Fullscreen and widescreen movies

[treg50]

I would LOVE to buy the Lord of the Rings movies: Fellowship and Two Towers EXTENDED Editions but both LOTR extended editions only come in widescreen format. I have a regular TV (ie. not widescreen). I know the normal editions of both movies come in wide- and full-screen. So I might just have to buy the normal editions of each movies :( ... that would suck.

Is watching a widescreen movie on regular TV that bad? I'm asking 'cause a friend of mine was telling me it's annoying or something, you get those black borders above and below the picture. I'm shopping for a DVD player right now and was wondering if DVD players can adjust a widescreen movie to be fullscreen.

:confused: :)

[04blackMAX]

alot of dvd's have wide screen and full screen version.....just buy a wide screen TV

[hooligan]

it's not that bad at all.

[kenny]

Personally I think ALL movies should be viewed in widescreen format. The main reason is because you get to see the ENTIRE picture that the director intended you to see. Sure your screen becomes a bit smaller with the black bars but at least you aren't losing 25 - 30% of the image by cutting off the sides so it fits on a 4:3 television.

Some DVD players can force a widescreen signal to be displayed full screen on a 4:3 (non widescreen) television by zooming into the middle and expanding it to the full size of your tv.

[rc2002]

I agree with Kenny, widescreen is the way to go. It sucks when they start cutting the picture to fit it onto your full screen TV size...

[Dope Dealer]

I used to hate Widescreen when it first came out. Now I can't watch anything other than Widescreen. I have a couple widescreen televisions, but I also watch them on my 23'' or so tube and I don't mind it at all.

[GTS Jeff]

yep, widescreen or bust. either get used to the black bars or buy a widescreen tv

[Khyron]

I have a normal TV but buy only widescreen DVDs. Cause:

a) 1 day I'll have a wide screen tv and
b) You can hit zoom once to get pretty much full screen. You can't do the reverse.

Khyron

[boi-alien]

i wouldn't watch anything other than widescreen movies

[accordboi_02]

Go widescreen all the way... if you want to see an example of what you lose when you go fullscreen, just check out the DVD of "Tomorrow Never Dies" (James Bond) right at the beginning it gives you a preview of what you get with widescreen vs fullscreen.

I will never, ever go back to fullscreen movies again; esp. with epics like LOTR, as you just lose too much scenery and action from the battles.

[SinisterProbeGt]

Go wide screen I have tons of DVD about 300 or so and i would say 85% are widescreen. There just so much better

[Altezza]

Originally posted by kenny
Personally I think ALL movies should be viewed in widescreen format. The main reason is because you get to see the ENTIRE picture that the director intended you to see. Sure your screen becomes a bit smaller with the black bars but at least you aren't losing 25 - 30% of the image by cutting off the sides so it fits on a 4:3 television.

Some DVD players can force a widescreen signal to be displayed full screen on a 4:3 (non widescreen) television by zooming into the middle and expanding it to the full size of your tv.

:werd: Buy the widescreen edition for sure in terms of seeing the action from a wider perspective. But from a technical standpoint, if you play widescreen movies on a full screen display, be prepared to lose about 30% of the screen resolution. Those black bars you see are part of your screen and are a part of the scan done by your tv when displaying your image. The image itself is not "shrunk", it is downconverted and downsampled by the DVD player to accomodate the 4:3 screen size (ie, black bars). The downconversion/sampling will also potentially leave screen artifacts but the biggest thing is the loss of display resolution. For me, I'm a quality freak, so it wouldn't be acceptable to me. :dunno: Most other people I know don't care, haha. Some 4:3 TVs allow you to convert the image to 16:9 - if so, then the loss of resolution would not apply in most circumstances.

edit: Clarification - Loss of resolution would not apply in most circumstances if your DVD were outputting in 16:9 and if your 4:3 TV allowed you to "squish" the "tall and skinny" image to 16:9

[B17a]

I'm a total DVD snob so I will not buy Full Screen versions. Although I don't have a 16x9 TV, I could never bring myself to watching the "modified" version. Widescreen all the way. And as Accordboi pointed out, that Bond selection menu shows you exactly what you're missing out.

[Ajay]

I have about 100 DVD's and almost all are in wide screen format or have the option of both wide screen and full screen cause I know eventually I'll have my wide screen. Actually I'll have it in a couple weeks!

A few of my movies are full screen though....will there be a poor picture quality watching those dvd's on a wide screen?

[Akagi Redsuns]

I really really hate Pan and Scan full screen DVDs. I want to see the full picture, not what some operator thinks I should be seeing.

Back to the original question, it's not that bad to watch widescreen movies on a regular TV. You get the full picture. It's odd that it's smaller, but I got used to it pretty quickly. Feels wierd to watch a full screen movie cause it seems like you are always so close to the scene, like the people's face is so big on the screen. Anyways, 100% of my DVDs are Widescreen. If it doesn't come in Widescreen.....I don't buy it.

[A_3]

I used to hate em to, but now i like em more, the director intended for you to see the movie in widescreen... especially on movies like LOTR widescreen is the only way to go because there's so much to see

[sexualbanana]

Originally posted by Ajay
A few of my movies are full screen though....will there be a poor picture quality watching those dvd's on a wide screen?

Not really. The only thing you might notice though is that people look short and fat on a widescreen TV. My parents bitch about it all the time, but I honestly never notice it.

I did notice it once in a department store, but just because they had a widescreen and a full screen side by side. Then I saw the difference.

[accordboi_02]

I think it also depends on the widescreen that you get??

I know there's some that you can change so you'll have the black lines on the left & right to make it a square picture for watching TV/fullscreen movies.

[kenny]

The only time you get the bars on the side of the screen is when you watch a fullscreen source (4:3) on a widescreen television.