South Park goes HD

L

LOVEato

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I suspected that South Park would be going HD soon due to some evident cropping in the most recent batch of episodes, and it turns out this is true. The bigger news is that the old episodes are going to be re-rendered in 16:9 HD as well.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/news/3581
The Comedy Central press release reveals that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will also be going HD in the near future. I'm assuming the very first episode of South Park will remain largely untouched.
 
The first time I read it, I thought it said that they weren't going to do all the episodes, but re-reading it now, their statement seems more ambiguous to me. They just say they're re-rendering previous seasons, but don't specify if it's all of them or just some.

In any event, if it's on film, then it's just a matter of ensuring the negatives are in good enough shape and then paying for the digital transfer to high-def. Whether South Park Studios/Viacom is going to pay for that is debatable, but I guess we'll see. If all that's left is video copies, then I don't think they're going to bother.
 
That's because Comedy Central HD hasn't been launched yet, but I'll probably get it because I have satellite (DirecTV, to be precise).

A pity that I only watch 3 shows on Comedy Central.
 
Can't Wait. Is this going to be like Cartoon Network HD, where it's obvious the shows are just cropped, then formatted? (I have Dish, so we get both broadcasts). So let's see...

Simpsons HD...check
South Park HD...check

What's the Hold up Family Guy/ American Dad?
 
The news article linked to in the news section says that the older South Park episodes are being "rerendered" for HD?

What does that even mean? I would guess this would entail going back to the original masters for each episode (whatever and wherever they are) and doing new HD-friendly transfers.

That's how HD transfers of older TV Shows and films are done, but South Park is new enough that I think there's not much that can be done to preserve better quality in HD.
 
Well, since South Park is animated by computer, it's likely more a matter of actually rendering the entire episode all over again in HD resolution than doing a new transfer from a film source the way you would for a live-action or traditionally animated show. Since the majority of SP is just faux-cardboard characters moving against a faux-cardboard backdrop, this would mostly just mean fewer jaggies when viewed on an HD set. Other than a few effects-heavy episodes, there isn't much in the show that would benefit too dramatically from a greater level of detail.

What I wonder about is the subject of aspect ratios. The term "HD" generally implies a widescreen AR, but I notice that they never actually mention aspect ratios at all in any of the official press releases. Are they just going to be adding extra background to the left and right of the picture, or what?
 
Yeah, but preserving the show in a higher resolution is always a good thing. DVD resolution is so low that you really do lose a lot of the image when you try to look at it up close. That's the one problem with digital: once you convert something to digital pixels, there's no way to get back the original image. A circle will never be a circle again. But at least with HD, you'll never tell, if you're viewing it at any reasonable distance. DVDs can look pretty crappy on a computer monitor.


If they're going through the trouble of re-rendering computer-generated imagery, it would be kind of a waste not to widen the viewing area a bit, since the scenery is all there. It depends on how tightly they framed it originally. If there are little bits just outside the original screen area that are not meant to be seen (like maybe if they stuck random production assets there), there could be a problem. Hopefully that's not the case, and 99% of the time the extra background area is more or less render-ready.
 
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