Widescreen or Fullscreen?

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

Which do you prefer for DVD's you buy and why?

 

[WDWHound]

Widescreen, no doubt about it. Pan and scan drives me nuts. The only way to see all of the original movie is to view it in wide screen.

 

[Jeff in BigD]

You buy a DVD for the extras & surround sound. Why gip yourself by not getting the widescreen?

Back when I still bought VHS tapes (man that seems like eons ago) a guy at suncoast showed me a side by side comparrison & I stopped buying full screen right then & there & haven't looked back.

 

[RoutemanDan]

Originally posted by WDWHound
Widescreen, no doubt about it. Pan and scan drives me nuts. The only way to see all of the original movie is to view it in wide screen.

Ditto.Widescreen it is.

 

[daannzzz]

Absolutely Widescreen. I like to see the film how it was planned, composed andphotographed. Now I just need a bigger TV.

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

I checked out a link that showed a comparison and it was amazing. BUT, some may not like the black at the top and bottom I suppose. I'm still unsure of my preference.

 

[supercarrie]

widescreen, definitely. i hate fullscreen now!

 

[Princess_Aurora]

I didn't really know the difference until DH explained it to me back when we first met. I didn't even know what pan and scan was. But once he showed it to me it was like, "Ewww, that's terrible. Who would only want to watch a movie like that?" So its been widescreen for me ever since. We bought all our VHS movies in widescreen before we got a DVD player and we buy all our DVDs in widescreen format. Its the only way to see the movie the way it was meant to be seen.

 

[Sharon A.]

Widescreen without a doubt. So much so that our tv is now widescreen.

 

[Prince Eric1]

While I prefer full screen, whenever i start to watch a widescreen movie I don't notice the black at the top and bottom after a few minutes. Hopefully i'll hit the lottery and buy one of those new high definition plasma tv's for 10k that are made for the wide screen.

 

[newmousecateer]

DH and I both prefer full screen. For some reason the wide screen bugs both of us.

 

[Jeff in BigD]

Oh man, I thought it was a given that everyone liked widescreen better. I guess it's one more question I have to ask on the date quiz.

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

Our DVD player is for Christmas, so I have not got to play with it yet. But I noticed the Monster's Inc. DVD I bought has the option to do either! Is that normal? I like that!

 

[WDWHound]

Originally posted by BibbidiBobbidiBoo
Our DVD player is for Christmas, so I have not got to play with it yet. But I noticed the Monster's Inc. DVD I bought has the option to do either! Is that normal? I like that!

Many DVDs offer both full and widescreen. I think thats the best way to go, but it does have 2 minor disadvantages. 1) It raises the cost of the DVD slightly and 2) They sometimes have to compress the digital images more than they normally would to get both versions to fit on the DVD. This can result in minor artifacts(slight distortions of the image). You can see these on the Beauty and the Beast DVD if you know where to look, but its not really noticable unless you look really, really closely. It certainly wasn't noticable enough to bother me.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

Originally posted by Jeff in BigD
Oh man, I thought it was a given that everyone liked widescreen better. I guess it's one more question I have to ask on the date quiz.

<font face="Comic Sans MS"><font color=#006400>Jeff!! lol


I like widescreen also because I want to see the whole scene - don't really know what pan & scan are, though I can imagine.

After the movie starts, I don't even notice the blank areas above/below on the screen.

 

[Jeff in BigD]

Basically, this is what pan & scan is:
Let's say that in the theater you have one steady shot of Billy Crystal (on the left) & Robert DeNiro (on the right talking) talking where the camera doesn't move & you can see both actors talking in the frame...

Pan & scan would only have DeNiro in the frame, then when Crystal talks, the camera quickly pans over to him (& DeNiro would now be out of the frame). This rarely looks right & if you ever watch a movie on TV that's been modified to fit the screen & you see what looks like a steady cam pan (or zoom), but it's too fast & looks weird.

 

[raidermatt]

Back when I had a smaller TV, widescreen did bother me. My counter to the "why watch only part of the movie you paid for?" was, "Why should I only use part of the TV screen I paid for?"

But that was because on a 19 in. TV, a wide screen movie is pretty small.

Since that is no longer a problem, its widescreen all the way. Fortunately, that happened before I got a DVD player about 4 years ago, so all of my DVDs are widescreen, if available.

Now, I find the pan and scan used on TV sometimes very distracting.

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

Thanks for all the input and good info. We only have a few DVD's as we could only watch them on the computer until now(I stopped buying VHS early this year). SO, I guess I will be trying Widescreen.

 

[olena]

I've been a fan of widescreen for years. I even had to defend it to family members who argued that the black bars meant that the picture had been chopped. LOL...I still have my 'letterbox' edition of Star Wars on VHS. Now they just call it widescreen. HDTV is also shown in widesreen.

 

[yensid1071]

Widescreen all the way. I've been getting movies in widescreen since buying them on VHS. Now when I buy a DVD, I look for widescreen. In some cases, they don't sell them. Only full screen versions (like A Christmas Story and the Vacation movies). You can just see so much more in widescreen. Just like the movies were intended to be seen.

Olena, that makes two of us! I still have my "letterbox" copies of Star Wars on VHS!

BTW, raidermatt, I love the tag!