DVD and Widescreen - WHY???

Posted by David Newman [IP: 208.202.222.1] on May 19, 1999 at 13:09:21
Using Mozilla/4.51 [en] (Win95; I):

In Reply to: DVD and Widescreen - WHY??? posted by Mike E on December 10, 1998 at 14:36:32:

: From a personal point of view, I find it strange that so many DVD titles are released in widescreen format only. Admittedly, It "perserves the original theatre aspect ratio", but this argument loses it's appeal when viewed on a standard 4:3 TV. Most people who watch letter box versions of movies complain about the reduced vertical image size, and the black bars top and bottom are annoying to all!

: Anybody have an opinion on this?

I agree! When DVDs first came out it was common to see Widescreen on one side and Full Screen on the other. I thought this was great because it would make all viewers happy. But now it seems all the new releases are Widescreen only and this forces me to continue to buy the VHS version. While I can handle the 1.85x1 ratio on Widescreen, I don't enjoy the 2.35x1 ratio which is much more common.

I've had a home movie theater setup since I bought my first laser disk player 14 years ago and I'm definitely a High Tech user with over 400 movies in my library but I don't like having to move my chair up to a few feet from my 32" TV just to watch a Widescreen movie. I've decided that I'm really not a "movie enthusiast" but rather a "home theater enthusiast" because I enjoy good surround sound and the biggest/sharpest picture I can afford. When I bought my last TV, I was looking for a 16x9 widescreen TV but could not find any (2 years ago), and the only ones I see today are new HDTVs which are too expensive for me.

Follow Ups:

Return to the new SMR Forums Menu

Design & HTML © SMR Home Theatre, Images © SMR Home Theatre cannot be reproduced without permission.  The images on this page are digitally watermarked.  New forum messages should be posted into SMR Forums v2 - http://www.smr-forums.com/

	The Web   SMR Archive