http://mgmdvdsettlement.com/

go here and check this out, i have 7 dvds on the list. I hope you can get more than one refund.

I dont feel like sending my movies in for 7 bucks when they cost me more than that to buy...

unless i read the notice incorreclty

I have two of those. I'm interested, but how do you find out what the titles you can trade them in for are?

from what i got out of reading it we dont have to send them back, maybe just send the proof of purchase tag. If we have to send them back then i want the same ones but with the corrected ones. i did notice that my rocky movies looked kinda funny, now i know why

i still have no idea what is supposed to be wrong with the movies on the list

yeah, what's the problem?

There is a great divide in the world of DVD. As a consumer, you're either in the Widscreen camp or the Full-Screen camp. If you happen to be an MGM consumer, you may have been in both camps without realizing it.

For those of you scratching your head over the differences between the two formats, basically Widescreen refers to the original theatrical presentation of a movie (think rectangle) and Full-Screen reflects the more traditional square shape of a TV. If you have ever seen the notorious black bars at the top and bottom of your TV while watching a movie, this movie was presented in a Widescreen format.

In order to get a rectangular image to fit on a square TV, someone has to go through and chop off "presumably useless" footage from the entire movie. At MGM, someone did the reverse, they took an Full-Screen image that was already chopped up and chopped more off the top and bottom, added black bars and called it a Widescreen version. The movie purists sued MGM and they settled out of court.

If I'm getting this right, they pretty much just slapped black bars on the top and bottom without actually making it widescreen, correct?

pretty much, but i think the chopped some of the top and bottom so they wouldn't look flattened. i looked at my dvd of the terminator and my vhs copy and i can tell the difference. a lot of the material at the bottom of the screen on the dvd is missing but it is there on the vhs. that sucks that they did that

pretty much, but i think the chopped some of the top and bottom so they wouldn't look flattened. i looked at my dvd of the terminator and my vhs copy and i can tell the difference. a lot of the material at the bottom of the screen on the dvd is missing but it is there on the vhs. that sucks that they did that

thats pretty crapy, but since i havent noticed this on anyhitng i own, i guess im good, there were to many movies on the list for me to keep looking at it

i never noticed it before either but now that i know about it, it is bugging me. I always go with widescreen but if i cant find the widescreen and i really want to see the movie then i will buy the full screen but these dvd cant be considered wide or full screen. i probably wont send them back though.

i don't own any of those. at least i don't have to worry about this.

I've been looking into this a little and it seems this is a bit of a frivolous lawsuit, or at least isn't what it's been described as.

The Widescreen versions of these movies are not cropped versions of Pan-and-Scan Fullscreen versions which were already cropped from the Widescreen theatrical releases. They are what is considered Matted Widescreen. This website does a good job of explaining it:
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_matted.shtml

It's actually the full screen releases of the films that contain extra footage at the top and/or bottom, that was never intended for release, and wasn't seen in the theatres.

I know a good example of this is Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. There is a scene where he's driving down the road and is passing road signs on the side of the road. In the full screen version of the film, you can see the track on the ground, and ropes pulling the signs past the car, which isn't moving at all.

So if you want to see the film as the director intended it, then keep your widescreen DVDs. I think the real issue, and the reason the suit was succesfull was because on the back of these DVDs, MGM advertised that the Fullscreen versions of the films were edited from the Widescreen versions, when that isn't actually the case.

edit: I remembered another great scene from the Fullscreen Pee-Wee. When Pee-Wee is locking up his bike with the seemingly endless chain, in the Full Screen version you can see that there is a hole in the side of the container that Pee-Wee is pulling the chain from, and the chain is being fed from below the shot.

i always thought my copy of 'meteor man' looked funny.

I've got The Terminator, This Is Spinal Tap, and UHF. Damn you MGM!!!