Hello!

I love fullscreen versions of films ( open matte or pan & scanned ). I’m particularly fond of pan & scans of movies that REALLY shouldn’t be pan & scanned ( think “The Deer Hunter”, “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, “The Magnificent 7”, “The Great Escape”, “Ben-Hur”… ). They’re fascinating.

I own many of those on DVD, and love the restoration job and the fact that I can finally watch them in their original aspect ratio, which is my favorite way of watching them, but I’m really sad to see pan & scan go. They have not only nostalgic value, they are also historically interesting, in the sense that this was the way most people first encountered those movies for the best part of the last 40 years, and also because new releases usually have slightly different cuts / revamped special effects / color timing, and other tweaks. Just like deleted scenes or alternate takes on a DVD, these versions tell you a little more about the film.

So I was wondering if there are more people out there who feel the way I do. There were a few fullscreen DVDs early in the format ( either stand-alone releases or flippies ( Widescreen on one side, fullscreen on the other ), laserdisc for a few prominent titles, and vhs for the rest. I hear Netflix also makes some movies available in fullscreen.

I do not have the resources, technical knowledge or money to own, convert or download everything I’m interested in, I have never even touched a laserdisc player, but if I didn’t think so strongly about piracy, I’d love it if like-minded people were to post a reply with their thoughts on this or maybe shoot me a pm about fullscreen laserdisc-to-dvd conversions and other such material…

By the way, I happen to be a member at a number of trackers, under the same username. Isn’t that a funny coincidence?