I dinna ken! I wisnay watching it. Right?

Cricket on Channel 4 didn't appear to be in widescreen - even though the adverts were. Very strange, particularily when it was on all day.

I could be mistaken though - to be honest, i couldn't give a toss... about sport.

Cricket wasn't in widscreen. NOr was C5. Maybe C4 haven't updated their sport cameras.

Cricket wasn't in widscreen. NOr was C5. Maybe C4 haven't updated their sport cameras.

>What are your thoughts from your region about the transition to 'widescreen' broadcasting which began today 1/7/2000?

Widescreen has been going for ages. The only difference is that all ITV companies are now doing 16:9 widescreen continuity and trailers on DTT, and all adverts on all-widescreen cable channels (including channel 5 DTT, but not elsewhere) are in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.

All 4:3 programmes are still 4:3 and all 16:9 programmes are still 16:9. Though, as before, more and more programmes will be made in 16:9


>What was your region's output like today?

UTV's was okay apart for all the ad breaks during SM:tv live which didn't opt-out the sound - i.e. it stayed in the studio. I wonder will the ad companies get their money back. Or will UTV not tell them?

I don't think UTV have much choice as surely the 'Sales Houses' will have to report the commercials as being 'marred' or lost and so they will have to be either reshown at a similar time for nowt or they will get some of their money back. I think they will go with a free second showing??! ?

the cricket was in 4:3

and I thought stuff for TV was shot in 14:9 widescreen, not the traditional 16:9

>the cricket was in 4:3
>
>and I thought stuff for TV was shot in 14:9 widescreen, not the traditional 16:9

TV stuff is usually shot in 4:3 or 16:9

Nothing is ever shot in 14:9 - widescreen TV is shot in 16:9 for digital, but cropped to 14:9 letterbox for analogue.

Sometimes 4:3 images are made widescreen by zooming them in slightly (to 14:9 cutting a bit off the top- meaning the digital picture has vertical black bars, the analogue one has horizontal ones). News 24 does this.

Sometimes 4:3 images are zoomed right in to 16:9 cutting a lot off the top. This can make the resolution poor on occasion, especially when these pictures are cropped further to make them 14:9 letterbox for analogue.

> I don't think UTV have much choice as surely the 'Sales Houses' will have to report the commercials as being 'marred' or lost and so they will
have to be either reshown at a similar time for nowt or they will get some of their money back. I think they will go with a free second showing??! ?

This is true. The control rooms of each company have to let their sales houses know, either directly or via their presentation offices, which commercials are marred, mutilated or lost. Depending on how bad the commercial has been affected will depending on the compensation.

>This is true. The control rooms of each company have to let their sales houses know, either directly or via their presentation offices, which commercials are marred, mutilated or lost. Depending on how bad the commercial has been affected will depending on the compensation.

I still can't believe that four or five ad breaks went out like this!

i know its on the other side... but even Neighbours has gone widescreen

Yorkshire got the widescreen advert system sorted out without problems, and seems to have been working fine since. That control centre which does the Granada stations seems to be doing it's job fine these days, unlike in the early days :)

I'll admit that I'm a complete ignoramus on this topic, but why is it that *every single* widescreen TV I see in John Lewis, Radio Rentals, etc that's on an aerial or dish feed (i.e. not hooked up to a DVD player) is just showing a stretched conventional picture?

Nothing seems to have changed since July 1st either. Are there some practical problems associated with providing different ratio images to a shop full of tellies, or are the staff simply stupid? I mean, are they trying to sell widescreen on the basis that, hey, it's got a *wider* screen, so you can make everyone in your favourite soap look fatter - great, eh? If they can't get a genuine widescreen (16:9, whatever it is) terrestrial signal, surely they should just play a film through the thing, set it to the standard image ratio or switch the bugger off.

If I'm missing something here, please enlighten me.

Anglia (West) & C4 (Sandy Heath) broadcast 14:9 indents and trailers on analogue. Haven't checked digital yet.

It's started a new game in our house: Spot the edit - see if you can see the cropping and editing for widescreen when watching the ads. (More fun than some of the shows).

Also, further to earlier comments, when you go into town play: Spot the streched picture.
I've even seen 14:9 analogue pictures streched with the thin bars at top and bottom of the screen in shop windows.

The Big Breakfast was in widescreen for about 10 secs today, well not really , the picture was just cut, the clock was along the bottom black bar of the screen

If they can't get a genuine widescreen (16:9, whatever it is) terrestrial signal, surely they should just play a film through the thing, set it to the standard image ratio or switch the bugger off.

News 24 is the only terrestrial channel broadcasting constantly in anamorphic widescreen. No analogue channels do at all. They should pipe News 24 through TVs - though I have seen a ws picture cropped to 4:3 by the box and then stretched to 16:9 by the badly set-up TV. Honestly - when will Curry's learn?!