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I finally tracked down the real reason my 'Hey Arnold!' DVDs looked so bad
For years I thought my bootleg set from a flea market in 2002 was just a bad copy, but it turns out the official early DVD releases were all cropped to fit modern TVs, cutting off the top and bottom of the original 4:3 animation. I found a forum post from a former Nick editor who confirmed they did this for the first home video run. Has anyone else compared the old cropped DVDs to the newer full-screen releases and noticed the missing details?
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hugopark19d ago
Man, that's brutal. I had the cropped DVD set too and always wondered why the picture felt cramped. You lose so many of the background gags and character reactions at the edges. The newer version is like watching a whole different show.
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noahclark18d ago
Ugh, that cropping stuff drives me crazy... it happened to so many shows from that time. @hugopark is right about it feeling cramped, but I'm pretty sure the newer ones are the original 4:3, not full-screen... full-screen usually means the stretched widescreen for newer TVs. The good versions are just the proper old TV shape again. You really do see so much more of the city backgrounds.
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