Cited on HN 6 times, 2019–2024, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Used as the main example of bad HD restorations and aspect-ratio recropping of older TV shows.
A critique of the HD remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, walking through cropping, color and effects problems that damaged the original look. It also advises which versions to buy.
“A great breakdown of the problems is on YouTube here” (HN, 2024)
Also the Buffy remaster, where interestingly they uncropped the footage, showing some of the filming crew, microphones, etc. [this video] (edit: already posted in this thread, oops: [link] )
One thing I really hope they don't do is altering the aspect ratio of the restored music videos. By altering the aspect ratio of the video, you are also messing with the cinematography of the video and putting your own "spin" on it. To make things even worse, sometimes companies will even crop 4:3 footage to be 16:9, resulting in less things being visible than in the original. Thankfully judging by the videos linked in the blog (at least the ones I've looked at), they've left the restored videos in 4:3. For a good idea of how bad things can get when a company doing restoration messes with aspect ratios, this video highlights the bad restoration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: [this video]
There are way more issues with Buffy on top of that too, and my Disney ire will forever be stoked until they rectify the situation (as the current owners of 20th Century Television.) [link] [this video]
Agree. All those remastering are often done with more importance given to the economic side of things, instead of respecting the art. Some are destroying the original work. The first thing that pop into my mind is how they destroyed Buffy with the HD makeover: [this video] As a reddit commenter said about the cropping job: "All they had to do was nothing and they still fucked it up." It's a disgrace.
The automated HD 'remaster' of Buffy is the prime example of how badly this can go wrong. A great breakdown of the problems is on YouTube here: [this video]
Not every HD redo is better. [this video] And honestly a ton of why dvds look so terrible is people forgot about deinterlacing. Toggle it on and things look a lot better.
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