Fullscreen, because when you've only got a 14" TV, widescreen makes things ikkle.

Busted

Fullscreen, cuz you only see a little bit more in wide and the black bars are distracting.

A little bit more? Geez look at those pictures. Some of them you don't even see Anakin at all?

What the hell do you expect, a 360 view? lol

My primary TV ain't that big, but usually I aim for Widescreen releases. But Fullscreen is OK too.

If you consider the rules of thirds (a scene looks most interesting if the focal point is at a third position horizontally rather than in the middle), anything but widescreen utterly destroys the camerawork.

I have never seen a non-widescreen DVD in a shop, and i'd never buy a non-widescreen DVD.

I had BTTF trilogy VHS box set, and at the start of every movie, it had a trailer for Widescreen Letterbox... the BTTF movies made me love widescreen.

Widescreen ftw.

Before I knew the exact differences between fullscreen and widescreen, I made some unjustified assumption that the black bars meant higher quality.

Sometimes they actually mean less, depending on the quality of the transfer.

The new widescreen DVDs are good. Most of them are actually encoded properly. Anamorphic widescreen tends to be the best (IMO). Older DVDs just made a fullscreen transfer with the black bars and everything. I own a few of those and it's pretty sick.

Sadly you'd never notice unless you were using a widescreen TV, which is probably why these terrible companies got away with it for so many years.

The TPM widescreen VHS transfer is heavily pixellated. It looks like they used a nearest point sample when they were resizing it.

Wrong. The standard tv ratio is 4:3. The standard cinema ratio is 16:9. Cinemascope is 2.35:1 or in some cases 2.40.1. In the case of 16:9, not alot of the frame is removed to execute a full screen image, but with cinemascope, nearly half of the image is removed. It's really quite disrespectful to the director of photography, as I said before, to disregard nearly half of the image that he created.

movies invented before tv

someone decides to make first tv square rather than letterbox

movies on tv sucks for next 40 years

hdtvs come out

yay!!!!!

Actually the film created cinemascope because when tv was released, the box office was annihilated because it was all about seeing pretty pictures move back then... SO, the film industry created this really wide image to give people something they couldn't get at home. Box office went back up. People wanted to see at home what they could see at theaters. Letterbox editions of movies. People hated black bars. Wide screen tvs. Then you know, dvds, hdtv... bla bla bla.

I'm all for the ORIGINAL aspect ratio. Most films that where shot on 16mm end up getting cropped and called wide screen when really you are loosing information. Several films in the 80s where shot on 4:3. I'm sure most of those DVDs are widescreen now too.

And its not just disrespectful to the Director of Photography but also the Director, DPs too must be directed.
The director usually composes all the frames unless he is a pansy. Film is a visual medium, and unless the director can take full advantage of composition he won't really be able to convey the idea or story at hand.

Aren't TVs closer to square because it's just a lot easier to make CRTs that way? It would seem that to have a regular CRT displaying widescreen you'd have to either use more powerful methods of deflecting the electron beam or move the gun back farther.

I hate widescreen. You dont see much more, so there is no point. It takes so much space up with those stupid black bars.

Yeah.
Widescreen TVs use some kind of voodoo magic, the same as shallow CRTs and perfectly flat screen CRTs. I don't know how they work. Nor do I care, since LCD, plasma and OLED are much more advanced technology.

Perfectly flat CRTs aren't really perfectly flat, they just add more glass to bend the light, resulting in a flat image once the light hits your eyes.

Canon's SED technology looks promising. If it's as good as they say it is, it will be superior to all other display technologies in every aspect. SED displays are supposed to be on the market in 2006. Wikipedia link.

Now that's sweet. It's pixel-based, but how does the image sharpness compare to a LCD panel?

I defniatly prefer widescreen, apart from some movies where its way to skinny. what we all need is a widescreen plasma hd tv.

Widescreen because you get to see the movie the way it was shown in the theater instead of watching a version with screen panning implemented to show a scene where panning wasn't supposed to be. I don't really mind the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen because when you watch a movie on a big screen, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Yeah, you only see OVER TWICE WHAT YOU DO WITH FULLSCREEN.

No.

They should really call it "Halfscreen" because you're literally only seeing half of the movie.

For dvd's, Widescreen always, because if your dvd player has zoom mode, you just zoom in and get "fullscreen" mode as well -- 2 for 1 deal!
You can't make widescreen from fullscreen, so widescreen is better

Ever since I was a little kid, my dad taught me widescreen was the way to go

i picked full.. it focuses in on the important details

No. It ruins the cinematography, and is in complete disrespect to the medium.

It'd be like cutting away the Mona Lisa to make it square instead of rectangular.



That focus on the important part too.

It's also equally as retarded as fullscreen DVDs.

My girlfriend unfortunately perfers fullscreen.

I do not share her opinion. Widescreen for the win.

Fullscreen DVDs are *almost* forgivable on fullscreen TVs. But if you don't yet own a widescreen TV then you don't deserve to have an opinion anyways.

You'll note that a 4:3 image stretched to 16:9 is barely noticeable, whereas a 16:9 image compressed to 4:3 looks absolutely horrible. That's why they have black bars instead of stretching it to fit the TV screen. Anyways, I watch movies on my computer all the time, and because it's an LCD it's actually closer to square than old-style TVs. I don't understand why people gripe about the black bars. What, are you worried it's going to burn in? You'll be stuck with faint black bars on your TV all the time? Hahaha.

Well, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with CRTs that makes them less sharp than LCDs. This is sort of a myth propgated by the fact that most consumer CRTs are junk and ARE pretty blurry (high dot-pitch, low tolerances, etc). Good, high end CRTs (which are unfortunately not in production anymore) destroy LCDs in image quality, even in sharpness. Unfortunately they are incredibly expensive. And big. But at least they double as space heaters! :p

But anyway, I'm not sure of the image quality on SED displays in any aspect. I should hope it's at least as good as a good CRT, otherwise I have no idea how they will market them. I mean, the general public probably thinks LCDs are better than CRTs for image quality (based on their own experiences where this probably holds true). It'll also be difficult because every other company making HD displays is going to try their best to make sure their LCD or plasma technology isn't knocked off the market.

Sadly I get the feeling that SED won't take off the ground or will have a very niche market. They might get their foot in the door if it's really cheap though.