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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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A possible explanation that springs to mind is that while the original on-set recording may have been done in a higher resolution format, broadcast was still at 1080p and as a result the original VFX where the vomit hose technician would have been painted out were done at 1080p and the failure to re-do the paint out at a higher resolution was a product of negligence, laziness, or penny pinching on the part of the parent company.

If this is the case (and it sounds plausible), then presumably the VFX layers in which the crew are painted out are transparent 1080p video files. Sounds like it would be trivial to upscale them to 4k and drop them into the timeline on top of your upscaled 4k live-action footage.

Perhaps, but it still has to be someone's job to do that for it to get done. I think Charlie is probably correct that whoever was managing the remaster didn't know or simply forgot that this was a thing that was needed, nobody got the job, and nobody at that level took the time to QA the final product.