Response from Disney regarding Widescreen... (1 Viewer)

[Dick]

No doubt many of you have received an e-mail response exactly like this one to mine regarding the cropping of favorite DVD titles.... First, my e-mail to Disney:

I own almost all of your special editions, and every single one of your animated classics on DVD (as do most Disney fans), but I've noticed a trend during the past year or two which is disturbing and has kept me from purchasing many of your live-action releases. Your decision to put out pan-and-scan-only DVD's of widescreen films is disheartening. I love the animal adventure films WHITE FANG and JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN, but when I purchased these blind I discovered they were cropped. Worse, NATTY GANN was originally 2.35:1, so about thirty percent of the image is missing. Sure wish Anchor Bay had released this as they'd once intended to... On top of that, the picture quality of this DVD is terrible - looks like a VHS tape (the laser looked better!). I sold both of these DVD's on eBay and will always check carefully on each DVD box to see if I am getting the original aspect ratio from now on. If the movie is cropped, I will not buy it. I do not at all understand why you cannot use both layers of a DVD to provide widescreen and pan-and-scan (notice I do not use the often incorrect and deceptive term, "fullscreen") versions, as Anchor Bay and MGM and Columbia and other companies do. This way, you please everyone. A beautiful movie like NATTY GANN, one of Disney Studio's finest efforts of the 80's, deserves the extra expense of a new widescreen transfer. Please consider doing with this, WHITE FANG, BABY, and others what you have thoughtfully decided to do with ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR and re-issue it in widescreen. Thank you for your consideration.

The studio's form response:

Dick,

Thank you for sharing your preference for a widescreen format with us. We appreciate hearing the opinions of our viewers, and we will forward your comments to our Marketing Department.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us. Please do not hesitate to contact us again if you have questions concerning our videos and DVD's, or if you would like to purchase one of our movies.

You may contact us by e-mail or by calling 800 723-4763 or our Canadian toll-free number 888 877-2843.

Regards,

BVHE Consumer Relations


I have followed this up with a snail-mail letter.

 

[Aaron Cohen]

I need to start sending snail-mail as well. I'm very angry over many, MANAY Disney pan and scan only hackjob releases that I REALLY want to add to my collection but will not given their current butchered form. We all hate their lack of interest in many of their catalog titles.

 

[Scott Strang]

Addenda to letter:

We received your letter. As you can see from our response to your letter we basically ignored what you said except for the first few lines.

We will continue to issue classic films in any bastardized form we see fit. Whether it be pan and scan, censorship, etc. Why? Because we can and John Q. Public will still buy our DVD's as long as they say this one thing on the box: Walt Disney.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

That response cracked me up! They just sent it on to marketing, which is another way of saying - 'we're passing the buck on this'. I really don't consider that a response at all. Please send a new letter to marketing.

Glenn

 

[Jeff Swearingen]

This is the standard Disney response from their website. I've gotten a couple versions of this where they just alter the first sentence and the rest is exactly the same. No surprise here at all.

 

[JohnAP]

Obviously, it's a form letter, but I'm sure they do at least count the number of letters they get like this so it's not a waste of time to write them. Snail mail is always better than e-mail for these kinds of things as well. The fact that they are correcting Absent-Minded Professor is at least a good sign, though that release was embarassingly messed-up. Yeesh, colorization!?!

 

[Jeff Swearingen]

Thank goodness the public outcry caused them to revisit Absent-Minded. I can't wait to get the B/W WS version on 9/2. Here's hoping they get their act together and fix Natty Gann and White Fang as well.

 

[Patrick Soucy]

I received the SAME copy/paste letter from Walt Disney concerning The Muppet Christmas Carol DVD...

 

[Seth Paxton]

One thing about form letters, it could easily still mean a log in some database gets another response added to it. After all, someone had to see your complaint and choose which catagory it fit in order to send the proper form letter back. Maybe the guy making $6/hr clicks a button that says "widescreen complaint" and fills in your address info, but its unlikely that you aren't then entered into some data collection.

That sort of demographic data is too valuable to waste for any company. Hell, they could at the very least sell another company their list of DVD owners who prefer W/S.

So I would say that at the very least your complaint has been duly noted.


The problem is more likely that the list of people who complain might still look like a tiny portion of the entire customer base when they sit in some DVD production meeting.

Heck, maybe at Disney you get logged in the "Crackpot W/S Complainers Group to be Ignored in the Future" list.