In the VHS days, did you prefer fullscreen or widescreen movies?

[Lethal_Striker]

The only good thing that widescreen movies had during the VHS days is if you got a foreign movie like a kung fu movie, the subtitles would be in the bottom black box instead of over top the picture of the movie.

 

[Madmick]

Widescreen, it's how films are supposed to look

Hey, look, a fail film snob! No, bro, actually "cinematic" is the aspect ratio term for how films are "supposed" to look. Widescreen defines a chopped aspect ratio itself. Just less so. It's the difference between 2.35:1 and 16:10/16:9.

Herp a derp.

 

[Iroh]

Full, unless it's a documentary about landscapes.

 

[Bobby Boulders]

Full screen. Used to get pissed watching movies with the black bars.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Ahhhh I remember when we got out 36 " tv. It was damn huge!!! Now anything under 50" is considered small(in my view)

 

[El Moose]

Hey, look, a fail film snob! No, bro, actually "cinematic" is the aspect ratio term for how films are "supposed" to look. Widescreen defines a chopped aspect ratio itself. Just less so. It's the difference between 2.35:1 and 16:10/16:9.

Herp a derp.

I'm a film snob because I prefer Widescreen out of the two options presented?

Thanks for the refresher though, it's been about fifteen years since I took tv production (Seriously, no sarcasm intended)

 

[lakersfan45]

During vhs days I only got fullscreen. Were many vhs offered in widescreen?
Once dvd came out I only bought widescreen. I hated when a friend would buy a widescreen dvd then zoom in, that was the worse.

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

Full screen because I didn't know any better. I made the switch to widescreen with DVD even though I didn't have a widescreen DVD until much later.

I think I read a "Why you should be watching widescreen" article on the internet and that's when I switched.

 

[Long Dark Blues]

Fullscreen was the only way to watch TV in the 80's and 90's.

This is the TV I had growing up:

 

[bubbleboyjones]

Widescreen. Even as a kid I could recognize pan and scan looked like shit compared to widescreen.

My other big pet peeve years ago was when people used to complain about "black bars" for widescreen in the belief that they were viewing less of the picture. These are the same people that are responsible for music being mastered at retarded levels.

 

[HugeFanSmallBod]

Full screen all day still today

 

[jmac98]

I prefer full screen.

I'm not into electronics, or changing all the settings, or playing around for best aspect ratio or zoom1 vs zoom2 or whatever. I just want to put the movie in and watch it, and if my 55" screen is full of movie, I am happier than when the black bars appear above/below. That said, if the black bars are there, my life is not changed and I enjoy the move all the same.

 

[Guestx]

People forget how rare "big screen" TVs were back then because of how expensive they were. And "big screen" meant 30"+.

Yeah, it's weird. Most people I knew had either a 25" or 27" in the living room. I personally, as a teenager, had a 19" in my bedroom. The weird thing about that 19" is that the size didn't bother me at all at the time. I would play video games and watch movies on it on a regular basis and thought nothing of it. Then when I turned 20 I moved into my own place and splurged on a 32" TV. This thing seemed FUCKING HUGE to me and my roommate.

Of course the funny thing is that now 32" seems kind of small to me for a main living room set.

 

[Guestx]

During vhs days I only got fullscreen. Were many vhs offered in widescreen?

Near the end of VHS's lifespan, as DVDs were gaining steam and widescreen was becoming more accepted and desired, several studios re-released many of their titles in widescreen. Interestingly enough, these tapes were influenced by DVD in another way as well: They had special content on the tape that would play after the movie, like director interviews or making-of featurettes.

Right now, off the top of my head, some movies that were released on VHS in widescreen include Jurassic Park, The Godfather trilogy, Top Gun, Apollo 13, The Exorcist, Enter the Dragon, The Craft, Contact, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the LOTR trilogy, Wyatt Earp, Titanic, Jaws, The Rock. . . There were a lot more. In fact, once studios began released a lot of widescreen stuff on VHS many movie stores created a special section just for widescreen VHS movies.

 

[Guestx]

Widescreen. Even as a kid I could recognize pan and scan looked like shit compared to widescreen.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I watched a pan and scan copy of The Mummy last night. It was weird to see how tight the shot compositions seemed after so many years of exclusively watching widescreen content.

 

[Gunshow74]

Fullscreen back in the VHS days. I found those black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to be annoying.

 

[Bay Area]

TS is poor.

 

[Pecker123]

Fullscreen back then. It was what I was used to and the tv in my bedroom had a screen smaller than the laptop I'm using now.

Now I'm used to widescreen. Widescreen tv's weren't common back then in the uk, in fact I think they only really started to become commonplace around the time tv was moving from analogue to digital.

It was 2000 when broadcasters started showing commercials only in widescreen here.

 

[thetruth2709]

People keep refering to the "black bars" as if somebody "put" black bars on top of the image... there are no black "bars"! thats just empty space...imagine as if the wide screen was zoom out inside your square TV screen so everything on a "wide" screen would fit inside a square... that creates EMPTY space on top and bottom, it could have been white, purple, any color! but there are no "black bars"... its just empty space!

 

[Guestx]

People keep refering to the "black bars" as if somebody "put" black bars on top of the image... there are no black "bars"! thats just empty space...imagine as if the wide screen was zoom out inside your square TV screen so everything on a "wide" screen would fit inside a square... that creates EMPTY space on top and bottom, it could have been white, purple, any color! but there are no "black bars"... its just empty space!

I'm pretty sure everyone knows this. People making such comments probably feel like they paid for 27 inches of screen real estate and they want it to be used. I felt the same way at the time. Even now, though I'm used to the black bars, I'm always happy when a production was shot in an aspect ratio that's going to make use of all 40 inches of my 40 inch TV.