Wide-Screen Videos Gaining Acceptance

Mon., Sept. 15, 1997

Peter M. Nichols New York Times

The image is flatter but, a growing number of videophiles say, distinctly better. Among the 16 films released last week in a new video collection from Universal, three “Psycho,” “Out of Africa” and “The Deer Hunter” are available for the first time in wide-screen, or letter-box, editions.

The other 13 wide-screen tapes - including “Apollo 13,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jaws” and “Waterworld” - are reissues of films in that format, which was once considered weird by many viewers but, distributors say, is now something of a trend.

The terms “wide screen” and “letter box” are synonymous and generally familiar. On a television screen, a “letter box” is formed by placing black bands across the top and bottom of the image, thus flattening the essentially square television picture (1.3 times wider than it is high) into the rectangle (2.40 or 1.85 to 1) intended by the filmmaker.

Until quite recently, that bothered a lot of people.

“The VHS audience used to think we were stealing something from them: ‘Why are you putting black bars on my picture and making it smaller?”’ said James Katz, a film restorer at Universal. He and his colleague Robert Harris, salvaged “Vertigo,” which is one of the wide-screen videos reissued by Universal.

During panning and scanning, the process by which a rectangular movie is squared for the home screen, as much as 40 percent of the image that appears on the theater screen is lost. Typically, the movies are lopped off at the sides, eliminating characters and occasionally entire scenes.

That was true in “Out of Africa,” for example.

“It wasn’t made to show square, and it came out badly with panning and scanning,” said Mike Fitzgerald, vice president of technical operations for Universal Studios. “Psycho,” shot for the wide screen in 1961, had similar problems.

Sales of wide-screen videos make up about 5 percent of the market now, which represents a sizable gain over the past year or two.

Much of wide screen’s broader acceptance is attributed to bigger television sets. On larger screens, the bars don’t seem as intrusive as they do on smaller sets, and viewers are more aware of the images they gain.

Newer sets also take advantage of advances in VHS quality.

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