Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

rollingstone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 109 posts

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#41

Post by remram »

foob wrote: post #13

There's a great blog post by David Simon on the conversion of The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 [1]. It goes into a lot of depth about some of the trade-offs and considerations as well as the lack of communication from HBO. Unfortunately, the video examples don't seem to work anymore. I can't help but wonder if HBO sent YouTube a DMCA takedown for David Simon's clips from the post (or they got taken down automatically). It's…

Also the Buffy remaster, where interestingly they uncropped the footage, showing some of the filming crew, microphones, etc.

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

(edit: already posted in this thread, oops: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28737063)

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#42

Post by sudobash1 »

Bud wrote: post #37
vadfa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The series was filmed in... film. There is no need for upscaling. They digitalised it from the film and it looks as if it was recorded yesterday.

For another striking example of this, see the original Star Trek series. It now looks 10x better than it ever did when originally shown on TV.

As a counter-point I think it looks worse in many ways. You can see the screen make-up jarringly clearly. And the special effects were added after filming, so they have had to be redone.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#43

Post by whywhywhywhy »

krispyfi wrote: post #20

It's times like this that I think that piracy is the only way to preserve pop culture.

Absolutely. Preservation can only be achieved properly through passion not money. The copyright holders of these cultural artifacts don’t care about them enough to properly preserve them.

Only passionate fans or enthusiasts care enough to make sure things are preserved to an acceptable quality. Companies will always do dumb things like change aspect ratio, remove scenes, ship low quality video, audio or subtitles.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#44

Post by vladvasiliu »

iso1210 wrote: post #3

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 'zo…

> 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.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#45

Post by everyone »

willcipriano wrote: post #28
krispyfi wrote: post #20

It's times like this that I think that piracy is the only way to preserve pop culture.

I maintain a cultural archive of about 60 terabytes for this purpose. I have both the original and upscaled Simpsons and Seinfeld, but I mostly focus on stuff that people never think about (ever hear of Jon Benjamin Has a Van, that sort of thing). As storage mediums and formats change I carry it forward, last year I started adding YouTube creators. Eventually I'll hand that task off to my daughter if she also sees th…

One of the tragic effects of the MAFIAA's legal efforts to stop piracy, was that, though they could never reduce the amount of popular stuff being pirated, they did manage to shut down a lot of niche sites or private trackers, where people had meticulously curated rare and obscure content that was impossible to get anywhere else.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#46

Post by noisem4ker »

goldenkey wrote: post #30
NelsonMinar wrote: post #16

Cropping is never the right choice for media presentation. Ever.

Mainstream media disagrees. In fact, cropping context is their main technique :-)

I'm actually horrified to see stretching on the rise, especially in news broadcasts. "Oh, this singer just died? Let's have a disfiguring retrospective of their 80s music videos where they appear 2x as wide now."

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#48

Post by ericpauley »

16:9 reframes of Seinfeld have been around a long time. Did Netflix reframe anything or are they using these existing versions? For what it's worth the reframed version is not a simple crop, and in fact sometimes previously-unused parts of the film are used[1]. It's not just a crop/upscale of the original broadcasts, though perhaps the same effort didn't go into this reframing as The Wire, which as others have noted is excellent.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/seinfeld/comments/17xn28/original_v...

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#49

Post by throwawayboise »

simias wrote: post #27
NelsonMinar wrote: post #16

Cropping is never the right choice for media presentation. Ever.

I think that it's much better for marketing it to a newer generation. I suspect that for somebody in their early 20s starting to watch Seinfield these days a 4:3 ratio would immediately make the show look dated. I mean surely they ran the numbers and figured out it was worth it? Otherwise it wouldn't be so common with so many TV shows. When I was a kid in the 90's I remember that it was not uncommon to have black-and…

The show is dated. Nobody has a mobile phone. Very few computers (I think Jerry has a Mac Classic in his living room). The cars and street scenes are all from the 1990s.

It's still good.

Re: ‘Seinfeld’ fans upset that Netflix’s aspect ratio cuts out jokes

#50

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jefftk wrote: post #18
tofukid wrote: post #12

Almost all TVs have an option to zoom to fit 4:3, so there’s no need to stream a cropped version. At least they should provide an option to view the original.

Done well, aspect ratio conversion involves editorial decisions: what part of the frame is most important to preserve? This isn't something TVs can automate. (Not advocating for cropping, though)

Just another reason not to do it. The only person who has the right to make those decisions is the original creator and they’d more likely just say ship it as intended.
Post reply on HN