Are the reruns of the cropped HD episodes being shown in widescreen now?

[Dogasu]

When the dub of first episodes produced in HD ("The Lonely Snover") premiered on Cartoon Network, they were cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio and aired in standard definition.

This continued for a while until the episode "Classroom Training." From that point onward, the show was aired with its proper 16:9 aspect ratio and in HD.

So my question is...are those older, cropped episodes airing uncropped now?

 

[Coffee]

I don't think DP121-DP125 have been rerun at this point, discounting the reairings that occur on the Sunday after they air.

 

[Thingamajig]

I guess there's no solid proof until the episodes are actually rerun, but at the moment it's not looking good.

There is only one common element to all of the HD episodes in the dub, and that's the opening theme (and closing credits I guess, but they're harder to compare)

I present to you, exhibit A.

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8236/widescreenissue.png

The three screenshots are from different episodes. The first, DP122, one of the HD episodes that was cropped. The second is DP130, one that was not cropped and the last one is today's episode - which for some reason was cropped again (at least it was in the version I took the screenshot from).

Anyway, you can see from comparing the first and second one is that, despite it being the same frame of the OP, the credits are in a different part of the picture. The third one, however, despite being cropped - matches the position on the screen from the episode that was broadcast in widescreen.

So there you have it, some evidence that the reruns will still be in 4:3.

 

[Cybersai]

Does CN really gain anything by cropping the episodes? Seriously, why bother?

 

[Dogasu]

Maybe they got complaints from kids about the black bars taking up too much of the screen?


Are the episodes shown in 16:9 on the Cartoon Network website? The videos won't play for me since I'm not in the U.S. at the moment.

 

[Rex Kamex]

Maybe they got complaints from kids about the black bars taking up too much of the screen?

Which would really be too bad, but kids should know that they're seeing more of the picture, not less. This isn't like the Dragon Ball Z "orange bricks" season sets...

 

[Midnight Blue]

Ok, who is the stupid one in this situation? I kinda liked the 16:9, it made it feel like a movie! But the one where the credits are cropped off, that just made look so lazy.