When M*A*S*H started streaming on Hulu in June 2018, fans were surprised to discover the series had been remastered in high definition and cropped to 16:9 widescreen. Before long, places like iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon began selling the remastered episodes as digital downloads.
Digital specialty network MeTV began airing the remastered episodes in the United States in April 2019.
For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to watch M*A*S*H in high definition widescreen, here’s a gallery of screenshots taken the opening credits to the Season 1 episode “To Market, to Market”:
M*A*S*H Opening Credits in Widescreen
Personally, I’ve only watched a handful of episodes of M*A*S*H on Hulu. I don’t like the remastered versions much. The quality is astounding but watching the series in 16:9 widescreen is jarring. I prefer the standard definition full frame (4:3) episodes available on DVD, even if the quality isn’t as good.
I got the series on DVD and I think the quality is awesome. Don’t really care for widescreen since it wasn’t filmed that way. Only blurry part is the first part of an episode where i guess the film was “double layered” to put the names of the director and writers and such on it.
So ….. opening credits with part of the top and part of the bottom of the full image missing, right? Hard pass.
I have the same reaction when MeTV does this and creates uncomfortable framing and blurrier enlarged images to Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and, well, pretty much every other program on that channel.
This is the reverse thing of when wider screen movies used to be shown on television, but with the left and right sides of the image being cropped out in order to fill TV screens.
I’ve seen MASH presented in 16×9 on Hulu. The image was most definitely high definition and looks quite good, except for that two-part interview episode (they apparently still can’t find the original elements). I’d say the cropping for widescreen doesn’t present an issue 95% of the time. Whether or not going with 16×9 was a good or bad idea, I’m just glad to see the image looking better than ever.