When Disney released the first trailer for their brand-new Disney+ streaming service, it was surreal to see so many 20th Century Fox properties in it. The Simpsons was the one TV show that caught most people's attention, since it was surreal to see these beloved characters being now part of Disney.
Disney+ launched in November of last year, and every single one of the episodes from The Simpsons — well, except for the Michael Jackson episode — but there was one thing that had subscribers disappointed, since some of these episodes were not available in their original format.
Later seasons of The Simpsons are being produced to fit widescreen televisions, but earlier season aired in 4:3 standard definition that perfectly fit the sceens of CRT televisions of the time.
Long Story short, fans of the show were disappointed because earlier seasons were streteched to fit widescreen televisions. Fortunately, Disney+ has recently added a new feature that allows viewers to watch those early seasons of The Simpsons in their original format.
Joe Rice, VP of Media Product for Disney Streaming Services, recently revealed some details about the process that made possible to give viewers the option to switch between The Simpsons' original aspect ratio and the new one.
"The best user experience would be achieved by treating 4:3 and 16:9 versions equally, supporting all Disney+ product features and content interaction mechanisms, while adding a new app feature — choice of aspect ratio," explains Rice in a lengthy post about this new feature added to Disney+.
It was of utmost importance to keep options like "Continue Watching", "Autoplay", and Watchlists behaved in a satisfactory manner even when the aspect ratio had been changed; this is particularly important, since the first 20 seasons of The Simpsons are in 4:3, but every other seasons since has been aired in 16:9.
In order to achieve this, the Disney Streaming Service team had to come up with a new concept called "facet", which is a flexible combination of audio, video, and subtitle components that allowed for existing assets to be re-used in a way that the service can "support a user preference for aspect ratio preference while maintaining existing content interaction features."
Rice also mentions that these new facets will alow them to efficiently support "new types of content presentations on Disney+," which also gives them the chance to present content in novel ways in the future.
Joe Rice's post is actually quite lengthy but a very interesting read, so be sure to check it out by clicking right here.