What was the FIRST movie you ever watched in WIDESCREEN? (1 Viewer)

[Alan Kurland]

Star Wars on laser disc, 1993 on the LD player I still use.

 

[Evan S]

I don't remember seeing a single VHS rental in widescreen. I think that the first experience for me was the Matrix in 1998, right after I purchased my first DVD player. Never bought into Laser previous to DVD.

 

[Bob-N]

Great thread. I'm a latecomer to OAR but I first noticed it in one of my favorate movies, Roger Rabbit (no snickering!) in 1988ish.

When it hit TV, it killed me looking at the scene where Bugs and Daffy w/Elmer Fudd falling off a building. The pan and scan was horrible as you couldn't see Bugs and Daffy in the same frame. They'd be both arguing and you saw only one character. The "camera shot" was jumping left and right. Right then I knew that for any movie I bought was going to be OAR or widescreen.

The first movie I recall seeing in widescreen was Star Wars special edition set in the silver foil box.

Bob

 

[Jeremy]

Manhattan, on VHS, with grey bars.

 

[Robert George]

Summer of '89. The Criterion edition of Bladerunner.

I then went out and spent $3000 (the most I had ever spent on anything other than a house and a vehicle at the time) on a 50" Pioneer big screen TV.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Like many others here, my first experience with Widescreen at home involved the original Star Wars Trilogy.
My second Widescreen experience at home was Ben-Hur (talk about an eye opener!! ).
After that, it was OAR all the way. The only VHS tapes I purchased were OAR, or I didn't purchase them.
When I got into DVD in November 1998, I was like a kid in a candy store. All these OAR movies ... and for just $20 (or less) a pop!!
It's really been a fun ride! (Now, if we could just get those same Star Wars movies on DVD someday ... )

 

[Richard Carnahan]

Twenty years ago, a CED of THE LONG GOODBYE.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

The "falling" scene in "Roger Rabbit" isn't really a pan-and-scan, though it sure looks like it is. I noticed that on the VHS, but then I got the widescreen laserdisc and it still pans back and forth. Guess I got a little overly paranoid, as I can't help but notice when pan and scan strikes!

 

[Bill J]

Lawrence of Arabia on VHS.

 

[Eric Paddon]

I think that would have to be the Criterion CAV LD of "Dr. No" for me around 1990. It took me a couple years though to really catch on to the benefits of widescreen, and what convinced me was an old VHS release of "Ben-Hur" that had only the chariot race in widescreen.

 

[IanS]

" Die Hard" was my first widescreen video and it was in LD format from CBS-Fox, no AC3 but awesome PCM sound. Also the first widescreen from CBS-Fox I believe.

Ian

Disc Title: Die Hard

CBS FOX 1666-80

Color - 132 minutes

Released in 1989

Available

List Price: $49.98

 

[Alan Wild]

If memory serves....

The first one I can remember is when my family rented "Innerspace" on VHS. I believe it was a recent release which would put it in like 1987 or maybe 1988.

I was in middle school at the time.

-Alan

 

[MaxY]

Well, I will be the second one to say Always which I had thought was the first commercial letterbox VHS release.

I remember seeing it and thinking, oh damn it is about time someone included the whole picture on a tape. Once I knew it was possible I was hooked.

BTW I remember as a kid seeing the Planet of the Apes Series of Movies on TV after having seen most of them in a theater and that was the first time it dawned on me how movies were cut to fit on the TV. I was in grade school at the time and two more movies were added to the POTA series after this so it was the early 70's.

Max

 

[StevenW]

Terminator 2, which happened to be my 2nd DVD ever bought. Widescreen has never bothered me, even when I didnt know the benefits from it.

 

[Blaine Skerry]

Very mild spoiler ahead.
My first memorable widescreen experience was the ALIEN box set on LD. I remember thinking at the time that the picture looked "smallish" on my old Panasonic 27". I can still remember the scene that blew me away. Kane (John Hurt) is being lowered down a hole in the alien spacecraft and just afer he says "I dunno, but it's like the goddam tropics in here." we get a panoramic shot of the cavern. I've seen this film close to 30 times and worn out two VHS copies, but until that day, I had forgotten how impressive that scene was.

 

[Steve Christou]

I still remember the BBC showing parts of 2001 in full widescreen in the early 80's and totally screwing it up!!
The film was only turning widescreen whenever there was an fx shot, but some BBC twit decided to add a moving starfield on the black bars top and bottom, presumably so some viewers wouldn't ring up and complain at the suddenly shrunken picture, suffice to say it was horrible, and so distracting!
But they did make up for it in another transmission in the late 80's, a super wide copy of 2001 and in stereo, I still have this copy on vhs, wider than my remastered dvd copy (I compared the two), but definitely inferior in definition, I'm still keeping it though, a souvenir.

 

[Markus Lidstrom]

Star Wars. I HATED it considering I didnt understand it.

 

[Paul J Anderson]

summer '94. Last of the Mohicans on VHS. eye-opening experience. i had known widescreen movies were available on Laserdisc (i would always check out the Aliens box set when perusing the local video store, drooling over the fact that it was in widescreen and the extended version not available on VHS) but couldn't afford the players or the discs. i would try to purchase widescreen VHS whenever possible until i had the dough to convert to DVD. now i'm in hog heaven. now i'm so OAR anal, i can't even bring myself to watch any movie on TV, whether it be TBS, TNT, HBO or what have you, unless it is in widescreen. TCM, Sundance and IFC are about the only channels i'll watch a movie on.

 

[Christopher Cheadle]

My first widescreen movie on television was Forbidden Planet as broadcast in its OAR on TNT in the early 90s. I had never heard of the process but was a projectionist at a movie theater at the time so it took me about 5 minutes to understand what was going on. It's been about 10 years and I've never looked back.

Incidentally, Forbidden Planet is the one movie that I can say propelled me into the film geekhood that I enjoy today. This is the first movie I have any really memory of seeing. I think I still watch it once a month or so.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

CBS/FOX Laserdisc: Star Wars- A New Hope

It opened my eyes man!

Dan