There are people who moan their screen isn't being filled though... Not as many as there was I don't think as pillarboxing has got more common, but they clearly feel they have to appease them with these awful cropped versions. There's quite a few of them across various channels, sadly. Forces TV do it with I Dream Of Jeannie, the CBS channels do it with the original Star Trek (but not the later ones funnily enough), and True Entertainment do it with Happy Days and Murder, She Wrote. There's probably even more examples out there I haven't spotted.
A shame these have turned up on C4. The picture quality of those early series isn’t enough as it is, let alone after cropping it.
One episode I saw a bit of on Sky 1 had a bemusing bit where it kept going pillarboxed whenever they did a close up of the Simpsons’ TV, presumably because it would have looked ridiculous otherwise.
Let’s hope the Christmas Tapes and London Studio shows coming up have people involved who don’t want to butcher archive material.
the CBS channels do it with the original Star Trek (but not the later ones funnily enough)
They show the remastered/"special edition" versions from a few years' back. They were put on Blu-ray in 4:3 if I remember rightly, but I think they also made cropped versions for TV at the time. TNG also got an HD remaster, but it was much subtler (there were some digital replacements but they very much followed the originals) and there was no cropped version. The rest haven't been remastered (TNG didn't do as well as they'd hoped).
One episode I saw a bit of on Sky 1 had a bemusing bit where it kept going pillarboxed whenever they did a close up of the Simpsons’ TV, presumably because it would have looked ridiculous otherwise.
That happens on all the 'remastered' episodes. The output of the Simpsons TV is the only bit that's still intact.
the CBS channels do it with the original Star Trek (but not the later ones funnily enough)
They show the remastered/"special edition" versions from a few years' back. They were put on Blu-ray in 4:3 if I remember rightly, but I think they also made cropped versions for TV at the time. TNG also got an HD remaster, but it was much subtler (there were some digital replacements but they very much followed the originals) and there was no cropped version. The rest haven't been remastered (TNG didn't do as well as they'd hoped).
Yes, I have the TOS blu-rays. They are 4:3, and you can choose between original and remastered (I always choose the original personally).
And I don't think the reason DS9 and Voyager weren't done in HD is becsuse TNG didn't do very well, it's because there's a lot of CGI in there that would need redoing from scratch and would take a lot of time, money and effort to do. Compared to TNG which was mostly practical effects they still had the original 35mm material for, or comparatively simple CGI (like planet shots) that was quite easy to recreate rather than the large scale CG space battles in DS9.
It's the same reason the "directors cut" of the first Star Trek film only came out on DVD, not blu-ray, they only mastered the new effects in SD, then disposed of the computer files they'd need to remaster the effects (short of redoing them from scratch), so the effort to remake it for HD isn't there. So only the original theatrical version is on blu-ray.
It appears Channel 4 has now gotten some copies of the bad HD remasters of The Simpsons episodes. Bart’s Comet is currently being broadcast with the wrong 4:3 DOG, so it appears stretched on SD and in the 4:3 safe area on HD.
Is the show itself still 4:3 (as available on the US Simpsons World) or are they using the godawful 16:9 cropped versions?
Mentioning Simpsons World- when that first launched they only put the 16:9 versions (I won't even dignify them by calling them "HD", as they're just the SD masters with some god awful processing, which wouldn't look any better even if it was kept in 4:3) on there, and got so many complaints they had to put the 4:3 ones on.
I concur that the Simpsons remasters look terrible: they ruin a lot of visual jokes. AIUI, the 16:9 versions are becoming standard all over the world, unfortunately. I suspect that as any Simpsons rights deals broadcasters may have are renewed, Fox are providing them with these 16:9 copies.