Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Audiophilander (A) on November 29, 2003 at 20:52:39

In Reply to: Lord of the Rings - Versions? posted by James L on November 29, 2003 at 19:37:48:

Widescreen: Anamorphic widescreen that will either reformat for 16:9 widescreen sets or display a letterboxed (black bars on top & bottom of screen) image on 4:3 sets.

Full screen: Also called standard format and may be refered to as the "pan & scan" version. This version has material edited from the left and right part of the picture to fit older 4:3 sets without bars on top and bottom of picture.

Forget the term Director's Cut in regard to Lord of the Rings series because the Director, Peter Jackson, carefully edited ALL versions of these films. The theatrical release version doesn't have any special phrasing attached to it. The extended version is called the Special Extended DVD Edition. There is also a Collector's Edition, but it's basicly just the extended version combined with detailed scenes or figurines depicted in the movie, packaged in a nice gift box, but at a premium price.

My suggestion would be to go with the Special Extended DVD Edition; I think that the Extended Editions are all anamorphic widescreen although I wouldn't swear to it. In any case, I wouldn't recommend the pan & scan (Full screen) version anyway, because most folks prefer seeing the whole film even if they have to put up with the black bars while watching over a standard 4:3 set. Besides, the way things are going, it's only a matter of time before we all own widescreen digital sets of one kind or another and let me tell you, viewing WS movies over a good progressive scan DVD player (RGB outputs) makes these films blossom in rich, amazing ways.

AuPh