My Wife's A Widescreen Convert! Say "Hallelujah!" (1 Viewer)

[WilliamG]

One night last week as I was on this forum, I heard my wife and daughter talking about LOTR:FOTR. Mind you,I own the EE that they really enjoy ALL the time. But this time while channel surfing, they happened upon it on TV. Encore was showing it. After about 10 minutes viewing time, I overheard my wife tell my OAR-savvy daughter: "Something's missing - we're not seeing everything in the shot! ...(short pause)... THAT'S what your dad's talking about with his widescreen and 'original something ratio' DVD's!"

I thought my jaw was gonna hit the floor, ya'll! To which my daughter replied "She's finally seen the light!"

(Heavy Sigh).. All is right with the world, my friends.

 

[Adam_WM]

Welcome to the "Significant Other Is Pro-Widescreen" Club. My fiancee has been a supporter of widescreen since I explained to her the difference three years ago. Now, she only buys widescreen.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

That's TRUE LOVE.

This is so cool to read!

 

[WillG]

Count my Girlfriend in. She told me awhile back that since being with me, she cannot picture watching movies not in W/S (except for T.V. Broadcast I guess) She said she would have even have liked it better of some TV on DVD we watch to was in W/S, to which I had to explain it wouldn't be right..... you get the idea

 

[oscar_merkx]

that is a great story to read.

Cheers

 

[Randy B A]

That is great. I had an older couple at costco ask me the diff b/w WS and FS. After explaining objectively the diif re black bars and filling the screen, they said so the Ws is better and left with a WS copy of Chicago. Two more converts.

My family are all converts also, the hard part is explaining to my 10 yo daughter that the Scooby Doo cartoon is OK to buy because it is not supposed to be WS.

 

[Damin J Toell]

A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were about to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. She pulled the case off the shelf, opened it, and was looking at the discs to figure out which one should be put in the player. I told her to go for the one that said "Widescreen" on it. She replied, "Why do they even bother having anything other than widescreen?"

DJ

 

[Eric Emma]

One small step for DVD, and... aw I forgot the rest See now my dad knows all of this yet it still doesn't bother him to watch fullscreen when he can be watching wide-screen... sometime I actually think he wants to watch full-screen! OH THE HORROR!

 

[WillG]

That is great. I had an older couple at costco ask me the diff b/w WS and FS. After explaining objectively the diif re black bars and filling the screen, they said so the Ws is better and left with a WS copy of Chicago. Two more converts.

The exact same thing happened to me with a middle aged woman, at Costco with "Chicago" Told her I always go with the W/S, that it does have the black bars, to which she said "I know" then said "Okay" and went with the W/S. I tried to further explain the benfits, but the sale had already been made.

Of course, I was in Wal-Mart on Sat. Looking at DVDs, I overheard some girl loudly proclaim "The problem with DVDs is the stupid Widescreen, I won't watch stuff in W/S" I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling at her. I know it's her choice, but the way she loudly decried W/S got my blood boiling a bit. On the other hand, the girl in question didn't look like the type who....how shall I say this..........well I probably can't without running the risk of offending someone...let's just say she was a loudmouth

 

[Stephen_J_H]

My wife became a WS convert with the video release of Twister. Her mother bought the P/S version and loaned it to us. The motion sickness that ensued was enough to convince my wife that WS was a good thing, so when we bought Twister ourselves (pre-DVD) it was the WS VHS.

 

[Rob T]

I've converted my sisters fiancee. I think my mother is a lost cause though. :frowning:

 

[Brandon Conway]

I became familiar with OAR back in 1996 when I was 17 and starting my interest in film. Since then, I've converted my brother and sister who refuse to watch fullscreen, and even though my parents pretty much watch what is available, they know all about OAR, and will watch WS no problem.

Unfortunately, I don't have a significant other to convert, but I just look at it as an opportunity to start that part of a relationship off on the OAR foot, so to speak.

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Are "black bars" being added just to annoy people? Wonder if those who complain ever ask themselves that question?

 

[Chet_F]

I've tried numerous times to convert my sister to widescreen but she just can't stand "those black bars!!" OH well..........NEXT!!!

 

[The Void]

I converted both my parents, my sister, and my girlfriend. All of them will only watch or buy widescreen DVDs. It was was an easy task for all of them.

Now my girlfriend's family...That's another story. They prefer fullscreen and I've explained the difference and I think they still don't care. But they don't even own a CD player, they only have a DVD player because someone gave it to them. They don't even really care if they watch a DVD or VHS tape.

I recently realized that all of my friends are pro-widescreen. This is with now help from me. Over the past few years, all the friends I've had, new and old, buy only widescreen. It suprised me a few times. There is still hope.

 

[Robert Floto]

For the longest time, my girlfriend was of the belief that as long as it was a good movie it didn't matter if the sides were cropped off...it was the story that mattered...

After a couple of years of watching movies with me this belief is no longer the case. When she watches something with her sister (who absolutely refuses to watch black bars) she now gets annoyed and wonders what she is missing on the MAR version. She simply can't enjoy the movie as much! She even mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she went to rent a DVD, but they didn't have the widescreen version of the particular title she was looking for...so she didn't get anything!

I've never wanted this woman more.

 

[Mitch Stevens]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't LOTR shot in Super 35 thereby watching it in 4:3 will actually give you more picture? You're wife and daughter both said that something was missing out of the 4:3, but I don't think that was the case.

Not that I would ever watch the horrible 4:3 version, as I always watch my movies with the aspect ratio that the director intended (in this case 2.35:1).

 

[WillG]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't LOTR shot in Super 35 thereby watching it in 4:3 will actually give you more picture?

Yes. LOTR was shot in Super35 and yes, you often do get some extra info on the top and bottom in the 4:3 version, but there are still many shots in that movie that are moderately to heavilly cropped. This can apply to any Super35 film. It's really all up to how the person doing the 4:3 transfer frames it. Plus, often visual effects are hard-matted requiring almost as much cropping as an anamorphic film for 4:3 presentation. Widescreen.org has some good examples of LOTR W/S vs P&S. WilliamG's (Wow, Didn't notice the guy's name at first) wife and daughter are correct when they are reporting infomation missing from the sides of the 2.35:1 frame

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Ahhh.

BTW Mitch, many of the special-effects scenes in LOTR were created CGI in 2.35:1 and so are literally P/S on the 4x3 version.

 

[WilliamG]

Oh, yeah- something I forgot to mention in my original post: My wife sat silently by (probably in confusion) when I first started buying DVD's in OAR when I picked up this favorite hobby last year. She'd ask me what 'all that meant' so I explained it to her as best I could. ... yet no 'light bulb' went off. It was the coolest thing to see her face when she finally understood last week.