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Comment by aomix | Hacker News Reader

I never watched the widescreen version of The Wire they put out years ago but now I'm curious again. That show was a bone deep 4:3 product and the show plays with it constantly. Here is an interesting breakdown that made me really appreciate how clever they got while trying to be pretty subdued with the cinematography on The Wire https://vimeo.com/39768998

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I watched both; both are good, in different ways. Some scenes that I remember being beautifully composed in 4:3 lost to the transition, while others have improved markedly.

They made a ton of effort on it, recognising it's a different version altogether:

> The new version of The Wire, then, will differ both creatively and technically. In certain cases, such as a scene in season two where longshoreman gather around a body, Simon said he believed the added space would add a vulnerability to the scene that wasn’t possible in 4:3. But he describes other scenes where the added space distracts the eye, and the remaster zooms in on the characters to retain that intimacy.

https://www.techhive.com/article/599415/hbo-remastered-the-w...

David Simon's earlier work, "Homicide" had a lot of interesting switching between film + video and aspect ratios as well. I think it's something that he's been interested in for a long time.

David Simon wrote the source material for Homicide but did not "make" the show, he cut his teeth in TV writing on Homicide.

I have Homicide on DVD, it also has some good extras.

It was recently remastered. I watched in the original 4:3 but I'm happy that some love has been put into restoring the show, albeit in unintended 16:9.

https://vimeo.com/39768998

> This video is not rated. Join vimeo to watch

No thanks. Here's a YouTube mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufs0Rwx8sOk

See https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

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