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March 28, 2024, 05:34:38 PM

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Seinfeld is on Netflix UK

Started by Mobbd, October 01, 2021, 01:33:53 PM

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JamesTC

Does Netflix come with a commemorative mini puffy shirt? NO

shiftwork2


Twit 2

When I was living in halls in my 1st year of uni, I had a friend who was fairly knowledgable about TV shows and the canon and had a lot of stuff on his computer, including every episode of Seinfeld in those awful low quality versions that floated around the net. I knew Seinfeld by reputation but hadn't seen it. He insisted that every evening we would sit in his room, eat our dinner (pesto pasta on toast for me) and watch Seinfeld until I'd watched every episode. To this day, it remains one of the best things I've ever done in terms of assimilating culture.

I then got my own shit copies of the eps and watched then on repeat, then wore out the DVDs doing the same and getting everyone I knew into it. So I've probably seen all 180 episodes 10 times each.

Not sure what the point of this story is: I have watched lots of Seinfeld because it's brilliant, and so should everyone?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


shiftwork2

Aye, that's double denim but for carbohydrates.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


poodlefaker

Quote from: JamesTC on October 01, 2021, 07:09:47 PM
Does Netflix come with a commemorative mini puffy shirt? NO
Always thought the puffy shirt would've been funnier if it hadn't been quite so puffy. If the puffiness was questionable, or a matter of opinion.

Magnum Valentino

Quote from: JamesTC on October 01, 2021, 07:09:47 PM
Does Netflix come with a commemorative mini puffy shirt? NO

Haha my wife won't let me throw this away. It's on the bottom shelf in a unit in the kitchen. She's watched Seinfeld once ever but is smitten by that weird artifact from the DVD era.

Bennett Brauer

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on October 01, 2021, 08:10:04 PM
Haha my wife won't let me throw this away. It's on the bottom shelf in a unit in the kitchen. She's watched Seinfeld once ever but is smitten by that weird artifact from the DVD era.

I got rid of mine after a couple of years because looking at it was getting on my nerves. I should have hidden it.

I've kept the script notebook though.

olliebean

Quote from: JamesTC on October 01, 2021, 07:09:47 PM
Does Netflix come with a commemorative mini puffy shirt? NO

That damn mini puffy shirt doesn't match the one in the episode at all. Not good enough!

Jerzy Bondov

I've got Monopoly: Seinfeld Edition. honestly what the fucks wrong with me i don't know

McDead

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on October 01, 2021, 09:28:02 PM
I've got Monopoly: Seinfeld Edition. honestly what the fucks wrong with me i don't know

I've got trivial pursuit: Seinfeld Edition. Who invaded Spain in the 8th Century? The answer might surprise you

Icehaven


Malcy

Put on 6 Music a minute ago and they were playing the Seinfeld theme. Got me right in the mood to watch some.

Mobbd

Quote from: JamesTC on October 01, 2021, 05:10:14 PM
Cropped to widescreen. Also will have moments in which we see more on the left and right of the picture. The show has been rebuilt in HD so they have will have reframed every shot.

I'll stick with the DVDs myself. A shame as I'd like to watch in HD but between the cropping and the lack of Notes About Nothing text track, it just isn't a better experience.

I'm very much a streaming media guy and I no longer own DVDs aside from a handful of comedy rarities, but it must be said that Netflix' cropping to widescreen is completely fucking artless.

Regularly, it looks like one of our main cast is standing down a hole (see scenes in Jerry's apartment when two characters are standing by the door or fridge). The rest of the time, there's a general sense that we're zoomed in too close and that the camera really needs to back the fuck up.

Would it have been so wrong to have "black bars" to the left and right, just as we used to have them on top and bottom when watching cinematic aspect ratios on our old TV sets? I am trying to get used to it but I seriously might give up.

Magnum Valentino

Quote from: Mobbd on October 02, 2021, 04:04:23 PM
I'm very much a streaming media guy and I no longer own DVDs aside from a handful of comedy rarities, but it must be said that Netflix' cropping to widescreen is completely fucking artless.

Regularly, it looks like one of our main cast is standing down a hole (see scenes in Jerry's apartment when two characters are standing by the door or fridge). The rest of the time, there's a general sense that we're zoomed in too close and that the camera really needs to back the fuck up.

Would it have been so wrong to have "black bars" to the left and right, just as we used to have them on top and bottom when watching cinematic aspect ratios on our old TV sets? I am trying to get used to it but I seriously might give up.

Your point stands but it wasn't done by Netflix, it's existed in this format for years (might have been done originally for/by Hulu, if I'm not mistaken).

But artless is the word for it, yeah.

olliebean

The reframing was originally done when remastering to HD for syndicated reruns on TBS in 2008.

Netflix is showing them in 4k for the first time, but they seem to have just upscaled the existing HD versions rather than remastered from the original film.

JamesTC


samadriel


up_the_hampipe

Quote from: sutin on October 01, 2021, 04:56:07 PM
By being the funniest American sitcom of all time.

Anything involving Jerry Seinfeld surely cannot be the funniest anything, especially with chunks of his painful stand-up wedged in there.

I got through 2 seasons last time before I gave up, but I heard it really improves from season 3 so I'm now going from there.

Blue Jam


Milo

I watched the first two episodes and they're incredibly dated. I loved the show back in the day, I think I may need to skip ahead a bit.

Such a massive waste of bandwidth being 4k HDR for the early ones at least, half the shots look like VHS standard. I imagine it improves.

Regarding the wide screen conversion, was it 4:3 for the entire run or did it switch at some point? Early episodes of Always Sunny are still 4:3 with bars and it swaps to wide a few seasons in. Not sure if Seinfeld was too early for when widescreen became the norm. Late nineties is when tellies went wide in my memory.

Magnum Valentino

Quote from: Milo on October 03, 2021, 08:58:11 AM
I watched the first two episodes and they're incredibly dated. I loved the show back in the day, I think I may need to skip ahead a bit.

Such a massive waste of bandwidth being 4k HDR for the early ones at least, half the shots look like VHS standard. I imagine it improves.

Regarding the wide screen conversion, was it 4:3 for the entire run or did it switch at some point? Early episodes of Always Sunny are still 4:3 with bars and it swaps to wide a few seasons in. Not sure if Seinfeld was too early for when widescreen became the norm. Late nineties is when tellies went wide in my memory.

Correct, there weren't any widescreen episodes in the original run and the DVDs are 4:3 through the last season.

Milo

Cheers.

Just realised what felt dated about the first couple of episodes - they're jarringly heteronormative in a way that really stands out now. Different times.

JamesTC

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

idunnosomename

Seinfeld is not one of those shows you should start from the beginning with, unless you really want to be patient and see how it slowly evolved to be great

Keebleman

I got into Seinfeld through the back way - I saw Curb Your Enthusiasm first.  It was actually that hideous slap-bass theme tune that put me off giving the show a try, it sounded so smug and glib (now I'm a fan of the show the music has positive connotations, but I've never learned to love it).  Rented DVDs of the first seasons through LoveFilm, and so I saw the episodes in broadcast order and wasn't jarred by the non-appearance of Elaine in episode one, or an unfamiliar actor playing Jerry's dad in ep 2 (actually, I think he's better than the guy who replaced him).

Watched the first couple of episodes last night and thought they held up well.  The show has a clear idea of what it wants to be, even if it's not yet sure on how to achieve it.  It was definitely a good idea to drop Clare the waitress.  The actress is fine but even in the pilot the character scarcely has anything to do.

The reformatting of the image is annoying - wasted a good couple of minutes trying to 'fix' it - but it's not as if it's Lawrence of Arabia or something.

idunnosomename

Good old fun fact: the Seinfeld theme is played on a keyboard accompanied by the composer's own vocal samples, and he played a new accompaniment for each episode.

https://youtu.be/oVldNNHQWVw

Icehaven

Quote from: idunnosomename on October 03, 2021, 11:38:18 AM
Seinfeld is not one of those shows you should start from the beginning with, unless you really want to be patient and see how it slowly evolved to be great

I only watched it through for the first time last year and I'd disagree with that only because I think then you'd miss a few of the jokes which rely on knowledge of the characters and their relationships and recerences to past events etc. I mean maybe you could skip the pilot and a few/all of S1 and not miss much but even then anyone who watches the rest and likes it enough is probably going to end up watching them eventually out of curiousity.

beanheadmcginty

Now that flatscreen tellies are ubiquitous and affordable, do you think there's a market for selling 4:3 versions just for the purpose of watching old shows on? Pop a scart socket in the back