Whats the difference between widescreen, pan-and-scan and normal formats?
Widescreen versions present the aspect ratio of filming in which the movie originally appeared, that is, the way a film maker composed it for a theatre screen. Television screens, though, are obviously not shaped like the rectangular movie screen. In order to compensate, most videos are “panned” by a computer and “scanned” so that they fit into the square shaped ratio. What this means for you is that most videos are not completely faithful to the director’s original framing. Obviously this matters more, perhaps, for a film like “Days of Heaven” than it does for “Little Nicky”. If you choose widescreen, you will get the original aspect ratio, but bear in mind that there most likely will be black bars appearing on the top and bottom of the screen in order to preserve the original size.
