Disney Full Screen dvd's...The reason why

I want to bring up a topic to shed some light on it. I noticed that the last few dvd editions Disney had been releasing were listed as an aspect ratio 4:3 (1.33:1) only. Which in essence is full screen. My first inclination was to boycott buying the dvd's and hold out until they hopefully release them in widescreen. I was very disappointed that they would do that since they had been so good on releasing widescreen in the past. After all that is the way the creators wanted you to see them, right? In order to fit into full screen you have to crop off the sides and then pan and scan to get the focal points. Inevitably you can't get everything in at the same time thus loosing some of the image. I finally attempted to do some research as to why when discovering that more of the upcoming films were to be released in this ratio as well. What I found out is in the early 60's Disney actually released these films in the theater as 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio.

What you see on the dvd is actually as it was shown in the theaters and in fact has not been cropped to fit your tv.

While some theaters did show it widescreen, they only matted to appear as if it were. Moving forward from 1961 with the release of 101 Dalmatians all the way to the Fox and the Hound in 1981 most were released in theaters full screen ratio.

So if you happen to be disappointed with all the recent lack of widescreen Disney releases you can now rest assure that you are still seeing all that was intended. I still give a warning to do research first. Make sure there is no version listed either way. If it says full screen then chances are there is a widescreen out there.