TV DVD in "pan and scan"???

[javasaurus]

"pan and scan" is the technique sometimes used to make widescreen movies fit on a regular TV. If you go to to Wikipedia's entry on "pan and scan" there is a great video clip, using Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, that shows how this works, and how much is lost.

Anyway, looking at the "Happy Days Season 3" set at Barnes and Noble's website, it states that it is presented in pan-and-scan. Huh? It was made for TV, it should simply be in fullscreen (1.33:1) format.

Comments

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

not quite. You could turn widescreen into fullscreen by simply chopping off the sides of each frame. But sometimes the good stuff is on the far right, and other times on the far left. Pan and scan is when they chop off a different portion of each frame to keep the action on-screen.

If you can go to the wikipedia entry, and scroll down a little, you'll see a nice demonstration.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that with the new wide TVs, rather than getting the stretch problem that some DVDs have, if they cut the top & bottom of the screen off to get the right aspect ratio for a wide-screen shot, it would work but you would need to pan a bit to determine if the top, the bottom, or both could/should get trimmed.

Naturally, I think that changing the TV preferences and leaving it full screen makes sense.