DVDeception

Friday 2 April 2004




I have two DVD-related topics to rant about.

The first thing is double-dipping. This is when a studio releases a movie on DVD, then later releases a different version, usually with more stuff. So if you want to have the "best" version out there, the studio gets your money TWICE. I remember this first starting with the "Star Trek" movies, but now it's a widespread practice...it's even happened with movies I really like. I want to own the nicer version, but I never buy it. I shouldn't have to buy the same thing twice.

The second thing is widescreen vs fullscreen. I'll make this simple: widescreen, despite its black bars at top and bottom, is the ACTUAL and COMPLETE movie as filmed and shown in the movie theater. Fullscreen is NOT; it is the original movie with left and right chopped off so it will fit on your TV. I understand that the black bars bother a lot of people and they refuse to have them on the screen, but these people need to at least acknowledge that they are watching an incomplete movie and missing out visually. A lot of people praise fullscreen, saying that they don't like having the movie cut off at the top and bottom. Educate yourselves, fools. Hey, I don't like the black bars, but it's better than not seeing 43% of the filmed movie!