Sky's Branding

Those shows that have been remastered were filmed on 35mm film, and so had the resolution needed to re-scan at HD resolutions.

The Simpsons was animated probably to a non digital format, and it is possible those original cells and backgrounds were not stored, and so can not be re-scanned.

I read two possible questions here :

1. Why hasn't The Simpsons been remastered to HD? That could be because it was animated directly to video rather than via film and may be limited to the original SD video resolution.

2. Why has The Simpsons been remaster to HD in 16:9 not 4:3? Many 80s US TV series shot on film that have been remastered to HD have been done with both formats - allowing purchasers buying the series for broadcast to chose between a 4:3 'original format' or a 16:9 'cropped for remaster'. In this case it may be a broadcaster choice - though it is possible that only one remaster route was taken for The Simpsons.

We're going waaay off topic here but something just occurred to me.... With the move to HD, would the phyaical size of the animation source images be bigger to accommodate the higher resolution? Or is it just a case of using thinner lines for more detail?

Modern episodes of the Simpsons are drawn straight onto computer, so the physical size is irrelevant to some extent. The level of detail, and thickness of the lines were tweaked to better fill the HD resolution.

I'm watching this on Sky1 HD right now, and to me it looks very odd. It almost looks as though the original picture has been traced over, and everything appears a little bolder. But it doesn't look HD to me, it still looks like they've just upscaled the picture. I don't really know how to explain it, other than taking the original and turning up the contrast and sharpness

The framing is way off. Some scenes are stretched, some are just straight up cropped. It's inconsistent and to me just looks bad, especially on close ups. Doing this just reveals the flaws in the SD picture even more.

Some scenes are still in 4:3, when they film the TV screen for example.

The Simpsons was shot on film and edited in NTSC for the bulk of its life - some of the earlier episodes are incredibly grotty and smeary - with terrible motion artefacts, even before the conversion to Pal. The Simpsons quite often change colour and become green quite often, I've often thought a ground up remaster was needed.

I don't deny that it needed remastering, I just don't like this remastering.

The credits are stretched. Yuck.

You only have to look at the example on the previous page to see that- where most of one of the banners on Nelson's wall is cut off. Makes you wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea and if they were even looking at what they were cropping off.

Last time I saw one of the W&G films on TV it was in what looked like 15:9, the bars were clearly thinner than in 14:9- if it was shot on Super 16 film, which is quite likely, then that's the aspect ratio of the film so if that is the case then you're getting the entire film frame- nothing cropped off, in fact you'd be getting more at the sides than the original 4:3 version.

A bit like the 16:9 version of Friends on Comedy Central- when you compare it with the 4:3 versions you're getting more on the sides (though a little less on the top and bottom). The framing does look a bit awkward though with all the action cramped in the middle of the frame as it was all composed for 4:3.

On some of these remasters there are cases where they've had to use upscaled SD footage because they presumably couldn't find the original film material. Watching the remastered Cheers it's painfully obvious when they had to do it as the old SD masters never really looked that good at all, so when they've had to use in a shot from them it really sticks out!

You would think that! But when the HD versions of the W&G films appeared on Virgin Media's on demand service, I checked my old VHS copies against the one that was in 14:9 (which I think was The Wrong Trousers because I especially thought it odd that it was the second of the three - but not entirely sure). When I compared them, it was very obviously cropped on the HD version. Now that was a few years ago so I don't know if the copies that are being used now are any different, if someone could confirm or deny that would be great!


The latter happens on the new Friends remasters as well. It usually seems to happen between two scenes where presumably the establishing shot in between couldn't be found, such as the aeroplane when they come back from Las Vegas. There is one episode of the new remasters - 'The One with the Chicken Pox' - where everything is too bright, and I don't know how they didn't notice that before it was sent out.