Widescreen preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio, usually 2.35:1 or 1.78:1. It's filmed in a widescreen ratio since theaters obviously can have a wider screen film, and that's basically how we see life through our two human eyes, in widescreen. When movies come to DVD, they're usually released either with both versions on the disc (wide and full) or just widescreen. Sometimes they make fullscreen versions, too. Fullscreen is for people that are insecure about themselves and feel the need to chop off almost 50% of the picture so it fills their entire screen. It's disgustingly zoomed in, and when something happens on the left side of the picture, then something on the right, the editor has to actually pan across the film, not only looking very cheap and obvious, but it's just a complete ripoff. With widescreen movies, which I should say is all movies, since every single movie is shot in widescreen, are shown on a television with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, black bars are present since the height of the film is less than that of the television. Anybody owning a widescreen television wouldn't have black bars on most widescreen movies, and would have very tiny ones on a select few whose filming aspect was even wider. Fullscreen is basically for anybody too wimpy to see the whole picture and wants to cut off virtually half of the frames shot in the movie. When DVDs came out, they were only in widescreen, The Matrix included. Thankfully, and God bless Quentin Taratino, the Kill Bill movies, from what I can tell, are only widescreen on their DVD releases. Fullscreen movies are gross mockeries of the original movie, and people should realize that sacraficing a bit of black is much better than sacraficing half the picture. If you turn off the lights in the room, you can't even tell, so quit whining, widescreen haters.
Attached is a picture showing how much picture you lose when converting a film from widescreen to faulty fullscreen.
Originally posted by JKozzy
Widescreen preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio, usually 2.35:1 or 1.78:1. It's filmed in a widescreen ratio since theaters obviously can have a wider screen film, and that's basically how we see life through our two human eyes, in widescreen. When movies come to DVD, they're usually released either with both versions on the disc (wide and full) or just widescreen. Sometimes they make fullscreen versions, too. Fullscreen is for people that are insecure about themselves and feel the need to chop off almost 50% of the picture so it fills their entire screen. It's disgustingly zoomed in, and when something happens on the left side of the picture, then something on the right, the editor has to actually pan across the film, not only looking very cheap and obvious, but it's just a complete ripoff. With widescreen movies, which I should say is [b]all movies, since every single movie is shot in widescreen, are shown on a television with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, black bars are present since the height of the film is less than that of the television. Anybody owning a widescreen television wouldn't have black bars on most .... yada yada yada[/B]
clap Very in depth explaination. I am also a fan of wide as opposed to full... you lose so much.
Originally posted by JKozzy
Fullscreen, mostly. Some things on TV are wide screen. But get wide screen movies, because... well read my post above, and they're just better.
some dvd players have options where you can change the aspect ratio...
with the regular 4:3 letter box
to 4:3 Normal ratio
and 16:9 aspect ratio of anamorphic widescreen
Yeah... but why would you want to? Then it REALLY cuts stuff off.. it doesn't pan for you to see the action, it just flat-out chops off the sides... the DVD players just change how it's projected, nothing special. Don't really get the point in mentioning it; it's just for setting up a television set, if you have a widescreen TV, you tell the DVD player that so you can take full advantage of it. If you tell it you have a WS tv and you don't, it'll just chop stuff off.