I love wide screen and never have owned a wide screen tv. Not yet anyway. I would love to get one of those HD-ILA types. IMO those are the best there is.

why? whats so special about seeing a picture thats 2x smaller then the standard screen your TV can show max?

my wife agrees, its like watching a movie on a 25 inch TV thats only 19 inches tall, its just, annoying

only advantage I can see, is that MAYBE you can see the movie in a wider perspective, but who cares about that when the picture isn't as tall?

In 4x3 movies you lose alot of the picture from the side of the original film. And sometimes, if they need to show you all that was in the original they simulate a camera pan when the original film didn't pan. And sometimes they jump-cut to someone or something else in the film when originally it was all one shot. Compare Braveheart or all the original Star Wars movies on 4x3 VHS and 16x9 DVD and you'll see a very big difference in the amount of picture that was lost. More than half I'd say.
Star Wars ep 6 was the first film I saw in widescreen and it was like seeing it for the first time because it was so different.

I hated it years ago on old systems but now I like it. Sometimes you get the option to go to full screen and check out the difference and it is huge. The full screen quality looks like someone shot the movie on a handycam 10 years ago.

I you use cyberlinks Powerdvd, I think it has an option to pan and scan which makes those widescreen features like watching a normal tv.

Youll notice the difference when you play a widescreen movie using it and turn the features on and off and you will see the difference between the 2 different views

That was for Bubazoo

I have this "16x9 Vs. 4x3" argument now and then with another guy at work, and I can't make him understand it either. He just asks me repeatedly "why do they cut off the top and bottom", and I can't make him undestand that they DID NOT cut off the top and bottom. I've given up there.

Bubazoo, I know you have some vision problems. Pick the format that is most comfortable for you to watch, and don't worry about it.

I had a guy tell me that too and I told him "Widescreen doesn't cut off the top and bottom. Pan and Scan cuts off the sides."

Then I invited him over to check out the laserdisc version of Jedi in 16x9 compared to the VHS version. I synced up the tape to the disc and flipped back and forth between him and he was blown away. The part where Obi-wan's ghost and Luke were talking was supposed to be one continuous shot but in full screen it cuts back and forth between the two actors because they were sitting on opposite sides of the film. There are whole actors and many creatures that are in the widescreen version that can not be seen at all in the full screen and I'm sure those actors are kicking themselves trying to convince their buddies that they were in a Star Wars movie.

Here's an example.
http://www.homecinemaworld.com/software/widescreen.html

And some more.
http://andrestarck.tripod.com/Widescreenvs.htm

More star wars scenes
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/hills/6781/EmpireCompare.html

And Dizzy, you're right. On the older systems it didn't look as good because of the way it was stored on the tape or the laserdisc and the way the hardware played it back.

Video tape can only store 240 lines of horizontal resolution, laserdisc is 420 lines and DVD is 480 lines. One VHS and LD the black bars of the widescreen are actually recorded and stored so you actually only see the movie on the remaining lines of resolution on your TV, which is about half. That's why they look so washed out and blurry.

On DVD the widescreen picture is actually stretched up to fill the screen so that people look like stick figures and is stored using the disc's full amount of resolution. When played back the DVD player's hardware squishes it down to normal size and digitally adds the black bars. This way no resolution is wasted on displaying the black bars. If it wasn't for this then I think laserdiscs would've put up a better fight with DVDs.

I just bought Crash and season 2 and 3 of MASH. They were all good deals.

I just got Harry Potter 4...it was on sale, already.

I haven`t seen it here yet, but I haven`t been looking either.

I just preordered the doctor who Beginning dvd set and the triangle on dvd Got a great deal on the triangle as I think it is 2 dvds and I got it for under 20 bucks

Just bought Harry Potter 4.

Odyssey 5 just arrived - The complete Series on 5 dvds Can't wait to dive in to it

I just watched Saw 2 the other day. Very good film although I predicted the ending sometime towards the beginning. I like how they linked in the first movie into this one.