They're solidly pre-digital. Somewhere, the individual frames were drawn/painted on cel, were they not? In principle, remastering should still be possible.
In fact there's an episode of the Simpson's where Bart buys an Itchy & Scratchy animation cel and is disappointed when it's just a segment of Itchy's arm (or something like that).
Guilty as charged! This brings back a memory from around 1980.
I ordered an animation cel from Original Animation Art (Starshine Group).
You had to mail them a check and a description of what you were looking for, and hope for the best.
The first one they sent me was a little bit better than Scratchy's arm, but not by much. I returned it and asked for something with the entire character in it.
They sent Daffy Duck nearly off the edge of the frame with a nasty scowl. Not fun to look at.
For the third try, I asked if I could please have something with the character smiling and in the center of the frame. And they sent a wonderful cel of Porky Pig from A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur's Court!
It looks very much like this one, but only Porky and not the background:
I shouldn't have said never had a film negative. They likely scanned hand-drawn cells to film, then transferred that to tape. At the time they likely saw the NTSC tape as the master.
It would take a ton of work, especially for a show as long-running as The Simpsons. The original materials probably aren't even available anymore.
I believe the reason they were able to remaster lots of old Japanese anime OVAs in HD is because the animation was recorded to film first. I wouldn't be surprised if the Simpsons just used videotape instead.
There are at least 60 recent DOGE stories on HN with comments on. I guess people get a bit DOGEd out.
It's probably part of the Trump/Musk strategy. 'Flood the zone' with so many things people can't follow it.
Time to move somewhere else because the CEO is so confident they can't be hacked he publically offers money to anyone who can do it? You want to be with one that thinks it is insecure?
As for Cloudflare I'd recommend NOT hosting your DNS with your domain name provider, just in case one of them does something stupid (but often if your domain goes sideways there's not much you can do anyway ...)
For me, fiction books are the worst of all of them. When I get into a series of fiction books, I tend to get so obsessed that I stay up all night reading, often multiple nights in a week.
That rarely happens to me with TV or video games. I haven't read a fiction book in about 10 years because I swore them off entirely. I typically watch about an hour of TV as I wind down for the night, and I often play hours of video games if I can (often child care obligations interfere). But at least I can do those things without losing sleep.
Yes. Somewhat famously, Socrates said that writing would breed forgetfulness. And that children could not understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
The radio, likewise, was considered too compelling by some.
Sure, I could afford to watch less tv. I do have many hobbies writing, photography, etc. That I don’t as much as I’d like because of TV. However, I’m one person and TV is a great way for me to hang out with my SO. My beef w/ this is blog post is the fetishization of productivity. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. We’re getting a covid vaccine in under a year. I’m pretty sure Netflix isn’t stopping us from continuing to develop. It’s okay for people to take their shoes off.
I’ll concede that the alcoholism comparison is fair in the sense that it is addicting. However, you don’t see too many people losing their job or destroying their relationships because of Netflix.
I guess what I’m saying is that the answer is balance.
