Last Updated on August 5, 2021

When The Simpsons debuted on the Disney+ streaming service last year, nearly 20 seasons worth of episodes were only available in a cropped 16:9 aspect-ratio, which destroyed many of the series' brilliant visual gags. At the time, Disney+ said, "We presented The Simpsons in 16:9 aspect ratio at launch in order to guarantee visual quality and consistency across all 30 seasons. Over time, Disney+ will roll out new features and additional viewing options. As part of this, in early 2020, Disney+ will make the first 19 seasons (and some episodes from Season 20) of The Simpsons available in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, giving subscribers a choice of how they prefer to view the popular series." Just yesterday, Disney+ finally gave users the option to switch between the original 4:3 episodes and the 16:9 episodes, but what took them so long to fix this Simpsons aspect-ratio problem?

Breaking Down the Simpsons Aspect Ratio Issue

From an outsider's perspective, it would only be too easy for Disney to simply replace the existing episodes of The Simpsons with the correct versions, but according to Variety, the Disney+ team had to "reconfigure its content-delivery engine and build a brand-new feature to accommodate a concept it hadn’t previously anticipated: Giving viewers access to the same content but with different underlying video attributes." According to Joe Rice, VP of media product at Disney Streaming Services, they had to make sure they could deliver without breaking any of the existing Disney+ features. "We needed to challenge prior assumptions and rethink how content for streaming is packaged and delivered," Rice said, but added that the new model "opens up a number of exciting opportunities for novel ways of presenting content in the future." From what Rice says, it seems that this would enable Disney+ to include alternate versions of movies and TV shows in the future, which is rather exciting.

The Simpsons aired in a 4:3 aspect-ratio from its debut in 1989 all the way to 2010, when it switched to a 16:9 aspect-ratio mid-way through its 20th season. The long-running is still trucking along as it recently concluded its thirty-first season, with a thirty-second season in the works. They'll never stop The Simpsons.