It surprises the hell out of me at how many people leave that crap on. It's like they don't even notice. To me it looks so bad that it literally is unwatchable. I remember one time at a friends house we were watching a movie, and the entire time I was thinking how bad the motion smoothing looked. I couldn't even pay attention to the movie, just how bad it looked. Finally I asked if I can change a setting on his TV, and I turn that s**t off. I audibly say in relief "that looks so much better" and you know what he says?? "What did you do, I don't see a difference" !!

I was lucky to discover them much earlier, albeit it probably wasn't until I started re-watching childhood classics on DVD to learn about pan & scan. I had a friend with satellite TV tape me old Star Trek movies and I guess they always broadcast movies in OAR so I don't think I've ever seen any of them in pan & scan, but watching movies like Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and Star Wars in OAR was such a revelation that even the resolution bump from DVD to blu-ray didn't seem quite as impressive.

I'll never forget in 2001 when The Fellowship of the Ring came out. I didnt really know much about Lord of the Rings prior. I was invited to a friends birthday party and a bunch of us went to see it. It was so much fun, we all left the cinema pumped to see part 2.

I remember subsequently getting it on vhs. I wanted to show it to my grandad because I kept going on about how good it was. Plus I think he may have read Lord of the Rings back in the day. So we sat down and watched it one evening. For some strange reason, the film didnt have the same impact. It was slow and boring and not at all visually interesting. It was so bad that my grandad switched it off halfway through and said something like, "I cant watch this s**t!"
I remember being really dissapointed. Not only did my grandad not like it but the film itself didnt even hold up!

It wasnt until years later that I realised. Not only were we watching the film in pan and scan, which for a scope film like FOTR is atrocious, we were watching it strecthed!! No wonder my grandad had that reaction. No wonder I felt like the film didnt hold up. We were watching a mere portion of the film and on top of that it was stretched and distorted.

Needless to say, when the DVD came out and I watched it, my faith in the film was restored. I dont think my grandad ever had any inclination to watch it again.

So great films and great experiences can truly be missed because of incorrect ratios.

I didn’t even realize LotR hit VHS.

To be fair, VHS isn’t as bad as Youtube would have people believe. First, the de-interlacing is done wrong. Then it’s cropped to widescreen throwing away 1/3 of the picture and the resolution. Then on top of that anything that YouTube classifies as “SD” gets a pathetic bit rate that murders it even more dead by adding digital artifacts all over the analog ones. The end result is nothing at all like best case VHS.

I was watching some really good footage of old motorsports stuff but it was all cropped wide. I made a comment about it and all he said was “I guess that’s how it’s done.” which is just depressing...

a straight-up prerecorded factory cassette being directly played back via the 1988 MITSUBISHI HS-U80 VCR through an LCD HD display;



(removed the S-VHS pics, we've seen them many times before)

And at what Aspect Ratio?

It's the topic of this thread.

Julien

No Rein-O, not my video. You can say/do what you want. I'm not here to criticize someone trying to be helpful to the community. In fact, I thought Sam explained all of the points pretty well. Long winded, but in order for people to understand AR you need a little history as to why things are the way they are. Context you know.

The video is even chapter encoded for your convenience

The video was not meant for experienced people. Duh. If that's you then great, no need to throw another LD fan under the bus for trying to help new people. I didn't learn anything new from the video but I'm so glad he is taking the time and effort to put together another resource for new people. It was also not misinformation so really nothing to complain about.

The AR guide here at LDDB is fantastic but almost no one is referencing it or even knows it exists. Many of the new people (on FB) have no clue and need help figuring this stuff out. Maybe they don't like forums and crusty senior members who look down on them. Maybe a video with someone explaining it to them is more effective than images and text. Who cares. More ways to understand it benefits everyone.

What I absolutely cannot stand here or on the FB groups is when people bash others about their set up when they clearly are new and/or ignorant. Being respectful is paramount. As Sam mentions, have some tact. You learn better from a kind, patient teacher than one who is sarcastic and demanding. The fact that there is even a group that refer to themselves as the AR police disgusts me. Just be nice and help people when necessary or just keep swimming.

Sigh.

The point is: the video is too long. The people who stand the most to gain from it are never going to spend 45 min watching it because everything already looks fine to them and they don’t feel they need to be “taught” anything.

And may I say that’s a very long post or two just to promote tyrannical positivity. I don’t cry when people say stuff sucks. Lots of stuff DOES suck. We can take it. If all you do is tell everyone they are awesome all the time all you get is more stuff that sucks. This insane and inhuman drive to rid the world of any and all negative thinking is dumb. It ain’t going anywhere as a philosophy. It’s negative thinking that drives people.

Even Return of the King was released on VHS, if you can believe that! If only Laserdisc lasted that long.

VHS lasted until about I want to say 2006 in terms of big movies being put out on it. I certainly remember most new movies in 04/05 getting VHS releases.

From what I can remember 2006 is when HD-DVD and Blu-ray really hit the scene. Literally everyone had a vcr back then so it makes sense that they were released up until that time. Just crazy to think they were pushing out movies in the wrong aspect ratio for that long.

I can thankfully say I have never seen that version of LOTR. It sounds dreadful.

2006 was indeed the last year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_home_video

Few titles I had no idea got a VHS releases in the USA.

Would they all be Pan&Scan?

• Invincible
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Cars
• The Little Mermaid (1989, re-release)
• Brother Bear 2
• Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure
• Eight Below
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Chicken Little
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Saw II
• The Legend of Zorro

Julien

I think a lot of Pixar movies from that time period when pan&scan and widescreen co-existed simultaneously were simply re-rendered for both with different camera angles and composition. I also vaguely recall Brother Bear (the original, not the sequel) doing something similar, but I could be wrong.

That makes a lot of sense. If you have a kid and one of those TV/VCR combos you have the perfect home theater. VHS auto plays, auto rewinds, and sometimes even has repeat. Being a DJ for a kid in the DVD/BR era *sucks* by comparison.

I plan to start a thread about this, about how the very young and the very old are basically SOL with modern formats but can easily understand records, LDs, CDs, and VHS.

And in the wrong aspect ratio as it is a 4:3 image stretched.

You should pillar/side box it so you're watching it right.

Looks like the creator of that YT video was right after all.

I would hope so. I always thought letterboxed VHS/Beta to be an atrocity since you'll only have like, what, 150 lines of actual picture on a letterboxed 240 image?

This has already been mentioned. He, like aunt Mable and uncle Zef, don’t care.