Non-Widescreen Version Of DVD Received As Hanukkah Gift

That good old reliable Onion!

http://www.theonion.com/3949/news3.html

 

Wow. Hanukkah really is early this year

Cheers-
Norm

 

"Tyler's got very specific tastes," Bernie said. "He told us he likes those foreign films. What did he call it? The Criterion Collection. Well, Hannah and I tried to find those, but they didn't have them at Target."


I'm still LMAO at that bit.

 

Funny article that has some truth. I have twice now bought a movie gotten home and opened them only to find that they are full screen versions. Talk about being pissed off at ones self. My mother gave my son the full screen version of the first Lord of the Rings movie and we couldn't give it away after we went out and bought the letterbox version. It is tuff training the different family members as to what a full screen vs a letterbox version is when they do not care because they are all still watching VHS full screen movies. They would complain when I would throw in a letterbox VHS version of a movie before dvd's came out, it was like do we really need those black lines at the top and bottom of the TV and it was yes we do as you are seeing the movie as if it was on the big screen.

 

My GF came home with a rental copy of Charlies Angels: Full Throttle in fullscreen the other day.

What makes it worse is that we have a 55" WIDESCREEN TV!

She knows better, but just didn't look closely. I took it back to Blockbuster, they had no widescreen copies available for rent. Amusingly enough, they had the widescreen copies for sale right there at the counter!

 

What happens then? Black bars on the sides of the screen?

 

Exactly. Or gray bars in some cases.

On projection sets, it's supposedly better to s-t-r-e-t-c-h 4:3 material out to prevent burn-in, but it wouldn't do to have the Angels looking short and chubby, would it?

Ryan

PS - That Onion article is a hoot.

 

Poor soul. There's always Half & eBay!

 

OMG! This is almost what did happen to me this year!

We have a gift exchange at work, which I absolutely hate because I never get what I ask for even though we make lists. I made a list of about a 15 DVD's that I am interested in. They're all music DVD's. I put very clearly (or so I thought) at the top "MUSIC DVD'S". We had the exchange last week.

So what did I get? Two audio CD's. One was U2's Joshua Tree which I have owned for 16 years and the other was Eric Clapton's Unplugged which I've owned for 10 years. So I couldn't hurt the person's feelings and had to act like this was the greatest lump of crap I've ever received in my life.

Then..... they proceed to tell me how difficult it was to find this stuff because the titles I wrote down were different than what they found. Instead of the Joshua Tree audio disc, I had asked for The Making Of Joshua Tree DVD.

I suppose I should have listed some movies on DVD. At least then I would have received full-screen VHS copies.

 

While some titles are clearly marked--or have different coloring or design to differentiate widescreen from fullscreen versions--most do not. I've had to be very careful myself....when the Indiana Jones DVD box came out, I first picked up the fullscreen to bring to the counter....hadn't kept an eye out for the fact there was going to BE a fullscreen DVD set Jeez, keep that crap to VHS, Ok? And MIB II, like many editions, looks virtually identical both ways, so you have to be SURE you're getting the right one!

In a way, this goes back to the days of mono/stereo editions for Lp's....when I was a kid, it was pot luck: sometimes I got the mono, sometimes the stereo, didn't know any better. I think a lot of people are like that today about DVD's....natch, the perfect solution is to include BOTH formats in the same package--easily done--but now they're separated. Makes ya wonder....


ED

 

"Well that's exactly it. If you can't find it at Target, then it's too damn hard to track down, so just get the next best thing!", Says Aunt Ester as she leaves exausted from shopping for 8 other children in your family....

It's not the true meaning of Christmas, but it makes an A/V geek fear of what to do, or how to react. Oops!

 

I did accidently buy the full screen version of Drumline when I meant to get the widescreen version. I brought it back to Best Buy unopened and got an exchange.

 

I considered breaking up with a girl because she preferred the full screen versions. I'm still not sure if it was the straw that broke the camel's back...

 

For the ultimate in stupidity, there are actually DVD players that offer a "letterbox elimination" feature, to convert widescreen titles to a "fullscreen" image. A Best Buy clerk tried to taut this to me as a highly desirable feature on a particular model.

 

I just ask for ties, cologne or cuff links. It is way to confusing to people who don't shop for music or movies every week to get it right. Truth is - they don't even understand it's wrong.

I let my teenage kids by me DVD's and CD's for the holidays. I didn't even make a list and I got:

Four Flicks - Stones
Pear Jam Live at the Garden
Pirates of the Caribbean (Widescreen of course)
And a four disc set of Looney Tunes (just got that one last night, don't know the exact title) - fullscreen*




*yeah, I do realize that's proper

 

I bought MOONSTRUCK for my sister with commentary from Cher & the director. I didn't look twice thinking that it would be widescreen given these extras. I just found out that it is only available in fullscreen. Is this the way the director wanted it? Seems strange to me.

 

Mike,

Perfect Bing av!

My JVC does that, but it also will zoom out, so you can windowbox fullscreen(to get every bit of the picture)or get the sides of the widescreen normally not seen. Conversely, I can take any matted or wide DVD and make it fullscreen by zooming in. This is more versatile than this latest addition to inexpensive players.


ED

 

Any retail stores particularly good about a straight-up exchange (P&S for wide) without a receipt (still sealed!)?

 

Amen to that!!! I still can't understand anyone preferring a fullscreen version of a film that's available in widescreen. That had to have sucked ending up with a pan & scan version of Lord Of The Rings. Since that movie was filmed in anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Blown up to TV dimensions, half of the picture is missing ruining the original framing and what the director intended you to see. Yet I guess there are people that are so used to watching movies as they were presented on TV that they think something is wrong when they see those black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Makes me crazy!!! Anyway, end of rant...

 

Egad!

My brother bought me the Indiana Jones Troligy in Fullscreen for Xmas. Ack!

This will be the first time I ever return a gift!

Sean

 

Oh no!

I lucked out. My GF got me the same thing for Christmas, thank goodness it was the widescreen version