The World At War: The Ultimate Restored Edition 2010

There are really two main considerations you need to balance over whether the new restored version of The World at War is worth purchasing on Blu-ray - on the one hand is the question of it being pan-and-scanned to fill 16:9 televisions, on the other is the fact that it is one of the most important and brilliantly-made documentary series you'll ever see.

On the question of the reformatting of the original 4:3 picture to widescreen, well the justifications made by the DVD distributor are spurious. If people really want to see the image fit the screen, let them do what they already do themselves and stretch it to fit. It's a horrible distortion of the image, but apparently a lot of people can't even notice the problem and don't particularly care. For those who do care, the cropping the top and bottom of the image by the DVD producers is nothing less than vandalism. Admittedly, before watching the new widescreen presentation, assured that it was carefully handled, I was prepared to make an exception to the Original Aspect Ratio only rule. After all, this is a series that consisting largely of talking heads and documentary footage that was hardly cinematographically composed. Well, I was wrong - the cropping is obvious and blatant, cutting the tops off buildings and heads. Framing isn't carefully done and it can't be. When there are captions on the screen (the original shaky captions, which suggests moreover that it's the original video masters that have been restored rather than the series being remastered from the original source materials), the image tilts down to the lower part of the screen, causing severe cropping at the top. The attempts to re-frame are obvious and obtrusive, the movement noticeable even as it tries to take in the credits at the end of an episode.

However, the decision to crop the top and bottom is vandalism of the highest order.....and, in response to other reviewers, it doesn't matter if you get used to it! You can get used to scars, too. It's a evolutionary process called 'Adaption'.

The commercial decision to crop almost 35% off the original 4x3 frame removes a huge amount of information and in the case of the interviews makes everyone look rather odd with the top of their heads removed! The war footage is not only cropped but being extended to the 16:9 width it creates a zoom effect and particularly on a big screen the picture has an over-telephoto effect that is not as pleasing to the eye as the old 4x3. Having said that the shadows have been lightened, the colors are weaker and overall the picture is noticably better.

I agree that one should own this and watch it from time to time.  Also, the "new" release sounds like it's not worth it.  I got the 11-DVD set with bonus footage ('the making of') last year for $50.

a great documentary.