VM
I think those HD versions were created for the American channel FXX when it ran a full Simpsons marathon a few years ago. They have a US only on demand service which has an option to watch the episodes in their original format.
I've found that the HD conversions are bearable on the most recent SD seasons, as the animation was done with digital ink and paint by then I think, but the framing can sometimes be very off. In some shots they resort to stretching the image to 16:9 in order to not cut anything important off. And at times the extra processing appears to just simply turn off during a scene so you see what the original picture looked like. But it's bearable enough for casual viewing.
However, I recently tried watching a season 2 episode. It looked really, really bad. Whatever process they are using clearly didn't work with this episode as the image kept constantly shimmering, and made it impossible to actually enjoy watching it, nevermind the cropping.
It looks like they just took the original tapes and tried to run a process through all of them without checking them individually.
Whilst I'm ranting, I watched the Tommy Cooper Forever documentary on ITV3, which managed to ruin, or at least almost ruin two visual jokes:
(I Struggled With ITV Hub So You Don't Have To)
I've found that the HD conversions are bearable on the most recent SD seasons, as the animation was done with digital ink and paint by then I think, but the framing can sometimes be very off. In some shots they resort to stretching the image to 16:9 in order to not cut anything important off. And at times the extra processing appears to just simply turn off during a scene so you see what the original picture looked like. But it's bearable enough for casual viewing.
However, I recently tried watching a season 2 episode. It looked really, really bad. Whatever process they are using clearly didn't work with this episode as the image kept constantly shimmering, and made it impossible to actually enjoy watching it, nevermind the cropping.
It looks like they just took the original tapes and tried to run a process through all of them without checking them individually.
Whilst I'm ranting, I watched the Tommy Cooper Forever documentary on ITV3, which managed to ruin, or at least almost ruin two visual jokes:
(I Struggled With ITV Hub So You Don't Have To)