MaximRecoil said:
No, not everyone had adopted 16:9 TVs in 2006 (much less well before 2006), nor even most people. You could even still buy brand new 4:3 standard definition CRT TVs in mainstream stores at the time (e.g. Wal-Mart). 16:9 DVD releases were pretty standard in 2006 because they benefited the ever-increasing number of people who had widescreen TVs, and they were 100% backward compatible with 4:3 TVs, so there was no downside to them.
4:3 TV's stopped being sold here in the UK much earlier than 2006, in fact CRT TV's weren't on sale AT ALL in 2006, only LCD and Plasma 16:9 TV's. You could find them online, just about, but in the main stores, no CRT's to be found. How do i know this, In 2005 my Dad wanted to replace his now defunked 4:3 portable TV, which had a built in VHS player. We went all around the shops and nothing. So he got a 16:9 20" LCD TV with built in DVD player instead. But even then, most people i knew who HADN'T upgraded to a LCD/ Plasma still had 16:9 CRT TV's, not 4:3
the GOUT was horrendous quality coming from a studio that had access to prints/ negatives. How difficult would it have been to make a scan off one of the prints for these bonus discs? Even without a clean up they would have looked miles better than crappy laserdisc transfers. These were actually LESS quality than the preservations fans were doing at the time. Forget the slight improvement in sharpness of the picture, the digital smearing and the terrible aliasing problems made that release an joke.