Hacker News Reader

Comment by iso1210 | Hacker News Reader

This was the case with Simpsons when it came onto Disney Plus - they took the 4:3 and didn't just blow it to 14:9, but 16:9 -- throwing away a quarter of the original image.

There's now an option to show the original aspect ratio, I didn't discover it for a long time though.

Amazon prime on my phone blows up 16:9 material too, chopping off the top and bottom to fit the wider aspect ratio, unless you're careful to 'zoom out'

View on HN

There are way more issues with Buffy on top of that too, and my Disney ire will forever be stoked until they rectify the situation (as the current owners of 20th Century Television.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F28XcxHxH6k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZWNGq70Oyo

Thanks for telling us about the option to use the original aspect ratio! I'd basically given up and might never have found out.

Another annoying way to 16:9ify The Simpsons is how it was done for broadcast/cable syndication originally. They did some kind of nonlinear scaling where the aspect ratio was unchanged at the center and increased as you moved to the sides.

But why would you want to mangle the picture no matter how you do it?

One thing the article doesn't seem to address is why these cuts are happening? What motivates a streaming company to go out of its way to re-shape the aspect ratio of a film? It is totally possible to re-digitize film without changing aspect ratio. Look at the re-done Star Trek TNG Blu-rays, they're amazing and with the original aspect ratio preserved. All widescreen TVs I know will play 4:3 content perfectly fine. Is there some technical reason that a 4:3 video can't be streamed?

People probably don’t like the black bars. Or at least the people in charge think so.

There is just no feedback from viewers to managers making decisions, and people actually doing work cropping don't have authority to override them.

It's still not "fixed" because Indian Disney+, which is run by a Disney subsidiary, still doesn't allow you to watch the Simpsons in 4:3.

The "Simpsons" on FXX is unwatchable. It's cropped/blown up to 16:9 and it looks like they took a scan meant for HD resolution and blew that up, so everything looks jaggy and blurry.

> Amazon prime on my phone blows up 16:9 material too, chopping off the top and bottom to fit the wider aspect ratio, unless you're careful to 'zoom out'

Interesting. I've just checked on my iPhone, and 4:3 video stays 4:3, with black bars on the side.

I'm talking 16:9, I was watching a fairly recent south park (from about 2015) on an iphone12 mini, there are two options that double tapping toggles between, one is the original 16:9, the other zooms in so it's full width (including the notch), so 19.5:9. In other words it's taking a 1920x1080 image and only showing 886 lines, dropping 97 lines from the top and bottom.

Why would it behave differently with 16:9 and 4:3 videos?

I only have an older iPhone with a 16:9 ratio, so I can't test what happens with 16:9 material.

But if I do the double-tap you describe on 4:3 material, it will zoom-in and crop the top and bottom.

But that's not the default behaviour in my case. I actually didn't even know about the double-tap thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com