I think it was probably the Godfather VHS boxed set. My wife gave me it for Christmas a few years back.

Years ago I rented The Last of the Mohicans on vhs it was widescreen. I didn't like it at first but got used to it real fast. I still didn't understand then why, but I learned real fast after

I rented Manhattan on VHS while in High School. That would be the first WS for me.

I understood enough to know that Manhattan was being presented in the format that it was shown in the theaters- but not enough to stop myself from wondering “Why is Woody Allen using a different format than everyone else?”

It wasn't until I saw the great Siskel & Ebert special on widescreen in the early nineties that I fully understood, and it wasn't until DVDs that I fully accepted those back bars.

It must have been something on Bravo (remember when all their movies were letterboxed and commercial free?) or possibly AMC. For some reason, The Andromeda Strain comes to mind (maybe that reason is because it was the first letterboxed movie I saw LOL). Or maybe Planet of the Apes.

But I do remember loving the way it looked without having it explained to me. That is when I first started recording movies with the idea of building a collection, and I joined Columbia House's VHS club too. I wouldn't mind buying P & S titles either. I just thought 2.35:1 letterboxed looked good, but I didn't really know what I was missing otherwise. It wasn't until I took a film class at community college in 98 that I really learned the difference.

Star Wars SE

I can't really remember........I'm almost 38 and probably saw one at a very early age, but don't recall the movie. I never thought of things like that at the time.

Interesting question though

The first widescreen movie that I purchased was Independence Day on VHS.

Superman which my parents took me to see upon its original theatrical release.

T2 in '92. I just looked at it and thought 'that looks more cinematic'. I dragged a bunch of mates over to watch it on a 25" square tv. They commented on the bars, I said they wouldn't notice, after a while and they didn't

My first exposure to widescreen was the video of Ghostbusters 2 back in 1990. I put it in the VCR and was VERY annoyed at the black bars. The picture was too small. Since I had never seen it before, I had no idea the concept of WS vs P&S. I was used to P&S and now I had the picture being shrunk to the middle of the screen. I thought picture was beind covered up by the bars.


WOW... Little did I know back then. Now I try to get WS for everything I buy. I will still buy P&S if no WS is availiable. It isn't super annoying to me as it seems to be to others.

STAR WARS, way before it was even out on laser in widescreen. It was an excellent pirate. Sorry!

I knew all about panning and scanning before that, though. But that was the first widescreen presentation I had seen on home video.

I figured out something was wrong at any early age, since a movie screen was a rectangle, and TVs were much closer to square. Back in the 70s, there were a lot of 2:35 to 1 Panavision flicks released to theatres, and when I later saw these films on TV, it was obvious to me even as a kid that huge portions of the action were missing and that there was a lot of panning and scanning going on.

I loved the PLANET OF THE APES series on TV, but I knew I was missing a lot. When the widescreen versions came out, it was heaven.

I, too, sensed something was wrong with watching some movies on TV, but I never gave it much thought. I just remember watching certain movies on TV where you couldn't see everything that was going on. I remember watching Basic Instinct on VHS during the scene where Michael Douglass was following Stone and he had to swerve away from an oncoming truck - that scene looks terrible because you literally cannot see what was intended. It was things like this. However, my first widescreen movie I watched on TV was a VHS rental - but I can't think of the name.

My first widescreen on TV experience was after reading the very first issue of "Widescreen Review" when it was less than a 100 pages long. I still have it. Anyways, I already had purchased a ld player and the first movie I bought was Alien after reading the review in the magazine.

"Always" on VHS.

Hated it...at first. After a couple viewing and an explantion I was hooked.

The first i really remember is Halloween. I got the criterion edition when i got my laserdisc player. I guess it was 94/95.

I can remember watching lots of movies where they would start out letterboxed so they didn't have to redo the credits. I always hated it and was glad when it left.

Then my dad found The Abyss in widescreen, the first of many widescreen special editions Fox released on VHS back in the early 90's. That was very cool. He showed me the difference between the old VHS copy and the widescreen. While the bars still bugged me, I appreciated that we had more picture.

It didn't take long for me to get used to the bars after that.