Mr Burns would say: excellent Disney Plus is finally making "The Simpsons" available in its original 4:3 aspect ratio starting today The fix will be delivered as a special new feature, allowing viewers to switch between watching episodes in the original 4:3 aspect ratio or in the remastered 16:9 widescreen format (where available)

Disney Plus may be one of the best streaming services on the market, but since its launch in November, The Simpsons has come under a lot of fire for its aspect ratio For the first 19 ½ seasons of The Simpsons, episodes aired in a 4:3 format, but were streamed in 16:9 on Disney Plus

Pushing the 4:3 aspect ratio into a 16:9 window means that the show is shown in a larger format In the case of "The Simpsons," that means cutting out many of the visual gags and background jokes scattered throughout the older episodes

Disney Plus has righted that wrong, making at least one of our staff members want to join again Joe Rice, VP of Media Products, wrote on his blog that the goal of Disney Plus was to give fans control over what aspect ratio they watch

"To support both the original 4:3 aspect ratio and the 16:9 version of 'The Simpsons,' we had to challenge our previous assumptions and rethink how content is packaged and delivered for streaming," Rice said 'We introduced a new feature to our Disney+ app today that will allow our fans to watch their favorite Disney+ videos in a new way This feature not only gives fans a choice of video viewing formats, but also opens up many exciting opportunities to deliver content in novel ways in the future

The feature is available on mobile, web, and streaming TV devices

The Disney Plus product team faced many challenges in making both aspect ratios available Existing features such as autoplay, continuous viewing, and watch lists had to be maintained, as well as all audio, video, and subtitle components

Rice's contribution goes into the technical minutiae of how it was accomplished Each episode consists of an audiovisual component (video, various audio languages and formats, and subtitles) and functional and display metadata (artwork, title, description, credits, etc) These are fixed to individual ID numbers Industry standards previously assumed that an individual ID would be associated with a single video edit

"The concept of multiple media 'facets,' or flexible combinations of audio, video, and subtitle components, was introduced," he explains

Each episode of "The Simpsons" would have two facets of the same content, sharing all components except video There is now a facet of the original 4:3 aspect ratio and a facet of the HD 16:9 aspect ratio The new concept of facets will support new types of content presentation on Disney Plus and will open up many exciting opportunities for novel presentations of content in the future," Rice said

Does this mean the door is open for Disney Plus to introduce vertical video for some of its shows, TikTok and Quibi had better watch out