HBO Max’s Mad Men vomit scene proves that ‘Remastered’ doesn’t mean ‘better’

But the problem goes beyond simply changing the aspect ratio. Re-mastering of shows originally filmed using more primitive technology sometimes goes horribly awry, e.g I love Lucy The clip that went viral Last year, a pair of actors with blurred backgrounds were shown so much focus that they now resemble Picasso’s surrealist drawings.

I visited a group of Freezer In the late 1990s, the television industry was preparing to shift from standard to high definition. While I was admiring the decor of Dr. Crane’s living room, one famous sitcom producer lamented that it would all look even worse in HD than in the more visually forgiving SD format, and expressed concern that they would have to go to the expense of rebuilding all their permanent sets. Freezer, Lucyand many other products were created without thinking about what they might one day look like in a format that didn’t exist at the time.

Although countless classic films have been successfully remastered to HD or 4K, they are also standalone projects, where real care and attention can be given to every frame. Seinfeld and I love Lucy They both made 180 episodes. The Simpsons He made 429 episodes in Standard. Performing quality control with this amount of product is very difficult, which is why a lot of these mistakes are made. (in case The SimpsonsDisney+ finally offered an option to watch the first 20 seasons in their original aspect ratio.) Every now and then you get a situation like The wirewhose creator David Simon insisted on participating in the process of changing the image quality and aspect ratio of the gritty urban drama, but that’s rare.

This is specific mad men The error is odd, given that the display is always presented in high-resolution widescreen. But the first four seasons were shot on film, so perhaps during the remastering process, someone inadvertently used an alternate take of the vomit scene where the crew members weren’t digitally scanned. A source close to the process said Lionsgate gave HBO Max “incorrect files” and that the proper versions would be uploaded as quickly as possible.