[Alpha]

What's the real difference between the black stripes on top and beliw the image? Pardon my ignorance I'm just curious because I'm going to buy the Back to the Future Trilogy and I want to know which version should I buy.

Thanks all....

[Ryx]

Basically:

Widescreen = As a movie is seen in the theater.

Full-screen = like a TV show.  

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I'd go with Widescreen. Always!

[Knight Templar]

wide screen = 1337

Regular = 80's

[Stealth]

Widescreen is generally much better.

see, when a movie is released in theaters, it's shown on wide-screen format (look at a movie screen and you'll see)... however, when it's released in DVD, VHS, on TV, etc. no TV is that wide, so they chop some of the image, so that it fits perfectly on the TV.  this sucks, because in some scenes, a person's whole head, (or part of it) is chopped off, and so you don't see everything.  On widescreen format, it's the same as in theaters, except there's the black horizontal bar at the bottom and top, well, because of the ratio... that's pretty obvious.

Some DVDs have full and widescreen versions on the disk.

For example... "THE ONE" (DVD) had both versions on the same disk... before the movie started you selected 'wide' or 'full'

I have dozens and dozens of DVDs that have the fullscreen version of the movie on one side of the disk, and the other side of the disk is the widescreen version.

... so try to find one that's got both versions, but if you can't, then i recommend widescreen

[Alpha]

 Wow thanks, that helped a lot... I'm going for widescreen, unfortunately they have both versions separate not on the same disc. But I'm definately going for widescreen.

Thanks again...

[Vertigo1]

Widescreen is your friend.  Damn those that produce Full-Screen DVDs!  Hell, damn the stores that stock shelves full of Full-Screen versions, but put out only a few Wide-screen versions...or only put out the full-screen versions.

[Ace]

They release fullscreen only because some shmucks out there think that those black bars are "chopping off part of the image" and so the film industry invented "pan and scan" where the movie pans between two people in fullscreen mode to avoid chopping out any of the important bits.

Of course, in widescreen mode no pan and scan is needed at all as you get the full, pure, image

[JR2000Z]

Widescreen.

It took me a while to get used to.

[ZylonBane]

What blows me away are people who are literally incapable of grasping the logic behind letterboxing. Yes, they do exist.

Like this guy.

[Anaz]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
What blows me away are people who are literally incapable of grasping the logic behind letterboxing. Yes, they do exist.

Like this guy.

I don't even want to know where you dug that up...

I wonder what that guy is smoking?

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
What blows me away are people who are literally incapable of grasping the logic behind letterboxing. Yes, they do exist.

Like this guy.

That moron must be of the same breeding stock as Bush.  Then again, you can't expect of intelligence from an AOLer.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

I hate widescreen, because for we paupers who can't afford a wdie screen TV, it is annoying. When a film is on TV in widescreen, you get those black bars at the top and bottom, meaning that the image has been shrunk to fit on the screen. The screen is small enough as it is, without shrinking the image that is on it!

Also, sometimes it gets screwed, and the widescreen image is stretched vertically to fit the height of the screen, making people seem very tall and thin.

[Vertigo1]

I don't have a widescreen TV either and I can watch them just fine.  Your TV is inserting the black lines because of the resolution of the movie.  As for your last point, that only occurs if you set your TV to do that, and its an easy fix.

[Stealth]

actually all regular sized TVs (the ratio) will have the two black lines on the top and bottom

[Petrarch of the VBB]

The point I was making is, if you are watching a film on a 14" TV, the image is already quite small, and if you're across the room, even more so. then they put the black bars at top and bottom, meaning the image is only about 7 inches high, instead of the usual nine. hell if you have poor eyesight (which I don't)

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Vertigo1
Your TV is inserting the black lines because of the resolution of the movie.

Umm, no no no no no.  The TV doesn't "insert" anything. The picture is broadcast that way.

Anyway, one practical use of the bars is it gives a nice place to put subtitles.

[Dark_4ce]

The bars are there because the film or program was shot in 9:16 format. That means in letterbox/widescreen. Whenever you see it stretched thats when its in Anamorphic widescreen, meaning that it automatically gets stretched for you're screen, thus if you have a widescreen tv, you got no problem. But with non widescreen tv's the picture gets stretched. When theres a letterboxed program, then the format is not anamorphic allowing normal tv's to see the program in its entire 9:16 format, but having its scale remain the same. So its not stretched, but it has the black boxes. Widescreen tv's however still compensate this and stretch the program until the black boxes have dissapeared.

I have to remember all that stuff. My boss always got pissed off whenever we finnished a documentary project, then when we gave him the master copy, he freaks out cause the picture is all stretched, meaning its anamorphic, and that he wants it in letterbox, so theres no stretching, yet no clipping of what we shot. Fun stuff....

[wEvil]

tell me about it...i've got PAL D-1 and Cinemascope coming out of my ears from my uni course

Personally i prefer 16:9 letterboxed, it feels far more ergonomic and easier on the eyes than 1.333 or a standard PAL/NTSC aspect, but since I deal with everything purely digitally and im not going near a VHS with a bargepole...i guess its a moot point.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

How dare you?!?

LONG LIVE VHS!
The crackly sound, the fuzzy images, the broken picture, the larger amount of space taken up! this is how films should be!

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
The point I was making is, if you are watching a film on a 14" TV, the image is already quite small, and if you're across the room, even more so. then they put the black bars at top and bottom, meaning the image is only about 7 inches high, instead of the usual nine. hell if you have poor eyesight (which I don't)

Yeah, but who the hell actually HAS a 14" TV?  I can watch movies just fine on my 17" monitor from a good ten feet away in bed, though most of the time I use my 25" TV. (Parents got me a set-top player the same year I bought my 10x DVD-ROM)