The Simpsons no longer coming to DVD

[StalwartUK]

I have the DVDs up to season 10. After around that point the series just turned to crap and I had little interest in continuing. Also starting with season 11 they changed the packaging to some really cheap cardboard thing (my season 11 set looked like someone had sat on it when my copy came in the post).

Of course said "Simpsons World" only works in the US. So much for the future...

 

[RandyS]

Does your family also stretch the SD image because they hate the black bars? Ugh, so painful on the eyes.

Okay, I have to admit, I don't understand this "black bar" thing. I have a Vizio 32in flatscreen and play all my DVD's on either a Toshiba recorder, or a Panasonic player, and the ONLY difference is in movies, or the TV shows ENTERPRISE and SMALLVILLE. On the Panasonic, those two shows have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, as they did years ago before I got my flatscreen. On the Toshiba however, both shows cover the entire screen. Now, DVD's of older shows, such as TOS and TNG cover the entire screen no matter which machine I watch them on. No stretching on either.

My best friend as all these same shows on Blue Ray, and he always complains about the black bars on the sides of his picture. He said he tried stretching the picture, but couldn't watch that after two minutes.

Why is this? Is it a brand name thing? The fact that I have DVD and he has Blue Ray? The way we have our machine connected to our TV's? I've tried to get him to explain it to me, and his attempt left me thinking he doesn't get it either.

Any of you guys know?

I would gues it's a setting on your TV. A Vizio 32" LCD has to be 16:9(or you could say a rectangle) TOS and most TV shows are 4:3(more or less a square) If you're watching them and there are NOT black bars on the sides there are only 3 options really.
1) You're watching the square image stretched to a rectangle and it doesn't bother you(Shame on you lol).
2) You're watching it zoomed in. Essentially cutting of the top and bottom of the square image to make a rectangle
3) Hybrid-zoom-strectch. Cuts of a tiny bit of the top and bottom then stretches the remaining image to a rectangle(Not as jarring as a full stretch usually)


On topic, boooooo Fox. I wasn't going to buy them anyway but I'm definitely not going to pay to digitally "own" something.

No, I never have to zoom in. I've tried, just to see what it looked like. so I know that's not it. The 4:3 shows look normal on my screen, no bars either way.Oh, and yes, my TV is a 16:9.

And also on topic, as somebody who does collect the DVD's and has only seen the 18 seasons available, I have no problem with the quality of the show past season 10. And as I said before, if FOX doesn't want my money anymore, screw them. But I do hope the show ends (what is it now? season 26? 27?) and they release a complete series set. There's a used video store nearby that I can sell my old sets to. I won't get much for them, but it's something.

 

[Timby]

My eyes are just fine. I've just never seen HD as an improvement over SD.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMnppqxKJc[/yt]

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

My eyes are just fine. I've just never seen HD as an improvement over SD.

Note: Remember not to just click play and zoom. but change the resolution settings for the video as well, or else you might wonder why HD looks like 360p.

Personally, if I don't own it on disc, I don't own it. It all remains the property of the studio if it's online. They can pull the plug whenever, and they often do.

 

[kirk55555]

My eyes are just fine. I've just never seen HD as an improvement over SD.

I own a bunch of TV show DVDs, and they are all pretty much higher quality than the "SD" images in that video, so I'm a bit suspicious of it. Not that there is a big difference in that video, but I can definitely confirm that the episodes of TNG I have on DVD look better than the "SD" clips in that video, not that those clips look bad. So, yeah, that video either messed with the SD footage or had a really weird source for the SD stuff. That doesn't seem likely based on the site its from, but the SD footage definitely isn't as good as the SD DVD footage on the DVDs I have.

Either way, it wasn't a huge improvement. The colors got a bit sharper, I guess. I definitely wouldn't invest hundreds of dollars in a HDTV and Bluray stuff to get that small level of improvement.

 

[Karzak]

I've spent the better part of the last two years selling off all the DVDs I've collected. I maybe have 15 discs, if that, left.

Shelf space, obviously has been a consideration, but seriously... there's just so much more to life these days than sitting in front of my TV.

I'm not really surprised that FOX has made this particular move; I am somewhat amused at how butthurt Bill Hunt sounds in that report though. You'd think someone canceled water.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Hollywood always wants to blame piracy for their lack of sales of certain titles. I won't speak in this post about the ethical probloems of stealing but I will say that Hollywood always sees the end of their financial world.

VCR's were going to kill them, allowing people to record things. Instead it opened a huge market for VHS tapes and recordable VHS tapes that last over two decades, only being stopped by DVD's. And even then there was a world wide black market of illegal copies.

Online downloading was going to kill them, yet VHS sales increased when unlawful downloading was taking hold with places like Napster. And we still got DVD's and now Blu-ray's and various online pay/stream servicables like Netflix and Hulu.


I'm surprised they are't complaning now that Spotify is like TV and recording programs like Audacity are like VCR's. Audacity will kill sales, OMG! Youtube will destroy them, oh nos!

The big difference there is that online piracy allows basically anyone with a computer to obtain a store-perfect version of the product for free (less whatever the internet costs, of course).

Anybody who doesn't think that piracy and the switch away from physical media hasn't been a net loss to the industry hasn't looked at the implosion of the music industry ever since it became possible to download songs for free (or listen to them on YouTube).

 

[Trekker4747]

My eyes are just fine. I've just never seen HD as an improvement over SD.

I own a bunch of TV show DVDs, and they are all pretty much higher quality than the "SD" images in that video, so I'm a bit suspicious of it. Not that there is a big difference in that video, but I can definitely confirm that the episodes of TNG I have on DVD look better than the "SD" clips in that video, not that those clips look bad. So, yeah, that video either messed with the SD footage or had a really weird source for the SD stuff. That doesn't seem likely based on the site its from, but the SD footage definitely isn't as good as the SD DVD footage on the DVDs I have.

Either way, it wasn't a huge improvement. The colors got a bit sharper, I guess. I definitely wouldn't invest hundreds of dollars in a HDTV and Bluray stuff to get that small level of improvement.

The DVDs were sourced from the only thing available, the edited together episodes from the 1980s/1990s on VHS. That's videotape. The DVDs look no better, at least not vastly better, than VHS. That's the only SD source available, the only thing the YT may have against it is any compression. But there's a vast difference than between the DVDs/VHS versions of the show and the BD version. To think or say otherwise is being willfully obtuse and naive. Sharper colors is a large part of it but it's also not as blurry over the DVDs and and is overall more vibrant.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

^ Dumb question but they didn't strike new DVDs off the source of the HD remasters? It wouldn't be as high res but I don't see why DVDs couldn't take advantage of the upgraded source.

 

[BillJ]

Either way, it wasn't a huge improvement. The colors got a bit sharper, I guess. I definitely wouldn't invest hundreds of dollars in a HDTV and Bluray stuff to get that small level of improvement.

You do realize, that from a mathematical perspective, the leap from DVD to Blu-ray is far greater than the leap from VHS to DVD? That doesn't account for the better color and sound provided by Blu-ray.

It isn't a small level of improvement by any stretch of the imagination. Even the jump to 720p is huge.

 

[BillJ]

^ Dumb question but they didn't strike new DVDs off the source of the HD remasters? It wouldn't be as high res but I don't see why DVDs couldn't take advantage of the upgraded source.

Nope. They used the same masters as the prior DVD's. It's just new packaging.

 

[Timby]

^ Dumb question but they didn't strike new DVDs off the source of the HD remasters? It wouldn't be as high res but I don't see why DVDs couldn't take advantage of the upgraded source.

I recall reading that it was considered but ultimately rejected due to potential cannibalization of the Blu-ray Disc sales (which would have been a less than ideal situation, given the cost of the Blu-ray remastering project).

 

[kirk55555]

The DVDs were sourced from the only thing available, the edited together episodes from the 1980s/1990s on VHS. That's videotape. The DVDs look no better, at least not vastly better, than VHS. That's the only SD source available, the only thing the YT may have against it is any compression. But there's a vast difference than between the DVDs/VHS versions of the show and the BD version. To think or say otherwise is being willfully obtuse and naive. Sharper colors is a large part of it but it's also not as blurry over the DVDs and and is overall more vibrant.

I still like VHS quality anyway (although I obviously far prefer DVDs and mostly just have DVDs nowadays). I'm about as far away from the people that obsess over resolutions as you can get. All I know is that I can throw my Star Trek DVDs on and they look clear and vibrant enough for me. I'm not saying there isn't a difference, just that it isn't something I feel is significant, or worth the price over DVDs and SDTV.

You do realize, that from a mathematical perspective, the leap from DVD to Blu-ray is far greater than the leap from VHS to DVD? That doesn't account for the better color and sound provided by Blu-ray.

It isn't a small level of improvement by any stretch of the imagination. Even the jump to 720p is huge.

From mathematical perspective I'm sure its a huge difference. From a personal viewing perspective, it doesn't do much for me. The improvement isn't something I find worth hundreds of dollars of new equipment. In 10 years when you can find HDTVs for less, I'll probably have it. But for me its not anything I'd pay extra for.

 

[Guy Gardener]

An inconsistency in packaging or format is reason to stop.

We don't want better, we want "the same" because it's not about how well it plays, it's about how the pretty bugger looks on your book shelf in your lounge.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

From a user experience perspective the difference between VHS and DVD is much bigger than the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray. Even a good VHS tape had some noticeable static and you couldn't chapter jump, you had to rely on rewind and fast forward to get where you wanted on the tape.

IMO the episode where Simpsons jumped the shark was the New York episode. The show had gradually been less and less consistent starting even from the fourth season, but the start of season 9 really marked the full transition to the 'Homer Falldown' show which it was for at least the next few years.

Frank Grimes was probably the last great Simpsons episode. It could have easily been the series finale.

 

[Gaith]

Beating up on kirk55555 has been fashionable in this thread, but AFAIK, you'd have to have a pretty huge CRT (old-school, non-flat) TV to see a difference between DVD and HD/blu-ray, and even if you did, the increased detail might well not survive the translation. So as long as he skips to CRTs that were considered on the large side as recently as a decade ago, there's really no need for him to upgrade from DVD.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Beating up on kirk55555 has been fashionable in this thread, but AFAIK, you'd have to have a pretty huge CRT (old-school, non-flat) TV to see a difference between DVD and HD/blu-ray, and even if you did, the increased detail might well not survive the translation. So as long as he skips to CRTs that were considered on the large side as recently as a decade ago, there's really no need for him to upgrade from DVD.

Unless it was an HD CRT it still wouldn't matter what size it was as the image isn't going to be higher than 480p. I remember moving my cousin's 200# 35" Sony Wega back in the day up a flight of stairs. I'm not an old man yet but I think even now I wouldn't care to repeat that task.

 

[jayceee]

The primary reason why I would buy the bluray versions of The Simpsons, is due to the really awful crappy packaging of the dvd versions of seasons 13-17.

IIRC, the seasons 11 to 17 dvd sets were packaged in some really godawful "digi book" foldout type of packaging, where the dvd discs were difficult to take out of them. I've had other dvd (or bluray) sets with this type of crappy packaging, where it was easy to scratch the discs while taking them out of the tight "digi book" sleeves.

In contrast the bluray packaging for seasons 13 to 17, were just generic 3-disc bluray cases (or 4-disc).

 

[Kelthaz]

Beating up on kirk55555 has been fashionable in this thread, but AFAIK, you'd have to have a pretty huge CRT (old-school, non-flat) TV to see a difference between DVD and HD/blu-ray, and even if you did, the increased detail might well not survive the translation. So as long as he skips to CRTs that were considered on the large side as recently as a decade ago, there's really no need for him to upgrade from DVD.

The TV size's has nothing to do with its resolution. A 12 inch CRT has the same resolution as a 50 inch CRT. And the same goes for HDTVs. You can buy a 1920x1080 32 inch HDTV or a 1280x720 42 inch HDTV.