Yeah, you really need digital for widescreen, or at least something like DVD which will output anamorphic pictures to give you proper widescreen.

I never watch 4:3 programmes stretched to fill the 16:9 screen. I usually crop them, either to 14:9 or 16:9. If your TV doesn't have these modes then it is not worth having especially 16:9.

You should keep your TV and get digital - if not OnDigital then SkyDigital. Even then, most of the material is still 4:3 so you would have to watch it stretched, or (if your TV does not support zoom), centred on the middle with black bars left and right.

Or swap your widescreen for one with several modes. My JVC 24" is great for that sort of thing.

Its amazing how many people buy widescreen and are oblivious to the fact that most of the pictures they see are stretched or zoomed.(not you 2 obvsly)
Both of which are a horrible concept to me.
zoomed is like having a nice big telly with the top & bottom cut off and
stretched is, well, a bit of a silly idea really. I'd rather have vertical black bars when watching "square" pictures.
I've always thought that widescreens were so expensive it'd be better to buy a HUGE square tv so that when watching widescreen (with bars top & bottom) the visible area is still as big as a decent sized widescreen. -that way when you are watching square broadcasts you can have a huge unstreched,unzoomed normal picture.

I think a lot of people just dont like bars on the screen because they think theres something behind them that they cant see!

Having said all that, Widescreen is the way of the future and when nearly everything is being broadcast in widescreen I'll get one.

It's really strange but apart from Channel 4 16:9 broadcasts, our widescreen telly still has the bars at top & bottom, AND the picture's streched.

That BASTARD of a MACHINE!!!

Widescreen is best in digital. I loathe the fact that nearly every TV shop shows 16/9 sets with a hideous s-t-r-e-c-h-e-d 4/3 picture. The area I live in has good ONdigital reception, so there's no excuse to use 4/3. Most folks I know are smart enough to see the distortion, and it puts them off moving to widescreen. Time for the retailers and broadcasters to knock a few heads together perhaps.....

This is probably the same comment that Richard Bell was making, but i naturally assumed that everyone had the same kind of widscreen TV as me i.e. a 4:3 mode for "normal" shows, a 16:9 fir widescreen, and a "special" mode for widescreen videos (i.e it stretches the screen both horizontally and vertically). Ooviously, any other widescreen TV would be pretty pointless as it stands now. But you can't be a neophobe all your life can you?

>It's really strange but apart from Channel 4 16:9 broadcasts, our widescreen telly still has the bars at top & bottom, AND the picture's streched.

Presumably you are watching on analogue. I think only channel four send the correct switching signal to zoom in a 16:9 picture to fill the screen.

Most of what is shown in 'widescreen' these days, is shown in 14:9 on analogue with narrower black bars. Ideally, you want a TV which can zoom in to make the picture fill the screen vertically and have smaller bars horizontally. Like mine does. If your TV doesn't have this mode, you can either have the picture stretched as you do, you can have it zoomed all the way in, so you lose some of the horizontal picture but the picture fills the screen vertically, or you can have all of the picture showing, in the correct ratio, but with a black surround.

I saw a TV once - a 28" Matsui that only had two modes - stretched and regular. There was no way I was going to buy it.

Incidentally, the Panoramic mode my TV has - I have doctored the settings so that 14:9 black bars are cut off and don't spoil the picture.

The BBC films all shows in widescreen now. They are automatically transmitted in w/s on digital or widescreen tellys. On normal tv's they loose a 6th of the image either side of the main picture. Logically they should broadcast with black bands above and below the picture to show the image in the ratio it was shot, but they don't do this because they are worried about license payers saying they have paid for a full screen and only 2/3 of it is being used.
SO - if you direct something for the BBC you are given a leaflet explaining that you must have no important visual info in the outer 2/6ths of the screen, which is really hard work, especially in comedy, where the timing of a joke may be to do with the point at which an image enters the shot.

The BBC films all shows in widescreen now. They are automatically transmitted in w/s on digital or widescreen tellys. On normal tv's they loose a 6th of the image either side of the main picture. Logically they should broadcast with black bands above and below the picture to show the image in the ratio it was shot, but they don't do this because they are worried about license payers saying they have paid for a full screen and only 2/3 of it is being used.
SO - if you direct something for the BBC you are given a leaflet explaining that you must have no important visual info in the outer 2/6ths of the screen, which is really hard work, especially in comedy, where the timing of a joke may be to do with the point at which an image enters the shot.

The BBC films all shows in widescreen now. They are automatically transmitted in w/s on digital or widescreen tellys. On normal tv's they loose a 6th of the image either side of the main picture. Logically they should broadcast with black bands above and below the picture to show the image in the ratio it was shot, but they don't do this because they are worried about license payers saying they have paid for a full screen and only 2/3 of it is being used.
SO - if you direct something for the BBC you are given a leaflet explaining that you must have no important visual info in the outer 2/6ths of the screen, which is really hard work, especially in comedy, where the timing of a joke may be to do with the point at which an image enters the shot.

>>It's really strange but apart from Channel 4 16:9 broadcasts, our widescreen telly still has the bars at top & bottom, AND the picture's streched.
>
>Presumably you are watching on analogue. I think only channel four send the correct switching signal to zoom in a 16:9 picture to fill the screen.
>
>Most of what is shown in 'widescreen' these days, is shown in 14:9 on analogue with narrower black bars. Ideally, you want a TV which can zoom in to make the picture fill the screen vertically and have smaller bars horizontally. Like mine does. If your TV doesn't have this mode, you can either have the picture stretched as you do, you can have it zoomed all the way in, so you lose some of the horizontal picture but the picture fills the screen vertically, or you can have all of the picture showing, in the correct ratio, but with a black surround.
>
>I saw a TV once - a 28" Matsui that only had two modes - stretched and regular. There was no way I was going to buy it.
>
>Incidentally, the Panoramic mode my TV has - I have doctored the settings so that 14:9 black bars are cut off and don't spoil the picture.
>
>The Sony set I have will either show 4:3 with the two black bars vertically (the picture then shrinks to the equivelant of a 21" 4:3 set)or it will "zoom" which to me is pointless as you loose the top and bottom of the picture and I feel the resolution is not so great. Finally it will go to "smart" mode (which is what I have had it on) which squeezes the picture into widescreen, distorting the top and bottom of the picture. As I originally mentioned, apparently I can't get digital where I live, hence why I am swapping back to a Sony 28" 4:3 set. Its only a hire set so when digital does become available, I may swap back. I am told though that say like I had before, a 28" 4:3 set, then to have a 28" widescreen will look much smaller (and it did) Apparently I would need to go to a 32" widescreen to keep a large enough picture ?

>The BBC films all shows in widescreen now. They are automatically transmitted in w/s on digital or widescreen tellys. On normal tv's they loose a 6th of the image either side of the main picture. Logically they should broadcast with black bands above and below the picture to show the image in the ratio it was shot, but they don't do this because they are worried about license payers saying they have paid for a full screen and only 2/3 of it is being used.

Yeah, silly really, considering this way you actually see less! But I suppose this is just a compromise between widescreen and normal TVs and it'll be gone in the next few years as we embrace digital...

>SO - if you direct something for the BBC you are given a leaflet explaining that you must have no important visual info in the outer 2/6ths of the screen, which is really hard work, especially in comedy, where the timing of a joke may be to do with the point at which an image enters the shot.

It basically means that even though you've got a wider screen, a third of it has to be entirely useless! This is presumably annoying for captions as well, it'd be difficult to get ones snuggly sitting in the corner so they'd have to be centred (as in all BBC Presentation's output at present) and I've seen a few widescreen documentries shown in that sub-widescreen format Stu's talking about where whole parts of names were missing as they came up on the screen! Surely the BBC should soon start phasing in full widescreen on analouge like Channel 4 seem to be..

>Surely the BBC should soon start phasing in >full widescreen on analouge like Channel 4 >seem to be..

Of course, Channel 4 sometimes show programmes in widescreen when they shouldn't be. I don't know, you'd think no one was watching Channel 4.

I mean, howw are the public supposed to 'embrace' digital when TV channels can't be arsed to make it seem exciting. I remember the BBC ran an advert in the early days proclaiming how good digital was (with all that BBC Quirk nonsense), but now it just appears that the main selling point of digital is so you can 'catch up' on episodes of Eastenders you may have missed.
Have the BBC not heard of a fucking video rocorder or something?

I don't watch Saturday morning TV these days, so I only just noticed -
That FBI show is done in w/screen but the American kid's shows they show in the programme aren't, meaning there's a black border all the way round the screen. This is a national television station for crying out loud, and our oldest and "greatest" too! You'd think they'd have someone to press the "zoom" button when needed, eh?

It does seem like they've forgotten they're actually broadcasting when this sort of thing happens, I mean I don't care about the show and it's only a small thing but, y'know, it's not a good sign

ITV are slowly going to widescreen: pretty well all of the HSBC-sponsored drama is transmitted as 14:9 for 4:3 screens/16:9 for widescreens or known in the trade as AFD 6 (where AFD = Actual Format Descriptor). Even other stuff like The Bill and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is in this format.

Other formats available are:

AFD 1 (fixed 4:3) - Coronation Street, most regional stuff;

AFD 2 (fixed 16:9 image, not used much) - some feature films;

AFD 3 (fixed 14:9 image, used more than AFD 2) - some feature films;

AFD 5 (4:3 on a 4:3 screen/14:9 on a widescreen, used more and more as an alternative to AFD 6) - Emmerdale, some regional progs;

AFD 7 (4:3 on a 4:3 screen/16:9 on a widescreen, used increasingly) - live sports events that come from the UK, like football and rugby.

You'll notice that there isn't an AFD 4 - I think the reason for that is it was originally set up but is never used ... unless anyone knows differently, of course!

The AFD5 that ITV uses is usually 4:3 pictures trimmed into a 14:9 frame. If viewed on a 4:3 set in letterbox mode you get black bands at top, bottom, and right side of the screen(!)

Worse still, some widescreen programme captions get cropped if they are expanded into 4:3 - which means you have to view it in letterbox-which defeats the purpose of allowing people to choose the viewing mode!

>(where AFD = Actual Format Descriptor)

Actually, it stands for Active Frame Descriptor.

BTW, to the person who made the comment about C4 apparently "phasing in" true widescreen on analogue - they're not! What you're seeing is the last vestiges of their PALplus project (an 1990s EBU initiative to try and introduce analogue widescreen).

C4 send a widescreen switching signal on line 23 of the analogue picture, but it's not proper widescreen - all it does is zoom up the existing picture to make it fill more of a 16:9 TV.

True anamorphic 16:9 widescreen is only available via digital TV broadcasts or DVD. So-called "widescreen" videotapes aren't anamorphic, so if you blow them up to try and lose the black bars all you're really doing is getting a lower-resolution picture - you're certainly not getting a true widescreen image.

So, scuse me if I'm getting it wrong, but the only way to send a proper widescreen picture across analouge would make it look all squishy and thin, right?

>So, scuse me if I'm getting it wrong, but the only way to send a proper widescreen picture across analouge would make it look all squishy and thin, right?

No, channel 4 used to use PAL+ which appeared 16:9 widescreen or normal TVs, but encoded extra information in the black bars. They did this by varying the luminescance (sp?) which hardly showed up in the picture.

They have stopped this now and when they broadcast letterbox on analogue it is without this info.

If they did use anamorphic the picture would appear all thin to a 4:3 viewer who didn't have a 16:9 button on his TV.

Why widescreen videotapes aren't like this I don't know. The 16:9 Star Wars was hopeless.