Question about widescreen on VHS

One of the great "advances" I always hear people say is how on DVD all the great movies are in WS format rather than FS. Why couldn't this be done in VHS? I remember seeing VHS movies in WS, but granted, there were not many. Was it difficult to achieve, and if so, what was the limitation in doing so?

 

Also, I'm unsure of whether VHS could handle anamorphic widescreen.

 

One of the main problems was a resolution limit. VHS is inherently limited to 240 horizontal scan lines. If a 2.35:1 widescreen movie uses around 1/3rd of that resolution with black bars, you're only left with ~140 scan lines, and this is best case scenario. Blow that up on a big screen and it's going to look rotten.

 

What Sam said. Make a VHS dub of a widescreen DVD or LD, and you'll see what we mean. ALL the detail is gone.

And what Steve said. Most people wanted the whole screen filled with picture and were totally oblivious to the concept of cinematography.

 

You could find a small selection of widescreen VHS tapes at one time. I had letterboxed VHS copies of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the first Austin Powers movie, but the selection was relatively poor, and about that time, DVD came around and made them obsolete.