Page 1 of Criminal Cropping...

Was watching `See No Evil Hear No Evil` last night (my wife likes it & I got it cheap, honest) and I felt something was missing. On the box it said `Anamorphic Widescreen, Preserving the original aspect ratio..` etc. etc. Well, it was an anamorphic widescreen picture, BUT...

... the deceiving expetives appear to have used a pan`n`scam master and then chopped off the top and bottom of this to give a `widescreen` picture. I know that Eastern Heros have done this for their cheapo Jackie Chan DVD`s, but I didn`t expect it from a company like Columbia Tristar. If they only had a pan`n`scam master, then well the hell didn`t they just produce a pan`n`scam DVD? Pan`n`scam is bad enough, but cropped pan`n`scam!!!! It`s criminal. Thats only about 56% of the original image by reckoning!

Is this common practice? Any other titles received this sort of treatment?

This item was edited on Tuesday, 28th May 2002, 13:22

OK,
There`s nothing wrong with your disc, it`s just a film that was shot in super 35mm, which is a format that allows a fullscreen and widescreen version to be filmed simultaneously.
When you see the film in the cinema (or on your DVD) the top and bottom are masked off to give a widescreen image, when shown on TV or video the full frame image is shown, often letting the viewer see things they`re not really meant to see(such as microphones creeping into the top of the screen).
So your widescreen DVD is still the best version and looks the same as it did in the cinema.

Makes sense I suppose. Thanks for the reply.