Fortunately, more and more people are buying 16/9 TVs, so this is becoming less and less of an issue. That’s also why all the widescreen versions are rented :). Not much you can do about that except try again later. I guess popular titles will always be in limited stock!

2 Points:

1) It’s called full-screen because if fills the entire television screen so there is no deception. On small screens, at the least under 19″, the widescreen format is very small and almost pointless to watch. Some would argue watching anything less than a 24″ screen is pointless also. However, my 19″ TV has worked very well for me and will continue to work until I am able to afford something larger.

2) Many of the early DVDs were both widescreen and full-screen, I own a few in my collection. “The Devil’s Own” with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt is one of them. The DVDs were 2 sided with the widescreen version on one side, or you could turn it over and watch the full-screen version. So neither side had any printing on it, save which version of the movie, except on the inner ring near the center.

I believe with the practice of additional footage and special features, plus all the printing they like to put on the DVD itself, has caused the version inflation.

Most of the DVDs I buy from France are labelled “widescreen 16/9 compatible 4/3″. Whether that means that the picture can only in so-called “letterbox” format on a 4/3 TV or not, I don’t know. My understanding was that, since the “full screen” version is basically, as you said, a “pan-and-scan” version of the widescreen version, DVD makers could save a lot of disk space by just recording the widescreen version along with a track containing the pan-and-scan coordinates for each and every frame. But maybe I am misunderstanding something.

I agree that widescreen versions look ridiculously small on smaller TVs, but you can’t really blame the movie :).

And Will, if you do move to America, just get a multi-region DVD player :-). They are not hard to find, really, and I don’t think the police is going to come knocking at your door because you have one. I agree the region thing is entirely driven by commercial considerations (mostly the Hollywood studios being afraid that Europeans would purchase American DVDs before their movies actually come out in the theaters in France). The stupid thing is that it affects all kinds of DVDs on both sides of the Atlantic that would never have any kind of commercial success anyway. But even if you didn’t have the regions, you’d still have the NTSC vs. PAL issue, so you’d still need a converter, which most people in America don’t have.

I am the firmest believer in keeping movies in the same format in which they’re shot. If you have a film like Lord of the Rings, which was shot in a 2.35:1 widescreen format (width is over twice as long as height), then to cut off the edges to fit it into a 4:3 TV almost removes HALF of the total viewing area.

In my strong opinion, 4:3 ratio DVDs should only be made if the original source is in that format, and with the emergence of wide-screen digital TV, that situation is becoming less and less common.

Oh, and agree with everything you said, Pierre! I’d add that regional DVDs are also ridiculous. What happens in 4 years if I move to America from Australia and all of my DVDs are unplayable? Stupidity!

Similarly it’s the norm to get NTSC and PAL in the same package, but now that I think of it I can’t remember if it’s the TV or the DVD player that supports both of them. Maybe both!

Anyway, with the pan n scan thing, as far as I am aware there is no way to implement it “on the fly” with current DVD technology. It’d be nice though, and you wouldn’t think too technically challenging…

Finally, I believe dual sided DVDs were more common before multilayer technology was widespread. It was really stupid when they would say like “this DVD can hold up to 18GB”, but if you have to eject the DVD and flip it over, it defeats the purpose. I imagine cutting dual sided DVDs would be more expensive and I think people like having one side which isn’t as delicate as the other.

As for DVDs themselves, I too remember the early days when they were touting the “up to 18 GB” capacity. But I believe that this capacity could only be achieved with a combination of multiple layers and dual-sidedness.

Right now, they are coming up with these “blue laser” DVDs that — I suppose — are able to hold more data on the same side.

I’m curious what you think on Soderbergh’s vs Tarkovski’s Solaris.