The Simpsons Will Finally Stream on Disney+ in Its Correct Aspect Ratio on May 28
Photo via Disney
Simpsons fans—and who among us isn’t a fan of the classic era?—will soon have reason to rejoice, as Disney+ is checking a major item off our wish list: Classic episodes of The Simpsons streaming in their correct aspect ratio.
If you’ve watched The Simpsons since Disney+ first debuted as a major streamer, you may have occasionally detected that something seemed amiss. This is because the show’s older episodes have been visually cropped to cram them into a standardized, modern 16:9 aspect ratio. This is problematic because the first 19 seasons of the series—which contains the entire golden era and then some—originally aired in a 4:3 aspect ratio, as was more common at the time. When you crop that ratio to 16:9, it results in a “zoomed in” appearance that has a tendency to destroy some of the show’s classic visual gags, as the tweet below illustrates.
All the classic Simpsons episodes on Disney+ are in cropped widescreen format — this means you miss out on tons of great visual jokes, like how Duff, Duff Lite and Duff Dry all come from the same tube. pic.twitter.com/cTy9adulFl