Nowadays, most old animation fans complain. From Disney's treatment of their old animations. It is said that old animations are not popular and profitable today. This is partly true.
Disney's own and rival streaming services have added only 8 older children's and teen titles owned by Disney so far.
Pepper Ann (DisneyTVA)
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force GO! (Jetix-DisneyTVA)
Bear in the Big Blue House - (Disney-Henson)
The Tick (Fox Kids-Fox Family) - First appeared on Prime Video and laterly became available on Hulu/Disney+
PB&J (DisneyTVA)
Sweet Valley High (Saban-Fox Family) - First appeared on Prime Video and has not been removed yet.
Fillmore (DisneyTVA) - UK Only
ATOM. - Alpha Teens on Machines (Saban/SIP-Jetix) - Removed from Tubi when first seen on Prime Video/Tubi, and the second season was removed from Prime, but not completely removed from Prime.
I will not count the shows that are exclusive to Hotstar but will be broadcast in HD quality due to production parlance. (Dave the Barbarian, Motorcity and Aaron Stone)
So, I want to share some information, of course I don't know how much it has to do with this, but I think the problem is that the old animations look really bad and the restoration process is extremely costly, rather than financial return. They probably see that the old animations are not viewed in the recordings because they have not restored any of them to date. I think this is the first problem they want to solve. Or rather, that's what I thought when I read this.
This is Disney's patent application for an AI editing software. Particularly noteworthy is the following reason given by Disney during the application.
Did Disney Patent AI Tech To Remaster Content For Disney+?
US Patent Application for DEEP LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR VIDEO REMASTERING Patent Application (Application #20230153952 issued May 18, 2023) - Justia Patents Search
"Streaming services require expansive catalogs to be competitive. Old legacy films can enrich and supplement the content of such catalogs. However, the video content of legacy films is typically degraded – that is, video content, captured by low-resolution cameras, based on old sensor technologies, may be blurry, noisy, and scratched.To meet current expectations of quality and current streaming and display technologies, remastering (restoration) of these legacy films is required.
Current restoration techniques, based on deep learning technologies, provide tools that separately tackle video denoising or video upscaling. Such specialized tools can be applied sequentially to denoise and, then, to upscale a video into higher resolution, for example. However, applying independently optimized restoration tools, in a cascading manner, may lead to sub-optimal performance in terms of restoration quality and computational complexity. Thus, techniques that restore video content by jointly addressing different types of degradations are needed."
So, from this point of view, it is clear that Disney wanted to get benefit from legacy shows, but could not do this due to technical reasons. Everyone knows Disney's attitude towards its legacy content. However, they said that legacy content is also necessary for the streaming catalog. This statement is contrary to Disney's current stance.
Until today... It was said that Disney did not have enough financial resources to put legacy content on Disney +. These were things like Music licensing and residual payments. But what if these are not the real problem?
However, no one thought this way?
1-) Disney has the financial means to provide this.
2-) Residual payments and music licenses for each show are subject to different agreements.
“So, for legacy content with title A, these costs are eligible, but for legacy content with title B, these costs are not eligible.
In this case, the fact that title B is not in the stream should not prevent A from being in the stream.
However, Disney did not add both title A and title B to the catalogue. Do you think there could be another reason for this?
We read Disney's statement in the patent application.
Nowhere in this statement is there any mention of complex music licensing or residual payments. This shows that what everyone claims is not the real problem. Or that Disney doesn't think the same way as everyone else….
My theory is this:
Disney does not want to add more SD content to the platform because SD content does not attract enough attention or they want to maintain a certain quality standard. Scanning Master Tapes from scratch is an expensive and laborious task. Most launch titles have also been added in SD. In this case, it seems more like a technical problem rather than a financial one. Maybe active use of this technology could be a solution, and after that day, more old animations may come.
Personally, I prefer such platforms to watch legacy content because I find old shows more characterful. (This includes old cartoons.) I'm not suggesting you hold your breath though, but you can cross your fingers. I hope they will firstly remaster such as 90s Marvel shows and series like Gargoyles which were produced with an art style that doesn't exist today. If this will be happen so we probably be able to watch these shows the way their artists want. There are many details in the scenes of such shows. Most of these details are wasted unnoticed. Because the image quality is terrible and the colors are pale. Therefore, they deserve better image quality. We haven't seen Disney remastering their SD content so far, but with an X-Men sequel on the horizon, they should come close to today's standards.
If old animations remastere with this technology become more profitable, we can watch edgy works in higher quality. Frankly, the remaster versions of some of the content whose images I have included below are my dreams.
So what do you think about this issue? Could remastering old animations make them popular with a younger audience? Do you think old animations should be remastered to HD or UHD quality? Or should people be forced to love them on VHS? If something like this happens, which animations would you like to watch the most?
P.S.: Every Disney show produced after Kim Possible has been produced in 16:9 HD or higher. If SD and 4:3 were added to Disney+, it may be because Disney couldn't access the masters or didn't want to go through the hassle of rescanning.
P.S. 2: Remaster doesn't just mean 16:9. If a content was produced in 4:3, it must remain 4:3. Cropping the image from the bottom and top is a massacre.
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