Post your J6P to OAR conversion success story here (1 Viewer)

[Tony-B]

I was at Target again today! I mentioned to the guy working there that there were no Widescreen copies of Ocean's 11, A.I., Jurassic Park 3, and American Pie 2. I also re-arranged all the A Beautiful Mind DVDs. People walking by gave me funny looks. Someone actually asked me what I was doing, and I said, "What is right." I also steered one person away from getting full screen of ABM before I re-arranged them, thanks to my little widescreen comparison sheet I had in my pocket at the time . I also converted my parents awhile ago. They did not want DVD because of the black bars, but when I showed them some comparisons, they immediately converted over.

 

[Adam_WM]

Well, I have been responsible for the conversion of hundreds of people. While I am at work (Circuit City), I don't let a single person walk out with a full-frame copy of a movie. Plus at a recent communication meeting, I gave a Power Point presentation about DVD's and the difference between widescreen and full-frame. Now, all of my co-workers give everyone the good ol' speech whenever someone tries to buy a full-frame movie! We have a pretty good track record as a store if I don't say so myself.

 

[Ken Garrison]

And as MORE people get converted, the more of a chance Disney and all the other companies can stop releasing Pan and Scan only DVDs.

 

[Brian Kidd]

I threw a J6P into a chipper the other night and successfully converted him to fertilizer.

 

[Rick Deschaine]

Unfortunately, my story is just the opposite of a conversion. There's a guy I work with who I've heard in the past complaining about letterbox on DVDs. At first I thought he just didn't like the black bars. A common enough complaint from most who don't like OAR. So we talked about it and he said that letterbox looked too small on his TV. I went a little further and asked what the size of his screen was.

60" projection was his reply.

How the F#@k do you argue with that impeccable logic.

Somehow I don't think he's the only one with that sentiment. We have a long fight (or a short one) ahead of us.

 

[Ken Garrison]

OMG! He has a 60" TV and still bitches that it looks too small? Right now, I have no problem watching 2.35:1 movies or WIDER on my POS 25" Magnovox in the living room. And certainly no problem watching them on my 19" in my bedroom. My brother don't seem to mind at all watching on his 13". This will probably be my first HDTV widescreen set I buy, since I'll probably be short on cash.
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=...t=24&scat=1470
I'm still living with mom and pop for a while. Just need to look for a job. Then might get something like this and a progressive scan DVD player and let them keep it as a gift. Then, in my own place, I'll buy something like a 65" Widescreen set.
Well, do what you can to convert that J6P over to widescreen.

 

[Ken Garrison]

Well, it's been weeks since anything has happened on this thread. Does ANYBODY ELSE have ANY stories on converting these J6Ps to widescreen? Even if it's NOT successful, tell the story. Tell stories about getting yelled at for posting Signs from www.widescreenadvocate.com all over the neighborhood. ANYTHING that has to do with trying to educate people. I've hung a few of those signs up. Even at the video store. And the lady at the video store DOES prefer Pan and Scan and she let me post a couple of them signs up in her store. I've posted one at the High Way Mart, and our local General Store. I plan on posting more later. Anyway. You got an interesting story about explaining OAR, I'd like to hear it.

 

[Geoff_D]

I know I'm not strictly a part of your American (civil?) war against evil J6P's, living in England and all, but I converted a mate years ago through the power of Star Wars. Star Wars nut that he is, he had numerous copies on video - all in p&s of course, thinking widescreen cut off the picture blah blah blah...

One day, after picking up a copy of the remastered trilogy, I showed him my widescreen versions and watched his jaw hit the carpet. He couldn't believe how much picture he was missing and he's never looked twice at a pan-and-scan movie again.

The only trouble with educating people over widescreen movies in the home is the 'you see more picture, period' line that people use, when with a lot of movies this is simply not the case. People need to be taught about OAR including all the differing formats movies are shot in, and the consequences these formats have when transferring to home video.

Explaining this is much more time-consuming, but people need to be shown that widescreen doesn't automatically mean more, otherwise their obsession with the evil black bands 'cutting off the picture' will continue, and with Super 35 movies like Matrix or Gladiator they'll actually have proof. They need to understand why the picture is matted that way in the first place. OAR, baby, OAR...

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

My first OAR conversion was way way back when my widescreen LaserDisc of Terminator 2 showed up (about a decade ago -- my third or fourth disc, and I watched it so many times I finally had to sell it because I was so sick of it. But then I bought the T2 SE LaserDisc box set last year for $10 CDN, about $6.50 US...but when I watched it I realized that I'm still sick of it). A friend of mine at the time was a huge fan of the film, and had it on (p&s) VHS. He had watched it dozens of times. I told him about the difference between the widescreen transfer and the p&s transfer, and he was intruiged, so I made him a VHS copy of the widescreen LD (at the time there was no widescreen VHS of T2 available).

He called me the next day and shouted "You can see the security guard picking his nose! I knew I saw that in the theatre! I thought I was crazy or that they had cut it out or something!" Nope, it was just panned off of the screen on the p&s VHS tape.

So, he stuck my VHS dub of the widescreen LD in the case for his T2 tape, and kept the p&s original around to use as an educational tool.

Between that film and the climax of The Hunt For Red October (which is incomprehensible in p&s because you can't see that Loganoff has a wire in each hand, ready to blow up the ship -- so it looks like Ryan just shoots him point blank in cold blood!)
we converted a lot of people.

 

[Bryan Tuck]

we converted a lot of people.

Yeah, I saw Red October at the theater when I was 12, but it was a few years before I saw it again on video (in P&S), and for a while, I thought he was holding a knife or something. (Although, it is explained what he's doing)

Well, I've slowly but surely converted my parents now. My dad prefers widescreen, I think, and my mom doesn't mind it. (I think I've told this story in another thread, but oh, well.) One night, my parents and I were going to watch The Mask of Zorro, and I (jokingly) asked, "So, do you want to watch the widescreen or the fullscreen?" My dad replied, "Oh, widescreen," without missing a beat.

Also, I showed a friend of mine the swordfight scene in Montero's place in both WS and P&S, and on the P&S, she said, "You can't even see the other guy." Now I'm kind of glad they put the P&S transfer on the 2nd disc; The whole movie is one big WS vs P&S examples.

 

[Ken Garrison]

Hey, that's great. I was browsing in Sam Goody today. Saw as stack of TEST DVDs that tested a bunch of shit and talked about OAR. IF I had 10 bucks on me, I would've bought it. This is getting interesting now. I don't mind hearing more. That dollar bill trick in another thread was kinda funny. "You gotta dollar?" "Yeah." *hands him a dollar* "WIDESCREEN!" *rips some of the sides off* "PAN AND SCAN!" And everybody in the store was laughing. As so I read from the post. Stories like that are acceptable here.