Digital Destruction

This is what really happens if you stay out past midnight.

"For many years, Cinderella was not the right colors. Her hair [is] dusty blonde, and her dress is silver. And over the years, we've seen her hair look the color of Cheez Whiz. We've seen her dress be bright blue. We've seen all sorts of stuff."

— Eric Goldberg, explaining why Cinderella's 2005 restoration was deemed unsuitable for 4K releases.

Ah, the Remaster—a wonderful thing, really. Take a piece of older media and clean up the picture quality, restore faded colors, get the hisses and pops out of the soundtrack, and offer three different screen sizes and two different surround sound mixes. However, it's a time-consuming process that's expensive and requires careful attention to the master records of the original. If possible you may even coordinate with the original creators to preserve every important detail.

Digital Destruction is when attempting to update the viewing format of a work results in dramatically altered images or sound mixing that results in a loss of detail. Among possible issues include:

Alterations to the Aspect Ratio that cuts off important parts of the frame.
Skewed color timing creating a persistent tint to the overall footage.
Excessive use of restoration tools or widgets that muddles skin tones and black levels.
Attempts to update the work with modern styles and maximize use of modern viewing formats that results in fewer details (such as clothing textures) even though the image format is bigger.
Use of AI upscaling that results in excessive sharpening, smearing and altering appearances, sometimes even creating new frames, in a misguided effort to eliminate all film grain or video artifacts that makes the image look unnatural.^note
Watered down Dolby Digital and DTS audio tracks which are merely copied and pasted from the original soundtracks, whether it's monoural or even stereo.

This often comes about because of the tendency to want to just get the stuff out as quickly as possible, all with a "digitally restored/digitally remastered" label stamped on it. Or worse, they didn't even know what harm they were doing to begin with; often the available tech is deceptively difficult to get good results from. As anyone who actually understands digital image processing will tell you, things like noise reduction and grain removal are actually really hard to do without at least some loss of detail (which can range from subtle to distractingly obvious), to the extent where preserving film grain is almost universally considered the better option among videophiles.^note

This happens with digital remasters of music as well. The most commonly known phenomenon is mastering at the volume levels of modern music, creating excess limiting and distortion that sacrifice the cleanliness, clarity and overall dynamics of the sound, but there are plenty of other destructive practices used as well. These include drastic alterations of the frequency equalization^note that don't suit the source material, excessive noise reduction that sucks much of the detail and life out of the recording (basically the audio equivalent of excess grain removal), and overuse of synthesized harmonics^note which replace the organic feel of the original recording with a cold, mechanical one.

The Trope Namer is this article from John Kricfalusi's blog, in which he feels the restorations of old cartoons are actually ruining them, rather than making them better. The specific issues he complains about result from over-zealous application of certain adjustments, namely color saturation and sharpening.

Compare Remaster. For the video game equivalents of this trope, see Porting Disaster or Remaster Disaster (although examples of digital destruction in otherwise competent ports and remasters certainly exist). For audio equivalents, see Audio Mixing Failure and Loudness War. May also tie into Bad Export for You. In particularly bad instances of this, to preserve the way the footage originally looked you gotta Keep Circulating the Tapes. Also see Visual Compression, George Lucas Altered Version.

Examples:

Western Animation

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Anime

8 Man After had added 5.1 sound effects and "restored" picture when the English dub was released on DVD.
The 25th anniversary of AKIRA overall is pretty good, but the blacks in the movie can be pretty inconsistent in color, also showing electrical distortion in some of them, giving some scenes a compressed look.
When Anpanman was remastered onto DVD, those episodes would have some tweaks with the knockout effect if someone or something gets punched. In the pre-1998 episodes, the show would use two stills of different color knockout stars and flash them for a millisecond and use lightning strobe effects for lightning. However, due to the "Electric Soldier Porygon" incident at the time, the knockout effect was changed to make the still images to be 2-3 seconds each and some scenes involving lightning and electric sparks would be slowed down. The show would make a new technique where the stars would be animated flying all over by the time Creampanda was introduced. However, this was changed for home video releases for 518a to 587b (the last couple episodes of the cel animated era), a few selected episodes from 1998 and 1999 for the Favorites Series and a few double length episodes where they simplified it by just showing the two stills for 3-5 seconds each for unknown reasons.
Almost all physical and digital releases of Belle (2021) have significant compression artifacts and encoding issues, with the most noticeable scene involving one going through the digital world with many effects all at once. The 4K Ultra HD disc is currently the only way to watch this movie without severe encoding artifacts.
The French Blu-Ray release of Children of the Sea has a heavy case of color banding on par with the Re:Zero releases. In an anime film produced in 2019.
Most season 1 videos of Corrector Yui circulating today are unfortunately derived from rebroadcast prints that are cropped to 16:9 from the original 4:3.
Digimon Adventure 02:
- In the first episode (at least on the Netflix prints), if you look closely at the first few seconds of the episode in the top left corner, you can see a TV-Y7 screen bug obviously blurred out. The opening intro is also cut out as well.
- Most of the Adventure episodes have tons of DVD artifacts on the Netflix versions of them. At least two of them (both the second part of two-parter episodes, including the Grand Finale) cut the intro.
- The Discotek HD remaster improved on the visual quality with some careful AI upscaling, sourced from the Japanese masters, and even restored the brief recap of the first series at the beginning of the first episode as well.
Funimation and Toei Animation are notorious in the anime home video domain for being repeat offenders with the Dragon Ball franchise:
- North America
  - The first uncut Dragon Ball Z DVDs were sourced from videotape transfers with film damage and color bleeding. They were also very poorly encoded by modern standards and were cancelled before the series could be completed.
  - This was followed by the infamous "orange brick" season sets, which were "restored" with cropping, over-saturated colors, and excessive Digital Video Noise Reduction (DVNR) which removed line art while failing to deal with numerous appearances of dust and scratches. Funimation's marketing of these sets presented misleading side-by-side comparisons^note and gave the impression that viewers were seeing extra footage with the new framing^note. Fans were outraged because not only were Japanese DVDs remastered frame by frame from the original film negatives,^note but this was the first complete release by Funimation. FUNi had actually cancelled the single-disc releases to make way for the remastered sets, and for years anyone who wanted the uncut version was forced to buy the cropped remaster.
  - Dragon Ball Z Abridged uses the Orange Brick sets for the first season, which combined with the consumer-level 2008 video production and compression causes the whole season to look very ugly. Season 2 onward uses the Japanese remaster and the show looks much better as a result.
  - "Remastered" Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT sets followed, which did not use new film scans like DBZ did. Instead, these were simply the broadcast transfers with DVNR, extra color saturation, and (for Dragon Ball) a significantly zoomed-in picture. These were seen as inferior to the untouched transfers, but were at least in the original aspect ratio.
  - Somehow Funimation halved the frame rate of the Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle remaster, resulting in an incredibly jumpy picture.
  - Less than a year after the Orange Bricks, DBZ was released again, this time using the remaster from the Japanese "Dragon Box" sets. Frustratingly, these were limited edition and soon became impossible to find at their original asking price. The "Dragon Box" sets also have their own problems, as despite the improved picture clarity compared to the other DVD releases, the scan never recieved any color correction, causing the video to have degraded and incorrect colors.
  - Two months after the Dragon Boxes, Funimation began releasing the series on Blu-ray with "Level 1.1". While the film prints used were not ideal, this remaster was uncropped and did not use the excessive tampering seen on the Orange Bricks. However, these were cancelled after just two volumes because, according to FUNi, "the cost incurred to restore these shows has outweighed the suggested retail price we were able to pass along to our fans."
  - A couple of years after Level 1.2, Funimation returned to the Season Set model, including the cropped video, over-saturated colors and noise reduction. The filtering on these sets was excessive to the point where they barely had more detail than the original DVDs from the 2000s.◊ This remaster particularly struggled with the the background paintings, as can be seen in this comparison with DBZ Kai◊ where the detail on the cliff face has been smoothed over and the tree trunks have been nearly completely erased. Even the infamous "Orange Brick" DVDs (left) didn't have this problem compared to the Blu-ray seasons (right).◊ Funimation even replaced the Level Set episodes sold on services like Xbox Live with their Season Set counterparts.
  - Tellingly, the main selling point for the 30th anniversary Blu-rays was the 4:3 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, this is just an uncropped version of the previous Blu-ray Seasons, with all of the digital tampering carried over and a layer of fake grain added on top of the grain removal. Infuriatingly, there is evidence ^note that they completed the work necessary for a "Level"-style release, but applied this filtering anyway. FUNi didn't help themselves by posting a blog that compared the raw◊ images◊ to their "remastered"◊ version◊. The set's detractors were quick to point out how much more detail could be seen in the raw scan.
- Japan and Worldwide
  - Toei's HD remasters for some of the Dragon Ball Z movies have sparked some controversy for being censored on the Blu-ray release. Additionally, the Blu-ray releases suffer from some very heavy DVNR, with Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler in particular being comparable to Funimation's work on the Z series. Thankfully, pre-DVNR, uncensored versions of all of these appeared on Amazon Prime and Netflix in Japan prior to the Blu-ray releases, and have remained there ever since.
  - While the quality of the remasters for Dragon Ball Z Kai are largely up to debate,^note opinions on Toei's in-house remaster of The Final Chapters are much more unanimous, with many criticizing how the remaster seems to take a lot of cues from Funimation in terms of being aggressively degrained and cropped to 16:9 widescreen with poor framing.
  - Many of the Dragon Ball releases have been given a green color cast due to using colour values intended for use with theatrical projectors, not home media. This includes all versions of DBZ Kai's Buu arc, the Japanese HD movie remasters, and several international releases of Dragon Ball Super: Broly. The North American Broly release had the green tint, but the UK one did not. The Japanese Blu-Ray release of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has the same issue; this master will also be used for the American release, and infuriatingly Toei's representatives claimed that the green tint on Super Hero is intentional (despite the actual promotional material not having this issue).
  - On every home video release of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, the Japanese dub is notorious for sounding very muffled and distorted, sounding more like a show from the 1970s than the late 80s/early 90s. This is due to Toei wiping the original audio tapes shortly after broadcast, thus the audio is instead sourced from the optical soundtrack of the 16mm film copies that has degraded significantly over the years. A fan remaster of the audio has been made using off-air recordings of the original broadcasts, but despite the fans behind said project offering their work to Toei (and Funimation even expressing interest in using the audio for their own releases), Toei has rejected the offers and continues to only provide the optical soundtrack for both their own releases and for foreign distributors.
Ghost in the Shell (1995) has been released on Blu-ray twice in North America, both times with issues. The first release primarily showcases the heavily altered 2009 cut of the film with the original version included as a bonus feature, but in very poor quality, seemingly sourced from an outdated master. The more recent "25th anniversary edition" features a fresh HD transfer of the original cut, but suffers from a botched sound mix full of missing effects and inaudible dialogue, as well as new subtitles which are awkwardly written and full of typos. In 2020, a new 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray was released, which fixed the previous version's sound mix and subtitles, only to add a new audio flub by using the English release's end credits theme by U2 (under the pseudonym Passengers) on both the English and Japanese audio tracks, whereas past releases only had the Passengers theme on the English audio track and the original credits music on the Japanese audio.
The ADV Essential Collection release of the original video animation Gunsmith Cats has a copied and pasted Dolby Digital audio track.
The Blu-ray release of the early pre-Ghibli Isao Takahata film Horus: Prince of the Sun's has suffered extreme amounts of smoothing and DNR courtesy of Q Tec. The destruction applied to the film has lead many people to mistake the native HD remaster for a LaserDisc upscale. And the saddest part is that the older DVD and LaserDisc versions looked even worse.
Interstella 5555 got a 4K remaster in 2024; however, the result was actually an AI upscale, and as a result looks overly smooth and mushy.
Inuyasha:
- The first two volumes of the 2020 North American Blu-ray sets feature an odd frame-skipping issue that makes some panning shots look jittery.
- Inuyasha The Movie 2: The Castle Beyond The Looking Glass: The English 5.1 track on the Blu-ray accidentally uses an unpolished earlier cut of the dub instead of the finalized version from all previous physical and digital releases. The English Stereo 2.0 track contains the correct version of the dub.
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: When the Funimation English dub was released on Netflix, it seems a rough cut was accidentally put on the service. Episodes are noticeably lacking audio at seemingly random times, with subtitles instead replacing the characters' speech; filters are missing when they should be present, such as when characters are speaking through space helmets; there is noticeably poor audio mixing; and Lacus' singing switches between the English and Japanese audio tracks with no explanation.
Pokémon the Series:
- Pokémon: The First Movie got a 1999 remaster in Japan^note that expands on Mewtwo's origin, redraws many of the visuals in CG and desaturates the color balance in order to give the movie a much darker and menacing tone. While the question whether the CG visuals look better or not is a hot debate within the fandom, few agree that the color change was a good thing.
- Pokémon Heroes suffers from an intense blue tint, which made all the colors darker. Averted with non-4Kids versions (eg. the original Japanese) which have accurate colors instead.
- The US Blu-Ray release of Indigo League has a filter applied to it to make it "look HD", and very few fans noticed. The Australian/UK releases are worse.
- After "Electric Soldier Porygon," the preceding 37 episodes were heavily edited to reduce strobing (particularly during Pikachu's electric attacks.) While the effect has been slightly redone over time and looks much closer to original airing on current Japanese prints (only throwing away major 'problem' frames like black/white flashes,) most international prints (including the Season 1 Blu-Ray) have looked generally the same since 1998, as if somebody mashed the freeze-frame button on their TV remote and hoped for the best.
The American, British and French Blu-ray releases of Re:Zero were criticized by several reviewers for having visible color banding and compression, which is quite egregious for a release of a 2016 anime.
Robo Tech Part 1: The Macross Saga: For the Blu-ray, they added noise to sharpen the picture, but it ended up being unbearably grainy. Also, they didn't even clean the picture. There are black spots and white spots popping up on the film constantly. Reviewers have compared this release to looking at a VHS under a microscope.
In 2014, Viz Media announced that they would become the first studio worldwide to release Sailor Moon on Blu-ray. Since multiple seasons' worth of 16mm film elements no longer exist, their sets for the first three had to work with the same masters used for Toei's 2009 Japanese DVDs. Unfortunately, comparisons between the first set of Blu-ray Discs and these DVDs reveal the former to have more DVNR and ghosting. Additionally, Viz's DVDs encoded the 4:3 picture into 16:9 with black bars on the left and right sides, making it appear low-quality by even DVD standards. Toei eventually upscaled the show to HD themselves, ensuring improved picture quality for the last two seasons, and for the "Complete Season" series of Blu-ray re-releases for the whole show. Earlier remasters from Japanese DVD releases infamously had a pink tint due to film degradation. Some fans had even brought up the original Italian DVDs as having much better picture quality and colors compared the Viz's remaster.
Some early BD upscales of newer digitally animated anime suffered from loss of detail due to heavy-handed DVNR. The poster child for this is Samurai Champloo, which FUNimation tacitly admitted to when it was re-mastered for a later re-release (this new version was good enough that is was also used on the Japanese BDs).
The Discotek Blu-Ray release of the uncut Japanese version of Sonic X was advertised as sporting the ultimate quality of the anime, to the point they created it comparing all available footage of each individual scene to hand-pick the best one. The problem is that they didn't do such a thorough job, as some scenes look blurrier than the original DVD releases (despite being a Blu-Ray), and at least one of the edits done for the English 4Kids dub as censorship was included by mistake.
Speed Racer:
- The Speed Racer Enterprises home video releases render many of the episodes in 50Hz format, causing the audio itself to be slightly faster and sound pitch-shifted in places. The only episodes that don't have this issue are the ones included in the 1993 Speed Racer: The Movie.^note The US Laserdiscs are sourced from 16mm TV prints, and don't have this problem.
- The framerate was fixed when Funimation released the series under their belt, but their release has very noticeable audio glitches. "The Great Plan" in particular has the first part obviously time-compressed with a noticeably higher pitched audio from Speed Racer Enterprises, and part 2 has a noticeable drop in the audio during the recap. Episode 5 ("The Secret Engine, Part 1") also suffers a noticeable audio blip in the first minute and a half of the episode. And the audio for the majority of the episodes is still pitch-shifted.
Studio Ghibli:
- While visual remastering for their back-catalog has always produced gorgeous results (up to and including preserving film grain), Kiki's Delivery Service seemed to get the short end of the stick in the audio department in 2010. Specifically, it had its 1998 dub tweaked for its North American DVD re-release that year, reverting the music to match the Japanese version, and removing some dialogue that was Filling the Silence^note. Unfortunately, what dialogue does remain now sounds as hard-to-hear as if the characters spoke through a fan. The fact that the edit is the only version of the English dub included on home media releases since 2010, including the more recent DVD and Blu-ray releases by GKIDS, only worsens the situation. Consequently, the 2003 Disney DVD, the only official home media release of the uncut 1998 dub from the post-VHS era, has become highly coveted.
- Almost every Blu-ray release of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) has had heavy noise reduction, lowered bass and clipping on the Japanese audio track. Earlier releases on DVD and LaserDisc had unfiltered audio tracks that better preserved the dynamics of the audio, and were much more natural and crisper than the later Blu-ray Remaster, at the cost of having more analogue noise (which is natural to the film). 2011 US Disney Blu-ray release preserved the audio characteristics of the LaserDisc audio track while being in a superior 24-bit lossless format like the Blu-ray. Unfortunately, Disney's release has been made out-of-print in favour of a new rerelease from GKIDS, which has the same denoised audio track from the Japanese release.
- The Blu-ray Remaster Castle in the Sky has had botched Japanese audio mixes on the various Blu-ray releases. The Japanese and UK audio releases have a narrower soundstage (sounding less stereo-y) and some amplification edits compared to earlier releases on DVD and LaserDisc, which also have their own issues while still being closer to the original theatrical mix. The 2012 US Disney Blu-ray, however, has a superior audio track that does stay faithful to the original theatrical mix and preserves the original wider soundstage, while having none of the issues from the LaserDisc and DVD versions, and being in a superior 24-bit lossless format, which is something the Japanese release didn't even have. Unfortunately, the subtitles are inaccurate dubtitles based on the Disney dub, and it too has been made out-of-print with GKIDS rerelease, which has the worst audio track of the film, having the amplification edits from the Japanese release AND some new audio glitches not present in any other version. The dialogue is panned hard to the left two-thirds into the film, and the ending song ends abruptly. At least the wider soundstage from the Disney Blu-ray has been preserved in GKIDS' rerelease.
When Funimation rereleased Tenchi Muyo! in Love as part of a box set with the other two Tenchi films on Blu-ray and DVD, they ended up releasing a version of the film that has horrific color-correction issues. All of the blues have been turned green (which also affects Sasami and Kiyone's hair colors), the sepia-toned scene near the start of the film has been turned bright yellow, and somebody seems to have punched up the color quite a considerable amount, making the whole film eye-gougingly bright. Pioneer Entertainment's original 1996 THX LaserDisc and 1997 DVD release, however, had none of these issues, being a direct transfer from the original film negatives. For those interested, here◊ are◊ some◊ comparisons.◊

Comics

A related phenomenon in the comic book industry was Theakstonization. To do reprints of pre-computer comics, you needed the original monochrome lineart so you can recolor using modern techniques. For many old comics, that art no longer exists — the only thing available is the actual comics. Therefore, you have to copy one of the comics and remove the color. Prior to the 1990s, the only economic way of doing this was to cut the pages out of an original comic, and bleach the color out, thus producing monochrome art. This process actually destroyed the originals, and could apparently reduce grown men to tears. In many cases, though, the cheap paper the books were printed on was crumbling away due to age, and it was a rock and a hard place situation; destroy the physical book or risk the content being lost forever.
One way of digitally destroying old comics is to scan them at an inadequate resolution - that way lines will become pixellated and jagged when printed. Ironically, the problem becomes worse the better paper you print on, as a hard, high quality paper soaks up the ink less than a pulpy one. Some of this occurred in the Finnish completed works of Carl Barks.
EC Comics: Some of the color reprints of the horror comics tended to completely alter the original colors and add elements that clearly weren't in the original comic art, such as photoshop gradients. They wised up and started using the original colors in later reprints.
The 1990s reprint of the old Felix the Cat comics, Felix Keeps on Walkin, deliberately altered the original artwork, redoing all of the colors digitally and adding gradients that weren't in the original art, and its linernotes even blatantly snark about how they removed bits of the original artwork, such as the expressive cartoon spark lines that pop up around Felix's head.
The various Mad Bathroom Companions are all novel-sized reprints of magazines that were more than twice their height and width when they were originally issued. Not only did they shrink them down but also cropped off the edges of some of the comics to make them fit, and some of them are so close to the spine that as much as an inch of the page is completely unreadable unless you're willing to tear the page out.

Films — Animation — Disney

DVD and Blu-ray releases of the 1937-1989 entries in the Disney Animated Canon suffer from an odd variation of this. Rather than being direct re-scans of the master negatives, these releases are instead rotoscoped and recomposited frame-by-frame, color-corrected, and DVNR'd to remove any semblance of age — right down to the film grain. While this ambition is impressive in and of itself, the result is that each movie looks as if it's imitating the "look" of a digitally-animated film, and said imitation is a poor one at that, with finer details and entire pieces of linework being scrubbed away in the process of this visual pseudo-modernization. Say what you will about the current restorations of Alice in Wonderland (1951), Bambi, and Sleeping Beauty (1959), but as aggressive as they were, they still came out beautifully and relatively faithful to the originals. Others didn't have quite so much luck, however...
The Blu-ray and Digital HD versions of Aladdin: The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves both have their original 1.33:1 aspect ratios cropped to 1.78:1. The latter was also cropped when it was released on DVD back in 2005, while the former thankfully wasn't.
Beauty and the Beast (1991):
- Modern home video and streaming releases starting with the 2010 Diamond Edition DVD and Blu-ray have an unusual glitch altering the ending of the "Something There" number. Originally, it ended with the objects watching Belle and the Beast read by the fireplace. Since the extended version follows this song with a scene of the objects cleaning the castle, it now closed with the objects in the hallway, closing the doors to give Belle and the Beast some alone time. Selecting the "Original Theatrical Version" on home video releases changes the ending of the song to the objects about to close the doors, but abruptly cuts to a different scene before they shut. Frustratingly, the corrected transition currently appears only on the 3-D Blu-ray.
- The Platinum Edition DVD and the Diamond Edition 2-D Blu-ray and DVD all have different color schemes than the Walt Disney Classics VHS and LaserDisc before them, making fans fear that Disney tampered with the picture. The tones of the 3-D Blu-ray hew most closely to the Classics releases.
- The restoration for the Platinum Edition removed a credit before the prologue for Silver Screen Partners IV, and some stuttering from the scene where Beast asks Belle, "You wan-you wanna stay in the tower?" The current restoration introduced with the Diamond Edition put both of these back in.
- For some reason, the Blu-ray restoration edits out Cogsworth's shocked gasps, when he, Lumiere, and Mrs. Potts rush to the scene when the Beast has been stabbed (after Gaston falls to his death).
In the original Cinderella, the titular character had orange hair and a silver dress. The 2005-2019 DVD and Blu-Ray versions, however, have blatantly altered the colors to look a little closer to the Disney Princess merchandise (blonde hair and blue dress). The fairy dust and some fabric creases have disappeared◊ from her gown, and some backgrounds were completely altered. As the other examples in this category indicate, this isn't the only Disney animated classic to have suffered from something like this, but thanks to how pervasive and vain the changes were and how long they have persisted since, the film has become the face of the problem of overaggressive restoration of classic animation. The movie finally had its original colors and missing details restored for a 4K screening at the 2023 Berlindale International Film Festival, and subsequent Ultra HD Blu-ray and Digital releases (accompanied by corrected Blu-ray and DVD re-releases).
In the Blu-ray release of Fantasia, many colors look drastically different from the original DVD, often using Orange/Blue Contrast. Compare the DVD version of "Night On Bald Mountain" with the Blu-ray version and you'll see that, among other things, Chernabog has been changed from black all over to purplish-blue and faint orange. These comparisons suggest that for at least one segment, the DVD's color scheme deviates farther away from that used in 1940.
The Jungle Book:
- For the 1990 re-release audio mix (used on home video releases before 2007), three scenes are affected:
  - After Mowgli saves Bagheera from Kaa by kicking the latter out of the tree, there was originally music playing from when Mowgli snaps Bagheera out of the trance to when Kaa says "Just you wait 'til I get you in my coils!" The music was not only removed for some reason for the 1990 re-release audio, but somehow also not heard for the post-2007 editions. However, it can still be heard on some foreign-language dubs, particularly the ones made around the film's original release (or at least before 1990) including French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish, Danish, and Hebrew. Interestingly though, two of those dubs, Latin Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese 1968, ended up using the 1990 re-release audio mix for their home video releases (probably because the original speech recordings for those dubs were preserved).
  - When Baloo gets pelted with fruit by the monkeys, he yells "Now, just try that again, you—-!" but is interrupted with a pumpkin splatting in his face. Here, there is a piece of "reaction" music that plays when this happens. Oddly, this was not heard on the original theatrical version, but was used on the 1990 re-release audio mix instead. It is unknown if the music was originally intended to be included, but it's also not heard on the post-2007 DVD and Blu-ray editions either.
  - During "I Wanna Be Like You" while Baloo and Bagheera are talking, there is a trumpet solo that plays in the background. This was somehow not heard in the 1990 re-release audio mix (possibly due to editing problems), but can be heard on the soundtrack (and can still be heard on the many foreign-language dubs made before the 1990 theatrical re-release as well) and was also brought back for the post-2007 DVD and Blu-ray releases.
  - In terms of quality, the 1990 re-release audio version is clearly a stereo mix and sounds very clean and crispy compared to the other versions. The post-2007 audio mix used for the Platinum Edition and Diamond Edition Blu-ray uses some elements from the 1990 version, albeit slightly "mono-ized". Unfortunately, the 2007 audio mix also has a few continuity problems, particularly with "I Wanna Be Like You". During the first part of the song while Louie tells Mowgli he can help him stay in the jungle, the 1990 audio edit is used. However, when Louie begins singing "Now I'm the king of the swingers..." the rest of the instrumental is used from the original theatrical audio (since the 1990 version is missing the trumpet solo) and you can clearly notice the quality change.
The Lion King (1994):
- When the movie was re-released in IMAX theaters, several scenes were altered and/or reanimated by the original animators who felt they didn't get it right the first time, most noticeably the somewhat odd-looking crocodiles in "I Just Can't Wait to be King" to be more on-model and the waterfalls in "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?", but also a host of more minor (and therefore less complained-about) changes like Mufasa's face being redrawn as he sees Rafiki approach during "Circle of Life" or Scar turning slightly to watch Mufasa and Simba leave the elephant graveyard. Later DVD releases advertised a remastered version that would feature the reanimated scenes as well as a new song ("The Morning Report", originally from the film's Broadway adaptation) alongside the original 1994 theatrical version; unfortunately for purists, however, the so-called "original version" keeps the tweaked scenes from the IMAX revamp. It may not be that big a deal, but if you're an advocate for preservation...
- For the 3D re-release and accompanying Blu-ray, not only did they retain the reanimated scenes, but at the end of the scene where Simba speaks to Mufasa's ghost (as Simba begs Mufasa not to leave), the giant cloud formation is completely missing. Records claim this flaw also existed in the IMAX version, but Disney corrected it for the original DVD. The cloud was ultimately reinstated in 2017, with updated re-releases of the Blu-ray and Digital HD editions. The DVD, sadly, still doesn't have the cloud.
The Little Mermaid (1989):
- On early pressings of the Diamond Edition Blu-ray, the ending of the "Part of Your World" sequence plays differently than it originally did. Originally, after cutting from Ariel reaching her hand out towards the surface, it cut to her floating back down onto a rock, to Flounder looking sad. The early D.E. releases switch the latter two scenes' positions, resulting in an audio sync issue. Also, the scene transition when Ariel and Flounder go to visit Scuttle has changed from a dissolve to a cut. When Disney fixed these mistakes, they only did so on the Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download copies, not the 3-D Blu-ray Discs. A disc replacement program was also offered for Blu-ray and DVD copies of the film.
- The Diamond Edition makes some intentional but ill-advised changes, such as changing the opening credits with drastically different timing, a new font, and the card reading, "In Association With Silver Screen Partners IV" absent. Like the Platinum Edition DVD before it, it also censors the minister's knee, due to some viewers of older prints thinking it looked like a Raging Stiffie.
- The 2006 Platinum Edition DVD has a few unique instances of Digital Destruction: The clamshells the sisters came out of were changed to green interiors, and Grimsby's hand at the start of the tour of the kingdom was removed. Both were undone on the Diamond Edition, but the 30th Anniversary Edition removed Grimsby's hand once again.
- The end credits have undergone several changes over the years, notably when the 1997 re-release — which remixed the Dolby Stereo audio to Dolby Digital, DTS, and SDDS — replaced the "Part of Your World" instrumental with the normal version of the song. Prints from 2006 onwards switched it back with the instrumental.
In Oliver & Company, there is a Coca-Cola sign on Louie's hotdog cart. Despite all the deliberate Product Placement seen throughout the film, this sign is somewhat blurred out depending on the version of the film. In the 1996 VHS release, the text is blurred out in every shot it appears in, rendering the sign as little more than a red rectangle. On DVD, Blu-ray and digital releases, the text is intact, except in the closeup where Dodger steals sausages from the cart. This is rather peculiar, as unedited Coca-Cola signs can be seen at other points during the film. One of the only places where you can see the original closeup of the Coca-Cola sign is in the trailer of the film from the 1988 Cinderella VHS.
Pinocchio (1940):
- Curiously, in the 2009 DVD, Jiminy's lines "Right!" (just after the "If your whistle's weak" line) and "Look out, Pinoc!" from the end of the "Give A Little Whistle" song have been edited out—apparently this was the result of a sound mixing error, as the line can still be heard in the film's mono soundtrack, but not the remastered 7.1 and 5.1 soundtracks. Not an atrocity by any means, but anyone who has seen earlier prints of the film will take notice of this. Fortunately, as of April 2011, Disney started allowing owners of the Blu-ray to exchange their discs for copies with the line restored. Owners of the DVD, however, were outta-luck until 2017, when Disney accompanied Pinocchio's Digital HD debut with DVD/BD re-releases of the corrected sound mix.
- The team restoring Pinocchio for its 1992 theatrical re-release used a print generations removed from the original camera negative. This resulted in the movie having an earthy color scheme, which carried on to all the home video releases of The '90s. When scanning the original negative for later DVD and Blu-ray releases, Disney reportedly found the picture to have a pastel appearance, which those releases more faithfully portrayed, but have the usual DVNR problems.
While most Disney films avoid using the DVNR process, the 2006 Most Wanted Edition DVD release of Robin Hood (1973) was an exception to the rule. While Disney is usually careful even when using the infamous process, the issue was that the film was made when Disney was using Xeroxing in place of hand-inked cels, and the itchy, hairy lines combined with a restoration process that is specifically designed to remove things it detects as scratches and dirt was a recipe for trouble. There are many obvious instances of linework and art erasing throughout this release. It's most noticeable in the opening when Robin is chatting with Little John and during the archery scenes, where the artwork of the arrows is frequently eaten away into nothing due to DVNR art erasing.
The Roger Rabbit short Trail Mix-Up has its colour grading changed on the Who Framed Roger Rabbit Blu-ray when compared to the film's 2003 DVD release. Stuff like Roger's gloves and Jessica Rabbit's hair are washed out while the backgrounds have a yellow tint to them. Also for some reason the beaver is changed from purple to grey.
The Sword in the Stone:
- The 2013 Blu-ray release snuffs out all the detail with the film looking like it has been rendered under a Photoshop Blur tool, completely killing the look of the drawings and line quality.
- The Swedish dub has, since the 2002 DVD release, only been available in a flawed 5.1 mix that causes the voices to sound enclosed, "canned" and with a lack of treble. The reason is because it was created out of the existing mono mix, as separate audio tapes for the dialogue had not been preserved (as with the case for many 1930s-60s dubs in the country). Disney likely didn't want to spend money on or anger fans with a re-dub just for DVD and therefore went the emergency route with the release.
- In 2019, Disney released a remastered edition of the film on Disney+ and various PVOD services that was sourced from a 4K scan, which averted this trope by fixing many of the flaws that plagued the 2013 Blu-ray release.
When Toy Story 1 was released on DVD for the first time in 2000, the movie was taken directly from the digital source instead of being transferred from a 35mm source like previous home media releases. Apparently, the original rendered frames were not properly archived digitally after they were transferred to film, so Pixar had to re-render the film in order for the DVD to be sourced directly from the original files. The problem, is that this new render introduced some errors that were not in the original print.
- One shot of Sid's toys scavenging his mutation of the Janie doll to try and put her and the pterodactyl back together properly has her textured incorrectly (with one of the tea party dolls' textures instead, said doll appears to use the same model as Janie.) on all digital releases save for the 3D version and the original 35mm theatrical prints and VHS/Laserdisc releases.
- When Buzz introduces himself to Woody for the first time, there's a noticeable shadow on Woody's hat brim, while on the digital releases from 2000 onward, the shadow is more subtle.
- During the scene after Hamm announces "birthday guests at three o'clock!" in which the toys react, part of the "You're welcome" text briefly flashes on Mr. Spell for a split second on digital releases since 2000, while this does not occur on the original prints nor VHS/laserdisc releases.
- A rather egregious case of this is in the shot where Sid's torturing Woody with the magnifying glass, runs off, and Woody yelling in pain, where on the original prints it had motion blur, but on all digital releases after, except the 3D version, the motion blur was missing.
- The upscaling on the digital masters accidentally revealed some parts of the environment on the outside scenes getting cut off into the sky.
The Direct-to-Video film A Very Merry Pooh Year features a remastered version of Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too edited into the film, but a couple changes were added during restoration. For starters, Rabbit's fur was changed from a green-ish tint, which is how he was depicted in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, to his normal yellow color, and Christopher Robin's voice was re-dubbed by the voice actor who portrayed him in the film's bridging sequences. Unfortunately, this is the only way to watch the Christmas Too special on DVD. The original special still airs during the Christmas season on Freeform, but as of 2018, the re-dubbed lines of Christopher Robin have been added into the special.
When Lady and the Tramp had its audio remixed to stereo for the CinemaScope version, the music that plays during the chorus verse of "Bella Notte" (the version of the song after the spaghetti scene) was erroneously edited out. Consequently, it's also missing from almost every home video release, except for the 1998 VHS and Laserdisc of the Academy version (originally screened in theaters lacking CinemaScope-compatible equipment). This error is also not present in most foreign language dubs of the movie, barring the 1989 French dub and the Cantonese dub.

Films — Animation — Other

A common occurrence with early computer-animated films (whether they be entirely made with computers or hand-drawn digitally) is that, whether the original data exists or not, the video transfers are always taken from film stock (most of the transfers were made back in the days of LaserDisc and early DVD, and were riddled with telecine wobble, dirt, and other artifacts). Examples of this include Toy Story^noteVHS and Laserdisc editions only, Antz, The Prince of Egypt, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Anastasia, Titan A.E., Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and Tokyo Godfathers. Once Pixar released A Bug's Life and the first two Toy Story films on DVD using digital masters, other studios began following suit as well. Even Evangelion: 1.01 You Are (Not) Alone. was sourced from a 35mm printout despite being a 2007 movie and the DVD version having slight animation upgrades compared to the theatrical release, resulting in darker and muddier colors, as well as color bleed. The later remastered 1.11 on Blu-ray, however, would be taken directly from the digital source and be much clearer and vibrant as a result.
- YMMV on this, however, as some people prefer the grittier and more vintage look of digital films on 35mm than the pure digital transfer, which can be seen as too artificial to some people. This is the reason why Studio Ghibli and Studio Ponoc prefer to add artificial filters on their digital films to simulate 35mm film grain, smoothing and gate weave, even for their most recent films (one of them even being an All-CGI Cartoon). Another example is the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy; despite the latter two entries being fully digital and receiving high-quality DVD transfers, some fans prefer to search for scans of the 35mm prints, because they appear closer to how the Original Trilogy looks. Films like Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two and The Batman (2022) have also been sourced from 35mm printouts despite being shot digitally, specifically to enhance the gritty feeling of 35mm film.
The DVD release of An American Tail was criticized by fans for those. Background music and sound effects were changed or added, new voice-overs were inserted (which seem to have come from the original recording sessions), and the orphans who bully Fievel near the end had their voices re-dubbed for unknown reasons.
Asterix:
- When Disney acquired the rights to the first three movies^note, not only did they redo the opening credits to Asterix The Gaul, the credits scrolled this way in the original version; the Disney version on the other hand...but also cropped The Twelve Tasks Of Asterix in 4:3, as opposed to the original 1.66:1.
- In the late '90s Extrafilm remasters, not only were The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, Asterix Versus Caesar, Asterix in Britain, Asterix and the Big Fight and Asterix Conquers America all cropped in 4:3, but they also edited a bit of the opening credits on Asterix and Cleopatra. Additionally, Asterix and the Big Fight used the panned US dub, as opposed to the UK dub, while Asterix The Gaul replaced the Asterix and Cleopatra teaser with the credits of the aforementioned UK dub of the Big Fight^note
- When the the first three movies were rereleased on DVD in France in 2008, all of them were cropped in 16:9,^note and present the usual problems of Extrafilm.
- Averted with the 2017 remasters of Asterix and Cleopatra and The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, which not only present them in the originally intendend format, but also boast a clear picture restored from the original negative.
All North American releases of The Brave Little Toaster, from the original VHS releases all the way to DVD, were taken from a worn-out copy of the film used for festival screenings rather than the original negative, resulting in the picture appearing to wiggle at the beginning. There is also some noticeable flicker in the image and a heavy amount of film grain. This particular print was also used for Japanese releases of the movie, as well as the 2009 Brazilian DVD. Astonishingly, the European and Australian releases are taken from a much cleaner print with none of these issues, which makes it incredibly baffling that this is still the case.
DVD and streaming releases of The Care Bears Movie feature the credits on a black background instead of blue.
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has extreme amounts of DNR in the long-awaited Blu-ray release in North America. However, the non-US Blu-ray releases have no DNR and beautifully preserve the film grain and integrity of the image.
Gulliver's Travels (1939):
- The 70th anniversary DVD and Blu-ray releases were "restored" by not only cropping the footage into widescreen,^note but also using a muddy, blurry, badly DVNRed transfer.
- The 60th anniversary Winstar DVD release uses a far better transfer than the 70th anniversary releases, but that version suffers from digital interlacing. The Winstar DVD also had a "restored" version that was aurally altered, with a new stereophonic soundtrack. The sound effects were redone, and the results were not seamless, such that one can painfully tell the difference between the mono and stereo versions without comparison!
- Averted with Thunderbean's 2014 Blu-ray release, which is restored from an original 35mm print to faithfully resemble its original theatrical release in 1939, such as keeping dust prints in shots, keeping the colors bright and retaining rounded corners on the edge of the frame. See for yourself.
When The Little Drummer Boy was released on VHS in 1998, Golden Books Family Entertainment (later absorbed into Classic Media) used a higher fidelity source of the soundtrack during restoration. The problem is the mix is missing many sound effects, such as Aaron's drumming and the sounds of the crowd commotion in Jerusalem. In addition, one of Narrator Greer Garson's lines is replaced with a scratch track recorded by Paul Frees. Subsequent releases have not corrected these problems. Thus, the only official way to watch the original mix is on VHS^noteOn releases before 1998. or LaserDisc. Not helping matters is that NBCUniversal only has a 16mm source archived for the visuals, resulting in it looking extremely grainy, and they seemingly don't even care to try to locate a 35mm source.
- The Blu-ray makes it even worse, by not only having worse color than before (night skies becoming greener, likely due to fading), but there were three commercial fade-outs added in the middle of scenes.
The "Bugville" DVD release of Mr. Bug Goes to Town was apparently a raw transfer from an old LaserDisc of the film, and it shows; with digital compression that makes it look like a bootleg release. Otherwise, there is no interlacing and DVNR issues.
Olive Films' 2017 DVD and Blu-ray release of Rock-A-Doodle is noticeably higher pitched, due to MGM choosing to remaster the film from a 50Hz print.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) had Yukon Cornelius' coat look green instead of blue in early pressings of the Blu-ray. The 50th Anniversary Edition has it changed back to blue.
The Allied Artists Classics DVD of Shinbone Alley used a poor transfer from a videotape master, resulting in washed-out colors, a blurry picture and even visible tape distortion; while the cut used has the opening slightly changed.
Jetlag Productions' version of "Snow White" is blurry and has tape distortion on the multi-pack DVD set, but oddly is fine on the single release by itself.
Son of the White Horse was first restored for a DVD release in 2005. The result was an eyesore, with excessively over-saturated pink and blue colors that muted out all the browns and greys (making the grey Three-Headed Dragon purple) and faded out intricate details like the White Mare's fine pinkish shading. To a movie in which the change and contrast of colors play crucial roles in visual symbolism, this was a huge downgrade. There were also numerous glitches like blank or misaligned frames. This was the only common version of the movie until it finally received a good 4K remaster in 2019 that restored the original, more earthly colors and missing details. However, even this updated restoration contained one barely noticeable glitch where a few frames would repeat.
In the European Spanish HBO Max release of We Bare Bears: The Movie, the last ten minutes of the movie were accidentally cut, resulting in the movie ending with Trout successfully capturing the bears with a last shot of Grizzly trapped in a cage in the reserve alone without his brothers, with the following scene being the credits scene featuring other bears celebrating happily with happy music.
The Yellow Submarine "Director's Cut" restoration by MGM attempts to lighten, brighten or saturate colors. After all, if you're trying to clean up a color cartoon, you don't want dingy colors. This would be a minor problem, except that it was done everywhere — including scenes in Meanie-occupied Pepperland. Yes, "faded color = grey" is starting to become a film convention, but it wasn't one back then, and the hints of medium pastel are somewhat distracting to anyone who doesn't yet accept the convention. The 2012 Blu-ray release amended this by painstakingly cleaning up every frame individually.

Films — Live-Action

American Graffiti's panned 4K UHD release features heavily DNRed picture with flat, waxxy surfaces, and a remixed soundtrack with new sound effects and less audible music soundtrack. This in spite of the fact that the film was shot in 2-perf 35mm because it gave the film a more grainy appearance of a documentary. Apparently Universal is not to blame for this; director George Lucas supervised the remaster himself.
The Apartment looked overly dark and vertically compressed on its Collector's Edition DVD and Blu-ray, released in 2008 and 2012, respectively. The 2017 restoration corrected these issues.
Back to the Future:
- The Trilogy had scenes that did not require special effects filmed in 1.37:1, and matted to 1.85:1 for theatrical and LaserDisc release. Unfortunately, the initial batch of widescreen DVDs for Back to the Future Part II and Part III matted some of these scenes in a manner that cropped out important details (such as the size-adjustment button and retractable sleeves on Marty's 2015 jacket). Thankfully, Universal began a disc replacement program that addressed the framing errors, and later pressings used the fixed prints. The 2002-2003 discs with full-color art can be identified by "V2" in the text around the edge on mail-in replacement copies, although reprints of the full set only placed the "V2" on Part II. 2009 black-label reprints and beyond used the corrected transfers.
- The 2010 DVD rerelease and Blu-ray debut (and 2015 reprints) had bad end credits on the original Back to the Future, with the text tilted, off-center, and squished by 25%. This was never fixed in that release cycle, but 2020 Blu-ray and 4K discs have the correct credits (standalone DVD rereleases may use the 2010 master).
- All versions since 2010 have included a shortened version of the blackout in Back to the Future Part II after Marty is hit by Biff's goons in 1985A. Previous releases kept the screen blank for over 5 seconds as the sound died away and the next scene's music began; now it's only a few seconds, and it also cuts out some of the music. Justified as back when the film was originally released, cinema operators had to partially or fully skip the scene as it happened to be at the end of a reel forming part of the film. Comparison here.
Bad Boys (1995) suffers from this problem on later releases since the 2000 Special Edition and the 2003 Superbit DVD releases. The Dolby Digital audio track is a bit quiet, such as when the store clerk famously exclaims the duo to freeze. The heroin raid scene has a missing sound effect when the video camera blows up, and when Mike gets ambushed by Noah, a poorly looped line was added, where he says "Don't mess with us", although that short line of dialogue was never featured in the original release. It also gives the film a orange filter for scenes set at daylight, which also wasn't seen in the original version. The only way to enjoy the film in the way it's meant to be seen is by watching the 1997 DVD release in NTSC format.
Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of Battlefield Earth scrubs it of any film grain, resulting in over-saturated colors and awful textures. Whether or not it was to deliberately give one of the worst movies of all time a bad name is up to you.
The Big Lebowski: Universal's Blu-Ray release of the film has been subject to quite a bit of criticism due to its overuse of edge-enhancement and DNR (digital noise removal), which, while removing a lot of film grain, also removes much of the texture and detail from the movie. This was later fixed with the Ultra HD release of the film.
Almost all the home video releases of The Blair Witch Project suffered from worse picture quality than the theatrical release, the result of using a master that's actually a telecine of a telecine. Initially, the movie was filmed with Hi8 video and black-and-white 16mm film, edited on the Media 100 software system, and transferred to DigiBeta. Because cinemas didn't have digital video projectors yet, this necessisated telecining the movie to 35mm film. However, when it came time to issue it on VHS and DVD, instead of using the DigiBeta master, Artisan telecined the 35mm print back to video. This resulted in a heavily grainy picture with muddied colors and frequent framerate errors, something made even more apparent on Lionsgate's initial Blu-ray release. It wasn't until the film's 25th anniversary that a Blu-ray with a proper transfer of the original Hi8 and 16mm sources would finally be released (albeit outside of the United States).
The Boondock Saints: The original DVD version and the Director's Cut version have a 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track that is the Dolby Surround 2.0 track copied and pasted across every channel. The Director's Cut only includes the 5.1 track.
Citizen Kane got an accidental taste of this. In one scene, outside the window there was supposed to be rain; the person in charge of the film's restoration thought it was excessive film grain, so it was digitally edited out of the restored print. Later, the Blu-ray boasted a new restoration, which brought back such details as the aforementioned rain.
The Crow (1994) suffers from the abovementioned 5.1 audio issue (since the DVD releases), as the Stereo track is copied several times, and sadly, the original Stereo track isn't included (other than the VHS and LaserDisc releases containing the Dolby Stereo audio mix via matrixed Dolby Surround, as well for the latter format's original 5.1 theatrical mix via Dolby Digital and DTS LDs).
The Dish's 2017 Australian Blu-Ray release was upconverted rather than "remastered" as advised. At first it was conversional thanks to users at a Blu-Ray forum until Roadshow replied and planned on making a proper restoration, which they released in January 2018.
On Disney+, several Disney Channel Original Movies from the late '90s and early 2000s that were originally produced in 4:3 are zoomed in and cropped to 16:9. This is most noticeable in Smart House (1999), where the running tally of sweepstakes entries for the titular home is always out of view, and when Nick reaches for a key just before it recedes into the countertop; only the tip of the key is visible.
Dog Soldiers: The 2015 collector's edition Blu-ray by Scream Factory, while praised for its expansive supplementary material, was widely criticized for a near colorless, and very grainy picture transfer. Justified as director Neil Marshall (who worked alongside Shout! Factory on the Blu-ray), confirmed that they were unable to locate the original negatives at the time and had to use the best available sources for the new HD transfer. In 2019, the original negative was finally located, allowing for a full 4K restoration from German company Koch Media.
From the start of the home video revolution, Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy has been put through the wringer. At first, it was simply the standard pan-and-scan treatment accorded to most every other film put out on video in the '80s; however, as letterboxing became popular, especially on videodiscs, the destruction started to become more creative:
- The 1988 MGM/UA print of A Fistful of Dollars, issued on VHS and Betamax in 1988 and on laser videodisc in 1990, marked the first uncut English-language release of the film, but the colors ended up looking rather muddy, far from the yellowish look Leone intended for his films. The 2005 restoration released Stateside on DVD in 2007 and on Blu-ray in 2010 also looks quite cropped.
- The Dutch DVD of A Fistful of Dollars was once thought to contain the UK theatrical cut, but it managed to misrepresent that; the true UK theatrical cut is only slightly shorter than what the Dutch DVD would have you believe, and several shots and cuts are different. The Dutch DVD closely resembles the US theatrical cut in its length, if not in the arrangement of its shots.
- Most current releases of the trilogy as a whole don't even have the original mono; exceptions include a repressing of the 2014 release of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (the original pressing accidentally omitted it) and the 2018 release of A Fistful of Dollars.
- Just like the Dutch DVD release of Fistful, the 1998 release of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly managed to screw up the simple task of assembling the International Theatrical Cut, losing several seconds of footage which have yet to resurface commercially to this day and also inserting footage that wasn't meant to be included.
- The 2014 release of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the first release in a while of any film in the trilogy to look yellow; however, it looks more yellow than Leone intended.
- From 2017 to 2019, Kino Lorber released the complete trilogy, with mixed results. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was the first out from them, and while it purports to be the high definition debut of the International Theatrical Cut, it's actually the same cut released by MGM/UA in 1998, plus it uses the same restoration as the previous release, only with the yellows toned down too severely yet again. Fistful, released in 2018, also uses an overly-yellow print; however, it at least appears to be a step in the right direction, as the original mono track is included for the first time ever, on any home video release (other English mono tracks for the film are folddowns from a 5.1 track and/or somewhat edited).
The original Bela Lugosi Dracula film has an odd one — at one point when Dracula throws Renfield from the stairs, in the original he's supposed to scream. On some VHS copies (or LaserDisc?), the scream is either intact or removed, but on the 75th Anniversary DVD release the scream was once again cut out.
Criterion's first print release of the Dressed to Kill Blu-ray/DVD in August 2015 was met with scathing criticism. De Palma asked the film restorers to fix what he thought were some minor distortion issues and in the process the frame became vertically stretched. Criterion apologized for the error, sent replacement copies to those with the first edition, and eventually released a second printing in October 2015.
Friday the 13th: Jason Lives suffers from audio issues thanks to its 5.1 audio track being copied. None of the other films in the series suffer from this issue.
Jackson's release of The Beatles' Get Back for Disney+ has quite a lot of DNR, making everyone on film look like something out of a video game. The re-release of Let It Be doesn't look nearly as bad, though, as much, if not all of the film grain, was kept at the request of Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the original director.
Ghostbusters (1984) had several color-inaccurate versions, with the 2005 DVD being the most off.
Gladiator's original Blu-ray release was overly sharpened, with very inaccurate colors. A remastered version was released in 2010, which managed to fix these problems.
The Godzilla films have gotten hit with this at times:
- Classic Media's 2002 DVDs of some of the older films featured "5.1 surround sound'' audio tracks in addition to the original mono versions. The 5.1 tracks turned out to just be the mono tracks blasted out of all five speakers at slightly different times, created a headache-inducing echo as though the movies were recorded inside a garbage can. The company's later releases of those films wisely just included the mono tracks.
- The TriStar-issued DVDs feature new, digitally-created title cards for some of the older films. They generally have digital reconstructions of the English title cards with trademark icons added to the monsters' names, while others keep the original English title card but add the icons, or feature entirely new titles (Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster). The Heisei films usually retain the Japanese title cards with digitally-added English subtitles, but the newer films have new, very dull English title cards awkwardly plastered directly over the Japanese titles, which are often much more elaborate and beautiful (though this is the work of either Toho's export department or the Hong Kong company that dubs the films). This one takes the cake. Sadly, with the release of the Blu-rays, this tendency now also applies to Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla and Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.
- The transfer of Godzilla (2014) used for the DVD and standard Blu-ray is, for reasons that remain unclear, much darker and murkier than the way the film looked in theaters, rendering many of the nighttime scenes nearly indecipherable. The most infuriating thing about it is that the ads for the DVD and the clips shown in the special features showcase an ungraded version of the film, while the transfer used for the 3D Blu-ray which is closer to the theatrical release, yet Warner Bros is doing nothing to fix the problem. The 4K Blu-ray release in 2021 averts this, utilizing a new transfer that brings the color grading about 1:1 to the theatrical release, which would later be carried over to all digital releases as well.
- King Kong vs. Godzilla's Japanese version was re-released multiple times in the '60s and '70s to the Champion Festival - a children's film festival in Japan. Toho edited the film's run time down to make it more tolerable for the younger audience, slicing up the original negatives in the process. The film's first Japanese home video release sourced those formerly lost scenes with a 16mm print, but a 35mm print was located in the early '90s only to be lost as well. Future releases sourced the LaserDisc release with the lost scenes being located once more for the Blu-Ray release. Most recently, Toho commissioned a 4K restoration in 2014 with the initial missing footage finally recovered from the first reel. The restoration was broadcast on TV and in theaters in the summer of 2016. The Japanese cut's US debut on the Criterion box set would only use the earlier 2008 Blu-Ray restoration.
- The British Film Institute's DVD of Godzilla (1954) doesn't make things worse by trying to fix them. Instead, it just doesn't fix anything. The disc seems to have been scanned from a very tired print, with many scratches and cue dots. ^note
Grease:
- The audio became remixed for the 1998 20th Anniversary theatrical/home video re-releases, with new sound effects and vocals added to some sequences. Unfortunately, the music sounded less clear afterwards, and some vocals disappeared altogether. For the 2018 40th Anniversary re-releases, Paramount managed to correct almost all of these issues.
- Early pressings of the 40th Anniversary Edition Ultra HD disc, Blu-Ray and DVD had a red flash overlap Danny's face during a closeup of him and Sandy dancing through the funhouse. Paramount eventually removed the flash, and allowed owners of discs with the flash to receive fixed replacements. Unfortunately, the "fixed" UHD disc now has distracting brightness fluctuations during the carnival.
The 1998 20th anniversary DVD release of Halloween featured a transfer approved by cinematographer Dean Cundey, with the daytime scenes graded with a strong brownish-orange tint to suggest an autumnal atmosphere and the night scenes bathed in deep blues. When the film received an HD telecine for the 2003 25th anniversary edition DVD, it was done without Cundey's involvement and the color timing was completely changed to a much more neutral appearance, removing both the orange and blue tints for an image that was technically more realistic but not in line with the film's artistic intent. This was just the first in a series of issues and debates regarding transfers of the film...
- The 2007 Blu-ray release was sourced from the same telecine as the 2003 DVD, but the color timing was tweaked in an attempt to address some of the criticism — again without the filmmakers' involvement. A slight brownish tint was added back to some of the daylight scenes, and a bit of the blue was restored to at least some of the night sequences, creating an overall look somewhere in between the two DVD transfers.
- For the 35th anniversary Blu-ray in 2013, the movie was given a brand-new scan with the transfer supervised and approved by Cundey. You'd think this was a slam dunk, but as it turned out, this transfer — while much sharper than any prior home video release — featured completely different color timing than any of the prior DVD or Blu-ray editions, including the Cundey-approved 1998 transfer. The entire film has a stark, desaturated appearance, completely removing the "autumnal" tint from the daylight scenes while also featuring less vibrant colors in general than even the 2003 DVD. The night scenes are bluer than they were in the 2003 and 2007 transfers, but still not as heavily-tinted as the 1998 DVD. This led to many impassioned debates about which version people believed looked most like the original theatrical prints, based on 35-year-old memories. There was enough controversy that the Deluxe Edition Complete Collection Blu-ray set of the franchise includes both the 2007 and 2013 transfers.
- Another new scan was done for the film's 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release in 2018, but the color timing was kept nearly identical to the 2013 transfer.
On the subject of Halloween, the fifth and sixth films, The Revenge of Michael Myers and The Curse of Michael Myers, respectively, again suffer from a bad Dolby Digital 5.1 track as the Stereo track is copied and pasted, then played back with a distracting echo. Fortunately, these have the original Stereo track.
A Hard Day's Night has gone through at least two of these:
- The first was more Analog Destruction as it happened in 1982, back when film restoration was a new idea. Universal wanted to spruce the film up for a U.S. theatrical re-release that year, and those handling the transfer elected to convert the entire soundtrack to stereo on the theory that stereo is better than mono. (Modern fans of The Beatles strongly disagree, but the fandom was still redeveloping back then.) To cap it off, the restorers then threw out the original soundtrack, making a legit restoration impossible.
- There were then two further attempts to restore the film, in 1996 and 2001. The 2001 restoration by Miramax deliberately tried to "improve" on the theatrical release. While the use of a modern theatrical aspect is understandable (the film did briefly air in modern theaters), they could've made the original aspect available on the DVD. It used the controversial 5.1 speech/mono song soundtrack (by this time, stereo would've been the best quality possible due to the 1982 restoration). And while we can't be sure that 2001's picture is less faithful than 1996's (if we could, then we wouldn't need film restoration as much), it's clear that they're using different greyscale keys. The 1996 edition frequently has what looks like light reflecting off smoke in the air (which may or may not have been in the original); the 2001 edition removes that and deliberately goes for chiaroscuro.
- Thankfully, The Criterion Collection came to the rescue in 2014, releasing a 4K restoration approved by director Richard Lester on both DVD and Blu-ray. Not only did the release restore the film's original aspect ratio, it also contained a mono soundtrack.
Iron Man and Iron Man 2 had their film grain either removed or frozen on Ultra HD Blu-ray, to match the movies that Marvel Studios recorded digitally (including all of Iron Man's post-IM2 appearances).
Shout! Factory released several Jackie Chan films as double packs on DVD and Blu-ray. One Blu-ray bundle in particular, for Crime Story (1993) and The Protector (1985), features not only the panned US version of the latter film, but the superior Hong Kong version as well^note. The problem though is that the Hong Kong version has little to no attempts at digital restoration whatsoever, with sights of film scratches, no sign of improved colors, and still looked pretty blurry, as well as the audio being clearly taken from a optical/analogue source. It also doesn't help that it's treated as an extra feature rather than another film.
James Cameron became notorious for remasters of his films on Blu-Ray and 4K home media that have featured heavy usage of DNR and revisionist approaches to their looks:
- Aliens's Blu-ray release by Lowry Digital has a somewhat teal look at points and a crude usage of DNR, with prerelease reports from Cameron implying fake grain was inserted. The Terminator and Titanic (1997) (with the latter applying the CGI "fixes") had similar revisionists applied, but these releases are seen as far superior to the later efforts done on Cameron's filmography on 4K discs.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day saw a 4K release that, despite approval from Cameron, boasted a much greener tint and excessive DNR. Additionally, the newly authored Blu-ray included now had the added scenes in the extended cut play in standard definition instead of being remastered as they were in the previous Blu-ray releases.
- 2023 and 2024 finally saw the debut of a number of Cameron films on 4K, being The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Avatar and the long awaited The Abyss and True Lies. Unfortunately, they all suffered from excess usage of DNR and sharpening that caused the films to gain an artificial appearance. Additionally, AI "enhancement" was also applied to the movies, resulting in not just poor picture quality but alterations to the contents of the image itself, including shoving the actors' faces straight into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley in many shots. In addition, The Terminator, Aliens and Titanic were not struck from true 4K scans of the footage, but upscaled versions of the 2K intermediate used for the Blu-Ray releases, on top of the Lowry Digital revisionist masters of these films.
The 4K release of Jaws 3-D has more DNR than True Lies or T2, and has AI used to sharpen the image resulting in illegible text that was legible on older formats, and the facial features of background extras warping nightmarishly at points. This is likely the result of the film being shot with a 3D system that made 2D prints only about equivalent to 16mm film in terms of detail, instead of the 35mm film usually used on major Hollywood productions, meaning that the low amount of detail in the base image causes all sorts of undesirable visual artifacts to become obvious; by contrast, Jaws: The Revenge was shot in the Super 35 format (meaning it had more detail than most other films of the same era) and gets off much easier, even if this trope is still present to a mild degree.
The King and I:
- The 1981 LaserDisc of the same film not only loses major details to Pan and Scan, but also uses an overly yellowed print.
- The 2014 Blu-ray has a bluer tint compared to previous home video releases.
The DVDs and Blu-rays for the films of Stanley Kubrick are the subject of a very long debate regarding what aspect ratios the films should be seen in.
- Barry Lyndon was expressly meant to be projected in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio, which was common in Europe but not in America. Kubrick even had notes packed with prints of the film urging American projectionists to make sure they got the 1.66:1 ratio right, or as close to it as they could. Tellingly, even the earlier television broadcasts and videocassette releases were letterboxed, a rarity at the time. The Warner Brothers Blu-ray is cropped to a 1.78:1 ratio instead, removing a noticeable amount of picture at the top and bottom of the image for the sake of filling a widescreen television (1.66:1 would produce small black bars at the sides of the screen). Luckily, The Criterion Collection got a hold of this title and released a Blu-ray that uses the correct 1.66:1 ratio in 2017.
- Kubrick's later films, such as The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, were shown in theaters in 1.66:1 in Europe and 1.85:1 in America, but "protected" for 1.33:1, meaning the frame could be expanded vertically to fill a television screen without introducing any glaring issues like boom mics or camera tracks. Shortly before his death, Kubrick approved 1.33:1 DVDs of these films, and some fans have taken that to mean that the 1.33:1 versions are the definitive versions which reflect Kubrick's vision most accurately. However, in reality Kubrick simply felt that viewers would prefer seeing the 1.33:1 versions than having to watch either letterboxed widescreen editions (given that letterboxing can look painfully low-res on a standard definition CRT) or badly cropped Pan and Scan editions. Now that high-definition widescreen televisions are the norm, the movies have been reissued in 1.78:1...which, of course, is somewhere between 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 and thus not actually a ratio the movies were ever intended for. Downplayed considering that Kubrick himself released the films in 1.33:1 back then also because he didn't want black bars in his releases when they came to TVs in and out his time.
- The 2007 Widescreen DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray versions of The Shining feature a color grade that infamously turns the yellow tennis ball pink. This was eventually corrected in the 2019 remaster, screened at the Cannes Film Festival and later released as a 2-disc Blu-ray set, one a regular Blu-ray and the other a UHD one.
The Last Starfighter:
- The 2009 (25th anniversary) DVD and Blu-ray editions are missing a dramatic-sting music cue about half an hour in, when Beta Alex is shown with goopy skin under his blankets. Strangely, this omission doesn't seem to be the fault of the conversion to 5.1, as the 1999 (Collector's Edition) DVD is in 5.1 and has the cue. 1999's also had the rarely-included Universal Studios and tour banners at the end, but not 2009's.
- Although most of the 1999 DVD's extras are brought over to the 2009 edition, they are of considerably worse image quality, with lots of interlacing artifacts and dot-crawl (and a cropped trailer). In fact, everything on the disc, including the feature, takes up less space on the 2009 DVD, and even with a new 20-minute retrospective the entire disc is smaller. The only thing keeping the 1999 DVD from being superior, apart from a slightly dirtier film transfer and one new extra, is the replacement of the original Universal and Lorimar logos with the 1997 Universal logo.
The Little Shop of Horrors Director's Cut DVD lacks audio of the Greek Chorus singing the word, "Da-doo!" during Seymour's radio interview, as well as Orin wheezing before he dies. Plus, a dissolve after Seymour feeds Orin to Audrey II plays faster than before. None of these alterations occur on the Blu-ray.
The Longest Day was released on Blu-ray the same year and has problems with DVNR. There hasn't been a corrected version.
The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy:
- The Extended Cut Blu-ray of The Fellowship of the Ring ended up having a slight green tint added to the film. There's been massive debates over whether this it was Peter Jackson's intent or not, or if the tint was actually even noticeable. For what it's worth, neither Jackson nor Warner Bros. have actually addressed the topic other than WB stating that the green tint was supposedly intentional in the official Blu-ray website review, presumably only for the ones behind the restoration to do a bad job at it considering all the stray masks and ruined contrast in the finished product. The 4K debut of the film saw the green tint removed.
- On European Blu-Ray releases of the film trilogy's Extended Edition, most of dubs (including the German one) have pitch lower by 4% than original, due to using the same tracks as in Region 2 DVD releases, complete with botched pitch correction.
- The 4K "scan" (from both 4K releases and "remastered" Blu-ray) of both theatrical cuts and Extended Editions suffers from DNR and revisionist grading changes (such as The Two Towers's flashback scenes changed from desaturated partial colors to black & white, with the most infamous being Arwen's Fate).
Streaming services sometimes crop films shot in extra-wide aspect ratios to 1.85:1. This was common enough at Netflix that a Tumblr blog called it out in 2013; notably one of the affected films, Man on the Moon (shot for 2.35:1), was never corrected even after the service premiered a retrospective making-of documentary about its production in 2017. When it became available on other streaming services in 2022 (perhaps not coincidentally in the wake of Kino Lorber's 2K-mastered Blu-Ray, which even included a post-credits card for the Universal Studios Hollywood tour at the tail end), the proper aspect ratio was used.
Mary Poppins:
- The 2004 40th Anniversary Edition DVD featured an "Enhanced Home Theater Mix" audio track,^note which tampered the audio quite a bit, with nearly all of the sound effects replaced, and a few bits of new music added where there originally wasn't any (obvious examples include the wind when Mary Poppins is sitting on a cloud, the "poof!" noise when Mary, Jane, Michael and Bert jump into the chalk drawing, the thunder and lightning before it starts raining on the chalk drawing, and the fireworks following the "Step in Time" number). This version was also used whenever ABC Family aired the film between 2006 and 2012. Disney released a new DVD in 2009, the 45th Anniversary Edition, with this specific Enhanced Home Theater Mix gone, and ABC Family's subsequent airings also use the original sound track. Additionally, the 2013 50th Anniversary Edition has an "Enhanced Home Theater Mix" that resembles the original soundtrack.
- The 50th Anniversary Edition had DVNR and line smoothing applied to the animated sequences, although the live-action scenes retain the grain.
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the mock-Scandinavian subtitle for the movie's title was missing in some DVD releases. Thankfully, the rest of the subtitles during the opening were still there.
The 2010 Blu-ray release of The NeverEnding Story (1984) featured a noticeably different colour timing from previous home video releases of the film. Many scenes in Fantasia have a distinct orange tint to them, and the whole thing in general looks much darker. The film later received a remastered German Blu-ray release of the original German cut in 2012. Though the release featured the previously unavailable English audio track for the German version, the picture was turned up way too bright, and ruined by overzealous DVNR, resulting in waxy skin textures. A couple of years later, Warner Bros. released a new "30th Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray of the film. Though it was advertised as "newly restored", it uses the exact same transfer as the aforementioned 2010 release.
The Criterion release of Nightmare Alley (1947) has tons of DVNR, resulting in a waxy image with less detail than the Masters of Cinema release.
When the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) was re-released in a George Lucas Altered Version for its 30th anniversary, one of the many complaints was that the restoration team had actually done too good a job, erasing the atmosphere provided by the murky public domain prints and making the film look cheap and shoddy as a result. In actuality this was because the producers of the newer cut altered the contrast levels of the original film so that it would be a better match for the new footage they shot; subsequent releases have generally averted this trope by seeking to maintain the look of the older prints, even when creating new high-definition versions. Though with the film in the public domain and available for anyone to make their own release of, some of them have naturally gone overboard with DVNR, with predictable results.
Downplayed with the Kino DVD of the 1970s Bolshoi video production of The Nutcracker. While the picture does look fairly beautiful compared to the original television broadcast, the DVD release does suffer from the postage stamp effect when played on 4:3 screens and is also subjected to the inverse of PAL speedup, i.e. slowed down from the original 25 FPS framerate of the SECAM source material to 24 FPS.
The 2008 release of Patton on Blu-ray had a smudgy look to the picture, caused by overuse of DVNR. A remastered version appeared in 2012, which fixed the problem.
When the Police Academy film series was prepared for Blu-ray, it proved to be a huge challenge to improve the picture quality, which up to then had been horrendous. They actually did manage to make huge improvements by accessing the original negatives and the movies do look a lot better. However, the BIG exception is the third part. Even though it originally didn't look worse than the third, the movie was put through a horrible DVNR orgy. The end result is as disastrous as it is amazing; everything now looks like a huge watercolor painting with next to no detail left.
The second Blu-ray release of the original Predator (from around the time Predators came out in theaters) relied so heavily on DNR, the movie boasts no grain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has a strange wax look at points. The premiere of The Predator saw the original debut in 4K Ultra HD, with a transfer that restored the missing textures and grain.
Red Sonja (1985): There are two 4K transfers, by Studio Canal and Arrow Video. The Studio Canal version has an obvious colour cast which makes white robes beige and blue skies greenish. A detailed comparison can be seen here.
Rififi: The Blu-ray transfer is very grainy in places. The counter-intuitively named Unsharp Mask increases perceived sharpness by increasing edge contrast. If you push it too far, the process finds edges in areas of flat colour, causing grain. There are also a few brief scenes which haven't been processed, and which look very soft in comparison.
The Blu-ray release of Selma came under fire by Blu-ray.com over its "pale and fatigued" color. Some shots have smudges on the edges and the color in most scenes is a poor blend of light sepia and pale blacks, all flat. Many were baffled that a 2014 film shot and finished digitally be released with such mediocre video quality.
Shock Treatment:
- The DVD has soundtrack issues. In the original cut, the end credits are underscored by a reprise of the overture, and once they've rolled the screen goes to black for several additional minutes while the single version of "Shock Treatment" plays (inspiring a stretch of jokes about the void in Audience Participation showings). This was preserved for the original VHS release through Key Video (a sub-division of Fox's video arm in the 80s that mainly released cult films like this one, as well as newer titles, '40s films, drive-in movies, etc.), though they stuck in the standard FBI warning image before going to black, while Fox Movie Channel airings just cut the music-only stretch. The DVD release's soundtrack jumps ahead to the second half of the overture when the credits start, so the single version of the song starts up midway through them and fades out as they end, meaning that neither is heard at their original length. Making matters worse, the end credits — particularly the photos of the actors — are clearly timed to the overture in the original cut, so an amusing touch is lost on the DVD.
- Synching/transferring issues with the original music causes a very noticeable audio drop towards the end of "Denton U.S.A." on the DVD.
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2's Blu-ray release looks much darker and more muted than it did on its original DVD run, due to the former being scanned from a print of the movie that was in much worse condition, as the original negatives are missing.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024): For unknown reasons, certain home releases of the movie lack the gag subtitles where Ozzy accuses Sonic and friends of stealing his "hoomans", leading to a handful of shots that focus on him barking and then inexplicably linger.
The Sound of Music:
- DVD releases from 2000-2004 reuse a master originally prepared for Laserdisc and VHS, "enhanced" for 16X9 TVs by raising the sharpness to unnatural levels. For the 2005 40th Anniversary Edition DVD, a new master dialed it back down.
- The 2010 restoration applied a golden tint to the picture, and replaced the backdrop of the opening Title In with a sepia-toned photograph. Eventually, the 2025 restoration reversed these changes.
- The 2005 and 2010 restorations gradually removed the audio's high frequency, softening sound effects previously heard clearly. The 2025 restoration of the audio, remixed from six channels to either 7.1 or Dolby Atmos for Blu-ray and digital, reinstated the high frequency.
Star Wars:
- The 2004 DVDs, despite being billed as digitally restored, received a poor color correction job, de-saturating the soft colors of the original films into darker, more realistic lighting, and much of the clarity and detail of the original prints is lost in the process. A comparison on YouTube claims this was the result of Lucasfilm ordering the color correction of the films to be done at a breakneck pace of 30 days. Darth Vader's lightsaber becoming pink and Luke's alternating between blue and green are particular standouts for ridicule.
- To make matters worse, the only official DVD release of the original theatrical cuts (released as limited edition extras) reused the Definitive Collection LaserDisc master, which had a pink tint in A New Hope, DVNR and lacks the extras from that set.
- Also, the 2011 Blu-rays releases for the original films are sourced from the same digital masters as the DVDs several years earlier, which are considered very dated by modern standards, as the scanning was performed in 1080p whereas most Blu-rays are sourced from much more detailed 4K, 6K, or even 8K masters. After excessive DVNR, those 1080p scans end up with decreased quality closer to 720p, making them well below standard for such high-profile releases.
- The 2011 and '20 Blu-ray releases of The Phantom Menace use DVNR, destroying much of the picture and resulting in a more pink-tinged presentation.
- The 4K restorations of the movies on Disney+ and the 2020 "Ultimate Collector's Edition" UHD sets zigzag this, fixing many of the color correction issues that plagued the previous sets, but still have severe DVNR (as the transfer was made for the 2011 3D release) and are the Special Editions with more changes than ever.
The direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal film Kill Switch has a badly made Dolby Digital audio track, which is similar to the Stereo track except that there's little rear speaker usage as sounds that are supposed to play from the rear speaker play from the front instead.
- It's the same sound problem with his earlier film Marked for Death, much like the abovementioned The Boondock Saints, as the Dolby Digital track is copied and pasted several times from the Dolby Stereo track starting from later releases - fortunately, the Dolby Stereo track is still there.
In 2007, StudioCanal made a digital transfer of Nurse on Wheels to air on TV and release on DVD. In doing so, nobody realised that two reels were switched around, causing the middle of the film to become a jumbled mess of plot points being resolved before they are set up!
The 2003 North American DVD release of Super Mario Bros. (1993) from Disney, in addition to having zero extras, is a phoned-in transfer of the Laserdisc master, which, among other things, suffers from massive DVNR, poor color correction, and constant motion smearing. And because the transfer is in non-anamorphic widescreen, high-definition/widescreen televisions read it as a full screen image, resulting in black bars on all four sides of the screen. Its only saving grace is the surprisingly impressive 5.1 surround sound mix. Compare this to Second Sight's 2014 Blu-ray release, TC Entertainment's 2017 Blu-ray release and Umbrella Entertainment's 4K release, which boasts a 4K restoration with much crisper picture and properly formatted for widescreen televisions. Too bad it's only available in Europe and Australia and not playable elsewhere, meaning fans in North America have to import the Umbrella 4K for a premium price or stick with Disney's shoddy DVD (Disney also hasn't bothered to release it digitally there, either).
Anchor Bay's DVD of Suspiria (1977) looks quite fantastic but suffers from a very badly remixed soundtrack. The sinister musical score deliberately overpowered the sound effects and dialogue in the original mix, but now it has been turned down considerably, often to the point of being difficult to hear. Some music tracks are also flat-out missing, as are several lines of dialogue and sound effects. Perhaps the most glaring omission of all is the screaming heard over the entire end credits, which largely robs the iconic ending of its visceral punch.
The Arrow Video Blu-Ray of Time Bandits acknowledges this in its foreword, in which they state that while they did their very best in making the film look as clean as possible, the condition of the original material still resulted in a few imperfections. Director Terry Gilliam approved of the restoration.
Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger the Movie: Full Blast Action had an issue on its DVD release: in the music video playing during the end credits, the blue was desaturated. This turns Hoji from Deka Blue to "Deka Gray" (and did not do Tetsu/Deka Break any favors as well, as his suit is mostly white but has a huge section of blue.) Fortunately, the HD copy released on the Super Sentai V-Cinema & Blu-ray Box 1996-2005 fixes this. (Pictures◊ from the◊ TV-Nihon wiki.)◊
True Romance, starting from the Special Edition, not only is the audio track less clearer than the NTSC 1997 version, but also has a watered down Dolby Digital track.
Vertigo fell victim to this for its 1996 restoration. Universal had the audio remixed into six-channel DTS by dubbing new sound effects into the original music and dialogue.^note However, by the time Universal decided to restore the movie again, for its 2012 re-release and Blu-ray debut, technology had evolved to a point where they could remix the soundtrack while keeping the original sound effects.
While the 2018 restoration of The War of the Worlds (1953) is otherwise an aversion of this trope, the aerial shot of Mars at the beginning is inexplicably colored blue instead of red as shown in all prior home video releases. Thankfully, Criterion's Blu-ray and DVD releases of the film from 2020^note corrected this error.
West Side Story (1961) suffered this a few times. The first DVD from 1998 changed one of the color shifts in the overture from red to blue, to red to green to blue, and also lost the whistles that played after the Quintet. The latter change made the part where the screen changed from intense shades of red and black, to normal colors, in time with the whistling, look even stranger than it originally did. The 2003 single disc edition is a Pan and Scan version of this master. On the Special Edition DVD, the whistles returned, but the "Tonight" sequence plays with the audio out of sync. The 50th Anniversary Blu-ray featured a restoration which corrected the syncing, but also has a flaw in which the screen briefly turns black during the red-to-blue color shift of the overture. The distributors of the Blu-ray announced that they would fix this flaw in the near future, but their "fix" also leaves some people unsatisfied; the color change doesn't look as smooth as those that occurred during the rest of the overture. This video shows how smoothly the colors changed on the CBS/FOX LaserDisc, while this showcases the transitions featured on the successive DVD and Blu-ray versions.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
- The restoration used for the 2009 Blu-ray does not match theatrical framing, in large part incorporating image information from the left side of the film, which was exposed on the negatives but always meant to be replaced by the optical soundtrack, and the bottom of the film, since the additional width means additional height but it averages very low in frame. WB never resolved this problem until the 2021 4K restoration (regular Blu-ray copies still use the "incorrect" framing). Comparison examples and explanation here.
- All stereo and 5.1 remixes have some problems compared to the original mono soundtrack. In particular, Mrs. Bucket's line after "I've Got a Golden Ticket" is supposed to be "Wait! Stop!" but "Wait!" is lost; audio quality of the music tends to be subpar as well.
The Wiz had some dialogue removed from Dolby Atmos remix produced for 4K releases, such as Dorothy loudly begging to the Wiz after his order to kill Evillene, Dorothy asking an Emerald City guard how to find the witch, the guard warning Dorothy that she'll find her and her friends first, and Dorothy whispering, "Home", before she starts singing the final song. The remix also pitches down the Wiz's announcements during the Emerald City sequence and the first time Dorothy and her friends visit his throne room. The Criterion Collection's second printing of their UHD and Blu-ray releases restore the missing lines to the Atmos remix, and also include the original theatrical soundtrack.

Literature

Computer scientist Donald Knuth was so annoyed by the poor quality of digital typesetting used in his famous The Art of Computer Programming series of books that he invented the TeX typesetting language, which is widely used in academic publishing for the high quality of its output and ability to typeset mathematical equations, something very important in scientific books and journals.
The original 1981 printing of The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation was printed on high quality paper and the illustrations were more crisp looking. When the book was reprinted later in the '80s and '90s, Disney found out that the original photographic plates for the book were lost or destroyed, so they were forced to scan pages from the original book in high quality and use them as the source materials for the reprints so they wouldn't have to go to the painstaking effort of reconstructing the entire book from scratch. On top of that, the reprints used much cheaper paper than the original. While the reprints aren't anywhere near bad, a side by side comparison of the original run and its reprints reveals a noticeable drop in printing quality.

Live-Action TV

Babylon 5 was filmed in a 16:9 Aspect Ratio at a time when most shows were filmed in 4:3, with an eye towards future home video release on the newer wide-screen HDTVs that were beginning to become popular. However, the CGI could be expensive and time-consuming to produce, so it was decided to render it in 4:3 and crop the live-action footage to match for broadcast (especially given that much of the scenes in the show were Chroma Key composited shots with CGI backgrounds). The intent was to re-render all of the CGI for the eventual widescreen release, but for various reasons, by the time the DVD sets were eventually released, it was instead decided to crop the CGI scenes from 4:3 to 16:9 by Tilt And Scan, reducing their resolution and making the CGI look pixelated, particularly in the Chroma Key shots where the actors were shown in native 16:9. Averted by the 2020 HD remaster, which is in 4:3.
Tubi prints of the third season of Blue Water High remove the end credits for unknown reasons, which is possibly the fault of the company who supplied the show to the streaming service, as the first two series retain their original end credits. The Via Vision DVD set retains the end credits for all episodes.
The high definition remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was widely disparaged by both fans and its creators alike. The aspect ratio was changed to 16:9 from the original 4:3, usually by opening up the sides of the frame and cropping the top and bottom, sometimes creating a host of problems like making film equipment and, occasionally, crew members visible. Joss Whedon even stated, "Buffy was shot 4x3 [because] TVs were shaped that way. Widescreen Buffy is nonsense." The restoration team also removed many color filters applied to the original versions, thereby inadvertently changing night scenes to day, and viewers pointed out that due to heavy noise reduction the HD version actually had less fine detail and much flatter lighting than the SD version.
Fellow classic game show network BUZZR began airing all of their programming de-interlaced starting sometime in the early 2020s. However, most promos show the footage interlaced, even those of shows that they started airing after de-interlacing all of their broadcasts.
Another documentary by Jeremy Issacs focusing on the Cold War was aired on CNN in 1998. It was cropped to 16:9 aspect ratio for its 2012 DVD release and its broadcast on CNN International in 2013.
Some international DVD companies were given unfinished 16:9 masters of Dark Angel (the show was finalized in 4:3) leading to many shots with incorrect takes^note and scenes that linger on a wide shot for far too long when they were not intended to. There is at least one particularly egregious example where you can watch an entire stunt from a single POV, which includes seeing Jessica Alba standing on the sideline as she jumps in to replace her double. And because of a combination of the show being niche, never being put on streaming anywhere, and most people naturally gravitating to 16:9 these days, the proper 4:3 episodes are becoming more and more of a rarity.
Doctor Who:
- Some BBC DVD releases of the Classic era have been criticized for this. Among the things that have been missed out during the restoration process on various stories are sound cues, music cues, certain special effects shots, and major hiccups with colour regrading. The team that does the restoration, when asked about these various mistakes, commented that because of the grueling release schedule set for them by the BBC they simply don't have the time to make sure everything is 100% okay, and so the mistakes simply have to be accepted by the buying public. Aside from genuine mistakes made by the restoration team, the classic Doctor Who restorations are generally considered excellent. What's more, the most notable restoration errors have now been re-released with the errors corrected.
  - A fault in the PAL to NTSC conversion process caused the second disc of Patrick Troughton's "The Invasion" to look jittery and soft on the Region 1 DVDs; As far as it is known this has never been corrected. The North American DVD release of the TV Movie also had an odd error whereby the original NTSC master was converted to PAL (which involved speeding it up slightly due to the frame-rate difference), restored for the UK release, then converted back to NTSC for the American release; this caused problems with ghosting and motion judder.
  - For some odd reason, the initial release of "The Seeds of Death" had the VidFIRE process — which is used to restore serials to the proper Video Inside, Film Outside look they had on first broadcast — applied to the entire story instead of just the segments shot in-studio. This was most likely a mistake that the team just didn't have time to fix, and corrected in the subsequent re-release of the story.
  - The Blu-Ray releases of the Classic era have also had their fair share of issues. Season 13 in particular featured heavy usage of AI Upscaling, which led to several bizarre visual changes; from fingers being removed, actor's faces being completely changed in wide shots, and even straightening, whitening and removing Tom Baker's iconic teeth!
- The revived series Blu-rays have frequently been encoded in a worldwide-friendly format that compromises the quality of the UK version: 'The Complete Specials' and Torchwood series 1-3 were converted from 25 FPS to 60Hz, while Series 1-4 were slowed down to 24FPS. In a bizarre twist, the American co-production Torchwood: Miracle Day was sped up from 24FPS to 25FPS for the UK BD, while America received the correct 24FPS version. Series 5 onward and The Sarah Jane Adventures are presented correctly at 1080i25.
  - Strangely, the 2020 UK Series 5 Steelbook release contains the US 24FPS discs instead of the original UK 1080i25 discs. While no official reason has been given by the BBC, it was noted that UK fans complained about the UK discs editing out the On the Next trailers from the original broadcasts, which the US discs did have...
The first season of the 1997 TLC documentary series Earth's Fury (also known as Anatomy of Disaster internationally) was cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio for digital (Tubi TV and YouTube) releases.
The Paramount+ version of the 22nd episode of Eureeka's Castle cuts a few seconds off the theme song and has a black screen show up for 24 seconds during one part of the episode.
The complete series Blu-ray release of Fraggle Rock appears to have been upscaled from interlaced DVD sources without any sort of de-interlacing first. The result is that any sort of rapidly-moving object looks absolutely horrible.
The 2015 ABC Family (now Freeform) airing of the Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas special runs at a progressive 24 frames per second instead of the original interlaced 60, and adds film grain in an attempt to make the movie look "timeless" (which of course backfired among Muppet fans). Yes, they purposefully added digital destruction because they thought it'd make the film look better. Additionally, the special was cropped to 16:9, and the cropping cut out a lot of the background (which a number of fans considered to be one of the more beautiful and elaborate model sets to be made by the Jim Henson workshop), and apparently the producer of this release did not know how to use tilt-and-scan, causing characters to have part of their heads go off-screen in certain scenes. On the plus side, the Kermit the Frog framing device was restored, but only his appearances at the start and the end were restored and not the narration throughout the special^note. Subsequent home video releases did away with the film noise effect, but still present the special in 24fps and in 16:9, although the 2018 Blu-Ray release has the option to play it in the original 4:3 aspect ratio.
Warner Bros. had many of its pre-HD series deinterlaced and upscaled to HD as part of a broader remastering effort in the late 2010s. (Several of the remastered titles were originally released on Hulu or, upon its 2020 launch, HBO Max.) Although this did result in the shows being presented with a sharper picture, it also resulted in many sitcoms and unscripted series that were originally shot on videotape at 30 fps (like Full House^note, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, Living Single, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Mama's Family, The Parent 'Hood, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and The Bachelor^note) being given a faux film look that the shows didn’t originally have as the deinterlaced reprints reduced the frame rate to 24 fps. While most series merely had the original broadcast masters upgraded, some (like Growing Pains, Perfect Strangers, Step by Step and Head of the Class) were upscaled using clean masters, resulting in onscreen credits being reproduced (with some series using fonts or formatting choices that don’t match the original broadcast versions).^note
Friends has begun to suffer many of the same woes as Buffy, in particular opening up the format to widescreen when the show originally wasn't filmed as such, which has led to multiple examples of filming equipment being spotted (and most famously, the actors' body doubles randomly appearing on the edges of the frame.) Another example is a scene in "The One With The Worst Best Man Ever" in which Matt LeBlanc begins Corpsing as Chandler says the line "Way to be cool, man." In the original version of the scene, he manages to (mostly) successfully duck out of view, whereas in widescreen, he's still fully in frame.
Game Show Network:
- In the 2020s, all programs produced in the 4:3 aspect ratio have brightly-colored graphics added to the sides of the screen. These graphics actually cover several visible columns of pixels on either side, resulting in the actual footage being cropped even narrower than 4:3. This is made obvious when the graphics fade away just before the end of the show, revealing the original black pillarbox.
- Several of GSN's acquired programs in recent years are hit-or-miss on whether they air interlaced or not, resulting in some shows airing in only 30 fps (when watching on linear television) instead of the original 60 fps. For The $100,000 Pyramid, most episodes from Seasons 1 are interlaced, but some episodes, and all of Seasons 2 onward, are de-interlaced. Other modern shows acquired from ABC are entirely de-interlaced. For other shows, such as Match Game and Wheel of Fortune, some episodes air in 30 fps while others air in 60 fps, with no consistency whatsoever.
Shout Factory yet again has a tokusatsu release issue — Gekisou Sentai Carranger features noticeable artifacting in scenes where significant usage of video editing is made such as the eyecatches, chroma key and character cards. However, this can mainly be blamed on Toei's usage of subpar sources like with the Orange Box example.
Sony had been making The Gong Show and The Dating Game very filmlike on their Classic TV Rewind channel by making them 23.976fps, though this was fixed in later uploads to their sub Game Show Rewind channel to 29.970fps.
The DVD version of LA Heat has an audio issue in which the original Stereo track is copied several times to make a 5.1 mix. The original Stereo audio track is not included.
On top of being plagued with Clumsy Copyright Censorship with popular songs, one episode of Lizzie McGuire on Disney Plus, "Grand Ole Grandma", is sourced from a 50 Hz master instead of the 60 Hz master.
This clip on the official YouTube channel for Mr. Bean retains the old ITV "black and white stripes box" in the top right corner that was a cue for the broadcast staff to cue commercials (it pops up at 5:15 in the video)
Despite the fact that Poirot (series 1-8) and Jeeves and Wooster have excellent restorations, they have been tampered with on their recent DVDs. Because ITV Studios Home Entertainment released them through themselves instead of Network Distributing, the 2011 restoration of Jeeves and Wooster suffers slight cropping (even though it is in its original aspect ratio), an edit to the final episode and the end caps changed (a copyright change and the ITV Studios logo plastered over the Granada ones), while Poirot had two Granada logos plastered over the original LWT logos and the use of the original intro and closing credits in The ABC Murders, Death in the Clouds and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (they originally had no intro and different credits which was retained through the early DVD prints from VCI). Taken to extreme for the JCA TV restorations of Poirot (Series 1-Series 8) where the copyright has been changed. Averted for many Network Distributing DVD releases of Granada and LWT shows which retain the respective endboard and copyright.
The mid-'90s "Re-Mastered" versions of the first three (late-'80s) seasons of Red Dwarf suffered from horrific picture quality, due to a combination of low-quality source material, widescreen cropping, and a nascent "filmizing" process being applied to footage that wasn't shot with filmization in mind. For good measure, the restoration artists also wildly oversaturated the colour levels. The "Re-Mastered" project was initially done to sell the earlier seasons overseas, as the originals allegedly looked too low-budget.
- To a much-lesser extent, the initial Blu-Ray release of the first eight seasons had the (as-broadcast) third season and half of the fifth accidentally mastered in the wrong framerate, causing a grainy, blurry picture that was later corrected in a reissue of the affected discs.
Sharpe (the episodes from 1993—97) had a bit of this for its recent DVD and Blu-Ray releases. It has a copyright change, a logo plastered on the 1st episode, becomes widescreen (though this is an aversion because it was filmed in widescreen, although it was shown in fullscreen for earlier TV transmissions and was presented that way for early DVD releases), and gains ITV Studios logos, though it retains the Central endboards for episode 2 to episode 13. However, it's still a beautiful restoration, unlike Poirot and Jeeves and Wooster.
The Jeremy Brett version of Sherlock Holmes had changes made in an attempt to remaster/restore it.
- It seems that during the restoration of the series for their reruns on the BBC during 2003 to 2005 and their 2005 Region 2 complete collection DVD boxset, had resulted in the loss of the old Granada logos (even the ones at the beginning) and ended up getting plastered over by the same Granada logo that plastered the LWT logo on the Series 1-Series 6 of Poirot, even the JCA restoration of Granada Holmes changes the copyright and ITV Studios logos. Averted by the Region 1 DVD release of that series due to being sourced from older prints before the series was restored for their BBC reruns.
- A modern remaster sought to make the show, originally shot in 4:3, fit 16:9 screens. This was achieved by simply cropping out the top and bottom of the frame, often resulting in a claustrophobic feeling as the series relied on tight framing of the actors and the cropping made everything even tighter. Not only that, but the cropping was done so carelessly that titles and credits were chopped without consideration of legibility. Plus all but one episode^note"The Sign of Four" was shot on 16mm film, so the cropping further resulted in fuzzy/blurred shots^note as the remaining image is stretched across a larger area.
The Stargate franchise is now available on Blu-ray in its entirety in North America courtesy of VEI. Stargate SG-1's first seven seasons are an upscale that are legitimately a large improvement over the DVDs (which suffered from severe compression) but the audio is no longer the same 5.1 audio tracks that were available on DVD and seem to be edited versions of the stereo track. Once you get past the first seven seasons though, you reach the three seasons filmed in digital HD and for some reason, they also have noise removal applied to them despite not having film grain or noise to begin with. VEI's Blu-ray of Stargate Atlantis also has noise removal applied, despite it already having gotten an American blu-ray release via MGM a few years earlier, and Stargate Universe had it applied too. It seems to have been used for VEI's earlier DVD releases (which boast a "super-enhanced picture") and the new masters were carried on to the blu-rays.
The remastering job for the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was criticized for being a considerable downgrade to the one seen in the first season. In part due to CBS Digital, the studio responsible for that set and most of the later seasons, not being involved with the season and outside firm HTV-Illuminate being utilized instead. While the live-action scenes were praised for exposing details not seen in the original SD broadcasts, the haphazard restoration of the show's visual effects and uneven efforts to recreate other shots were criticised as being a step down from the consistent high quality of the first season. The rest of the remaster averts this, and is considered to be top notch by fans and Season 4's remastering by Modern Video Film was likewise far better received due to closer involvement with the main CBS remaster team.
The Ultraseven DVD set by Shout! Factory has a redone soundtrack, with reverb added to most explosions, new sound effects created in some cases and the BGM volume screwed with.
Classic World War II documentary series The World at War was reissued on DVD and Blu-ray in an "Ultimate Restored Edition". On the plus side, most of the archival war footage is remastered from the surviving 35mm or 16mm originals, descratched, stabilised and re-graded. What kills it for some viewers is that the image is cropped and scanned into widescreen. This restored version was rather controversial due to being in widescreen, so the unrestored fullscreen edition with Thames triangle logos from the 1990s (before they lost their franchise to Carlton) is shown instead for TV reruns. Fortunately the remastering was carried out on the full-frame pictures before cropping, and the most recent DVD and Blu-ray edition from Network restores the original aspect ratios, in line with Network's usual policy.

Music

The music video for Bryan Adams' "This Time" had some noticeable tape damage at the very start of the earliest "official" YouTube upload on November 2, 2010, with the audio sounding distorted for the first few notes (the file was later updated to correct the issue). An identically-titled upload from October 31, 2008 doesn't have the distortion, but it has a URL in the bottom-right corner for the entirety of the video.
The Alan Parsons Project: CD releases of The Turn of a Friendly Card were mastered with the master tape played at the wrong speed by mistake, resulting in the entire album being slower and lower-pitched than the original LP release. This was eventually corrected for the 2015 deluxe edition.
Aphex Twin: Sire Records' vinyl reissue of Selected Ambient Works Volume II was sourced from the CD edition, and in addition to the decrease in quality stemming from that, not only is missing "Stone In Focus" from the hard-to-find original vinyl edition, but leaves out "Hankie" as well. This was averted with the digital download edition and Warp Records' 30th anniversary vinyl repress, which both retain the original tracklist as well as including bonus tracks.
David Bowie's backlog hasn't had the best luck with CD releases over the years, from RCA Records sourcing their releases from multi-generation cassette masters to contested equalization choices on subsequent remasters. In terms of specific albums, some prominent issues are as follows:
- Space Oddity: Parlophone Records' 2015 remaster of the album was a noticeably rushed job and— by their own admission— not cross-examined with the original 1969 LP, resulting in a number of audio transfer issues such as a tape buzz during the line "someone else to hear" in "Cygnet Committee". Because of this, the Conversation Piece Boxed Set in 2019 went for the earlier 2009 remaster, which was made to match the original release, in addition to including a new remix by producer Tony Visconti that's been mostly praised as an improvement upon the '69 mix.
- Hunky Dory: The initial US CD release by RCA Records featured tape damage on "Changes", while the same track and "Oh! You Pretty Things" are noticeably compressed on the concurrent European CD. The US CD additionally suffers from a volume and equalization imbalance, with the tracks from Side Two being louder and brighter than the tracks from Side One.
- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The 30th anniversary expanded edition of the album in 2002 reverses the stereo channels.
- Aladdin Sane: The album was an unusual victim of RCA Records' self-admittedly rushed CD releases of the Bowie catalog in The '80s. Unlike other albums in the series, Aladdin Sane was pressed solely in Japan regardless of region (other albums had European copies made by PolyGram in West Germany), but used two different plants with different masters: CSR and Denon. The Denon master, featured on European copies and later American ones, is considered overly-muddy compared to the CSR master (used solely for early American copies) and the original LP, featuring a lower volume, reduced treble, and increased bass.
- Diamond Dogs: The original European CD release by RCA Records is unusually and noticeably bass-boosted compared to all other versions of the album, resulting in a sound often described as dark and muddy. Of note is that this is the only instance where a European RCA Bowie CD has more issues than its American counterpart; other Bowie albums in the series either have more issues on American discs, have more issues with one manufacturer than another in the same region, or are negligible in difference.
- Young Americans: The original US CD release by RCA Records cuts off the first two opening drumbeats in the Title Track due to a mastering error. Meanwhile, the 1991 Rykodisc reissue erroneously uses earlier mixes of "Win", "Fascination", and "Right" (most prominently distinguished by their heavy reverb), which staff member Jeff Rougvie claimed was the result of them simply seeking out the best-sounding tapes from Bowie's vaults without cross-referencing them with the original 1975 release (the 1989 Boxed Set Sound + Vision also uses the earlier version of "Fascination" due to the same error, which was fixed on the expanded 2003 reissue). The 1999 and 2016 remasters reinstate the original mixes.
- Station to Station: The original US CD release by RCA Records is mastered at an abnormally low volume compared to the label's other Bowie CDs, and turning the dial up reveals that the sound is extremely thin compared to the original LP; the latter can also be said of the Japanese RCA CD, which is simply a volume-boosted version of the US CD. Both discs also lop off the very start of "Word on a Wing". The European RCA CD doesn't have any of these problems; consequently, a repressing of it was included in the 2010 deluxe edition as a bonus disc.
- Low: The original CD releases by RCA Records have their own sets of issues depending on the region. American CDs feature an imbalanced equalization, with the left channel being noticeably brighter than the right. European CDs lack the equalization problem, but add fade-ins to almost every song (the exceptions being "Breaking Glass", "What in the World", "Be My Wife", and "Subterraneans"), despite many of them being written with cold-opens in mind.
- "Heroes":
  - Due to a mastering error, the initial US CD release by RCA Records lops off the first 1.8 seconds of "Beauty and the Beast". The European RCA CD, meanwhile, features an audibly congested low end, a trait not present on other releases.
  - The initial version of the 2017 remaster, included in the Boxed Set A New Career in a New Town [1977–1982], featured an audible volume drop partway through the Title Track. Parlophone Records claimed that it was to obscure irreversible damage on the master tape, but eventually relented after further complaints and included a revised version of the remaster on replacement discs for affected buyers. This fixed version was also incorporated on the standalone CD, LP, and digital releases.
- The Greatest Hits Album Fame and Fashion erroneously reverses the stereo channels on side two. Not only is this carried over to the CD release, but the US version of the latter additionally features narrower mastering on the tracks corresponding with side one.
In 2025, Devo released remasters of their music videos in association with Vevo, with uploads going onto their official YouTube channel. Despite the effort to present the videos in far better quality, this still happened. The video for "Through Being Cool" has a noticeable buzzing noise in the background, and a few seconds are lopped off after the first "Eliminate the ninnies and the twits!"; "Time Out for Fun" has the buzzing, along with slightly softer (than other uploads) audio (and, like, "Through Being Cool", a few seconds are lopped off in the first minute); and "Disco Dancer" has very muffled audio, likely due to master tape damage (something previous releases of the video, including in a DVD compilation, weren't affected by).
Electric Light Orchestra: Due to a mastering error, initial CD releases of Time include a pause between "21st Century Man" and "Hold on Tight", disrupting the intended use of Fading into the Next Song. The 2001 remaster fixes the error, restoring the segue.
Peter Gabriel: Later Geffen Records CD releases of Security prior to the 2002 remaster are sourced from analog safety tapes, resulting in a more muffled sound compared to both Geffen's earlier "target" CDs and Virgin Records' discs for European markets.
Genesis:
- Due to an indexing error, almost all CD releases of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway prior to the 2007 remaster sequence most of "Broadway Melody of 1974" as part of "Fly on a Windshield", save for the 33-second instrumental outro. Only two pre-2007 CDs properly preserve the intended starting point of the song: one American, one Canadian.
- Due to a mastering error, the original North American CD release of Duke swaps the stereo channels around. Additionally, streaming releases of the original mix disrupt the segue from "Behind the Lines" to "Duchess" by having the latter song start at a point in the transition considerably before where the former song ends.
2018 saw the digital/physical release of Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Unfortunately, this release contained very low-quality recordings of the tracks, all having a tinny/overly-digital sound to them and leaving in some of the sound effects from the original special. Thankfully, it was later re-released in 2022 with much higher quality recordings of the tracks, after the soundtrack's original master tapes were found.
Jean-Michel Jarre: The 1997 remaster of Chronology was botched in a number of ways from reversed panning to leaving audible time-code clicks.
King Crimson: All CD releases of In the Court of the Crimson King prior to 2004 were sourced from multigeneration tapes as a result of the masters being lost, resulting in them having audibly strong tape hiss and requiring various equalization tricks to work around the quality loss. The master tapes were eventually recovered from Virgin Records' archives in 2004, allowing for all reissues from the aptly-titled Original Master Edition onward to use the first-generation audio. While these in turn were criticized as overly bright, they ended up being favored over pre-2004 CDs in blind listening tests.
Yuzo Koshiro: The Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack album, released shortly after the game's Japanese release, noticeably suffers from the notorious difficulty with replicating the sound of the Genesis' YM2612 FM synthesizer, resulting in tinny audio and radically different mixing.
The CD release of Laserdance's debut album Future Generation misplaced the track markers for "Space Dance" and "Goody's Return", leading to them starting during the preceding track.
The 2015 vinyl reissue of Ken Laszlo's Self-Titled Album was based on the 2004 German CD edition rather than the original Italian pressing, leading to subpar mastering compared to the original release.
Pink Floyd: The original US CD release of The Wall by Columbia Records notoriously contains a prominent click at the start of "Comfortably Numb" due to a mastering error. Subsequent remasters fix the mistake.
The Police: The 1993 remaster of Zenyattà Mondatta adds a prominent click to the start of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" due to a mastering error.
In 2018, Follow That Dream (a sub-label of RCA solely dedicated to Elvis Presley releases) released a pair of Viva Las Vegas!-themed box sets. Whilst including countless versions of Elvis' numbers (including the long-awaited release of "The Climb"), Ann-Margret's two solo numbers ("Appreciation" and "My Rival") were only represented by versions taken directly from the film, in addition to a few session takes of the former. As a result, the supposed "masters" for her songs are filled with unnecessary sound effects that make you wonder why Viva Las Vegas never got a proper soundtrack album, despite every other Elvis film from that era getting one…
The 2004 remasters of the four EMI albums by Red Hot Chili Peppers were a disaster. The sound quality being brickwalled to be in line with their later albums is somewhat inevitable.
- Six songs from the band's first demo tape were included as bonus tracks on the first two remasters, having previously appeared on Out In LA. However, they are all from a much worse source with very audible hiss and hum compared to the previous issues. Also, "What It Is" reappears here from "Out In LA".
- The cover art for The Uplift Mofo Party Plan is noticeably cropped. In addition all four albums have Parental Advisory warnings digitally added to the artwork, rather than using stickers.
- The Uplift Mofo Party Plan only includes two bonus instrumentals when there are many more circulating outtakes from the album that would have made it more interesting. An outtake complete with lyrics, "Blues For Meister", had previously appeared on the outtakes compilation "Out In LA".
- The Mother's Milk remaster is the only one of the four which has any previously unreleased songs on it (sans alternate mixes), these being "Salute To Kareem" and "Song That Made Us What We Are Today". However, the latter track is widely believed to have been a By The Way outtake (previously known as "Strumming In D On J"), finding its way onto the album in mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile, a relevant track from this period, "Show Me Your Soul", does not appear here or as part of the remastered series at all (thus, you can find it in print on the compilation "What Hits!?). Also omitted was "Politician (Mini Rap)", which admittedly is only a small snatch of vocal later heard in "The Power Of Equality", but would have fit.
- None of the remixes included on singles released during the band's EMI period (of which there were several) were included here, meaning a number of them are only on vinyl. This is particularly egregious with "Fight Like A Brave", as EMI commissioned two different 12"s worth of remixes yet didn't include a single one on either "Out In LA" or the "Uplift Mofo" remaster.
R.E.M.: When the rarities compilation Dead Letter Office was released on CD, the entirety of the band's debut EP, Chronic Town, was appended to the end as bonus material. However, due to a mastering error, the stereo channels for the EP's songs are swapped. This was later corrected for the international Boxed Set The Originals and the standalone CD release of Chronic Town in 2022.
Rush: Initial CD copies of Moving Pictures in 1983 feature a mastering error that cuts off the first beat in "Tom Sawyer". This issue was fixed on later CD releases.
Klaus Schulze: The 1976 French pressing of Cyborg accidentally replaced the A-side "Synphära" with a lower-quality duplicate of the C-side "Chromengel".
Skinny Puppy:
- The first CD edition of Rabies was accidentally mastered with Dolby Noise Reduction, resulting in a weak and muffled sound. The 1993 remaster fixed this.
- Nettwerk's reissues of the group's vinyl back catalog were apparently slapdash-remastered to cash in on the format's revival, as they are widely considered inferior to the original pressings.
When Sparks' second album "A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing" was first issued on CD in the late '80s, it was bundled with their debut self-titled album on the same disc. This meant "Woofer"'s entire second side had to be sped up to fit on the disc. All subsequent digital re-issues of the album, including standalone CDs and streaming prints, continue to use the sped-up version.
The first CD copies of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly in 1983 were noticeably thin and muted compared to the original LP, despite the album being fully digital. After getting a letter from Stevie Wonder complaining that his CD sounded "funny," engineer Roger Nichols discovered that copies on the format were in such high demand that Warner (Bros.) Records had resorted to using analog safety tapes generations removed from the master, leading him to publicly criticize the myriad of record labels that were partaking in this practice. Warner would rectify the issue shortly after: since 1984, all later CD copies of The Nightfly have been sourced directly from the digital master.
Due to an indexing error, David Sylvian's Greatest Hits Album A Victim of Stars 1982-2012 sees the first split-second of "Forbidden Colours (Version)" play at the end of "Bamboo Music".
Talking Heads:
- Initial European CD releases of Remain in Light master side one much louder than side two; CDs since the mid-'90s use a new mastering of the album that fixes the volume imbalance, but inexplicably swaps the stereo channels and cuts off high frequencies.
- The original CD release of Speaking in Tongues (Album) was audibly sourced from a multigeneration copy tape used for the LP release. Consequently, not only does it feature the shortened versions of "Making Flippy Floppy", "Girlfriend is Better", "Slippery People", "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity", and "Moon Rocks", but it also features conspicuous tape hiss and transfer errors. North American CD releases from 1990 onward and the 2005 remaster worldwide would remedy this by switching to an earlier-generation master with the full versions of each song.
Tears for Fears: The original LP release of Songs from the Big Chair erroneously swaps the stereo channels around. This error is not present on the concurrent CD or cassette releases, but it is carried over to the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remaster.
"Weird Al" Yankovic:
- The DVD release of "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Videos has a chapter indexing error that starts "You Don't Love Me Anymore" at the guitar intro, implying that the video's true opening at the drum set is a coda to "Smells Like Nirvana". Since most other video compilations don't put these two together in this order, this is not a problem on them, and Al confirmed "The folks that mastered the DVD messed up the chapter stops."
- The Boxed Set Permanent Record: Al in the Box has had its share of problems. Original printings accidentally contained the album version of "My Bologna" while saying it was the promised older Capitol version (this was corrected). Loss of some physical artwork for the set after the move to Volcano Records made it go out of print. Later printings (Volcano only?) left out the first 27 seconds of "Hooked on Polkas"!
Ollie Wride: The vinyl edition of the Updated Re-release of Thanks In Advance crams 11 tracks, where there previously had been 9, onto a single LP rather than spreading them across two LPs, causing the quality to noticeably suffer, especially on the A-side.
Yellow Magic Orchestra: The 1992 Restless Records CD reissues of the band's catalog feature noticeably poor print work with oversaturated colors, thanks to the label using cheap Xerox printers to make the CD inserts. This is most prominently illustrated by Solid State Survivor, where most of the detail is lost.

Video Games

Nintendo:
- The Virtual Console releases of their back catalog on Wii and Wii U had a fair share of graphics and emulation issues that makes the games look and feel off. Besides suffering from input lag, the games seem to all have been put through a darkening filter (perhaps as an attempt to prevent seizures), and the NES/SNES games look unusually blurry due to an anti-aliasing effect, ostensibly meant to replicate the look of a CRT TV. The audio also seems noticeably muffled compared to other emulators and original hardware, which again might have been an attempt at replicating '80s/'90s-era speakers. Only the GBA and DS games on Wii U seem to be exempt from most of these issues.
- The NES/SNES Classics consoles and the Nintendo Switch Online rereleases fix most of the audiovisual problems from the Virtual Console releases, but the NSO releases of the N64 catalogue suffer from even more problems, with input lag galore and many visual emulation errors, like the water in Dark Link's room in the Water Temple of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time appearing as solid mist instead.^noteThis has since been fixed The timing is also off in some cases due to the emulator ignoring the native slowdown of the console, which is visible in Mario Kart 64's credits sequence, for example.
- The Wii release of Super Mario 64 has an odd issue with the Chain Chomp's mouth that makes it appear purple instead of the proper red. This was an error. In addition, the Super Mario 3D All-Stars release of the game suffers from the same muffled audio that plagued the Virtual Console titles, which sticks out given the game's otherwise flawless presentation.
- While the game itself is perfectly playable, the cutscenes in the Super Mario 3D All-Stars release of Super Mario Sunshine have been upscaled and smoothed out, resulting in a loss of detail. Furthermore, F.L.U.D.D's lines in the cutscene demonstrating a gameplay tutorial were awkwardly edited to remove mentions of the Nintendo GameCube buttons, which results in a noticeable jump in the audio.
Sega Genesis:
- AtGames's library of Sega Genesis microconsoles has been significantly criticized due to their poor performance and mangled audio (for example). Sega severed their partnership with them in 2018 to produce their own in-house Genesis microconsoles, handled by respected developer M2, which have been better-received on the whole.
- M2's Sega Genesis Mini 2, though otherwise as solid as predecessor, has forced pixel smoothing applied to all of its games, with no way to disable it outside of hacking. While it is a relatively minor effect, it makes the graphics look smoother than usual, but still not quite at the level of an actual CRT TV.
Final Fantasy:
- The remastered versions of the PS1 titles upgraded only the character models. The original low-resolution models fit in well with the low-resolution backgrounds, but the upgrade now makes it appear as though they're running around in a diorama. This is especially true for Final Fantasy VIII due to its more realistic art style. Although the issue isn't as pronounced in Final Fantasy IX, it does make it very clear who the plot-important characters are because only they got remastered models—every other NPC retains their original look. Some fans took it upon themselves to create mods to fix the visual issues.
  - The reason for all of this appears to be that the original, uncompressed files for the maps were lost in a fire. As such, all future rereleases will be stuck with the low-res versions from the games themselves, or upscaled versions thereof.
  - Final Fantasy X does not have this problem for its prerendered backgrounds, suggesting that those survived.
- The remaster of Final Fantasy XII upgraded everything except for the voice files. As such, their compressed quality sticks out compared to the newly reorchestrated soundtrack.
- The PC port of Final Fantasy XIII, which already has a bit of a reputation for being a Porting Disaster, has its FMVs be more compressed than those of the console versions, particularly with the audio, which sounds audibly worse. A fan-made patch can correct this however.
The remastered editions of the PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto games suffered from this, to the point where Rockstar apologized and gave the original version for free to anyone who had purchased the digital version of the remaster. The issues, which seem to have stemmed from using AI to upscale textures, ranged from glitched cutscenes to bizarrely wrong textures to restored text on surfaces that both looked terrible and was glaringly inaccurate.
Halo: Combat Evolved received an Anniversary Edition in 2011 (and included in the Master Chief Collection Compilation Re-release) that offered updated graphics and the option to toggle back to the graphics of the original release. When it came to displaying the original game it used Gearbox Software's flawed 2003 PC port of the game as the foundation, but contained small coding errors. These made it look even more dated than it was, specifically with bump map textures and the quality of various translucent visuals like the windows, Jackal shields and energy constructs, all of which made the game feel flatter and less vibrant than it originally was. These flaws weren't corrected in the initial release of the Master Chief Collection, but were finally fixed by an update to the MCC in 2021, allowing people to finally play Halo as originally intended without having to dig out their old Xboxes.
In Kingdom Hearts 1.5 (and the later 1.5+2.5), due to a lack of anti-aliasing and proper upscaling to 1080p, the cutscenes in Re:Chain of Memories have dithering artifacts due to being sourced from pre-rendered 480i video files from the PS2 original and not in-engine cutscenes like the other games (it's also why the lip movements are still synced to the Japanese audio rather than being re-animated to the English dub like the other games, even for the HD version). The 358/2 Days and Re:Coded cutscene movies also suffer from this, though it's zig-zagged with the former as there are several cutscenes ripped right out of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix HD from after they properly upscaled and anti-aliased that game's cutscenes to 1080p and a later PS4 free DLC cutscene depicting the Roxas VS Xion fight that was also properly rendered the same way, leaving a slightly jarring viewing experience. Kingdom Hearts I Final Mix has things left off the sides of the frames during cutscenes that expanding the picture out to 16:9 from its original 4:3 framing let people accidentally see sometimes, though on PS3 you could at least convert the games in 1.5 back to 4:3 if you wanted to. There are also sound glitches in 1 and 2 Final Mix that cause sound effects to not properly play and voice clips from some bosses to either inconsistently play, or not play at all despite being in the games' codes still that Square have yet to patch. This is odd since KH2FM was released with its English dub in Japan in 2007 with no such sound glitches present, though with the additional cutscenes and new boss characters not being dubbed until 2014 when the HD version was being put together (even the Japanese actors weren't brought back in until that point), making it odd that the sound mix for the voices would be glitched since all they had to do was add in the new voice lines and grunts for the new cutscenes and characters. Plus, Roxas' battle grunts at the beginning of 2 are replaced with Ventus' from Birth By Sleep despite the original sound files also still being in the game as well, though this seems to be a deliberate choice on behalf of the devs rather than an audio glitch (Roxas and Ventus both look and sound alike, leading them to be voiced by the same actors in both English and Japanese, so replacing Roxas' original battle grunts with the others isn't too jarring a switch unless you played the original PS2 version of the game and know what they used to sound like).
- Another anomaly comes in the form of models they used for the HD version of the first game. Due to losing the source code for it, the devs behind the remaster had to go back and recreate the game as best they could from a mix of digging out an ISO/ROM of it from a PS2 disc, rerecorded music at Yoko Shimommura's request, and character models from later games (which, though made on the same engine, had changed enough over time that it's noticeable). The results can be a bit jarring when going between games that used the newer and older models when going in order in the HD collections.
- The Steam re-release of the compilaton replaces most textures with AI-upscaled versions that look excessively smooth in some areas.
The CD-ROM version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, despite being otherwise superior to the Nintendo 64 version, had the glaring problem of its music being pitched down a semitone. This may have contributed to the fact that Midway used 48khz Stereo mastered music tracks, and not the 44khz masters as intended. It wasn't officially fixed on the Saturn and Windows/MS-DOS versions, but a fan-made patch for the PlayStation version can be found here.
The PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch ports of Persona 3 Portable had their 2D graphics upscaled with AI, resulting in blurry, smoothed-out visuals.
Despite boasting extra content, the enhanced GameCube port of Skies of Arcadia suffers from MASSIVE quality loss in its textures and music, much of which stems from poor conversion/compression methods. As a result textures that use alpha channel have the worst color branding you'll see, the music was so compressed that some tracks were outright mangled, lots of textures became blurrier^note, and there are various graphical issues not present in the original Dreamcast version^note.
Sonic the Hedgehog
- High quality versions of the animations from Sonic the Hedgehog CD were included in Sonic Mega Collection, but they were given new audio and sped up to coincide with it, resulting in insidious frame blending and ghosting, especially during the ending cutscenes. The developers of later Sonic CD ports didn't have access to the master footage (if it still exists at all), and previous versions of the game used low-quality, low-res video, so they had to use the edited versions — edited again to match the original slower speed, making the frame blending even worse. In addition, the 2011 remaster cropped the top and bottom of the frame from its original 4:3 to 16:9, and the cropped versions are used even if you're running the game in 4:3. A fan remaster of the opening animation used an AI restoration model to upscale and clean the footage, along with a color correction pass based on stills of the original production cels, but using the same process on the ending animations proved fruitless due to a far greater amount of damage. The same fans later went on to produce a more thorough remaster for Sonic Origins—using a combination of AI and manual cleanup, including tracing and rotoscoping—with a softer film-based color pass and the original 4:3 aspect ratio. While the ending cutscenes weren't fully ridden of frame blending and contain some AI "blurriness" on damaged frames, the end result still looks significantly cleaner than previous releases, and this likely is the best possible outcome given the unavailability of the original masters.
- The 2004 PC port of Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut (already a Remaster Disaster to begin with) broke a lot of the intended visual effects (most notably vertex coloring and mipmaps), and took a massive hit to sound quality since all of the sound effects were converted to a lower quality format, resulting in the music no longer having proper loops and every sound in the game being more muffled than it was originally. While the port of the game to Steam, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 does revert back to the original audio for the most part and fixes the lack of mipmaps, most of the visual downgrades still remain, and even introduced its own audio problems.
Ys I & II Chronicles, a remaster of the first two games in the series, includes bilinear or trilinear filtering that makes the graphics look smoother. This can be disabled, so it's not a problem for those who prefer a pixel-sharp image, but for some reason, the filtering is forced to be on during Ys I's boss battles.

Web Animation

As seen in this video, the early seasons of Eddsworld suffered majorly from this when they were ported from Newgrounds to YouTube, as the latter site wasn't able to support the .swf files that contained the raw animation, forcing the showrunners to convert them into a supported video file type using a program that wound up compressing the animations to such an extent that several scenes with a lot of fluid motion happening at once were reduced to as little as three frames a second. This also led to noticably reduced image resolution due to the vectors being converted into bitmaps, slightly reduced video speed, and a loss of saturation in the colors. Fortunately, with more powerful video editors becoming available over time, future episodes would suffer from progressively less quality loss when being uploaded to YouTube, and several episodes would be properly remastered and reuploaded in far higher definition through the "Eddsworld Remastered" playlist on the show's official second channel.
The TV series of Happy Tree Friends was rereleased for the infamous "Complete Disaster" DVD and the Mondo Media website, but it was given a Pan and Scan so it would fit the 16:9 aspect ratio, but the problem was unlike the internet episodes where Flash files could be converted without a problem because they were easily public, the files for this series weren't available, so they just cropped it, which while not a problem for the intro and end credits, some shots that close up on a character's face now can look awkward. They also oversaturated the colors as well to match up with the current saturation, which also can make it hard to see compared to the original YouTube uploads, 2006 DVDs and G4TV airings of the show. The current botched release prints of the TV series are also currently used on streaming platforms like Crunchyroll and Tubi as well.
- In Butter Me Up (also known as Giggles' Bumper), the audio was pitched lower than normal, where this was absent in the 2005 broadcast.
- The reason for the files being private were possibly because both were animated by Fatkat Animation Studios, which closed down in 2009 and production moved to Oasis Entertainment.
Even Homestar Runner wasn't immune to this.
- Most of the home video releases suffer from this due to how the footage was rendered. Unlike the original flash files, the image quality of the toons suffers from having less color. The only upside is that the audio is clearer and the live-action segments are rendered in higher quality.
- Thanks to Adobe Flash ending support in 2021, the site had to switch to Ruffle to run the original flash files. However, due to it being an early build (for now), the files are downsized as both image and audio quality are worse than when they were running through Flash natively. It is recommended that people use Greasemonkey's All-in-One player (which is only on Mozilla Firefox) if they continue using the site or go to the old site (old.homestrrunner.com).
Due to the creators having to remove a copyrighted song, the audio of Episode 11 of Inanimate Insanity is heavily off-key. Fortunately, they since made a fixed version that made them way less off-key.

Web Video

As of 2025, YouTube has recently been doing AI upscaling to many older videos without the creator's consent, causing a bit of controversy when one of them glitched and added flashing lights that weren't there before.

Digital Destruction
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