The original post: /r/television by /u/Strange_ScottVA on 2025-04-12 14:09:35.
If you are like me and enjoy watching many shows from our youth, chances are you’ve noticed how many series have been remastered for streaming and have been put into 16:9 widescreen format when they were originally 4:3 fullscreen. And if you are more like me, then you are completely sick of it because zooming in on a fullscreen with pan&scan just does not work for these shows because they lose so much of their visuals. I can’t begin to tell how many times I’m watching a show from the last 20+ years and heads are cropped off by the TV border all because some people can’t stand to see black bars on the sides of their screen. From DragonBall Z, to Seinfeld, to Goof Troop, to Garfield & Friends, and lord knows how many others. If it’s that much a problem, give people the option to zoom in and leave it the format it is intended. It’s one thing if a movie was made in “letterbox” widescreen back in the day and was changed to 4:3 for tv’s back then to change back to that format. But if the show was made to be that way, then leave it the way it is.
Goof Troop is especially egregious with it’s remastering all together. Because the visuals in some episode are just inconsistent. Once in a while, some scenes cut back to the original standard definition. The lines are less sharp, colors are washed out, and again, the awful zoom in. I would’ve much rather they just leave it as is if it was going to be so staggering. Either do it all right or don’t do it at all.
And on a final note, cartoons do not need rotoscope flash animation on their theme songs. It just looks like a jarring mess like the Star Wars Special Editions. They think we can’t tell the difference between hand-drawn/painted animation cells, and vectored computer lines, coloring, and motion. Trust me, we can tell.