Is wider better?

A question I often get asked is whether someone should buy the full screen or widescreen version of a DVD. The easy answer? Widescreen. It’s a no brainer for me. Look around in your retail stores. How many square televisions do you see on the shelves? How many widescreens? Of course I always hear the argument from someone that has a standard (square screen) television they recently purchased and plan to keep for the next um-teen years. To which I respond, you should still get the widescreen. But this decision really comes down to personal taste. If you play a widescreen DVD on a standard television, you are going to get black bars on the top and bottom of your screen, a real nuisance to some. If you stick with the full screen you probably won’t see the entire picture on your screen, a bigger nuisance in my opinion, because most DVD producers have to chop off parts of the left and the right of the picture to make it “fit” on your square screen. Ever see the words “This picture has been formatted to fit your television screen”?

Keep in mind that the FCC is making a big push right now to get the world on widescreen, high-definition television. There are regulations on when television networks must be sending high-definition feeds and when they must plan to shut off the existing standard definition feeds. There are also regulations about how many standard television sets a retail store can sell vs. the number of high-definition sets, and believe me, the number heavily favors high-definition. Yet another reason to get the widescreen format.

Long story short? Get the widescreen unless you have a very compelling reason not to.