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1571760cookie-checkThe Simpsons’ 16:9 Airing On Disney Plus Crops Some Visual Gags
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2019/11

The Simpsons’ 16:9 Airing On Disney Plus Crops Some Visual Gags

[Update 11/16/2019:] It’s being reported that Disney has taken the feedback to heart and they will be modifying the aspect ratio of the streaming of The Simpsons, where the series will be displayed in its proper format without cropping in 2020.

[Original article:] Disney+ is now airing The Simpsons episodes after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox. According to Polygon, approximately 286 of the 429 pre-HD episodes that were scaled to 4:3 standard definition televisions have been moved over to the Disney+ streaming channel. The problem, however, is that all of those episodes have been rescaled for widescreen 16:9 HD displays, but they had to do some cropping in order to get there.

The article details how the cropping might seem benign, but upon viewing the actual episodes it has resulted in parts of the frame being cut off. In turn, this means that some of the images involving some of the visual gags lose a little bit of their flavor… sort of like the Duff tour where it shows that all three different types of Duff are actually made from the exact same brew.

Twitter is actually somewhat useful for once by bringing up that this was always going to be a problem for widescreen displays, given that even show creator, Matt Groening, warned that the pre-HD era version of the shows would all be stretched out and look out of place on a 16:9 display, and that the show was meant to be viewed on a 4:3 output.

As noted by Polygon, in February, 2009 Fox did switch the show over to support 16:9 output. However, that was for all future shows. The problem is that the previous shows were still in 4:3 format and Disney decided to simple rescale them instead of allowing people to view them with large black spaces on the side via their streaming service.

What’s funny is that even completely unrelated companies are taking digs at Disney for the aspect ratio kerfuffle, with the Toejam & Earl account mocking them for the cropping mishap.

Thankfully, there appears to be an apropos fix for the moment in the form of a little website known as The Simpsons World on FX.

Like all good things, though, there’s a catch.

Due to Disney having purchased Fox, and having moved the episodes to Disney+, the Simpsons World is shutting down.

This means you might want to act fast if you want to watch all of the episodes in the original 4:3 aspect ratio before Disney pulls the plug on The Simpsons World web portal.

(Thanks for the news tip RomanPerfection)

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