Why are the DVD producers such idiots? What is the point of cutting off the top and bottom of the picture to make it look like a movie? Why would anyone want that?
I'm quite certain that no one buying TV shows on DVD wants that, but the studios still do it. Warner Bros. used to do it with a lot of their TV show releases. They even claimed that some of them were actually originally framed for Widescreen and were being released that way for the first time ever. I'm refering to the 2 original "V" mini-series from back in 1983 and 1984. Yeah, like anyone was thinking of framing a TV mini-series for Widescreen 20+ years ago. I just had to watch the first few minutes to know that the top and bottom of the screen was trimmed off. I was so pissed that I immediately returned to the store where I bought the DVDs and got my money back. And when I bought my DVD recorder last year I transfered over my still mint quality tapes which Warner released in the correct Fullscreen format some years earlier, and what I now have is much better than watching the crappy fake widescreen prints and because I have them on DVD-R the quality will remain at this level forever (which isn't true for my VHS tapes). And luckily by the time Warner got around to releasing the regular TV series (19 episodes) which followed the 2 mini-series, they had realised how much these fake widescreen releases were a mistake, and released them in their original fullscreen format and I happily bought the set. They also screwed up another mini-series that I really love, the original 2 part "Bourne Identity" starring Richard Chamberlain. It's also fake-Widescreen and also not in my DVD collection.
Anyway, the likely reason that they're even doing these fake-Widescreen DVDs is because everything will eventually be in HD, but what they fail to realize is that the reason almost all movies are being released in Widescreen on DVD (whereas VHS movie releases used to be Pan & Scan/ Fullscreen) is that most people want to see the full picture. Well, the same thing is true with TV shows. We want the full picture. We want the ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO. If something was shot widescreen, release it widescreen. If something was shot fullscreen, release it fullscreen. Simple as that.
In response to Hornet's post - Gosh, now I need to find a region-free DVD player (not so easy to find, I've discovered) that also records ... Are the ones that record much more expensive than regular DVD players? Maybe I can ask for this for Christmas ...
DVD recorders are quite a bit more expensive than regular DVD players, and I'm not sure if there are any that are region free.
Also, is there any loss in quality when you record to DVD as there is when, for example, you record something from TV to VHS? Or is the difference in quality you refer to the fact that the VHS quality is lower than the DVD quality to start with?
Yeah, I was just refering to the fact that VHS quality isn't as good as DVD. But on the bright side there is virtually no quality loss when going from VHS to DVD. As a matter of fact I've found that the picture quality sometimes even appears to be better. I know this is not possible of course, but I'm always amazed at how good things look copied from VHS to DVD. And knowing that the picture will always look this way makes it all the better.
Dan
