16:9 Full Screen?
Dear Gary, I’m confused! A few days ago I was shopping online for some new DVDs. One of the new releases I was interested in was Stir Of Echoes. The online catalog I was shopping from listed it as a “full screen” edition. Having remembered seeing your Webzine’s “Studio News” announcement months earlier mentioning it being planned for release in widescreen, I decided to contact a live person to double check the situation. He pulled a copy of the disc and verified it was labeled “fullscreen.” Since I prefer seeing movies in the original format (thanks to reading your magazine), I decided to skip the purchase. But then I saw a review of Stir Of Echoes on your Web site. Your review says it was in widescreen! Now I’m really confused. Can you please shed some light on this for me?
James Gordon, San Francisco, California
Research Editor Michael Coate Comments:
Stir Of Echoes was released in anamorphic widescreen (and reviewd in Issue 37 and on our Web site), as a matter of fact. What Artisan did with this title is they labeled it a “16:9 Full Screen” edition. While this isn’t entirely incorrect (on 16:9 displays, the image would technically be “fullscreen,” but the original theatrical “widescreen” image is what is being presented), it is highly misleading and serves no one. This misleading form of labeling was also used on the Artisan DVD releases Buena Vista Social Club and Joan Of Arc. The press release for their upcoming The Minus Man is listed the same way as well. Widescreen Review magazine’s position on this is that we prefer the term “anamorphic widescreen,” and wish all of the studios would adopt this clear, concise and accurate form of labeling. It’s bad enough that studios choose to use the term 16:9 in the wrong context. The term “16:9” should be used only in the context of describing a display or monitor. When describing actual content-related aspect ratios, the common height figure of “1” (1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, etc) that the motion picture industry prefers should be used for clarity. When a studio chooses to label their discs in a manner that differs from a rival studio, what happens too often is that consumers become confused as to what the terminology means. This is especially true for newcomers to the world of home theatre. Just think back to the early days of widescreen on LaserDisc. The studios never did come to an agreement on whether they wanted to use “widescreen” or “letterbox.” Eventually, many people were led to believe that “widescreen” meant one thing and “letterbox“ meant another. Many consumers thought that one term meant 1.85:1 (“little bars”) and the other term meant 2.35:1 (“big bars”). The same thing is happening now with DVD, and since DVD is poised to being accepted by many millions of more people than LaserDisc ever was, so correct labeling is an important issue.
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