Wide Screen VS Full Screen

Comparing Widescreen and Fullscreen

©Turner Classic Movies

• Category

  Film & Animation

[kdawq]

So is widescreen better to buy in DVD when you have a flatscreen TV. I always wondered if they chopped off the bottom and top to give us more on the sides. is this true?

[Sebastian Rabern]

Typically speaking Widescreen is the better option for most DVDs since it shows you the whole image that the director intended when he shot the film. There are some DVDs when DVDs first came out (IIRC they were MGM movies) that took the Fullscreen version of the film (which was already Pan & Scanned) and then cropped it to fit in the Widescreen aspect ratio, so they were getting rid of a ton of the picture. Newly made DVDs typically won't do this though.

[Sebastian Rabern]

That's not entirely true. Truly good filmmakers have a vision of how the film should look and they shoot the scenes to fulfill that vision. Some movies are wider than others because that's what the director intended. When you start taking a fully realized vision and cutting it down just to fit into a box you lose the art behind the film. There is no "perfect" aspect ratio. What you should look for though is the Original Aspect Ratio instead of something that has been modified.

[swordbook]

I hated when you play a widescreen movie on a widescreen HD TV and you still get the black top and bottom bars ;|

[NickMichalak]

It was great seeing Michael Mann in this. That man knows how to use the geometry of the widescreen frame. He can cut it up and direct your eye to a specific corner of it while also being able to create beautiful compositions with the help of great cinematographers like Danté Spinotti.

[JaredJMyers]

Wasn't there more to this? I could of sworn when i saw this on TV there was an excerpt from JAWS... im searching

[clownshoes87]

It's not annoying at all. You're watching the movie as it was filmed. Why would you want to watch a version that chops off nearly half of the image? That would be annoying.

[clownshoes87]

That's because a "widescreen" HDTV still isn't nearly as wide as most films. Your typical HDTV out there is 16:9 or 1.78:1. The standard aspect for most movies is around 2.35:1.

[SpeaksIt]

Don't Jones too hard, or you may get Munsoned.........

[B Murphy]

They forgot to mention that TV + VHS versions of many films have a thing called "open matte" where they leave extra picture on the top of bottom to not lose anything or just a little on the sides which catered very well for standard tvs. Back two years ago I would have preferred the fullscreen version of films.

[oenrca]

how can people watch movies with black boarders! It annoys me so much

[gohanrage]

I absolutely Love WIDESCREEN Movies. After watching this video and another one on the same subject I could see how much of the Movie I was missing out of. I've even re-purchased movies that I have in Fullscreen. Now a days All DVDs are in one Widescreen format or another. I haven't seen fullscreen along the top of a dvd cover in years

[NHL15Productions]

Widescreen > Fullscreen/Pan & Scan

[craapula]

What are we not seeing?