Good for Circuit City... (1 Viewer)

[todd s]

I was looking at my Circuit City flyer today. And they show the Harry Potter release. But, what was nice is that under the price for the dvd was "Widescreen". Their was no mention of a pan & scam release.

 

[Kyle McKnight]

Good for them. Maybe, like at GameStop, they're only gonna be selling the Wide-Screen version? I don't know if it helped, or if it was already pre-decided. But a little over a month ago, when I first got word we were going to be offering a "trade in 2 used DVD's for Harry Potter" special, I looked up Harry Potter in our computers to see which version we'd be ordering. It didn't state WS or FS, so when I sent an email to our corporate offices trying to get clarification, I made sure to put in comments about seeing what the director intended, not chopping off part of the picture, and how most people won't 'not' buy a movie because it's full screen, but a lot won't buy it if it is. Needless to say, a couple days later I got a reply stating our company would be ordering the Wide-screen version.

 

[David Lambert]

Kyle, you work at Gamestop? Heh. I used to manage for Software Etc. Is Maurice Holdgraf out of KC your Regional Director? He used to be my District Manager, a long time ago. In fact, I also know President Dan DeMatteo "personally" as well; we worked together long before the Babbages merger, when he was still VP of Marketing. The topic was sales of Commodore Amigas, if that helps gauge the timeframe!
Ah, memories. I haven't spoken to Dan or Maurice in about six months, come to think of it. I'll have to commend them on the OAR decision when next we speak. Thanks for mentioning it; I'll do what I can to support it from the backend. Just make sure the sales support it. And don't forget the MST's! (inside joke )

 

[Kyle McKnight]

David, I'm not sure who our Regional Director is, but my store being located about 10 miles away from corporate, I can assure you Dan & Co. stop in frequently. I'm a part time 3rd Key while going to college. It's too bad highly visible titles like Harry Potter are not released in Wide-screen only, to get the ball rolling, but we've read that argument many times at this here forum . HA! MST's...still as important as ever.

 

[David Lambert]

If you ever run into Dan, and I am *serious*, tell him David Lambert of Memphis says hello, and I'm sorry that I let that Sullivan dude waste his time (he'll know what I mean). If he blanks on who I am, remind him of the time he playfully wanted to choke my neck at the manager's conference when I brought up Amigas!
In fact, maybe I'll just dig up his # and call him...

 

[Kyle McKnight]

David...I hope you haven't made that call yet. What did I get in today? To my surprise (and the disappointment of 4 people who reserved it) we got 12 copies of P&S Harry Potter. I proceeded to call the 4 GameStops in the immediate area, and all they got were P&S copies too. It looks like that's all the company ordered, and they're loosing customers over it. I noted to my district manager that 4 people canceled their reservations, I hope he passes that up the ladder.

 

[David Dennison]

I would not give CC too much widescreen praise either. My CC had a large display of P&S disks. Unfortunately, the display did not make it clear which version was stacked below. You had to read the fine print to notice it was P&S. I dug through the display but found now sign of widescreen. Then I went over to the new release section, and they had a bunch more P&S copies with just a small handful of widescreens below.

I mentioned the lack of widescreen copies to the cashier. She said that she was the one setting up last night and originally started displaying all the widescreens in the main display area. However, she was instructed that they had to put the P&S there instead. I told her thanks for trying.

I would like to think the widescreen version was outselling the P&S by the fact that there were very few left, but I did not really see any empty space where the widescreen would have been.

At least I got my widescreen copy of Harry Potter.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Too bad there's no DIVX version

 

[David Lambert]

Kyle, I *will* still bring it up whenever I talk to him. Just in a different way is all!

 

[Qui-Gon John]

At my Ckt City, Plantation (Flamingo & Sunrise), they had no more WS left at 3:30 pm and a bunch of P&S.

 

[Adam_WM]

Well, I gotta tell ya, at my CC, we got freakin' boatloads of HP's. We got over 700 copies. 400+ P&S, and 300+ WS. Very sad. It was damn near impossible to try and convert people. Usually I can get about 90% of people to buy WS, but yesterday was more like

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Go to this web-site, blow up some of those pics, maybe then you can convince them.
Ws vs. FS Comparison

 

[John Berggren]

It would have been better had my CC carried more than 10% OAR. It makes me think that WB might have offerred prepacks that were MAR heavy since CC has been getting progressively better about carrying and championing WS.

 

[LeeL]

FWIW, the St. James Future Shop here in Winnipeg, the Harry Potter WS&S ratio was about 10:1.
As well, while grabbing my copy of the movie, I heard three different customers ask three different employees which was better, Widescreen or Full. Each time, the clerks said "Widescreen", and that's what the customer took. Too bad, because I really wanted to do the whole "do you have a dollar?" comparison for some of those folks (of course, we Canucks don't have dollar bills, so I'd have to ask for a fiver, which is still roughly equal to about 40 cents US).

 

[David Dennison]

The link listed above by John Co appears to advocate the full screen version over the wide screen. Are these pictures accurate comparisons of the two dvd versions?

 

[Chris Duran]

At Wal-Mart the ratio of Harry Potter DVD's was something like 700 Pan and Scan to less then 100 Widescreen. I think it has something to do with Warner in those big displays of cardboard they have tons of Pan and Scan on the first three rows on the top, and widescreen on the very bottom, of course people just pick up the one that is on the top thinking they are all the same, I of course moved the widescreen version from the bottom and did my best to put the Pan and Scan versions on the bottom.

 

[David Lambert]

Are these pictures accurate comparisons of the two dvd versions?

I dunno. I would have thought so, but today while picking up my son at daycare, I saw in one of the classrooms they were playing a FS version of HP for the kids (I presume someone brought their copy from home, and I presume the kids in the class were cleared to watch a film of this rating).
I didn't ask if this was a VHS or DVD version (I know they have both types of players in this class), but I presume they both use the same transfer.
I stuck around for a few minutes, since the film was RIGHT at the point where you first see Fluffy the 3-headed dog., the identical scene I wondered at how you can "PAN AND SCAN *THIS*" (mentioned in another thread, and supported with a WS screenshot of the scene in question).
Here is that site's comparison of the scene I'm talking about:

The thing is, I [rant]swear[/rant] that the cropping of the dog's face was the left-hand dog, not the right-hand dog as depicted!
I thought that maybe that site had flipped the pic, but I checked against my WS screen cap, and it's for sure not flipped.
If the scene in that site is somehow "unreal", though, then I simply cannot imagine where the screen info came from above and below the WS area, which matches up perfectly with the center of the shot.
So maybe I had imagined it, or am misremembering? That's my only conclusion. Yet, I was SOOOOO sure!

 

[Qui-Gon John]

The link listed above by John Co appears to advocate the full screen version over the wide screen. Are these pictures accurate comparisons of the two dvd versions?

Well I wasn't advocating either, just supplying the link. I agree several of the pics do represent more 'content' in the FF version vs. the WS version. But there are some pics there that show a major loss of 'content' in the FF version compared to the WS version. Especially the one with Snape on the left, Quirrell on the right, and McGonagall in the center.

All in all, I think one would do better with the WS version. But, if that website is accurate then Harry Potter FF is not your typical P&S job, either.

 

[David Dennison]

Looking at the pictures on the website, I would choose the FF version. I think there is a lot more loss with the widescreen. Like you say, the website is either wrong or this is not typical P&S.

 

[Malcolm R]

I think there is a lot more loss with the widescreen.

There is no "loss." The WS version is the exact version shown in theaters. If you went and saw HP in the theater, you saw the WS version.

With the apparently open matte of the FS version, they are revealing more at the top and bottom of the frame but it's all irrelevant to the presentation since it was matted over when originally projected in the theater.