One of my favorite movies is Steve Oedekerk’s High Strung. Chances are you haven’t seen it, because it wasn’t released theatrically, was only available as a rental, and the company that put out the VHS tape went out of business. You may occasionally run across a copy at ye olde video shoppe, but it’s pretty unlikely since most rental copies have since been stolen.

Over 10 years ago Steve Oedekerk’s official website reported that they had finished the video mix for a DVD release, and all that needed done was a 5.1 audio mix and menus and extras and whatnot. About 3 years ago I ran across a VHS copy, digitized it, and made a torrent of it so that more people could have a chance to see this gem of a film — and maybe increase demand for the “any time now” DVD release in the process.

It’s been a couple years since I’ve checked for an update on the DVD release, but yesterday I came across a copy online purporting to be a “DVD rip.” So I downloaded it. Turns out that it is a significantly higher-res copy than the one I put up, and even wide-screen to boot, but still pretty obviously VHS-sourced. It smelled fishy, so I pulled out my copy and compared them side by side.

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I then found the same frame in each version and did some scaling and lined them up. Here, the “wide-screen” version is outlined in red, overlaid atop my full-screen version.

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So, as you can see, someone simply cropped and stretched the full-screen VHS copy and pretended as if it were a 1.78:1 wide-screen-sourced copy. Since it is cropped down, it means that there’s even LESS of the film visible, and since it is scaled it means everyone has put on a good 10 pounds. It also means that there is still no DVD.

Bummer.

(Until a DVD does get released, you might want to check it out here: http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3464649. It makes me very happy that 3 years later there are still seeds on that torrent.)