FS or WS better? DVD

F

frankyk

Gawd
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Jan 30, 2004
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I'm about to purchase a few DVD's and I saw that they offer FS or WS, which is better to have on a non-WS TV?
 
It depends on your preferences and future plans.

Only go WS if you can live with watching it letterboxed right now and are planning on upgrading to a WS at some point in the future. Otherwise go with FS.
 
are you serious? Dont dont dont watch full screen cropped movies its just awful, if its shot in 2.35:1 you are only seeing about 40% of the image and it just changes every bit of meaning. Even on a small tv its better to go with widescreen dvds. Ultimately the best idea would be to get a widescreen tv, but then you get black bars on the sides with 4x3 video...

anyways sorry for rambling, WS = BETTER
 
Aye, definitely Widescreen, I HATE fullscreen DVDs because there's so much that you're missing.
 
My personal preference is for WS.

However, I have had that argument with a number of non-technos and ultimately lost. I lost because they genuinely preferred the look of the movies in FS over WS. These were people with FS TVs and no plans to upgrade.

Now, it may just be a screwy people I have dealt with on this. If they don't see at a glance what they get from WS over FS, even when I've shown them the difference, they have been happier with FS.

If they see the difference at a glance, they don't ask which is better.
 
subrandom said:
if its shot in 2.35:1 you are only seeing about 40% of the image in FS and it just changes every bit of meaning.

anyways sorry for rambling, WS = BETTER
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QFT. I always have this discussions with my friends telling them that WS is better. Widescreen is everything that the director shot in the movie. Fullscreen deletes some of the picture.

Always buy WS. Then you'll get everything that the movie is supposed to show.
 
Too bad every DVD isn't like The Ususal Suspects and Poltergeist.. both widescreen and fullscreen versions on the DVD. The Usual Suspects did it the best, both versions on a single side. With Poltergeist you have to flip the DVD over.
 
Daniel53 said:
even with a widescreen monitor, you still get those damn black bars
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On a monitor. Widescreen televisions are usually exempt from this being that they are 16:9. Perfect fit then.
 
feigned said:
On a monitor. Widescreen televisions are usually exempt from this being that they are 16:9. Perfect fit then.
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Not true ..a lot of movies still have the black bars.

I always buy WS dvd's myself.
 
UrielDagda said:
Too bad every DVD isn't like The Ususal Suspects and Poltergeist.. both widescreen and fullscreen versions on the DVD. The Usual Suspects did it the best, both versions on a single side. With Poltergeist you have to flip the DVD over.
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You're giving up a lot of video quality though to get two movies on a single layer. At best you have 8.5 GB for 3-6 hours of video and audio.
 
I also hate the bars but and smaller image but overall I like wide screen better because as others have mentioned you are missing a ton with the fullscreen versions... If you are so desperate for a full screen image i'd say the next best thing to a fullsceen DVD version is to grab a DVD player that has a zoom function (preferably one that will let you turn off any OSD junk when it's zoomed) and then watch it that way. It's had to say how long you'll have the DVDs and the way tech is going you'll eventually have a widescreen TV.

Everything I have read says that even if you have a wide sceen TV you will still frequently see the dreaded black bas because of the aspect ration that the movie is in but they arn't as big as a 4:3 set and the image looks bigger since the set is wider (well in most cases, I guess that depends on what size you end up buying).
 
The thing is that wide screen movies like seen in a movie theater are like a ribbon or a big bandage or big piece of 35mm film displayed on a wall. Is not really a "screen". But because it is so big it appears to be a regular screen to our eyes. It is very hard to reproduce a big theater image in a home. I have not seen a display that is able to reproduce a wide screen movie without seeing black lines above and below the movie. Perhaps a projector would do a better job.
 
IMO, it doesnt make too big of a difference as long as your monitor/tv is big enough. While I do feel somewhat cheated with FS dvd's, youre really not missing anything since everything thats worth seeing is almost always filmed in the center of the screen.

If its a monitor, I'd probably go FS since its more general purpose, and I'd rather have black bars on the top and bottom than both sides.
 
Photo slide shows in wide screen monitors look horrible. That was one of the reasons why I returned a Samsung 243T monitor. And what is worse, not many video cards support its native resolution.
 
WS! While the main focus is usually in the center of the screen, you do lose a lot and a good director doesn't have meaningless crap to the sides... ;)

I've been a fan of WS since forever though... even though everyone hated it, I always rented the WS VHS tapes :p

And now that I have a WS monitor, it's all paid off! :)
 
SLee said:
You're giving up a lot of video quality though to get two movies on a single layer. At best you have 8.5 GB for 3-6 hours of video and audio.
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They used a dual layer DVD for The Usual Suspects. One layer for widescreen, the other for fullscreen. The movie runs roughly 1:45, and the picture quality is among the best I have seen on DVD.
 
isai95 said:
Photo slide shows in wide screen monitors look horrible. That was one of the reasons why I returned a Samsung 243T monitor. And what is worse, not many video cards support its native resolution.
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Are you sure you didn't have it set to stretch content, or was it changing resolutions?

Also, I don't know about ATI video cards, but my GeForce 2 MX in my nearly 5 year old Gateway can do 1920x1200. I just had to upgrade my drivers.

I am glad I have a widescreen CRT.. Almost went LCD, but judging from all the complaints about them, I don't think they are quite as good as I would want yet. Having it look like crap when changing from the native resolution is just unacceptable to me in a product I would spend an arm and a leg for.
 
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