Will Disney close all the UK linear kids channels?

Sometimes Sky air 4:3 Simpsons, but it's very hit and miss.

Anybody who comes along and says they don't see what the problem is with cropping will firstly be locked in the Globe Room with Tumble Tower for an hour, then when they come out will be shown this which was posted on Reddit and shows how much material is chopped off the picture:
https://imgur.com/a/FOPr9

It seems it's only season 11 they still show in 4:3, for whatever reason.

From what I'm reading online, Disney+ are using the cropped versions of The Simpsons. As well as some other shows.

A particularly irritating thing relating to Disney and cropping is that the animated series 'The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh' had a proper, rescanned from original film elements HD remaster a couple of years ago (which is also on Disney+ apparently) - where whoever was in charge of that project _insisted_ on cropping them to 4:3.
At least to me, it completely negates the gorgeous HD retransfer of the film.

However, another series which received the same treatment (presumably by the same team at Disney) - 'Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers' - managed to preserve its' original aspect ratio:


I fail to understand how anyone could enjoy cropping.

Chip N Dale is one of the shows that is cropped to 16:9 on Disney+. So even though there is a 4:3 HD remaster, that's sadly not what they're using.

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is another 4:3 SD show on Disney+ that is also cropped to fit the 16:9 HD screen. pic.twitter.com/Co7Tis7psJ

— Disney Schedule Archive (@DisneySchedules) November 12, 2019

That account mentions Goof Troop as being cropped as well.

As far as I am aware, a 'Goof Troop' remaster doesn't exist.... so they're cropping the awful old DVD transfers saturated with dot crawl, in addition to upscaling them to 1080p, presumably.

What do animated shows get "made" to? Videotape or film?

I suppose one could, if given enough budget draw the elements to fill in the 16:9 portions of the picture either side, as its quite likely the original animation stops at the 4:3 mark and remaster it that way. But of course it's far cheaper just to chop the top and the bottom off the frame instead...

Until digital ink & paint started to take over in the 90s they were still done on cells and photographed on film. Often from the mid-80s onwards they were still mastered on video though, so you'd have to go back to the original film and re-edit it to make a HD version (which I assume was what they did with the Chip & Dale and Winnie The Pooh remastered listed above).

The Simpsons remasters might have looked a lot better if they'd done that for the pre-digital ink & paint era rather than just applying some awful processing to the SD versions. The cropping is still a mess though.

The screenshot that account's posted looks pretty ropey, so I imagine that is likely the case:

Goof Troop on Disney+. It's cropped to fit the 16:9 HD image. pic.twitter.com/RXSK1qVV83

— Disney Schedule Archive (@DisneySchedules) November 12, 2019

Indeed, all of the graphics are recreated faithfully enough as they don't exist on the film elements and only ever existed on the masters edited on tape. If you directly compare the two you can see obvious differences however:





(this also happens to expose quite how ropey the old DVD transfers of animated Disney TV series are)

Two BS channels owned by Disney, Dlife and Fox Sports & Entertainment, will be closed in Japan on March 31, 2020.
Dlife is a channel that mainly aired Disney program and US/UK dramas, while Fox Sports & Entertainment aired SoftBank Hawks baseball events and general entertainment
https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/17379110/

To those unfamiliar with the television in Japan, "BS" here stands for "broadcast satellite", not the swear word most of us are familiar with.

I was expecting Disney Japan to rename Fox S&E in line with Disney's own Dlife.