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Harry Potter - Why is Warner so happy for fullscreen? (1 Viewer)

David Stone

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I picked up my OAR DVD of "Harry Potter" this morning and noticed a very disturbing thing.

The first stop was CompUSA, where the manager-on-duty defended his lack of OAR versions by informing me he received 70 full-screen copies, but only 7 (seven!) OAR ones for today's advertised sale.

Next stop was Target, which had set up a large end-of-isle display complete with artwork header. From top to bottom, there were 3 shelves of full-screen VHS tapes , 3 shelves of full-screen DVD's and one single row of OAR DVD's at the bottom.

Wal-Mart was the last stop, which had a large free-standing floor display that appeared to have come from the distributor. The display was four-sided, with each side divided down the middle to display both VHS tapes and DVD's. Similar to Target, all the VHS tapes were full-screen, as were the top three of the four rows of DVD's. Only the half-row at the bottom of each side stocked OAR DVD's.

When I got home, I checked online and there doesn't even appear to be a wide-screen version available on VHS tape (as with other popular films).

Did each of these retailers happen to decide to on their own to stock so much full-screen product (and so little OAR), or did the Warner Home Video distributors suggest it to the wholesale buyers?

Getting my films in OAR is one of the main reasons I switched to Laserdisc and, in turn, DVD (and I still refuse to purchase "Space Jam" until a proper OAR is released), so why is WHV taking a step back and trying to push full-screen on the public now?
(Besides the obvious greed-motivated reason that today's full-screen customer will get be coming back and purchase the same film a second time to get OAR when HDTV becomes more popular.)

Or did I answer my own question?
 

Jeff Kleist

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I'm guessing Warner is pushing it behind out backs. They probably are offering prepacks with 1 row widescreen, and the rest P&S and that's what retailers are buying
 

Patrick McCart

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It's the store's fault.

When I picked up my LBX DVD of Willy Wonka, the Best Buy I went to had mostly the LBX versions...in fact, they had 4 rows of them and only 1 for the open matte version.

I was able to find both versions of Ocean's Eleven at a local mall, but the local video store in town had only the cropped versions (also had P&S versions of AI, Spy Game, and the JP movies)

A lot of stores think they won't sell and LBX versions when there's a 1.33:1 version out...
 

Randy A Salas

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When I picked up my LBX DVD of Willy Wonka, the Best Buy I went to had mostly the LBX versions...in fact, they had 4 rows of them and only 1 for the open matte version.
But the P&S version had been out for several weeks at that point, while the widescreen version was new.
 

Jesse Skeen

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I REALLY wish they would stop calling it "FULLSCREEN"! (Call it "Filled Screen" instead!)
Anyway, I bought Harry Potter at Fry's, which ONLY had the widescreen version in stock. Since the second disc is only single-layer, they really should have made this either a single disc or included BOTH versions in the same package instead of making everyone feel like there's competition between the two.
 

Dick

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I buy my DVD's at K-Mart now. I ignore Wal Mart completely. K-Mart carries all four of the VAULT DISNEY titles and always have widescreen versions of DVD's when there are two versions. Let's help a shaky company get back on its feet a tiny bit by saying "Thanks" for their DVD choices!
 

John Berggren

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With the aggravating lack of content on the second disc surrounded by the obnoxious hoops you need to go through to get to it, I'm thinking a dual layer could have held the MAR version, even with the "gobs" of features they provided.

I still look forward to a more complete SE.
 

Donald W

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I work for Longs Drugs and we got 2 48 piece sets of the Harry Potter DVD and VHS which were all FullScreen...I asked about the fact of us getting mixed boxes *1/2 wide-1/2 Full* and they said that Warners didn't have the boxes or orders done that way...the other thing that my managers told me that people were sick of the widescreen DVDs and that they wanted their DVDs to be just like there old VHSs in fullscreen...I think that this is a load of crap but I don't know...most people have made the transfer over from VHS to DVD and I think they want the format that we helped make big just to be like old dumb VHS for no reason, or that people still don't understand OAR at all when they watch a film...as for people carring Fullscreen over Widescreen here is some stuff I've seen-
The Targets here in Fresno only carried the Widescreen Ocean's Eleven and it looked like they had sold many of them, the Longs where I work had the Fullscreens only and we only sold maybe one or two out of a set of 20
The Best Buy in Fresno has never carried the Widescreen DVD of Willy Wonka because none of the Fullscreen copys sold at all...I had to get mine at Tower Records that only seems to have Widescreen DVD's in stock

And last, I'm holding out for a better Harry Potter DVD thats a SE...not the DVD thats out now with the crapy kids games that I could care less about...I hope Warners goes back and does a nice SE with some making of stuff and other goodies for us older Harry Potter fans
 

Sean Conklin

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I buy my DVD's at K-Mart now. I ignore Wal Mart completely. K-Mart carries all four of the VAULT DISNEY titles and always have widescreen versions of DVD's when there are two versions. Let's help a shaky company get back on its feet a tiny bit by saying "Thanks" for their DVD choices!
You betcha Dick!! I will gladly browse KMart for DVD choices first from now on if I find this is true!

But I must commend my local WalMart, they do carry a good selection and quantity of OAR DVD's.
 

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