That same year, Carolco/Live Home Video released a special Widescreen Director’s Cut of the iconic erotic thriller Basic Instinct.īy Spring 1994, all the home video subsidiaries of the major Hollywood studios put on the “This film has been modified from its original version. 1.33:1 or 4:3) & as a result, many viewers weren’t seeing the full picture & thus the only way viewers could watch films in their original theatrical aspect ratio, just like i said, was on either LaserDisc (which was the Blu-Ray/DVD of the ’80s & ’90s) or on Super VHS (which sadly was not widely available).īy the 1990s, widescreen was slowly but surely making its way onto VHS, as in 1992, the United Kingdom was the first to do widescreen VHS releases on some of their Columbia Tri-Star & Fox tapes such as the first 2 Die Hard films, the Star Wars trilogy, Alien trilogy & Lawrence of Arabia. Most films that were released on VHS & Betamax as well as TV airings of the films have been modified from their original theatrical aspect ratio, by a video process widely known as “pan & scan” (a.k.a. However all the other letterboxed films weren’t so lucky when it came to VHS/Beta releases. Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959) side by side aspect ratio comparisons. Last of the Mohicans (1992) side by side aspect ratio comparisons. That same year, the controversial director Woody Allen released his critically acclaimed film Manhattan, which came out on home video a year later & made VHS history for becoming the first known film ever to be presented in its original aspect ratio (albeit with gray bands rather than the usual black) rather than being cropped down to 4:3 just like all the other letterboxed films had at the time. ![]() That all changed by 1985, as The Criterion Collection was established, which was an independent home video distributor that specialized exclusively on films the way they were meant to be seen, exclusively in letterbox & exclusively on Laserdisc (& later DVD & Blu-Ray). When the Video Home System (VHS), Betamax, CED & Laserdisc formats were only a few years old, those 4 major formats at one point only showed films in the pan and scan 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio rather than in their original theatrical letterboxed aspect ratios of either 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or 2.40:1. ![]() Here’s how the aspect ratio wars on home video formats began.Īt the beginning of the home video era at the dawn of the 1980s, televisions at the time were only 4:3, as 16:9 wasn’t invented yet. Siskel & Ebert talking about the differences between the widescreen (original letterboxed version) & fullscreen (pan & scanned version) versions of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade & There’s No Business Like Show Business in Spring 1990 & the major Hollywood studios often making those aspect ratio versions exclusive to particular home video formats.
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