What a time to be alive. I remember many movies getting a widescreen vhs re release such as max max during this era. When I went to block buster it was only wide screen movies for me. Once you go wide screen you never go back.
That Star Wars box set was definitely my crash course in “widescreen/letterboxed” vs “fullscreen/pan-and-scan”. I’d watched the original VHS releases to bits, but never really tweaked to how much picture I was missing until I saw the widescreen version of ANH.
The stormtrooper hitting his head was the most famous "easter egg" we missed on television. I first saw it during the 97 release. I remember asking for DVDs for birthdays or Christmas and specifying wide-screen over fullscreeen.
I remember watching Star Wars on VHS and nearly going crazy at the scene of the Sand People attack. When Luke Skywalker said "There's Sand People, I can see one of them now". There was none of them to be found, just the bantha on the screen. My first widescreen experience of Star Wars was seeing the Special Edition in theatres. That very same scene showed what Luke was talking about and that made a huge difference.
Loved the idea of seeing the movies in their full feature style. Till I switched from VHS to DVD's. The first DVD player in the house was my Playstation 2 and the TV in the living room was from the 80's meaning we had to run the signal threw the VHS player with its AV cable input or get a RFU adapter. We stopped using the AV cables because some DVD's had the VHS copy write protection on them to prevent illegal copy/conversions. Something I first found out while trying to watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The story gets even funnier because while I had bought CTHD, I was going to watch it the next day. My mom saw it and wanted to watch it that night. So when the screen started acting up she thought she had broke the PS2 or VHS player.
I remember back when I was in college DVD's became the thing, and you could get full screen or wide screen versions. My uncle was a big movie collector and would send me to the mall to pick up the new releases for him on Tuesdays when they dropped. We would have so many debates over the widescreen versions because he thought the image was getting cropped. I would try to tell him, "No, you're seeing MORE." And he was like, "it's not even filling half my TV! It's less!" So glad they changed the aspect ratios of TVs, haha.
VERY familiar with the black bars. Grew up at a friend’s house who’s dad was a hardcore movie fan. His “home theater” was a real theater with a 6x18ish screen and a few super 8 projectors. Didn’t have the super wide one because it needed a special lens. He would literally spit when he talked about widescreen, letterboxed, CinemaScope shown on TV. Blade Runner is another one people reference when comparing aspect ratio and what you miss.
I grew up in the early 2000s (one of my earliest childhood memories was watching episode 1 in theaters as an infant) so all of this was just the norm for me as I watched the DVD versions but its always interesting to see how different things must have been back then. Maybe the modern equivalent would be something like them releasing an extended version of revenge of the sith with all the cut content fully completed and implemented, which would be amazing
My friend had a LaserDisc player and could project the Trilogy against a white wall. It was watching it at his house that I first discovered so many Fantastic additions in the widescreen version. The biggest one was the Imperial officer being killed by the asteroid in the holoprojection in The Empire Strikes Back. I had him rewind it over and over to see it again.
I've loved the widescreen experience when they started releasing them on VHS. At myvideostore we used to set up two TVs showing everybody the difference between widescreen and pan-and-scan. People's Jaws were dropping seeing the difference between the two versions that we synced up.
I was a huge widescreen enthusiast back in the days of DVD. I remember renting Laserdiscs in letterbox back in the day too. Also, TV is not square, it's 4:3 so technically it's a rectangle. TV is just more proportionally similar to a square. Also consider CRT TV's had curved screens and many had rounded edges that distorted the image. CRTs also had overscan, so even more of the original image was cut off.
A lot of people don't know this, but you can buy an HDTV in the 21:9 aspect ratio to watch your movies in that theatric widescreen format. They do really exist. They're usually only found in specialty electronic shops and the most variety is found in online retail, but they're totally out there. For the record your standard HDTV is in 16:9 aspect ratio that still does some cropping.
The first Letterboxed version actually wasn't released in the US at all but in Japan on Laserdisc. We did get them in the very late 80s and early 1990s. The Japan Special Collection is the first ever release of the Letterbox.
In colllege, seeing TESB widescreen on laserdisc: When Luke rappels up to the belly of the AT-AT and I could see gears of the legs moving on the right of the screen, something I’d never seen on TV as a kid. That blew my mind.
We - or at least I - did not quite know what they meant when they said the series was being sold "one last time." I can't accept the Special Editions so these tapes are what I continued to watch even after the DVDs came out, and until the 2006 editions with the theatrical versions on the "bonus discs." I remember in 1990 in a report about the future HDTV getting a lesson in widescreen cropping for TV, having not really noticed in all the years before that. I'm so glad they have become the standard and people got past the "Full Screen" verses "letterboxed" debate. When everyone's TVs were still almost square but DVDs were popular 20 years ago, people said the dumbest things like "I paid for this TV so I want to see it fill the screen."
I saw Return of the Jedi in theaters last Saturday, for the 40th anniversary! It was my first time time since the special editions released when I was a kid. Watched ANH and TESB the two previous nights at home. It was such an amazing experience at the theater. I really hope Disney releases all all of the originals for the 50th anniversary.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the binocular scene with the Bantha. My entire childhood watching that movie Luke says "I can see one over there" and I had literally no idea what he was talking about until I saw it widescreen and they show a Bantha and a Tusken Raider. Widescreen Star Wars, as you said, was more revolutionary than special edition
At the risk of being a geek, Luke said, "There are two Banthas down there . . ." but only one was ever visible through his Electrobinoculars in the Pan & Scan format.
I remember understanding the.comcrpt.of.letterbox VHS as a teenager in the 90s, but I couldn't convince my family. They all hated it. Ironically now, since we all have TVs that are formatted for film as shown in theaters. When you watch older TV shows, the black bars are on the sides now instead of top and bottom 😂.
I was the same as you Scott, the widescreen VHS was mind-blowing. One of my favourite Star Wars moments growing up! I never minded the black bars because I learned what they meant. In the UK, 20th Century Fox released the first 5 films in Widescreen format on VHS - the Star Wars Trilogy and Die Hard 1 & 2. I bought them all and after watching them, I found it almost impossible to enjoy watching Pan & Scan films ever again!!
Ghostbusters pan 'n' scan was pretty obvious, too. Especially noticeable when they're walking together in the library, talking about Egon drilling a hole in his head. The original pan 'n' scan, Egon's not visible at all when he says 'that wouldhave worked if you hadn't stopped me'.
Heck yeah I bought this. I still have it. If I want to watch the the old versions now, I'll put in a DVD. There was a limited edition release of the trilogy that has the unaltered versions as bonus discs.
ปีที่แล้ว
Yo no tengo muchas películas pero tengo todas las Star Wars porque recuerdo que cuando niño eran imposibles de alquilar, siempre estaban afuera. Tan pronto tuve la oportunidad las compre. Mis primeras fueron el box set donde venían wide y regular. Tuve las regular. Hoy día tengo los Blu-Ray y las 3-D
I remember seeing this one copy of Star Wars, I believe rented from the video store, it had super wide widescreen. I never seen the movie that wide since. Trying to find it so I can buy it.
I have most versions of Star Wars on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. While the original version on VHS wasn't exactly square, its aspect ratio was much more square-like than the wide-screen versions. Full-screen's 4:3 is the same as roughly 1.33:1 vs wide-screen's 2.35:1. So you get much more length from each cell of a wide-screen shot.
I worked in a store selling music and movies in the late nineties and early aughts right in that small window of time when VHS and DVD were usually “letterbox” formatted but 95% of TVs were still square… This is triggering my PTSD from endless arguments with old people trying to return their “defective” media and me trying desperately to get them to grasp the concept of widescreen. At one point I even constructed a visual aid to demonstrate the difference in the picture but the WW2 crowd refused to get it.
I remember arguing with people who just didn't get it that the black bars on the top and bottom meant that they were actually seeing the entire film. I would sometimes draw them examples on a piece of paper and it was like talking to a brick wall. They just knew that the VHS from the rental place said "Full Screen," so that meant that they must be getting the FULL picture. I'd want to scream at them for how ignorant they were being.
Remember these videos coming out in the UK. Never purchased these cause I had already purchased the non wide-screen versions months before. As these where the first time to be released in years and costing £12.99 a tape. A big hit in the weekly wage and I was only earning £35.00 a week. So had to pass and stick to what I had.
Surprised you didn’t mention that THX set wasn’t the first letterboxed Star Wars set. The first VHS Letterbox Star Wars set came out in 1992. Long blue box with a hologram on the front. Came with a 4th VHS that had the documentary From Star Wars to Jedi. That was the first Letterboxed set I owned, and I also bought this THX set. And the SE Letterboxed set as well. As many of us did.
As a kid I hate the black bars cause it made the image look smaller, but as I grew up and started loving film as an art I started liking it. And of course now with widescreen tvs u don't see them as much
So what you're saying is: "The way to save modern theaters, is to make the screen even wider". Small rooms with a Disney-like "Volume" could be a draw.
I have to admit when I was dumb and young I hated the black bars and no clue about aspect ratio. Not being a fan of tape I didn't really buy movies until DVD and I had some VCDs before that. I got into DVD around 1997. And at that point things got a little more complicated over time with widescreen and how the video was stored on the disk. Some were 4x3 black bar Harding encoded, other DVDs had the video stored differently, anamorphicwhere the machine would add black bars for 4:3 or let it fit natively as widescreen. All related to squishing the video and then stretching it later it's not have black bars recorded in the format..
My dad always wanted his movies cropped to a square. He was convinced that widescreen cut off the top and bottom of the movie. He had three doctorates.
Depends on how its shot. Some films are made 3/4 for TV & cropped at the cinema. Its annoying when a film you've only seen full frame on VHS is cropped 16/9 on DVD, loosing picture.
@@spectorcreative1872 addendum: there are certain releases (like the Dragon Ball Z DVDs) that actually crop a square tv picture to make it look letterboxed.
@@spectorcreative1872 off hand examples of Movies "cropped" from 3/4 masters & loosing picture...Wicker Man(original), Yellow Submarine, various Hichcock films like Frenzy, Hammer's Quatermass & the Pit, & 80's comedy's like Porkys etc.
I learned about "widescreen" in the late 90s and other than a very small, and MUCH pricier, selection at the Suncoast in the mall I rarely could find VHS that had widescreen. I was elated when the Star Wars Special Edition launched on VHS and general retail had the Gold full screen and Silver widescreen versions. Yes I bought both. Fortunately DVDs mostly came on widescreen when they launched, which again made me happy, but I did have a couple that were full screen pan and scan only. Like Last Action Hero. I can't watch that DVD because of all the panning that takes place 🤮
Lots of 4K or Blu Rays are Pan Scans like The Transformers Movie many complained about or The Simpsons even Teen Titans. Many of them are 4:3 converted into 16:9 but everybody knows 2.35 or 2.40 is trash not worth owning. If I wanted to have black bars on my TV I would not have a 16:9 aspect ratio. Even Conan is better in the Cable version. Things like 1.66 or 1.75 or 1.85 at least show up though like 1.65 has little bars kinda like Heels. I think that is the Star Wars VHS set I have in my room. I never thought much about it other than the box is cool. So many good movies are ruined by having that awful aspect ratio like Lord Of The Rings to Flash. I rarely every get anything in that format. People who like that Ratio are Lost Boyz :).
![Every Star Wars Film Release on VHS [YungJunko]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q6EmE1UGXR4/mqdefault.jpg)
What a time to be alive. I remember many movies getting a widescreen vhs re release such as max max during this era. When I went to block buster it was only wide screen movies for me. Once you go wide screen you never go back.
That Star Wars box set was definitely my crash course in “widescreen/letterboxed” vs “fullscreen/pan-and-scan”. I’d watched the original VHS releases to bits, but never really tweaked to how much picture I was missing until I saw the widescreen version of ANH.
The stormtrooper hitting his head was the most famous "easter egg" we missed on television. I first saw it during the 97 release. I remember asking for DVDs for birthdays or Christmas and specifying wide-screen over fullscreeen.
We called it letterboxed back then sir lol
Letterboxing is putting a black matte over a picture to give it the appearance of widescreen. WB did this with a lot of DVDS in the early 2000's.
We did too in the UK.
I remember watching Star Wars on VHS and nearly going crazy at the scene of the Sand People attack. When Luke Skywalker said "There's Sand People, I can see one of them now". There was none of them to be found, just the bantha on the screen.
My first widescreen experience of Star Wars was seeing the Special Edition in theatres. That very same scene showed what Luke was talking about and that made a huge difference.
Loved the idea of seeing the movies in their full feature style. Till I switched from VHS to DVD's. The first DVD player in the house was my Playstation 2 and the TV in the living room was from the 80's meaning we had to run the signal threw the VHS player with its AV cable input or get a RFU adapter.
We stopped using the AV cables because some DVD's had the VHS copy write protection on them to prevent illegal copy/conversions. Something I first found out while trying to watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The story gets even funnier because while I had bought CTHD, I was going to watch it the next day. My mom saw it and wanted to watch it that night. So when the screen started acting up she thought she had broke the PS2 or VHS player.
I remember back when I was in college DVD's became the thing, and you could get full screen or wide screen versions. My uncle was a big movie collector and would send me to the mall to pick up the new releases for him on Tuesdays when they dropped. We would have so many debates over the widescreen versions because he thought the image was getting cropped. I would try to tell him, "No, you're seeing MORE." And he was like, "it's not even filling half my TV! It's less!"
So glad they changed the aspect ratios of TVs, haha.
The Japanese Lazerdisc widescreen was absolutely mind blowing in the early nineties on a early wide back projected screen !!
Great video! Really took me back to the nostalgia feels
VERY familiar with the black bars. Grew up at a friend’s house who’s dad was a hardcore movie fan. His “home theater” was a real theater with a 6x18ish screen and a few super 8 projectors. Didn’t have the super wide one because it needed a special lens. He would literally spit when he talked about widescreen, letterboxed, CinemaScope shown on TV. Blade Runner is another one people reference when comparing aspect ratio and what you miss.
I grew up in the early 2000s (one of my earliest childhood memories was watching episode 1 in theaters as an infant) so all of this was just the norm for me as I watched the DVD versions but its always interesting to see how different things must have been back then. Maybe the modern equivalent would be something like them releasing an extended version of revenge of the sith with all the cut content fully completed and implemented, which would be amazing
My friend had a LaserDisc player and could project the Trilogy against a white wall. It was watching it at his house that I first discovered so many Fantastic additions in the widescreen version. The biggest one was the Imperial officer being killed by the asteroid in the holoprojection in The Empire Strikes Back. I had him rewind it over and over to see it again.
I've loved the widescreen experience when they started releasing them on VHS. At myvideostore we used to set up two TVs showing everybody the difference between widescreen and pan-and-scan. People's Jaws were dropping seeing the difference between the two versions that we synced up.
I was a huge widescreen enthusiast back in the days of DVD. I remember renting Laserdiscs in letterbox back in the day too. Also, TV is not square, it's 4:3 so technically it's a rectangle. TV is just more proportionally similar to a square. Also consider CRT TV's had curved screens and many had rounded edges that distorted the image. CRTs also had overscan, so even more of the original image was cut off.
A lot of people don't know this, but you can buy an HDTV in the 21:9 aspect ratio to watch your movies in that theatric widescreen format. They do really exist. They're usually only found in specialty electronic shops and the most variety is found in online retail, but they're totally out there. For the record your standard HDTV is in 16:9 aspect ratio that still does some cropping.
The first Letterboxed version actually wasn't released in the US at all but in Japan on Laserdisc. We did get them in the very late 80s and early 1990s. The Japan Special Collection is the first ever release of the Letterbox.
In colllege, seeing TESB widescreen on laserdisc: When Luke rappels up to the belly of the AT-AT and I could see gears of the legs moving on the right of the screen, something I’d never seen on TV as a kid. That blew my mind.
We - or at least I - did not quite know what they meant when they said the series was being sold "one last time."
I can't accept the Special Editions so these tapes are what I continued to watch even after the DVDs came out, and until the 2006 editions with the theatrical versions on the "bonus discs."
I remember in 1990 in a report about the future HDTV getting a lesson in widescreen cropping for TV, having not really noticed in all the years before that. I'm so glad they have become the standard and people got past the "Full Screen" verses "letterboxed" debate. When everyone's TVs were still almost square but DVDs were popular 20 years ago, people said the dumbest things like "I paid for this TV so I want to see it fill the screen."
I saw Return of the Jedi in theaters last Saturday, for the 40th anniversary! It was my first time time since the special editions released when I was a kid.
Watched ANH and TESB the two previous nights at home. It was such an amazing experience at the theater. I really hope Disney releases all all of the originals for the 50th anniversary.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the binocular scene with the Bantha. My entire childhood watching that movie Luke says "I can see one over there" and I had literally no idea what he was talking about until I saw it widescreen and they show a Bantha and a Tusken Raider. Widescreen Star Wars, as you said, was more revolutionary than special edition
At the risk of being a geek, Luke said, "There are two Banthas down there . . ." but only one was ever visible through his Electrobinoculars in the Pan & Scan format.
I remember understanding the.comcrpt.of.letterbox VHS as a teenager in the 90s, but I couldn't convince my family. They all hated it. Ironically now, since we all have TVs that are formatted for film as shown in theaters. When you watch older TV shows, the black bars are on the sides now instead of top and bottom 😂.
I was the same as you Scott, the widescreen VHS was mind-blowing. One of my favourite Star Wars moments growing up! I never minded the black bars because I learned what they meant. In the UK, 20th Century Fox released the first 5 films in Widescreen format on VHS - the Star Wars Trilogy and Die Hard 1 & 2. I bought them all and after watching them, I found it almost impossible to enjoy watching Pan & Scan films ever again!!
Ghostbusters pan 'n' scan was pretty obvious, too. Especially noticeable when they're walking together in the library, talking about Egon drilling a hole in his head. The original pan 'n' scan, Egon's not visible at all when he says 'that wouldhave worked if you hadn't stopped me'.
Heck yeah I bought this. I still have it. If I want to watch the the old versions now, I'll put in a DVD. There was a limited edition release of the trilogy that has the unaltered versions as bonus discs.
Yo no tengo muchas películas pero tengo todas las Star Wars porque recuerdo que cuando niño eran imposibles de alquilar, siempre estaban afuera. Tan pronto tuve la oportunidad las compre. Mis primeras fueron el box set donde venían wide y regular. Tuve las regular. Hoy día tengo los Blu-Ray y las 3-D
I remember seeing this one copy of Star Wars, I believe rented from the video store, it had super wide widescreen. I never seen the movie that wide since.
Trying to find it so I can buy it.
I have most versions of Star Wars on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. While the original version on VHS wasn't exactly square, its aspect ratio was much more square-like than the wide-screen versions. Full-screen's 4:3 is the same as roughly 1.33:1 vs wide-screen's 2.35:1. So you get much more length from each cell of a wide-screen shot.
I worked in a store selling music and movies in the late nineties and early aughts right in that small window of time when VHS and DVD were usually “letterbox” formatted but 95% of TVs were still square…
This is triggering my PTSD from endless arguments with old people trying to return their “defective” media and me trying desperately to get them to grasp the concept of widescreen.
At one point I even constructed a visual aid to demonstrate the difference in the picture but the WW2 crowd refused to get it.
My main pan and scan memory was how Jabba's subtitles got cut off on either side.
I remember arguing with people who just didn't get it that the black bars on the top and bottom meant that they were actually seeing the entire film. I would sometimes draw them examples on a piece of paper and it was like talking to a brick wall. They just knew that the VHS from the rental place said "Full Screen," so that meant that they must be getting the FULL picture. I'd want to scream at them for how ignorant they were being.
This is when I became a widescreen format snob.
"Regretting seeing episode 1"
How little we knew how much worse the movies would get after episode 1
Recuerdo los primeros televisores “widescreen” 👴🏽
Remember these videos coming out in the UK. Never purchased these cause I had already purchased the non wide-screen versions months before. As these where the first time to be released in years and costing £12.99 a tape. A big hit in the weekly wage and I was only earning £35.00 a week. So had to pass and stick to what I had.
Surprised you didn’t mention that THX set wasn’t the first letterboxed Star Wars set. The first VHS Letterbox Star Wars set came out in 1992. Long blue box with a hologram on the front. Came with a 4th VHS that had the documentary From Star Wars to Jedi. That was the first Letterboxed set I owned, and I also bought this THX set. And the SE Letterboxed set as well. As many of us did.
As a kid I hate the black bars cause it made the image look smaller, but as I grew up and started loving film as an art I started liking it. And of course now with widescreen tvs u don't see them as much
I used to hate wide-screen, only now i realise This is the way. 🤦🏻♂️ 😆
Altering format has ALWAYS bothered me going back to the days of VHS.
So what you're saying is: "The way to save modern theaters, is to make the screen even wider". Small rooms with a Disney-like "Volume" could be a draw.
I have to admit when I was dumb and young I hated the black bars and no clue about aspect ratio. Not being a fan of tape I didn't really buy movies until DVD and I had some VCDs before that. I got into DVD around 1997. And at that point things got a little more complicated over time with widescreen and how the video was stored on the disk. Some were 4x3 black bar Harding encoded, other DVDs had the video stored differently, anamorphicwhere the machine would add black bars for 4:3 or let it fit natively as widescreen. All related to squishing the video and then stretching it later it's not have black bars recorded in the format..
Spector Creative Binge Day Episode 5
My dad always wanted his movies cropped to a square. He was convinced that widescreen cut off the top and bottom of the movie. He had three doctorates.
Depends on how its shot. Some films are made 3/4 for TV & cropped at the cinema. Its annoying when a film you've only seen full frame on VHS is cropped 16/9 on DVD, loosing picture.
As a film major, this was one of my biggest pet peeves with people always saying, but I can’t see the whole movie. Umm. Yeah. Actually you are.
@@spectorcreative1872 addendum: there are certain releases (like the Dragon Ball Z DVDs) that actually crop a square tv picture to make it look letterboxed.
@@spectorcreative1872 off hand examples of Movies "cropped" from 3/4 masters & loosing picture...Wicker Man(original), Yellow Submarine, various Hichcock films like Frenzy, Hammer's Quatermass & the Pit, & 80's comedy's like Porkys etc.
I learned about "widescreen" in the late 90s and other than a very small, and MUCH pricier, selection at the Suncoast in the mall I rarely could find VHS that had widescreen. I was elated when the Star Wars Special Edition launched on VHS and general retail had the Gold full screen and Silver widescreen versions. Yes I bought both. Fortunately DVDs mostly came on widescreen when they launched, which again made me happy, but I did have a couple that were full screen pan and scan only. Like Last Action Hero. I can't watch that DVD because of all the panning that takes place 🤮
The greatest trilogy - with The Dark Knight 😂 MTFBWY
Why do all the stars gotta have wars? Can’t we have a Star peace?
I haaaaaaate pan and scan. The pan over always bothered my eyes.
Why aren't you talking about the major news bombs that Mattel has dropped recently? Please do a video.
What bomb ?!?!
William, were you referring to the Mattel/Hasbro collaboration?
He Already done a upload about it about a week ago. I'm sure you will find it. Plus it's Star Wars day today 👍
@@211inprogress no he didn't.
@@NealHunterHyde no.
Lots of 4K or Blu Rays are Pan Scans like The Transformers Movie many complained about or The Simpsons even Teen Titans. Many of them are 4:3 converted into 16:9 but everybody knows 2.35 or 2.40 is trash not worth owning. If I wanted to have black bars on my TV I would not have a 16:9 aspect ratio. Even Conan is better in the Cable version. Things like 1.66 or 1.75 or 1.85 at least show up though like 1.65 has little bars kinda like Heels. I think that is the Star Wars VHS set I have in my room. I never thought much about it other than the box is cool. So many good movies are ruined by having that awful aspect ratio like Lord Of The Rings to Flash. I rarely every get anything in that format. People who like that Ratio are Lost Boyz :).