Cashier's inadvertently recommending F/S over W/S (1 Viewer)

[Joshua Clinard]

Wow - I was just looking at my site stats, and I noticed that the number of flyer downloads has increased dramatically over the last 4 days, I believe because of this thread. You guys have downloaded almost 100 copies of my flyer in the last 4 days alone. Usually I don't get more than 50 flyer downloads in a month! By the way, this is good news, and I've plenty of bandwidth to spare, so keep downloading. Thanks guys (and girls)!

Also, feel free to link me if you find the site useful. Let me know, so I can add your name/site to the supporters section.

 

[David_Blackwell]

Yep, the Sci-Fi Channel shows many of their movies in widescreen. It's great seeing Red Planet in OAR.

I have been buying widescreen on VHS (when I could get it- VHS titles like The Abyss SE, Stargate Special edition, and Star Trek: First Contact ) before the days of DVD. I strongly prefer widescreen on DVD over full screen.

 

[Jonathan Dagmar]

Now another bad story. I was in blockbuster the other day, and I guy in front of me was buying a copy of return of the king. he walks up to the counter and the stupid girl asks him if hes sure he wants to widescreen version. He says, oops, no, and he runs back and picks up a fool screemn copy. Then he makes some dumb comment about how he only has a 19" screen.

Whatever. I just can't stand how shortsighted some people are. I mean, are you gonna have a crappy 19" tv forever? Doesn't it make sense to buy the best version of a film available? You can zoom the freaking thing if it bothers you that much.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

Ugh...say it ain't so. There was a time when AMC was a fairly decent classic movie channel. Now, well, now they completely suck to put it mildly. Take a look at their movie selection. Is Rumble in the Bronx really a "classic" movie? Also, in addition to censoring their films they actually have countless commercial interruptions. And I can't remember the last time I actually saw a widescreen movie in its OAR on AMC.

TCM, on the other hand, still rules.

 

[Chris Will]

I love your flyers Joshua. The only thing I wish was different was on the business cards. I wish it said fullscreen instead of pan & scan just so the average person would relate it better to the DVDs they see on store shelves. Great job though.

 

[Sean Aaron]

I think it's been said in older threads, but having wider availability of widescreen TVs would result in more widescreen tv broadcasts and negate the need for "fullscreen" DVDs. As was stated by another European resident, there are not fullscreen/widescreen releases. You get the odd sub-license which is only square format (Glengarry Glen Ross comes to mind *ugh*), but it's quite the exception.

You have to hunt to find a square tv here and usually they're the small ones for the kitchen or the spare room. Movies are always shown OAR and usually uncut (even on commercial stations). I just don't get why widescreen TVs in North America seem to be limited to expensive HDTVs, plasmas and the like. There is a wide selection of sizes, brands, and price leves for widescreen CRTs here, both flatscreen and curved, and many by brands that exist in the US already, so I don't see why you cannot get the 28" Sony Wega I saw in the supermarket yesterday for £300, for example, without going to some specialty retailer.

 

[Tory]

I've seen video rental stores do it, actually, I've been to a Blockbuster that put a sticker over the widescreen side of a widescreen/fullscreen flipper.

Now at stores, Best Buy and Circuit City sales people seem so disinterested that I have never had such trouble, as for Toys R Us, I don't know why one would bother. My local Wal-Mart had an interesting circumstance happen when the Indiana Jones box set was released. While they had both widescreen and fullscreen versions, they had considerablly more fullscreen than widescreen, probably about 4/5 of the space devoted to the title. The fullscreen section had a couple of hits but the shelf cleared of all widescreen super fast. After repeat visits to Wal-Mart the Widescreen section of the title grew in space devotion as the fullscreen shrunk yet still the shelves were nearly clear of widescreen as it was selling more and the full screen was barely touched. A majority of people in my ignorant backwards town are now bright enough to pick widescreen over fullscreen.

 

[Eric_B_C]

Regarding TV and OAR, on IFC Canada, which I had for a while, ALL their movies were seemingly broadcast in P&S. I wrote and bitched at them and asked them why, given they're a station that supports independent film, and thus should pay respect to the OAR, why they showed movies that way. They claimed it was because "that's how we're given them"... Still don't believe it.

I give up educating people. I've educated people I care about. My wife didn't know the difference until she met me (I've been buying widescreen where available on VHS since I started buying movies). I've educated my Dad too. Everyone else, I give up. Fine, you want a movie with 44% of the picture missing? Then you're an uneducated moron who needs to look at a movie screen, look at a TV, then go "Hey... Hang on a minute..." (That's how I figured it out all those years ago.)

You really like losing a big chunk? Then fine, here, have this copy of your favourite authors latest book... Just to make you feel right at home, I've cut 44% of the book off. Enjoy!

 

[Tory]

I hope you painstakingly picked the portion of the page where the most action is taking place to keep.

 

[Steve K.H.]

We must have a hundred threads on this topic but it's fun to revisit it once in a while.

Personally, I've come full circle. I can understand why people with smaller 4:3 sets prefer the larger image display with P&S. I don't bother them anymore. Others don't escape the wrath however.

I can't figure out why the teller at a local video outlet said to me she prefers P&S on her parent's 57" 16 x 9 though.

 

[Eric_B_C]

Tory: Absolutely, though I've yet to figure out how to get the book to have artifical pans

Steve: I had a 28 inch TV that went kablammo a couple of months back. I could only afford to replace it with a second hand 19 inch. Quite the drop I can tell you. My immediate thought was how hard it would be to go back to a screen that size (though I used to watch widescreen movies on my 14 inch portable TV)... You know what? It took me about two minutes of a movie to not even notice it.

As far as I'm concerned, the "Oh I have a small TV" is a crap excuse. Not because of what one person said on here ("So, you'll never have a bigger tv?") but because it simply doesn't matter WHAT size the TV is. I've gone from a lovely stereo 28 inch to a mono 19 inch. Unless you have one of those small pocket TV's, the size of your box is no excuse.

 

[Marc_Sulinski]

But with a pocket-sized TV, you will be so close to the screen that you should be able to watch a widescreen movie with no problem.

 

[Eric_B_C]

Good point

 

[David Grove]

How about using a little object lesson for those informal, spontaneous encounters in the store:

Just pull out a dollar bill of any denomination, and say something like, "This is your dollar." Then, fold in the sides and say, "This is you dollar in 'Full Screen'-- which would you prefer in you wallet?"

DG

 

[Charles J P]

Unfortunately this would probably condemn HD-DVD to the halls of SACD and DVD-A. It would never reach critical mass without playing to the masses. We must realize that we fanatics are the minority and we need j6p to get a product off the ground.

There are any number of products where WE are the average consumer and dont purchase what the "fanatic" would. How would you like it if the next time you were at the grocer picking up a case of Bud Light, someone ran up to you with a brochure about the history of beer and explained how Bud Light was fairy pee and not "real" beer. You'd probably tell them to screw off. Why do we feel the need to crusade agains P&S?

 

[Malcolm R]

Because you can always buy the Bud Light if that's your preference. But there isn't always a widescreen release for some films on DVD. P&S only is becoming more and more acceptable at some studios.

 

[Charles J P]

Yes, but the P&S folks feel the same way when there is only a Widescreen release. My point is not that we shouldnt all want P&S to die (we should, in this case its objectively wrong IMO since its not OAR) but walking up to a person in a store seems silly and unecessary.

 

[Malcolm R]

While at Wal-Mart on Monday, I heard an interesting exchange between a customer and an associate. A customer wanted "Lord of the Rings: ROTK."

Customer: I'm looking for the new LOTR movie...
Associate: Are we out? (begins walking to shelf to look)

Customer: ...the full screen version.
Associate: (immediately turns around and walks back to counter) I don't think we're even carrying the full screen version.

Customer: You're not?!
Associate: You get more picture on the widescreen version anyway.

Customer: Well, maybe, but I just have to have full screen.
Associate: Sorry.