I hate the Fullscreen ratio, which forces the industry to crop the picture via the "pan-and-scan" technique whereby the outer edges are edited out, depending where the "action" is taking place on the screen, in order to fit on the low aspect ratio TV screen. They are getting better at making new DVDs in the Widescreen format which preserves the native cinema aspect ratio, but some of the older, less "marketable" movies (especially sci-fi) are currently only available in Fullscreen. In one of the worst slaps to the face of the consumer by a cheap-ass industry, some movies like Dark City are actually Fullscreens with the tops and bottoms cropped out to make them look like they are Widescreens!

So, do you predict that some of the older films will soon get the treatment they deserve, or maybe not for years if ever? For example: I had a desire to get some of the older classics on DVD, but lots of them are Fullscreen still, like The Thing from Another World, and The Bridges at Toko-Ri. I decided to go ahead and get them, but they will look terrible when the new HD TVs with their Widescreen formats replace the current 1.33 to 1 aspect ratios.

Your thoughts?

Are you sure that those two movies you mentioned were originally released in widescreen? They were released around the time when they just started introducing the wider aspect ratio.

Don't worry about it - most of today's high quality (not Wal-Mart or other cheap retailer) HD TVs offer many options for viewing full screen movies or TV. The popular opinion that they will have a "stretched out" look or that you'll have to view with the black bars on the sides instead of the top and bottom was true 5 years ago, but many brands such as Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony, Pioneer and Samsung have made great strides and spent lots of R&D to avoid these problems so that people will buy widescreen TVs such as DLPs, Plasmas and LCDs. I personally own a Panasonic Plasma HDTV and it has some great, non-image-distorting options for viewing some of my older DVDs and even VHS.

digitallyobsessed.com/showreview.php3?ID=1269 says The Bridges at Toko-Ri has an OAR of 1.33:1 so full screen would be correct
as is The Thing from Another World
www.digitallyobsessed.com/showreview.php3?ID=4998

Quoted: Your thoughts?

You are going to wait for somthing that cannot happen in most cases.

Most movies shot before late 50s early 60s are fullscreen format, shot that way there is no widescreen available. Widescreen only came about as a means to differentiate movies in theaters from TV and was not originally the norm.

Wow I did not know that!  I will now commence to stock up on the classics.

I'm phazing out the VHS totally, just getting rid of them. I just got a DVD recorder so I'm going to record the rare stuff I got then trash them. The cassetes jut take up too much space.

How long does a DVD last?

I have old videos from the late 80's that still work fine but wonder about DVD disks...

Quoted: How long does a DVD last? I have old videos from the late 80's that still work fine but wonder about DVD disks...

longer than tape