Actually, the blu-ray player my parents have will start a movie at the same spot you stopped it at, even if you take the disc out. I know, the list is about DVD vs VHS, but since you can play DVDs on a blu-ray player, I thought mentioning it would be relevant.
Any good DVD player will remember where the disc was last stopped. The trick is to press "Stop" once instead of twice. If somebody has a habit of stopping movies in the middle and watching other movies before finishing the incomplete ones, then VHS will have more utility in that regard.
I didn't mean to sidetrack this thread. Just pointing out the humor back in the days of "I'll never give up VHS for DVDs." Has the whole "why are there black bars on my TV screen" era passed too, or are there still people like that out there?
Yes, my mother. No matter how much I try to explain that she's seeing everything as opposed to something being cut off she still doesn't seem to get it.
There's a nice featurette on certain editions of A Bug's Life and Sleeping Beauty that illustrates what happens in a concise, understandable manner. For an even shorter demo, there's a picture inside the James Bond 007 Edition DVDs with the rectangle and square indicators. If those tools or a hand-drawn substitute don't work, then the matter may indeed be hopeless. The "smaller image = more picture information on a 4:3 TV set" concept is hard for many people, including my very intelligent mother, who also had to have the idea explained over the course of time.
Saw somebody at Wal-Mart buying an HDTV about three days ago... they wanted a 42" TV, but only wanted Fullscreen DVDs so they wouldn't have to see those "annoying black bars".