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

[Harminder]

I was standing in line yesterday to buy Return of the King at Best Buy, and the man in front of me was doing the same. When he got up to the cashier, she asked him if he was sure he wanted the widescreen version. He asked, "What's the difference?" She said to him, "In widescreen you get those black bars at the top and bottom. With full screen your whole TV takes up the picture." The guy obviously not knowing much about DVD's and OAR, thinking he's actually going to get more picture with full screen, asked to exchange it for the fool screen version. Needless to say, I just stood there shaking my head.

When I got up to the cashier, I asked if the customer who just left indeed did switch widescreen for the full screen version. She said he did. I told her, "What a mistake." She asked, "You liked widescreen (cringing her face a bit)?" I said, "It's the only way to go." I explained to her that with full screen you loose 33% of the picture (please don't kill me if I got the number wrong LOL) and it's the way it's meant to be seen by the makers of the movie. She just stood there nodding her head and promptly asked for my debit card. LOL

I'm not saying this is being done on purpose, but I wonder, are people being dooped by cashier's at stores who don't explain to customer's properly what the difference between widescreen and full screen is? I suspect so. Anyone else got a story to tell?

 

[Lev-S]

I made WS vs FS signage for my store for the ROTK release day. It's amazing how many people get angry when they find out that they've been getting screwed out of the movie. One guy actually said "I don't believe you" in a challenging tone, but I stood my ground and by the end of the explanation, he thanked me profusely because I had been the first to tell him the truth. As for the cashiers, well, exactly the same as the one above...

 

[john mcfadden]

That and since Best Buy has all those new fangled HDTV's im sure they dont want to sell any of those ! :b ...

 

[Adam Portrais]

I was looking at TVs in a Circuit City one day and I overheard a sales clerk talking to a guy about TVs, DVDs and such. I didn't hear all of it but I did hear the sales guy say: "And when you get a DVD make sure that it says Fullscreen otherwise you get those black bars." I just laughed out loud and they both looked at me. I said, "Don't listen to a thing this guy says. With fullscreen you loose a ton of your picture." They just stood there like I was crazy. "Go watch LOTR in widescreen and then watch it in fullscreen and you tell me which one is better," I said. They stood there as if I was an alien come to harvest their bodies on order to take over the world. At that point I just walked away laughing.

 

[Malcolm R]

A cashier at Best Buy not knowing about the products they sell. Pardon me while I put on my "big surprise" face. :rolleyes

 

[Haggai]

Harminder, why didn't you jump in and try to save that guy from his own (and the cashier's) stupidity before he left the store? Some people clearly need our help!

 

[Harminder]

To be honest, even if I did, who's he going to believe? A person who works at Best Buy and might know what she's talking about or some guy coming out of no where and trying to do the job of a Best Buy employee and also holding SpongeBob SquarePants Season 1 for purchase? LOL And besides, Adam already tried that and it fell on deaf ears.

If I was in Lev's position, I would have been more then happy to try to convince the man, but sadly I could not. And yes Lev, you are a hero!

 

[Vincent-P]

I take a little offense at this. I am a cashier at Best Buy and am probably the most pro-OAR guy you can meet. Just this saturday I laid out a 10-minute chastisement of my grandmother for saying that she preferred fullscreen over widescreen while we were watching "Matchstick Men" after my college graduation dinner. I go out of my way to try and convince customers not to buy fullscreen and have succeeded in preventing many of them from making that mistake. I don't know everything about everything in the store, but I'm pretty up with it. I know other employees who also are very pro-widescreen. Sometimes there are just stupid cashiers, but there's no "pro-fullscreen" conspiracy.

A Best Buy cashier who is not a moron,
Vincent

 

[Haggai]

Heh, the old "SpongeBob SquarePants credibility deficit" kicked in, too bad.

 

[Harminder]

And I salute you Vincent, we need more people like you in stores. I never said there's a conspiracy, but there is an indirect promotion of full screen due to the lack of knowledge by the cashier.

This isn't the first time it's happened. I saw the same thing happen at Future Shop when The Matrix Revolutions was released.

Keep up the promotion of widescreen Vincent. Getting through to 10 people, changing from full screen to widescreen, is better then 10 people going the other way around.

 

[Jonathan Dagmar]

I have just been hired by best buy. I tell you I fully expect to be the most freaking knowledgable employeee the organization has ever seen. I don't think anyone means to suggest that all Best Buy employess are clueless, just that a LOT of them are. And that much is true.


I am actually more than a little aprehensive about the whole thing. I know I am going to encounter a lot of well meaning morons. The kind of people who insist that full screen is better are the same people that cut you off in traffic and then smile and wave....

 

[Jonathan Dagmar]

I just wanted to share a positive experience in the widescreen wars. I firmly belive that MOST people buy fool screen out of blissful ignorance. They see the term FULLSCREEN, which is a MISLEADING term, and they conclude that the fullscreen version displayes the full picture and that the widescreen version is missing the top and the bottom. If all pan and scan movies were labelled as such, it might invite a lot more people to actually inquire about the difference.

Anyway, I was browsing DVD's at my local HMV the other day and I watch a lady come in. She head's straight for the new release wall were there are dozens of copies of "Miracle". She inittially pick through them and grabs a widescreen copy. I thought to myself "hey cool! a middle aged mother type that knows what shes doing!". However to my dismay she put that copy back and grabbed a pan and scam version and took it to the counter. When she got there the guy asked her if she was sure she wanted that version and explained why widescreen was better. She chnaged her mind and bought the widescreen. I gave the guy a thumbs up, but he did't seem to understand why and just looked at me like I was a freak.

Oh well....

 

[Sven Lorenz]

When a movie is shown on US TV do they show the widescreen or the fullscreen version?

In Germany they almost always show the widescreen version - and I think that's why there's this fullscreen problem in the US.

In Germany (and most of Europe) there are no seperate Widescreen and Fullscreen DVD editions - there are only Widescreen editions because everybody knows that this is the way to watch a movie.

So the American TV stations are really to blame for the fullscreen problem - if you're used to watching fullscreen from the days before DVD then suddenly switching to widescreen must seem strange.

 

[Jim Dalton]

My mother-in-law and I have had this conversation many times. She lives in another state (no pun intended. Then again...LOL) and I will head down soon and have her sit there while I do an A-B comparison.

Face it, some people don't know any better, whether they are a relative or a cashier. In that case, a little education can go a long way.

 

[jonathan_little]

The only station that regularly broadcasts movies in their correct aspect ratio in the USA is Turner Classic Movies. Other channels, even many HDTV 16:9 channels, usually modify the aspect ratio to fit the 4:3 (or in the case of HDTV, 16:9) screen.

 

[Mike.B]

Of course there is! Even in the weekly ads they produce, they always have the fullscreen version pictured if two versions are available. Then, they will have a little tiny graphic ((WS)) on the picture to let the "fools" who prefer the OAR version know that they are also carrying that version.

Of course not all Best Buy (or Circuit City or Target, etc.) employee is that ignorant, but many are. And considering that they are working in an industry that should definitely be PRO-OAR, it is a very disproportionate amount. In any case, to all employees at these stores who are putting forth the effor to educate customers: "Thank you!"

 

[Devin_C]

It would be nice if there were a few sites around with easily printable (GENERIC) comparison flyers. I suspect that many (smaller anyways) retailers might have no aversion to posting something like that if someone provided it to them and it didn't advertise competitors or something. Free = Good, usually.

Even stickers or business card-sized items might be nice (though of course I'm not condoning smacking stickers on retailer DVDs ). Print a sheet at home, smack a few in your pocket, and rescue a befuddled consumer. Even if they ball it up and throw it away five seconds later, at least you tried.

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Wonder what "those people" are thinking. Do they think the black bars are there 1) to annoy people who hate them and 2) because certain weird people just happen to like black bars on the screen? In other words - do they think the black bars are pointless?

 

[Tim Hoover]

Devin, it's funny that you should ask that question. www.widescreen.org

 

[Bill Williams]

I remember all too well going to Suncoast some years back in my pre-DVD days and getting a widescreen video of a film (I think it was either "Twister" or the first "Mission: Impossible" movie). The cashier actually had the nerve to say, "Are you sure you don't want to get the fullscreen version?" I about went off on him, but I calmly said, "No thank you, this is the version I prefer."

A couple of years ago, when I went to Toys-R-us to get "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" on DVD, all they had in stock was the foolscreen version and no widescreen versions. They had a note on their walls saying, "Sorry, we're all out of 'Star Wars: Attack of the Clones' in widescreen format." One fellow asked, "What's the difference between widescreen and fullscreen?" I explained to him the benefits of widescreen, of getting the complete picture as opposed to getting half of the picture in a foolscreen version. He was really grateful that I explained it to him, and he said that he wanted to go look for the widescreen version. Chalk up another convert!