[HN Gopher] The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle
___________________________________________________________________
The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle
Author : tosh
Score : 358 points
Date : 2025-12-03 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fxrant.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fxrant.blogspot.com)
| walthamstow wrote:
| Damn, that's terrible. Reminds me of The Simpsons being cropped
| into 16:9 for Disney and obscuring the joke that all the Duff
| brews come from one pipe.
| haunter wrote:
| You can switch to the original 4:3 though
|
| Edit: and I'm getting flagged lol
|
| The Simpsons > Details > Remastered aspect ratio > Off
| https://i.imgur.com/pQohgQp.jpeg
| crtasm wrote:
| That option wasn't added until some time later.
| conradfr wrote:
| I wish Netflix did it for Seinfeld.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| The fact you can't see the pothole in the pothole episode
| still cracks me up. Ironically the kind of plotline you'd
| see in a Seinfeld episode.
| https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/seinfeld-
| netflix-...
| firmretention wrote:
| And thank god for that, because the 4:3 remasters are quite
| good, and IMO the best way to watch the old episodes on big
| screens. They've just remastered enough to make them more
| crisp and less pixelated but not so much that they look like
| a flash cartoon like the previous 16:9 TV "remasters".
| maxerickson wrote:
| I've had people make the Duff argument about real beers.
| Putting bad batches in a different can is a great way to do
| quality control on your main brand though.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Great article.
|
| Can someone explain what was wrong with that _Friends_
| screenshot? I can't tell.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| There's a window-hole in what should be an exterior apartment
| wall facing a hallway. Right side of the screen.
| swores wrote:
| They never intended to show anything to the right of the
| doorframe on TV, so there's a random sign on the wall and a big
| hole in the wall (which makes sense if you are a camera crew
| wanting to film a sitcom in the apartment, that doesn't make so
| much sense in the fictional world that anyone would have a big
| rectangle cut out of the wall between their apartment and the
| hallway).
| dboreham wrote:
| The apartment was a bunch of 2x4s and plywood in the middle
| of a big sound stage building on the Warner lot in Burbank.
| It's still there afaik.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| The "five card charlie" sign is part of the set that's
| supposed to be on camera, but the hole in the sheetrock
| obviously isn't.
| swores wrote:
| I might be wrong but I don't remember the original framing
| ever showing the sign, so I assumed (perhaps incorrectly)
| that it was there ready for them to move in shot if they
| ever wanted it, but that as seen in this image it's not
| supposed to be on camera
| joezydeco wrote:
| I distinctly remember the "5 card Charlie" sign from the
| original SDTV broadcast back in the day.
| swores wrote:
| In that case your memory (or perhaps just attention to
| detail when watching) is better than mine, and I withdraw
| my previous belief! Thanks for the correction
| convenwis wrote:
| I know you are right here but it is also true that many
| real New York apartments have crazy things like the hole in
| the sheetrock.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Who doesn't want a permanently open serving window
| between their apartment and the public hallway
| piva00 wrote:
| There's a cut out on the wall for cameras on a different angle.
| TechRemarker wrote:
| haha. Take a look at the massive unfinished window into the
| hallway =).
| albert_e wrote:
| I think it is the open hole in the wall next to the door --
| which no real apartment would have. I think that part was meant
| be cropped in the final frame, maybe?
| meindnoch wrote:
| New York apartments rarely have holes in their walls opening to
| the hallway.
| abanana wrote:
| This post explains it nicely, by showing the noticeboard they
| normally use to cover that camera hole (which looks like an
| unfinished window frame, missing its architrave):
| https://x.com/MattBaume/status/1661785600050233344
| h1fra wrote:
| Great article, I really thought it was a recropping like friends
| (and many others). So weird that they just forgot about CGI.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's even weirder when you consider how big of a deal this was
| for _Star Trek_ only a few years ago (well maybe more than a
| few...). You would have thought people in the business would
| know about this.
| afavour wrote:
| Everyone is underpaid and overworked. All things considered
| the companies probably think it's worth the trade off,
| they'll just fix it and republish. Might even end up with
| more viewers in the end! How many people have learned that
| Mad Men is on HBO Max as a result of this?
|
| Execs have less and less shame as the years go on. Pride in
| artistic endeavour? That's not going to make the shareholders
| happy.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Also cuts down on QA costs, offloading the burden of
| finding and cataloguing issues to the user. Since this is a
| monopoly, as you can't have multiple vendors competing for
| the best 4k restoration, and you can't have multiple
| streaming services competing for quality, they don't
| consider brand impact with low quality products because
| that's meaningless in this case.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > You would have thought people in the business would know
| about this.
|
| People in the business world seems to only know business, and
| that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people
| into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to
| have at least a single ounce of care when you work on
| projects where you want some level of quality.
|
| But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are
| run by business-people still, as they think it's a numbers
| game, not a arts game. Eventually someone will understand and
| take the world by storm, but seemingly not yet.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services
| are run by business-people still, as they think it's a
| numbers game, not a arts game. Eventually someone will
| understand and take the world by storm, but seemingly not
| yet.
|
| Because they are businesses? Just because something is art
| doesn't mean expenses can be more than revenue.
|
| There was an enormous increase in the supply of
| entertainment over the last 20 years, in the form of
| Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, WhatsApp, HN, video
| games, etc. Demand stayed the same, maxed out at 24 hours
| per day. One should expect changes in quality and quantity
| and price in a market with drastically shifting supply and
| demand curves.
| code_for_monkey wrote:
| Dont criticize the billion dollar corporation >:(
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am not criticizing anyone. Just explaining the dynamics
| that led to the dramatic reduction in value of the legacy
| businesses that produced professional video content, and
| the inevitable repercussions.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > People in the business world seems to only know business,
| and that's the limit of what they care about.
|
| You'd think these people would go off and be executives at
| a ball bearing manufacturing company or something and leave
| the arts alone, but it never happens that way.
| triceratops wrote:
| Why do business without glamor when you can do business
| with glamor?
| bsenftner wrote:
| It's all about prestige, which in my opinion is the #1
| driver of human motivation.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The wheels would fall off of modern society if ball
| bearings had quality issues like this.
|
| I know that you are joking, but well-made BBs are
| incredibly important to just about any modern machine
| that moves, and indirectly, all the non-moving ones too.
|
| Hell, Albert Speer, Nazi in charge of BBs and other
| manufacturing, said that the US bombing offensive would
| have had a huge impact on the war if they had just kept
| at it with bombing the BB factories instead of giving up.
| iso1631 wrote:
| They spent a lot of money doing a decent remastering job of
| TOS and TNG.
|
| The public did not spend a lot of money on buying these
| remasters - they lost a lot of money.
|
| The DS9 documentary "What we left behind" had some HD
| reproduction. It was great, and I was lucky enough to see DS9
| on a big screen at an semi-arty cinema in Hackney (not a
| chain, but did have popcorn), but doing this type of
| production is _expensive_.
|
| Automating it is far cheaper, and although it comes out crap
| - people would prefer to watch stuff in 16:9 and either
|
| 1) Have stuff (like the hold in the Friends wall) which
| wasn't suppose to be there
|
| 2) Crop stuff out (see the first 20 years of Simpsons)
|
| With the Simpsons there was enough outrage that they gave an
| _option_ to fix it, but for those who remember 20 years ago
| it was very common for the average viewer to have their TV
| simply stretch 4:3 to fill the entire screen width. Nowadays
| a whopping 4 in 5 people in America are using their phone at
| the same time as watching TV, they simply aren 't paying
| attention.
|
| The number of people
|
| 1) Who notice
|
| 2) Who care
|
| 3) Who are watching older stuff
|
| 4) Who will pay for it
|
| Is tiny.
| klustregrif wrote:
| They didn't just forget about CHI, they got all the way to
| releasing this to customers without ever watching it
| themselves. This is crazy levels of incompetence.
| meijer wrote:
| Really surprisingly bad work by HBO.
| vessenes wrote:
| https://www.vulture.com/article/mad-men-hbo-max-4k-rerelease...
| has more. Some finger-pointing going on here right now - HBO
| claims they got 'incorrect files' from Lionsgate. Either way we
| had clankers doing most of the work, clearly.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| So have they fixed everything? You'd think when it's this bad
| they'd just pull it for a day or however long it takes to
| fix.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's weird that they'd have the crew in the frame anyway. Was it
| really not possible to have them out of frame? I guess being able
| to "do it in post" makes people lazy?
| fredoralive wrote:
| Possibly some issues with the hose length and the ability
| control the flow? Or perhaps it's just an off the shelf up
| chuck chucker that doesn't have a longer hose?
| whycome wrote:
| I think we are also forgetting that the crew member IS a part
| of the scene. They have to see the actor and respond to their
| actions to make sure the flow aligns. It's much harder to
| control the flow as it pertains to the actor if you have the
| latency of a long pipe.
|
| And having the real product on set allows the other actors to
| give realistic reactions.
| liampulles wrote:
| Probably more a function of "shit happens" when doing something
| new (making and using a "vomit hose") in a big, multi-
| functional project (shooting a TV show).
| the_af wrote:
| If it can be fixed in post, what's the problem? The only flaw
| here is that they completely screwed up and forgot post for
| these scenes (in the remaster).
| nayroclade wrote:
| Apparently they didn't forget. Lionsgate did all the
| necessary work, then someone sent the "wrong file" to HBO
| Max, and it seems nobody checked it properly before uploading
| it!
|
| Given the volume of material these streamers are handling, I
| expect QA is minimal. I remember when I was watching Frasier
| on Amazon Prime, a bunch of the episodes had been configured
| to play in the wrong aspect ratio. Clearly nobody had ever
| bothered to check them.
| sevensor wrote:
| I've seen movies on Prime where the audio was very badly
| out of sync. I thought it was my setup at first, but I was
| able to isolate it to particular titles. Like watching a
| bad dub from another language.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Given the volume of material these streamers are
| handling, I expect QA is minimal_
|
| Yeah, I expect QA is minimal for these shows that are past
| their prime. Only fans will really watch them again, it's
| probably not worth it to spend the extra time to review
| every single episode. (But of course, fans will care! I'm
| just saying it's probably not worthwhile for HBO to check)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| HBO Max was advertising this as a big new exciting
| release. They probably paid a bunch of money for
| exclusive streaming rights and expected to capture a new
| audience that missed the show the first time.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Friends on Netflix one day years ago had the extended
| versions of the episodes. They fixed it quickly, but it's
| kind of a shame since it'd be nice if we had the choice to
| select which version we wanted to see.
| cuvinny wrote:
| When I worked in the VOD industry we never almost never did
| a precheck of the files. The content provider (Lionsgate in
| this case) would upload the files that would then get
| ingested by the CMS system for normalization and
| transcoding. The most check the distributor did was add
| metadata marks for ad breaks and random checks for
| transcode quality.
|
| I set up custom ingest workflows many cable companies
| around the world and they all worked the same. You just had
| to trust that the providers sent you good copies and get
| them to fix their shit if it was wrong. Most of the time it
| was bad metadata (episode description, ect).
| lou1306 wrote:
| I guess the crew has to stay pretty close to the end of the
| hose or it becomes hard to time the... flow... correctly.
| Likely, they still had to process the frames anyway to make
| the... flow... look like it comes out of Sterling's mouth, not
| from the side of his face, so it was basically no extra cost.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| They _were_ out of frame. Out of the 4:3 frame.
|
| Edit: I jumped the gun and thought we were talking about the
| Friends screenshot.
| dghf wrote:
| But it was never intended for 4:3. They were always in frame,
| just digitally removed.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| No the original was 16:9, you can see they have been
| digitally removed in the shots from the Blu-ray.
| joncrane wrote:
| Hypothesis:
|
| They were set up to shoot that scene that day and they were on
| a tight schedule. They started to set up and they realized they
| only had 12 feet of hose, or that the pressure dropped too much
| with a longer length of hose. They discussed all the options,
| and fixing it physically would take too long or be too
| expensive. Thus another "we'll fix it in post!" moment was
| born.
| eknkc wrote:
| They were already gonna edit it in post to remove the hose
| anyway.. Might as well remove the crew too in that case.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's not laziness!
|
| It's the fact that shooting is _enormously_ expensive per-
| minute, and time-constrained. Think of the sheer number of crew
| involved. And then think of the sheer number of shots you have
| to get per day, to stay on schedule and on budget.
|
| If there was a mixup and it's going to take half an hour to get
| and set up a longer hose, it's much cheaper to have 1 person do
| it in post if it takes a day, versus delay the shot for half an
| hour while 50 people wait around. (And no, you often can't just
| shoot a different shot in the meantime, because that involves
| rearranging the lighting and set which takes just as long.)
| astura wrote:
| Likely harder to get the timing and pressure right with a
| longer hose.
| whycome wrote:
| They didn't buy the XL model
| alexpotato wrote:
| A side story on the techniques for restoration:
|
| I'm guessing about 10-15 years ago I was watching a documentary
| on the re-release of Ken Burns Civil War.
|
| They were highlighting the digital tools they were using to
| restore and enhance the original film capture for new streaming
| services etc.
|
| They showed one of the restorers using a fascinating tool where
| one window was a video feed of the original film's "first pass"
| to digital. One of the landscape scenes had a small smudge in the
| upper right hand corner so the restorer pauses the feed, goes
| back frame by frame and then was able to drag and drop the frame
| into another window where he used Photoshop like tools to fix
| everything and then drag and drop it back into the "feed". Seemed
| VERY efficient and shows how good tools can really accelerate a
| workflow.
|
| I'm not sure if the above scene is in the below quick documentary
| but there are a lot of other cool "behind the scenes of
| restoration" moments: https://www.pbs.org/video/civil-war-
| restoring-civil-war/
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| The documentary is no longer available (or, possibly, only
| available in the US), but the tool you're describing is pretty
| common in digital video editing. In DaVinci Resolve the
| dustbuster tool will look a few frames ahead and behind of the
| one where you want to paint out a mark, and make its best guess
| based on that.
|
| I've used it to paint out tape dropouts on VHS transfers with
| remarkable success.
| stogot wrote:
| Do you do VHS transfers professionally or your own personal
| VhS? Stacks of VHS sittin in a corner that I need to decide
| what to do with
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I got into it because my parents produced a video about the
| area I grew up in, back in the late 80s, and I only have
| VHS copies. The master tape is probably lost but the guy
| who shot it said there might be a copy made about 20 years
| ago on DVD that the editor made for archival purposes.
|
| Since then it's turned out that people want their old tapes
| copied over quite a bit. I don't do it "professionally"
| simply because I cannot afford to dedicate that sort of
| time to it, because people actually expect it to be done
| more quickly than "okay today I have a full day of Teams
| calls where I don't need to say much so I'll get on with
| something fun" ;-)
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| My advice is to pay someone else to do the transfer, but
| get someone good. Most services online don't bother with a
| real TBC because a professional TBC is expensive, and not
| worth investing in for the average consumer. However, it is
| an absolute necessity if you want any kind of quality.
|
| Failing that, you can get a retrotink 4k and any old HDMI
| capture card to do a "good enough" job for most folks. It
| has a sort of poor-mans TBC that will work as long as the
| tapes aren't too bad. You're still looking at a grand for
| the retrotink, but you can then use it for retro video
| games if you're into that.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I am fortunate that the Panasonic AG7650 I use for
| playback has a built-in TBC that emits stable enough
| video to go straight into my BMD Intensity Pro.
| Lammy wrote:
| Disambiguation to save anyone looking it up: TBC ==
| timebase correction
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_base_correction
| dylan604 wrote:
| Restoration tools are very cool. One tool I liked allows you to
| draw a marquee around an area you'd like to fix. It then allows
| you to shift the frames forward/back in just the highlighted
| area to find a frame without the blemish. Obviously a more
| static shot gave better results, but it was fast and easy to
| use. Much easier than trying to use a blemish/clone tool. Doing
| the same fix with rotoscoping techniques would take much more
| time/effort.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I wonder if it was Cinepaint, one of the earlier Linux success
| stories
| kroaton wrote:
| I used to work at a film restoration studio about 10 years ago,
| and back then PF Clean from PixelFarm was more or less the
| industry standard. That might have been the software you saw.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Unrelated: does anyone else experience huge lag with HBO
| streaming app? It's easily the slowest I regularly use on Samsung
| smart tv.
| etothet wrote:
| On an Apple TV with first gen Homepods connected it is
| incredibly laggy. Specifically rewind and fast forward take
| sometimes up to 10 seconds to respond. And even then they never
| seem to get me to the correct location. It's pretty maddening.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If we are going to dog pile on streaming problems...
|
| HBO is the worst about remembering what episode I just watched.
| Finish episode 6? Next time you go to click next episode, it
| might play #5. Incredibly annoying, coupled with their
| interface which makes selecting episodes clunky.
|
| You just sent me how many GBs of data, how could you forget
| where I am?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| The did something similar to Buffy The Vampire Slayer when
| "upgrading" it to HD. It lost all/most of the color grading and
| was cropped to 16:9.
|
| Some night scenes now take place during daytime and you can see
| booms and camera operators in many shots.
|
| It never even got a blu ray release. The only way to watch it at
| home without egregious errors is still DVD as far as I know.
| liampulles wrote:
| I have the PAL DVD release, and I have to say the color grading
| has never been great, although it obviously at least has the
| correct effects applied.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| The PAL release is already the bad copy (starting with season
| 4 I think). You already had odd stuff in view that wasn't
| supposed to be visible.
|
| The only way to watch this show properly now is the 4:3 NTSC
| DVD release.
|
| I think the recent streaming releases also have the music
| altered in many places. The show just got <bleep>ed up
| basically. It's a real shame.
| liampulles wrote:
| Hmm, I didn't notice any "odd stuff in view" when I watched
| it, so at least it wasn't obvious. I'll have to keep an eye
| out next time I watch
| phantasmish wrote:
| Not just that, they seem to have also applied some weird auto-
| cropping that made "choices" no human doing the job would have,
| meaning that in some scenes characters who were meant to be in
| frame aren't, then suddenly and surprisingly appear when
| there's a cut to another angle (this is usually in group dialog
| scenes--like "oh that's who they were talking to!")
| liampulles wrote:
| Fun fact: The X-Files production team foresaw the coming of 16:9
| home entertainment, so they made some effort (increasing with
| later seasons) to try and "protect" a 16:9 frame, which allowed
| for an unusually good 16:9 Blu-ray restoration.
| [https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7499/look-inside-the-files...]
|
| I learned this from the older X-files DVDs, which have some
| unusually good special features.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Not saying it had anything to do with X-files, but also when
| you shot something for TV but were not entirely sure if the
| capture would ever go to the movies, you protected the wide
| frame.
|
| Also, if you shot a movie but wanted it to look good in TV
| later, you put the most important action somewhere in a 4:3.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Some movies were shot in 4:3 (ish) and cropped in the
| theater. Titanic is an example.
|
| (For the pedantic, yes there is a name for this technique,
| and yes the ratios aren't exactly 4:3.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| 35mm film is more square than rectangle. When you shoot
| wider aspect ratios, the whole frame is exposed. The
| eyepiece on the camera has lines on them to allow the DP to
| see the framing for the desired aspect ratio vs the whole
| frame. So it wasn't just a Titanic as example, it was
| pretty much all film was shot like that.
|
| When digital cameras like the ones from Red came out, you
| can tell it the aspect ratio so it only saves the active
| pixels of the full sensor and ignore all of the out of
| aspect pixels. That's a brave operator doing that, and I've
| only seen it in the wild once.
| turnsout wrote:
| Not quite but close. Titanic, like a lot of movies of the
| 90s and 2000s, was shot in Super 35. In Super 35, the image
| is ~4:3, but it _requires_ optical printing or scanning to
| produce a release print, since the image is both not the
| correct aspect ratio and also occupies the area used for
| optical sound.
|
| So it was not "cropped in the theater"--the theater got a
| standard anamorphic print. To go from the Super 35 negative
| to the anamorphic print, they both cropped and optically
| squeezed the image (in the case of the non-vfx shots), and
| scanned, cropped, squeezed digitally and printed back to
| film (in the case of the vfx shots). This was a few years
| before they did full "digital intermediates."
| jjmarr wrote:
| The term is "open matte" and is the ideal way of watching
| movies on folding phones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_matte
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Open matte is a filming technique.
|
| The second half of your sentence is misguided.
| dmpk2k wrote:
| Similar with Babylon 5, although the CG has not aged as well.
| sgt wrote:
| I don't know, currently watching Babylon 5 Season 3 and I
| think the CG is pretty impressive. It's not high resolution
| or sharp, but the ray tracing is excellent. A lot of moving
| parts flying around everywhere with lighting and planets in
| the background.
| zehaeva wrote:
| What he's talking about is that the CGI in B5 was filmed in
| 4:3 and not in 16:9 like the rest of the show. When they
| did the "high res" releases they had to make the choice of
| doing everything in 16:9 or in 4:3.
|
| In 4:3 it looks good and like the original airing show, in
| 16:9 any non-digital/composite shot looks freaking
| fantastic. But once you get to any digital or composite
| shot it takes a nose dive in quality.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There was recent (last few years) work done to fix all of
| this.
|
| https://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.
| htm...
|
| I have these versions, and it's world better than
| everything beforehand. It's also a good opportunity for a
| re-watch!
| sgt wrote:
| A very well written show. It's crazy to think a lot of
| people don't even get to watch this, because it's so hard
| to find. I couldn't find it anywhere (except for DVD's)
| so I had to resort to torrents.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| There's a 4K 4:3 remaster streaming on HBO Max. It wasn't
| exactly well advertised (certainly not to the extent that
| it has been hard to miss this Mad Men advertising), but
| it exists and is a good way to watch the show. Feels a
| bit less cinematic not being in 16:9, but it looks good
| other than that because the show was shot to be 4:3 safe
| (as that was still the most common TV at the time).
| sgt wrote:
| Also a US only thing. Torrents keeping the rest of us
| alive.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I loved B5's story, but no remaster is going to fix the
| cheeseball acting of the show. It felt 200 years old even
| when it was airing. (Sigh, I'm probably still going to
| rewatch it...)
| sgt wrote:
| I think Garibaldi was actually quite good.
|
| Sheridan was maybe a bit cheesy at times but definitely
| gave off that vibe of a leader one could follow into
| battle.
| 5555624 wrote:
| It's streaming, for free, on Tubi
| sgt wrote:
| Not available outside the US, I think. Torrents are then
| just more convenient.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The Babylon 5 team had tried to prepare for that as well by
| keeping digital masters of all the effects. It would have
| meant recompositing, which isn't necessarily cheap, but in
| theory they could have run the exact same effects at a higher
| resolution.
|
| Unfortunately, Warner Brothers lost those files. Rumor has it
| when they sent copies to Sierra (really Vivendi at the time,
| just before the Activision acquisition) for a Babylon 5
| videogame the WB Archives team accidentally sent their only
| copy and that when the videogame project was shutdown they
| destroyed the copies per the IP license agreement.
|
| There's a high probability that even if WB had had the
| digital masters of the effects, they probably still would
| have stuck to the 4:3 restoration over the 16:9 restoration
| to avoid recompositing costs, but it's still such a weird
| swing of bad luck that the production team thought ahead
| about HD technology well enough as well as anyone could at
| that time and yet the 4K copy we have in this timeline is in
| the wrong aspect ratio.
| petee wrote:
| The first season or two you can definitely see the crew in the
| safety margins, sometimes the camera crane too
| aomix wrote:
| 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
| lloeki wrote:
| 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...
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| 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.
| liampulles wrote:
| 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.
| wackget wrote:
| 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
| anal_reactor wrote:
| When you have an OLED screen then 4:3 aspect ratio is fine
| because the black bars aren't backlit, so it's not a problem.
| liampulles wrote:
| I mean I personally would prefer a 4:3 restoration anyway,
| because composition and its relation to mise en scene are
| important to me, but c'est la vie.
| layer8 wrote:
| Except when you do it too much, the 4:3 area will remain
| brighter due to the higher usage.
| doctornoble wrote:
| Not to dismiss the X-files team, but 16:9 was already around
| when they started. Just not in the states. Japan started
| getting 16:9 CRTs in the early 90s, Europe followed in the mid
| 90s. America lagged another half decade and effectively skipped
| 16:9 CRTs mostly going straight to plasma/lcd.
| drmpeg wrote:
| The first 16:9 content I ever saw was the trailer to "Batman
| Forever" (with Val Kilmer) in 1995 when I was working at
| C-Cube Microsystems. The studios use to send them test
| content all the time for video compression testing. It was on
| D1 tape, and looked beautiful for SD resolution. The
| professional Sony CRT 4:3 monitors back then had a 16:9
| button to letterbox the image.
| liampulles wrote:
| Japan has been ahead of the curve on a lot of home media
| related technology, not least because they manufactured a lot
| of it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I saw a movie in a theater years ago where the projectionist
| did not change the lens and/or mattes when switching from
| previews to the main feature. The projected image was much
| taller like a 1.85 or a 1.78, but the feature was shot wider
| 2.35/2.40. However, the image wasn't protected for the taller
| aspect, so all of the on set gak could be seen as it was never
| meant to be shown at the taller aspect ratio.
|
| I've also sat in transfer sessions where the Pan&Scan decisions
| were being made to transfer wide screen down to 4:3 vs just
| doing a center crop extract. It makes you appreciate just how
| much effort is needed when done as best it could be rather than
| just the fast/lazy way.
| hovering_nox wrote:
| Although Stargate SG-1 (1997) was filmed in 16:9 from the
| outset, earlier seasons were broadcast in 4:3.
| rendaw wrote:
| The article mentions that Mad Men was already in 16:9 so the
| issues are unrelated to re-framing.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Agreed. Mad Men premiered in 2007, well into the HD era, and
| was already composed for 16:9. The issue here is that the 4K
| "remaster" seemingly wasn't mastered at all, just a re-scan
| of the original negatives at a higher resolution.
|
| That said, I think letterboxing is a better choice than
| trying to recompose a shot for a different aspect ratio if it
| wasn't accounted for initially (eg: The X-Files). And even
| then, the shot selection and composition would have been
| different had the aspect ratio been initially different (like
| TXF's 16:9 versions leaving the edges of the frame largely
| unused).
| russdill wrote:
| Friends....did not.
| rob74 wrote:
| Stories like this regularly make the rounds when movies or shows
| that the original creators put a lot of love and thought into are
| "remastered" on the cheap. The last one I saw was the story about
| the garish colors in digital versions of old Pixar movies -
| amongst others, they _intentionally exaggerated_ green hues in
| the digital original to compensate for the transfer process to
| analog film stock which was less sensitive to green. When Disney
| transferred the movies to digital formats and streaming, they
| took the digital original 1:1, so the colors now look off
| (https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-toy-story-you-...)
| parkersweb wrote:
| Through work I once got into conversation with the guy who did
| the re-mastering into 96kHz of the ABBA back catalogue. Up
| until that point CD re-releases of their material was
| apparently all converted from the cassette masters where they'd
| massively exaggerated the HF to compensate for the fact that
| cassette had a notoriously terrible HF response...
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| A few years back I had the sudden realization that I'd
| upgraded all my video equipment to HD and then 4k, but hadn't
| really done anything with my audio. So I went out and got
| nice equipment (Nice DAC, Headphones, Speakers, Etc).
|
| One of the first things I learned once I could hear music
| properly was that I had favorite "versions" of different
| albums. They truly are NOT created equally, but it's not
| something you can really appreciate on a crummy Bluetooth
| headset either. Once you can you really start to appreciate
| the work that folks like your friend do.
| alexfoo wrote:
| > Once you can you really start to appreciate the work that
| folks like your friend do.
|
| That can be a real double edged sword.
|
| When you realise how good things can be it means many of
| the everyday/average things can become intolerable.
|
| I'm happy that I've got slightly dodgy eyesight in that I
| don't really care whether something is in HD or 4K (I can
| still tell if my wife has selected the SD version of a TV
| channel, and I'm still way above the minimum standard to be
| able to drive).
|
| I'm also happy I didn't inherit my father's audiophile
| hearing. I can do blind listening tests of different bits
| of audio equipment and barely hear the difference between
| them whilst my father (even in his 80's) can provide a
| whole list of things that are wrong/better/different about
| each of them (and he's not just making stuff up).
|
| The biggest test is that I can also drink most supermarket
| instant coffee without complaint. I've got some friends
| that walk 25 minutes each way to their favourite coffee
| vendor multiple times a day as "everything closer is
| awful", but then that's more about them having a nice
| routine to get them away from their desk.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Tangent as you mentioned boosted high frequencies on tapes...
|
| It's possible (likely) that those prerecorded cassettes had
| boosted high frequencies because they were intended to be
| played on a deck that supports Dolby B noise reduction, and
| will do the reverse operation to get the level back to where
| it's supposed to be.
|
| Dolby B noise reduction didn't actually reduce noise at the
| source. Instead:
|
| - During recording: Boost the volume of high frequencies
| (where tape hiss is most audible)
|
| - During playback: Apply the inverse.
|
| When you reduce the treble during playback, you're reducing
| the hiss along with it, but the original signal (which was
| boosted before) ends up at the intended level. This improves
| the signal-to-noise ratio in the high frequencies.
|
| This is similar to the RIAA equalization curve used for vinyl
| records.
|
| - During mastering: Reduce bass, boost treble.
|
| - During playback:The RIAA phono preamp applies the inverse
| curve--boosting bass and reducing treble.
|
| IIRC the reasons for the RIAA curve aren't just about
| improving signal-to-noise ratio, but something about the
| physical limits of vinyl.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So odd that they didn't slap a film emulation on top of that.
| Although maybe not any existing software emulates exactly the
| film stock they used, _any_ film emulation would look more true
| than a 1:1.
| danaris wrote:
| Part of the reason this one is news is that there's really zero
| excuse for it being done "on the cheap": HBO can afford the
| very best, and their reputation kiiiind of depends on it.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| What happened to the early Pixar movies isn't at all the same,
| though. They weren't remastered, they were just transferred to
| a media that they were not originally mastered for.
| flobosg wrote:
| Discussed here a few weeks ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45883788
| rendaw wrote:
| And notably, there's some dissent there that the modern
| Disney/Pixar versions are wrong (there's an arbitrariness to
| scanners, plus no particularly objective recordings of what
| you'd actually see at theaters back then) IIUC.
| philjohn wrote:
| See also the "remaster" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer not having
| proper colour grading done https://horrorbuzz.com/buffy-hd-
| issues-original-teams-reacti...
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| Disneys old animated shows get remastered by cropping the 4:3
| source to 16:9. It shows more often than not that something is
| missing from the picture.
| egorfine wrote:
| Prerelease about 4K remaster premiere will please shareholders
| and push the stock price up, while actually doing a good job will
| only hurt the bottom line.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This could be an EXCELLENT marketing opportunity.
|
| Set up a site for fans to point out errors and vote on them.
|
| Then have HBO have just one editor interact with fans on the
| site, fix the most popular errors, and talk about them, maybe
| stream a little of the editing process.
| intrasight wrote:
| True
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yes a bit like modern car companies do by pushing out whatever
| untested experimental feature they have and let the customers
| figure them out (or die).
| esafak wrote:
| Or just regular software companies. Microsoft's been beta
| testing on actual users since MS-DOS!
| bilekas wrote:
| That would require HBO to actually care.. They've already been
| paid, I don't see them fixing any of this for the streaming
| service.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Update: the season one episodes are being updated live on
| HBO Max to their correct positions and titles. The corrected
| title:
|
| >They've already been paid
|
| HBO sells a subscription. Presumably, their goal is to be
| paid again, and again, and again.
| colechristensen wrote:
| marketing for people to engage with HBO Max and Mad Men...
| they haven't "already been paid"
| zebomon wrote:
| It honestly seemed like pretty sharp marketing to me already
| when I read about it on AV Club.
| Plankaluel wrote:
| I think this is just another case of "over-optimization to make
| shareholders happy in the end ruins everything". I.e., the normal
| enshittification problem.
|
| Pretty sure all of that does make financial sense: - Being able
| to write 4k will bring people in to re-watching/watching the show
| for the first time. - Redoing the CGI, etc., would have cost a
| lot of money. - Very few people will cancel their subscription or
| stop watching because of stuff like that - So in the end, no one
| cares
|
| I.e., it makes financial sense to do the minimum possible. Sure,
| if this were a project you care about, if it were your company
| that you are also emotionally invested in and maybe proud of,
| etc., things might look different. But your actual customers are
| shareholders, which in the end are predominantly giant ETF
| brokers and pension funds, that don't care about anything else
| but what your stock price looks like and whether you are in the
| S&P500. They probably don't even know what your company is doing.
|
| Sorry, rant over ;P
| Retric wrote:
| Only if you're optimizing for easily measured metrics alone.
| The value of a companies brand is not just some arbitrary
| number on a balance sheet it does influence the easily measured
| metrics like the number of customers you have across multiple
| segments in a noisy way. Which then influences your profits,
| which those institutional investors do care about.
|
| That said, the general public is more price conscious than most
| people on HN. Walmart is generously rewarded for finding a good
| price:quality match for a huge segment of the population.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Reputation will only become more important as AI generated
| content permeates society, the name behind what you'll read,
| watch or listen will be a bigger factor in whether anyone
| would commit minutes to hours to consuming what could be
| slop.
|
| I think this erosion of trust will have far reaching
| consequences and people will become less open to ideas and
| experiences front strangers.
|
| Running your brand into the ground in the early days will be
| costly.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| You're absolutely right, and I don't know why more people
| aren't talking about that instead of just pointing out aspect
| ratio issues in their favorite movies and TV shows...
|
| This is the end goal of a system that doesn't think beyond next
| quarter, that wants to accumulate vast sums of money above all
| else, and that treats customers as an annoying side effect of
| the line going up. They'd take our money and give us nothing,
| if they could get away with it. Based on what passes for
| products these days (seriously? A toilet with a camera?) we're
| very nearly there.
| rurp wrote:
| HBO became an incredibly valuable brand because of a well
| deserved reputation for quality. Any one great show or highly
| visible screwup will only move that needle so much, but they do
| compound over time. I still remember the leaked audio from some
| years ago when the new HBO ownership explicitly said they
| wanted to take a more quantity over quality approach. This
| latest case certainly reinforces my mental model that HBO isn't
| what it used to be and probably isn't worth combing back to any
| time soon, given that there are better streaming options out
| there.
| runamuck wrote:
| 100% chance I would have never noticed the "puke hose" tech in
| the background. I never saw the Gorilla in that classic
| "basketball video".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Exactly what I was going to say. I didn't even see it in the
| still photo until I looked carefully. The eye focuses on the
| main action, and that area is relatively small. The brain
| "fills in" the detail around your center of vision.
| Illusionists exploit this regularly.
|
| There was a post here maybe a month ago that exposes how small
| the actual "high definition" center of vision (fovea centralis)
| is. You can really see detail only in a small area at the
| center of your vision. Outside of that, the brain fills in what
| it thinks should be there.
|
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM
| nilslindemann wrote:
| You mean the moonwalking bear?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hgJpfn3zXw
| fusslo wrote:
| personally, I started re-watching Mad Men JUST because of these
| errors!
|
| I love audio commentary, behind the scenes, and other looks
| behind the veil. I would love the ability to see more of
| unedited, 'raw', or 'mistakes' in older tv shows. Hell, I would
| even pay for it.
|
| Whats really interesting to me is that no one 'decided' what's
| worthy of inclusion like they do with behind the scenes stuff
| PyWoody wrote:
| That reminds me of House of Bamboo, which kind of had the
| opposite problem[0]: For many years after its
| initial release, the film was seen only on television in pan-and-
| scan prints, leading people to believe that DeForest Kelley has a
| small role near the end of the film. When Fox finally struck a
| new 35mm CinemaScope print for a film festival in the 1990s,
| viewers were surprised to see that Kelley is in the film all the
| way through; he was just always off to one side and thus had been
| panned out of the frame.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bamboo#Casting
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I don't get why they bother changing the aspect ratio in the
| first place. What audience is saying, "I want a weird one-off
| version of the show in HD, please"?
|
| Most of these shows were shot for 4:3. Directors framed for 4:3,
| lit for 4:3, blocked scenes for 4:3, and even built their special
| effects around 4:3. Stretching that work into widescreen feels a
| bit like deciding to colorize Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, or
| The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It solves a problem no one
| actually has.
|
| Viewers are already used to black bars, and we watch lower-
| resolution content constantly. Vertical phone clips shot by
| amateurs on TikTok, grainy GIFs, and IMAX footage down-scaled to
| fit our phone (and connection). Content that wasn't designed to
| fill the entire screen isn't the issue.
|
| From what I've seen, most of these old shows end up on free or
| bargain streaming services packed with ads. I watched an episode
| of Highway to Heaven with my dad where they sped up the dialogue
| and trimmed pauses, squeezed the credits into a tiny picture-in-
| picture box, and still lopped off another minute so the episode
| ended mid-sentence. All of that was just to make room for extra
| commercial slots the original show was never designed to
| accommodate. Disgusting, really... though I suppose you get what
| you pay for.
|
| Sticking with the original 4:3 and simply adding pillarbox bars
| is cleaner, simpler, and far more respectful -- and ultimately
| more enjoyable for the audience.
|
| Relevant :
|
| * "That Was A Mistake": Steven Spielberg Admits He Regrets
| Removing Guns From E.T. // https://screenrant.com/et-guns-
| removed-steven-spielberg-regr...
|
| * 5 Worst Changes Star Wars Made From The Original Cuts //
| https://screenrant.com/worst-changes-star-wars-special-editi...
|
| * 'Casablanca' gets colorized, but don't play it again, Ted |
| Interviews | Roger Ebert //
| https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/casablanca-gets-colori...
| op00to wrote:
| > Viewers are already used to black bars, and we watch lower-
| resolution content constantly.
|
| This is actually not as common as you think. It is common for
| "normies" to see 4:3 and think "This is not HD". People really,
| really hate black bars.
|
| What's more surprising to me is that content providers don't
| keep stuff in 4:3 and just shove ads on the side.
| mjg59 wrote:
| You're not wrong, it's just not relevant to this case - Mad Men
| was originally broadcast in 16:9
| MaoSYJ wrote:
| I remember seeing how TV had to take into account numerous
| formats, specially in the transition from tube to flat screens.
| Shame that no one takes that into account any more.
|
| If you have an old TV with an off format you will miss a portion
| of the intended frame.
| tonymet wrote:
| Seems to have been a deliberate incident, just look at all of the
| free PR on social media from this "accident" . Has HBOMax ever
| been on Hackernews except for bad naming ? Their app isn't
| otherwise noteworthy
| Teever wrote:
| > Reframing old shows to fit a new aspect ratio is antithetical
| to the spirit of media restoration, and cheapens the future of
| our shared culture. The folks at the studios who insist on
| hobbling their most classic television shows are really bad at
| their jobs.
|
| I disgree with this. I'm fine with companies putting out new
| versions of something that are experimental like this, but I
| tihnk that they need to both acknowledge that they're
| experimental _and_ put out versions that are true to the original
| intent.
| knorker wrote:
| Relatedly, if anyone has a copy of Battle Royale before they
| ruined literally every effects shot with the digital special
| edition, please make yourself known to a member of staff.
|
| It's not even that it aged poorly. The effects they added are so
| bad that it's hard to see what happened.
|
| Like a guy's getting shot, and then they've spliced in a red
| dodgeball exploding, as if his head completely exploded. But one
| second later he's still alive. Huh?
|
| There's even behind the scenes of them being completely happy
| with these grade school MS Paint BS.
| butlike wrote:
| I'd pay a separate subscription if I got to watch all these
| workprints. Fascinating stuff.
| csours wrote:
| Very slightly related:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb07MT5fcEE
|
| A grab bag of edits by 'Craven in Outer Space' on Star Trek TNG
| Season 1 - some of which are related to the restoration/re-
| release showing things that were not easily seen on old TVs.
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