MGM offers refunds in settlement over 'widescreen' DVDs

Posted Friday, January 28, 2005 at 10:26 AM Central

by Tim Briscoe

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.

In the terms of the settlement, MGM has agreed to re-purchase any of these DVDs for $7.10 each -- or to exchange them for another in their selected catalog of 325 legitimate movies. The list of 550 victimized DVDs includes some classics like Spaceballs, The Silence of the Lambs, Rocky, The Terminator, and the eternal favorite Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.

MGM has established a web site at mgmdvdsettlement.com to provide information on the list of movies and how to obtain a refund/exchange. The deadline for action is Mar. 31, 2005.