This was one of the first DVDs I bought - on the Region 2 Entertainment In Video label. Watching it again for the first time in years I noticed how the picture is actually very small with huge black bars on all 4 sides. According to the specs I found on line this DVD release in not amorphic. Does that mean that the re-releases will have a larger/better picture?
...now I do it just to watch their f----n' expression change.
Yes, the EV release was non-anamorphic. You can use the zoom controls to "fill" the screen but the picture will suffer as a result. The rerelease from Warners is anamorphic so will unsqueeze and display correctly on a widescreen tv (as long as your dvd player is set correctly). There'll still be a small(er) amount of letterboxing because it's a 2.35:1 film, which is a wider aspect ratio than a widescreen tv but yes, you will have a larger/better picture with the rerelease.
shareMany thanks for the info!
...now I do it just to watch their f----n' expression change.
I have the R2 RCV release from 1999. It is fullscreen (4:3) and the image quality sucks big time. There is a 'featurette' (a poor man's 'making of') and a B-roll (camera's filming camera's that film) too.
Any wider-screen release will be better than this. I have just compared my 4:3 version with a widescreen 1:1.78 version I found on-line. See for yourself:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7598/comparisonlms.jpg
The movie is definitely worth a proper re-release in 1 : 2.35.
The funny thing is, that sometimes the fullscreen 4:3 version contains more and relevant image information than the widescreen version. As in the last image in my comparison. So it's hard to say which is the 'optimal' release.
Michel Couzijn
But how come the picture is totally surrounded by big thick bars - or is something wrong with my TV set up? It only happens with this old DVD. It's like watching a zoomed in picture. I have this movie on VHS somewhere - I am sure it was letterboxed. Why wasn't this doen for the DVD? Anyway, it's all yesterdays peanuts as I got the later release recently.
I also noticed that my original DVD has started to turn a kind of golden colour - some CDs I bought at the same time have done this as well - deterioration?
...now I do it just to watch their f----n' expression change.