widescreen vs. full screen

[EddyH]

Asda*Walmart has a huge fresh fruit/veg section... you mean the american original doesn't???
Supermarkets aren't exactly the best places to get your produce from, not British or American ones either. European ones are somewhat better, but the tastiest (and cheapest, though not the best looking!) goods come from the smaller grocers shops and farmers markets.. Lettuce with flavour.. tomatoes to die for.. instead of the limp and watery mass-produced veg-like objects presented in supermarket aisles.

Our (UK) supermarkets these days tend to cover pretty much anything you could ever want to buy, short of a car, house, or a couple hours with a hooker (and all three are probably on the cards)... even home cinema systems and insurance.. really they should be hypermarkets all of them by now. But we still have specialist stores... eg Dixons, Comet, PC World, Apollo and so on for electronics, slightly smaller supermarkets like Farmfoods, Iceland, or the Spar in which I work, which stock grocery goods almost exclusively, except for maybe newspapers, kitchen consumables, and cheap throwaway toys for the kiddies.

It rocks

[g_shocker182]

Asda*Walmart has a huge fresh fruit/veg section... you mean the american original doesn't???

Nah. Like I said Giant or Safeway, places like that. Definitely not walmart. Buy clothes/ electronic/ some food there.

Supermarkets aren't exactly the best places to get your produce from, not British or American ones either.

Other than the uncommon (but not rare) farmers markets, supermarkets are a great place to get fresh food (in America).

[MOVIEGEEK]

Sure we have specialist electronic stores. But supermarkets sell just about everything these days, and quite often cheaper. What about WalMart in the states. Our Asda is now called Asda WalMart.

Here they are called Super Walmarts,there aren't any in California but they're scattered across the US.

BTW..I can't stand shopping in Walmart because the stores are a mess and you have to wait in line 30min. to check out.

[flaninacupboard]

Our local Spar started doing DVD rental last year, and they now sell PS2 and xbox games as well. weird!

[Craig Tucker]

Sure we have specialist electronic stores. But supermarkets sell just about everything these days, and quite often cheaper. What about WalMart in the states. Our Asda is now called Asda WalMart.

Here they are called Super Walmarts,there aren't any in California but they're scattered across the US.

BTW..I can't stand shopping in Walmart because the stores are a mess and you have to wait in line 30min. to check out.

The store here is pretty new less than 2 years old. It is very clean and is huge, 150,000 square feet with over 50 checkouts and very wide aisles so you are not continuously bumping into other people with your trolley (thats what really annoys me about supermarkets)

[henk schuifkaas]

Supermarkets aren't exactly the best places to get your produce from, not British or American ones either. European ones are somewhat better,

What do you mean, Britain is not a part op Europe?

[flaninacupboard]

Not if we can avoid it

Although with Mr. Blair at the helm it's difficult to tell which will happen first, French becoming our first language, or giving handguns to kids on the streets to protect them from bullies

[Craig Tucker]

That is very confusing I thought TGPO wrote that reply. I look at the avatars first then the name second if I don't recognise the avatar.

[flaninacupboard]

Yeah, i'm trying to freak him out
See how long till he posts a

actually, wouldn't it be great if one day a month was compulsory TGPO avatar day? i'd enjoy that.

[Craig Tucker]

Yeah, i'm trying to freak him out

I am sure it will work

[digitalmaster]

I read in some magazine that Madonna stated the one thing she misses about the states is the good customer service.

[rallynavvie]

I don't know if any of the rest of you have Super Targets or not, they're basically the equivalent of the Super WalMart. There's pretty much everything there. Both Target and Best Buy are local businesses, they're based here in Minnesota if anyone cares or not. Not like we get their business any cheaper here because of it

I live far enough out into the country that there are vegetable farms closer to me than the grocer so I often just go visit them for produce. The best are the fresh herbs I can get.

Getting back to the subject I wasn't accusing anyone of being a movie pirate. I was just pointing out that it seems much easier to return opened movies in the UK and therefor it must be pretty simple to copy and return everything if you really wanted to take the time to do all that. Over here we could only rent the DVD but then we'd still be paying for the rental. Are you charged restocking fees or something like that more often when returning items like that then?

[flaninacupboard]

a restocking fee would kinda take the piss a bit.
"Open case, remove disc. place disc in drawer. Place case on shelf."

Don't forget though that even our biggest shops are not -that- big. if i was buying and returning things as frequently as i rent them, the shop staff would know me personally (as the guys in the video store do!) and tell someone what i was up to.

Don't think we don't pay for the situation though, the cheapest DVD rental i can get is £2.50 (almost $4) for an overnight rental, none of this 3 day or week long business! also new relase movies typically cost £15.99 which is about $23 or so. CD's cost £13.99 from HMV, that's about $20. and that's for new non-rare stuff. pick up a copy of NIN's the Fragile, and expect to pay £18.99 for it, thats pretty much $28. all of this is a bit steep when you earn £4.78 an hour. i pity the people under 18 who have no minimum wage limit. i know someone who took on a job at £1 an hour. not nice

[Craig Tucker]

i know someone who took on a job at £1 an hour. not nice

Thats not legal surely even for under 18's. Or was this cash in hand. A paperboy would earn more than that.

[flaninacupboard]

well it's through this vip training scheme, so money gets deducted from your wages to pay for a GNVQ, hence you only take home 40 pounds a week!

[Craig Tucker]

Sounds like YTS all over again, good way to rip of the workers.

[jonas more]

what??
they -are- the right aspect ratio. they're just not anamorphic, and if the package doesn't say anamorphic, they haven't misled you in any way. yes, the pack says widescreen, and it is. it's just not anamorphic.

Thank you... you just answered my initial question which was, "Is there any way of knowing which are real [widescreen movies] BEFORE I buy them???"

I always thought when they claimed the movie was in the same aspect ratio as its theatrical release, it meant you were getting exactly what was shown in theatres but obviously I was wrong

I'll look for anamorphic widescreen movies from now on...

Thanks again

[jonas more]

...actually I just checked some of the movies in my collection and found that the "The Sum Of All Fears" case only claims to be the "widescreen version enhanced for 16:9 TVs" but is actually anamorphic. "The 'Burbs" case claims to be "1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen" but ISN'T... so I am back to square one, being ripped off by the movie industry and having to guess which movies to buy!!!

[geek rock]

actually, movies being anamorphic or not really isn't that big a deal. all it means is, the encoding will have less bits dedicated to the moving image, because it also has to allocate bits to the black bars of the video.

but there are anamorphic widescreen DVDs that look crappy, and letterboxed (ie, non-anamorphic) DVDs that look superb. it all depends on the film masters and the quality of the encoding.

jonas moore, i think you're getting confused somewhere along the line. a letterboxed film is still in widescreen and in the intended aspect ratio. all that happens is you will need to zoom in with your TV remote to view the film without black bars.

here's a letterboxed film.



and an anamorphic widescreen film..



and, finally, a 4:3 pan and scan version of the film..



what you want to stay away from are the full screen versions. it's very very unlikely that a DVD will be issued in widescreen anamorphic and widescreen letterbox formats. it's usually one of the two widescreen methods, and the fullscreen version. just look for "widescreen" somewhere on the packaging.

the only cases where you might find both a letterboxed and an anamorphic version of the same movie, are if one disc is a special edition and the other is the normal version.

www.imdb.com will let you see what ratio a movie was filmed in, and in a lot of cases what ratio the DVD is presented in. (go to "technical specs" and "dvd specs").

-Mark

[pixel]

i know someone who took on a job at £1 an hour. not nice

Thats not legal surely even for under 18's. Or was this cash in hand. A paperboy would earn more than that.

This is actually a legal income for someone under 18.
I could tell you why but that would be politics.

[jonas more]

geek rock,

The following screen shots are from "A Nightmare On Elm Street".

Full screen and widescreen versions are on the same disc.

Notice that the scenes are the same in width (the scenes are the same on the right and left hand edges but shouldn't be)

They only differ in height (more is shown at the top and bottom edges of the full screen version but the top and bottom edges should be the same)

I know of no one who buys widescreen movies because they 'like' the black bars. They buy them because they love movies and want to see what the movie makers intended... they want to have and watch what was shown in theatres.

In my opinion pan and scan is a mutilation. To further mutilate a movie by converting it to pan and scan and then cutting the top and bottom off to market it as widescreen is insulting.

A Nightmare On Elm Street - full screen



A Nightmare On Elm Street - widescreen



:: Just edited your picture slightly so it didn't warp the forum width (Pacmania_2001)

[spiderman2k1]

I real think its wrong for movie companies to make fake widescreen movie's people pay alot of money for DVD's. I find it funny how HollyWood say's please do not bootleg movie's. But it's fine to sell fake Wide Screen movie's.

"fartt" good idea rent them from the library. If you can not rent from the library if to hard to get to. I would sign up with www.netflix.com rent movie's all you want for $20.00 dollars. You can just load up the DVD in your PC and use bitrateviewer to see if it's true 16:9 and if so then go buy the movie. bestBuy is good for new movie's the first month there cheep at bestbuy

[flaninacupboard]

jonas,
i'm afraid to say you've got the wrong end of the stick on this one.

films that are shot in 2.35:1 (reallly wide screen) are shot on an anamorphic lens, onto 4:3 shaped film. a 1.85:1 movie is shot with a -standard- lens onto 4:3 shaped film. a cinema screen is 2.35:1 in shape, so a 2.35 film will fill it. the 4:3 film shot for 1.85 movies would look silly in the middle, so it is "matted" with black bars top and bottom, and only the section in the middle is shown on the cinema screen, at 1.85:1 shape, filling about two thirds of the cinema screen.

When you come to play the same two movies on a TV screen, the 2.35 either is full width with black bars top and bottom, or the width is cropped and the height fills the TV screen. that is pan and scan (as the image must move back and forth to cover the whole 2.35 area)
The 1.85 movie is different. you can either show it matted like it is in the cinema, with black bars top and bottom, or you can show the original 4:3 shaped film it was shot on, filling the TV screen.

Your grabs from "nightmare" exemplify this: the widescreen version is the matted version, and how it appeared in the cinema. the fullscreen version is how it was shot, and has more picture info than the cinema version.

You've not been conned on this one, this is the way films have been shown in cinemas for a few decades now.....

[jonas more]

flaninacupboard,

Thank you very much for your response... I get it now!

I always thought ALL movies that were shot for theatrical release were shot in the same, widescreen format and then converted to pan and scan for release on video and DVD (or left in widescreen format).

I guess I can safely assume now that my DVDs of older movies (A Nightmare On Elm Street; Red Dawn; WarGames; etc.) as well as my more recent DVDs (Jeepers Creepers; Final Destination; Final Destination 2; etc.) were all shot with a standard lens onto 4:3 shaped film.

Even the term "anamorphic widescreen" makes sense to me now. (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) As you stated, the film for either aspect ratio is the same size (4:3) so the image in a "widescreen" movie MUST be distorted by the lens to make it fit (as I said 'anamorphic' makes sense to me now). I assume the image on the actual film would be stretched out from top to bottom making people look taller and thinner and round object appear oval. Again I am guessing that the film is then projected through another anamorphic lens to make the images regain their original shape???

This may be a dumb question but when it says on the DVD package that the video is anamorphic widescreen does that mean that the actual image recorded on the dvd is distorted as it is on film and corrected by the DVD player? If that's the case then I guess the black bars aren't actually on the DVD but are added by the DVD player???

Thanks again for your response...

[flaninacupboard]

yep, sounds like the penny has dropped! took me about four months to wrap my head around the whole anamorphic issue!
You're exactly right.
The anamorphic issue is more like the horizontal info is squished down to fit into a 4:3 shape, but yes, if you look at it as is, people are tall and thin. you need to use an anamorphic lens to see it correctly. and yes, anamorphic DVD's are the same. if you view the file as is on a PC you have a 720X480 video with tall thin people, and no black bars. the bars are generated by the DVD player when connected to a 4:3 TV. obviously it doesn't need to do anything when it's connected to a 16:9 TV.

Check the three grabs i posted on this page. first is how it appears on a 4:3 TV, second how you see it on a widescreen TV or a PC, and the third is what the original file looks like. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=102812&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=80
You'll notice the third one looks "stretched"

If you've any more questions, feel free to ask

[jonas more]

flaninacupboard,

Sweet ELATION!!!!

I can't believe I FINALLY get the picture.

Now I feel kind of dumb... it is one of those things that once it clicked I wondered why I didn't get it in the first place!

I really want to go back and edit some of my previous posts (you know... the ones that make me look like an imbecile) but I guess I will leave them alone... surely I'm not the only one with those questions...

Again, thank you very much...

[flaninacupboard]

Hey, just glad i could help!

Yeah, leave it up there, those looking for info in future can follow it along

[gmatov]

G_shocker,

Now that this subject has been cleared up, I gotta tell you that the Super WalMarts,
here in PA, stock everything under the sun, cars, houses, boats, excluded.

One end resembles your typical WalMart, the other your Giant store. They're even tearing down a store only about 5 years old to build a Super half a mile away, mebbe a little less.

[geek rock]

I always thought ALL movies that were shot for theatrical release were shot in the same, widescreen format and then converted to pan and scan for release on video and DVD (or left in widescreen format).

I guess I can safely assume now that my DVDs of older movies (A Nightmare On Elm Street; Red Dawn; WarGames; etc.) as well as my more recent DVDs (Jeepers Creepers; Final Destination; Final Destination 2; etc.) were all shot with a standard lens onto 4:3 shaped film.

it all depends on how the film was initially shot. a check of www.imdb.com will tell you (technical specs section).

yes, some films are shot in 4:3 and then matted to 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. (eg, nightmare on elm street, most james cameron films..) remember though, just because the picture information is there, that doesn't mean the director wants you to see it. it's only there because of the limitations of the camera lens - the directors know that what's at the top and bottom will be cropped out.

however, some films are shot with widescreen lenses, meaning no matting takes place - until the film is cropped for 4:3. (eww!)

star wars is a good example of this..

actually, here's a really good web article explaining pretty much everything this thread has discussed (well, the on topic stuff anyway)

http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen.shtml

and one about "matted" widescreen (ie, filmed in 4:3 widescreen)

http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_matted.shtml

check the rest of the site for plenty of examples.

-Mark

[jonas more]

geek rock,

Thanks for the links to widescreen.org

For those of you who haven't visited, it is an awesome site dedicated to 'letterbox and widescreen advocacy'. If you feel the way I do about widescreen movies, you will probably appreciate the site as much as I do.

Even though I fully understand that when you view a matted widescreen movie, you are seeing exactly what the filmmaker intended, I still wish ALL movies were shot in anamorphic widescreen.