don't run them through a break-in period. They eventually will want to sell those display models, and they won't get as much if there's noticeable burn-in.

Then of course, there's good old-fashioned ignorance, where people will be more impressed with an image that fills the screen, despite the distortion.

This whole issue would go away if TV stations would start airing things consistantly in 16x9. Joe Sixpack is not going to bother educating themselves until their daytime stories and reality shows start showing bars.

And trying to find widescreen editions at my Walmart is always a pain. I have to hunt for them because they are vastly outnumbered by foolscreen copies and sometimes widescreen versions aren't even carried beyond the initial shipment.

Anyone wanna get me a fullscreen version of the BTTF trilogy box set?

Seeing I already have the European release, in widescreen, and I want the R1 release just for the additional extras, I'd like the option for open matte, too

Well, again, I didn't have a problem getting that particular disc in widescreen at Wal*Mart. Maybe the WM near me tends to stock more wide.... dunno. Color me lucky.

I'd also be interested to know if good ol' JSP changes the audio from DD5.1 to DTS if it is available on the disc ??

(wont go into questions of whether he knows what DTS is !!)


If he wont be swayed from Foolscreen discs - how will the HD people get them to 'convert' to all those other audio acronyms ??
(DTS-ES, DD Plus, DTS MA, PCM etc - imagine JSP coming in trying to 'sprout' these terms and getting them wrong !)




(**** I'd be keen to know if even the guys on this forum do the same as well - or do you just leave it at the default DD format)

Education can help in some cases, but it won't solve it. There are people who know full well why those bars are there, but they don't care. They want their screens filled, composition be damned. I've read statements like "well the action is in the middle of the screen so that's all that's important," "I paid for a 50-inch TV and I want to use all of it," and "it's a shame we have to deal with black bars in this day and age" (as if somehow a different TV shape would cause anything that doesn't fit to magically fall in line).

I'm hoping a plague will come along and take care of those people.