Daring Fireball
HBO Max Butchers ‘Mad Men’ in Botched ‘Remastering’
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/02/hbo-max-butchers-mad-men
HBO Max Butchers ‘Mad Men’ in Botched ‘Remastering’

Link to: https://www.wired.com/story/hbo-maxs-mad-men-barf-scene-proves-remastered-doesnt-mean-better/

Daring Fireball
Dec 2 at 11:54pmDF Tootbot
Show threadBob PetersonDec 3
@daringfireball We’ve traveled so far since those early days when we whinged about colorization.
Show threadFrançois KahnDec 3
@daringfireball No, it's not Warner or HBO Max that botched the episodes. They didn't bother to check them, but the problem is with the original studio, Lionsgate. It looks like LG went back to the original film negative for the early seasons (the crew switched to Arri Alexa and digital during season 5), rescanned them in 4K, but forgot that some shots featured CGI, like mattes to hide equipment or technicians. Hence these blunders. HBO Max simply has exclusive rights on the 4K versions.
Show threadNitDec 3

@kahn @daringfireball there’s a thread on Bluesky that seems to align with this:

https://bsky.app/profile/tvaziri.com/post/3m6zcqcrzsc2a

Mad Men has been on my list forever. Once they work out these kinks I think I’ll finally get round to watching in 4K.

Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri.com)

This is absolutely real. The current HBO Max version of this "Mad Men" episode "remastered for 4K" did not include an updated visual effects shot, which originally painted out the crew and equipment. Not just that, the HBO Max episode titles/order is jumbled for s01. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Bluesky Social
Show threadTodd VaziriDec 3
@NitP @kahn @daringfireball good thread
Show threadTodd VaziriDec 3
@kahn @daringfireball yes, but I'd argue that customers pay HBO MAX and see the HBO MAX logo when they fire up the app and HBO MAX has been promoting the release of Mad Men... so they are absolutely partially responsible for this debacle
Show threadMatt GarberDec 3
@daringfireball @gruber Typo, or recent quirk with your linked list redirects, that the URL you used for “a well-known idiot” ends in .php?
Show threadJohn GruberDec 6

@matt_garber Mistake/typo. But I'm not sure how it happened, because I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that automatically nukes those .php extensions from DF URLs when I paste them. (They come out of my CMS that way.) It's a genuine mystery to me how this happened. I must have drag-and-dropped the URL instead of copy-and-pasting it!

Thanks for reporting this!

Show threadmrpommerDec 3
@daringfireball FWIW, the box set (all seven seasons) of Mad Men is for sale for C$20 on the iTunes store right now.