HP DVDs in wide screen vs full screen

[GulPlum]

For various reasons (personal, work, etc) I've been out of the loop for the 
last couple of months. This is my first online presence since 
mid-September. I'm still inordinately busy but have finally managed to grab 
a few moments to contribute here, because I've noticed that lots of people 
have mentioned my web site.

For the record, I took all my HP pages down in May because the email 
address which appeared there (and ONLY on my HP pages) was getting over a 
dozen virus attachments a DAY, EVERY day. Even now, six months after the 
pages disappeared and that email address shouldn't appear in anyone's 
cache, it's still getting a couple a day. That hacks me off like you 
couldn't believe.

I actually find it interesting that the popularity of that site was clearly 
such that nobody in the HP community actually seemed to have noticed its 
disappearance (or at least, nobody thought of mentioning it to me)...

Furthermore, about a couple of months ago, the web server which hosts my 
whole personal site (HP was just a tiny part of it) managed to catch a 
glitch of some sort and the whole site has been inaccessible. The error 
message seen instead of my site is pointless, as the address which appears 
there (plum at cream.org) has been abandoned to spam and I've not even looked 
at any of the messages sent to it since early September (since then, any 
messages are automatically deleted - the last time I checked, it was 
getting upwards of 12,000 spam emails a day, and I was lucky to get one or 
two valid emails a week to that address - I've been using alternatives for 
the last two years). So anyone who responded to that error screen - you've 
wasted your time.

I've only just been able to start doing something about the server and the 
site hopefully should be up after the weekend. Nevertheless, my HP site 
will NOT be back, at least not in the form in which is previously existed.

For the time being, however, I've uploaded my DVD comparison materials 
elsewhere, including the stuff missing from the web archive link some 
people have posted: http://www.sliwa.clara.net/ (please do not mention that 
address outside this Group - thanks).

I don't really have more to say on the merits of w/s -v- f/s regarding the 
first two movies beyond what I said on the site. With regard to PoA, 
however, I simply can't imagine how horrid it must look in full screen. 
Having seen the film at the cinema more times than I'm willing to admit to 
(I stopped counting at 18 but saw it many times after that; there were also 
two IMAX showings with which I was particularly unimpressed), I can think 
of at least three sequences/images which I *know* I would hate in their 
truncated form (Harry in his bedroom at the beginning, especially when 
Vernon comes in; meeting Buckbeak and the first flight; the final Patronus 
scene; not to mention the end credits).  And that's just without thinking, 
from memory, not having seen the film for over three months!

In fact, I am astonished that Warner Home Video in North America has even 
considered releasing a full screen version - to the best of my knowledge, 
that is the ONLY market which has it; the rest of the world has only wide 
screen versions available. I've just been shocked to my socks to discover 
that Spider-Man 2 is getting a fullscreen release in America next Monday. 
That is nothing short of a travesty! Is the US population *so* technically 
and visually uneducated that they'd actually be willing to watch this crap? 
PoA is bad enough, but Spider-Man 2 isn't a matter or individual sequences 
being ruined - the whole movie from start  to end would be unwatchable.

I see on Amazon's sales rankings that PoA W/S is no. 3, F/S is no. 9; SM2 
w/s is no. 8 and SM2 f/s is no. 21. I can guarantee that throughout Europe, 
even if f/s versions were available, f/s versions of both PoA and SM2 
wouldn't even make the top 100 of sales.

The American public clearly has a long way to go to accept widescreen 
feature films, presented as they should be... I really see nothing to 
recommend full screen versions of movies originally shown in cinemas with a 
1.7:1 or greater aspect ratio.

To finish, and getting back to my comparisons and PoA - before anyone asks, 
because no full screen version has been released here in the UK, I can't do 
a comparison unless someone in the USA provides me with the full screen 
pictures. Richelle did it for CoS but she doesn't seem to be around. Is 
anyone else willing and able to do this? I don't have a great deal of time 
to deal with this, as I'm going to be rushed until the middle of next week. 
And from 8th December, I will be completely out of the loop again until 
after the New Year. So if someone has the full screen version, knows how to 
take screen shots and can devote a full evening to it early next week, 
please let me know.

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who's not even going to TRY to read everything said 
since September!