BBC Widescreen Broadcast Policy

[Gavtech]

I know some of you ladies and gentleman have worked in Broadcasting at some time... and perhaps currently.

I regularly encounter queries about how some broadcasts do not fill a widescreen TV. [ BBC1 Eastenders is one such cited programme]

I have no interest in widescreen myself so I have never got on top of this issue.

I believe there was a time when BBC broadcast a hybrid 14:9 widescreen as a compromise during this lengthy transition period. Do they stilll do that?

Can anyone point me to a resource that deals with these issue... specifically, if possible, in regard to BBC's broadcasting policy and standards.

[Focus Diode]

I've noticed this on the Newcastle/North East and Cumbria version of "Look North" when seen on a widescreen tv.

There's a gap of about an inch on the right of the picture, sometimes some information such as credits are partly missing from the bottom.

Widescreen tv is only available from digital services including Freeview. Analogue transmits what I call "Fake w/screen". On a conventional set there's a gap at the top and bottom, when seen on a w/s set the gaps are still there and images very squashed. It's amazing what folk put up with on the grounds of the latest fashions......

Brian

[ianj]

Also to note is the fact that many cheap widescreen sets do not have an automatic switching facility............only 3 or 4 presets..........Ive seen people watching cheap w/screens where everyone has a rugby-ball shaped head and are 7 ft wide!! the owners are quite happy with the set............................................... ....................ianj

[paulsherwin]

I think the OP is referring to analogue. There is no such thing as 'widescreen' with this technology. Programme material made in 4:3 will be transmitted in this ratio, while material in 16:9 ('widescreen') will be cropped to 14:9 and transmitted with black borders at the top and bottom.

How this stuff is displayed on a widescreen TV depends on the user's preferences. By default TVs will usually show the pictures in 'stretchyvision' with the picture stretched out to fit the wider screen. 14:9 will still have black borders and tends to look especially ridiculous in this format. The 'correct' way to watch is pillarboxed, with black lines on each side of the picture. 14:9 material tends to look best zoomed, where the top and bottom of the picture are discarded. Some TVs have additional display options.

16:9 digital should display correctly on a widescreen TV, while 4:3 digital will be handled like 4:3 analogue above. Some 16:9 material sourced from analogue production facilities will actually be 14:9 with small black borders on each side of the widescreen picture - this can be seen clearly on some BBC news output.

The vast majority of UK programming is now made in 16:9. The biggest exception is ITN's news bulletins for C4 and five (their ITV bulletins are ARCd to 16:9). Sky News switched from 4:3 to 16:9 about a year ago.

Paul

[Gavtech]

Thanks for that detail Paul.

One thing I remain confused about is the pixel count.

Ignoring all other in-between's, fixes , workarounds , stretches etc... It would seem that a true 16:9 widescreen picture actually carries more information, at the sides, that is absent from the other extreme of a 4:3 [ or am I still stuck back in the analogue days here? ] ... so therefore one would think it must have more pixels... yet from what I have learned so far, it does not.

...or am I misinformed?

What is the pixel dimension for a standard widescreen picture?... and if it is 720 x 576 ... then what happens when tranmitting 4:3... or is there now no such standard in Digital terretrial broadcasting?
... and in analogue broadcasting what happens ? Always the same number of pixels ? .. just stretched or squeezed?

My confusion is evident.

[ppppenguin]

In the studio it's all 720x576 for standard definitiion. The pixels are wider for 16:9. There is a standard with 960 pixels for 16:9 but I don't think it's used very much. It uses 18MHz luminance sampling rather than 13.5MHz.

[Duke_Nukem]

Even weirder is that if the pixels _were_ square then the screen aspect ratio for the standard 720x576 would by 5:4 ... just as it was prior to 1950 !!!

Combine that with the fact that with the typical black bars top and bottom the number of actual useful lines in around 405. Progress ? What progress

TTFN,
Ned Ludd

[ppppenguin]

Originally Posted by Duke_Nukem

Even weirder is that if the pixels _were_ square then the screen aspect ratio for the standard 720x576 would by 5:4 ... just as it was prior to 1950 !!!

Jon's right! i hadn't thought of that.

One of the problems that blights TV signal processing is non-square pixels. Both the 525 and 625 systems have non-square pixels. In 625 they are too wide, in 525 thay are too tall. The 720 and 1180 (active) line HDTV standards all have square pixels.

[Gavtech]

This is getting muddier ... not clearer

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Gavtech

Thanks for that detail Paul.

One thing I remain confused about is the pixel count.

Ignoring all other in-between's, fixes , workarounds , stretches etc... It would seem that a true 16:9 widescreen picture actually carries more information, at the sides, that is absent from the other extreme of a 4:3 [ or am I still stuck back in the analogue days here? ] ... so therefore one would think it must have more pixels... yet from what I have learned so far, it does not.

...or am I misinformed?

What is the pixel dimension for a standard widescreen picture?... and if it is 720 x 576 ... then what happens when tranmitting 4:3... or is there now no such standard in Digital terretrial broadcasting?
... and in analogue broadcasting what happens ? Always the same number of pixels ? .. just stretched or squeezed?

My confusion is evident.

The pixel count is the same in standard definition as Jeffrey says. 16:9 is done anamorphically (actually so is 4:3, as the Duke points out )

There is no real concept of pixel counts in analogue broadcasting. All analogue broadcasting assumes a 4:3 aspect ratio and any widescreen source materiel is modified to fit this as best it can. Usually this means 14:9 with black bars at the top and bottom but sometimes 4:3 cutout is used, especially for sports programming.

There is a modification of the PAL system used in some parts of the world which allows true widescreen analogue to be shown for isolated programmes at the cost of a squeezed display on 4:3 TVs, but I don't think this has ever been used in the UK.

Paul

[Gavtech]

Thanks again Paul .. and all for your contributions.

Gavin

[Nickthedentist]

I must say that I feel the whole "widescreen" thing is an utter mess.

It was widely publicised as revolutionary: I can remember the science journalist Barry Fox being interviewed on the radio in the late 1980s (?) and saying how utterly amazed he'd been when he'd been lent a prototype widescreen set, and how the development would change peoples' experience of television forever.

But as people have said here before, it seems to be just another example of "keeping up with the Joneses" i.e. people replacing their 4:3 sets with 16:9 ones simply because they've been conditioned into thinking that 4:3 is now old-hat, then putting up with a distorted image or one that still doesn't fill the whole screen.

When I acquired a Sony 16:9 TFT portable (with analogue tuner) a few months ago, I was slightly disappointed and surprised to find that in the "normal" mode, there are black bars to be seen at the top of the picture, so in spite of it being sold as a "17 inch" model, the actual picture area is similar in size to what you'd get on a 14" 4:3 set. And as it's an LCD model, the black bars aren't even black, more a mid-grey.

Nick.

[ppppenguin]

A lot of so called 16:9 sets are actually 15:9.

[dave walsh]

Could be worse Nick. The beeb occasionally experimented with a wide screen format in the eighties and because people complained they weren't getting full license value [your arguement is technical there's was money]we had 2001 A Space Oddessyat Christmas with a strip of tinsel top and bottom to disguise the gap. I am not making this up. Dave

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by ppppenguin

A lot of so called 16:9 sets are actually 15:9.

Just measured my Sony, and it well is 15:9 as you say

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

But as people have said here before, it seems to be just another example of "keeping up with the Joneses" i.e. people replacing their 4:3 sets with 16:9 ones simply because they've been conditioned into thinking that 4:3 is now old-hat, then putting up with a distorted image or one that still doesn't fill the whole screen.

I do prefer the 16:9 aspect ratio when used properly with a digital source. Once you've got used to it a 4:3 ratio looks very restricted.

There has been a long period of unsatisfactory compromise between 16:9 and 4:3 though. The 14:9 compromise used on analogue worked reasonably well with 4:3 sets but looks ridiculous on a widescreen set using the default stretchyvision processing.

Some people seem completely unaware of the aspect ratio issue and don't see anything wrong with stretchyvision. Many configure their digiboxes and DVD players to output a 4:3 cutout picture regardless of the correct ratio, and then configure their widescreen tellies to stretch it out. Many pubs are guilty of this.

Personally I think stretchyvision looks awful - I can't stand it even with cartoons!

Paul

[ppppenguin]

All this debate about wide screen is a load of Bring back narrow screen! Baird used 3:7 for his 30 line system. Portrait format with vertical scanning lines.

Cinema has never had this problem too badly. They just use whatever aspect screen they want and because you watch in the dark you can't see the black bars.

[YC-156]

A word regarding stretchyvision: You get used to it after a while and your brain automagically compensates. The only stumbling block is that you have to allow this to happen by ignoring the odd aspect ratio distortions in the beginning.

The viewing surface on my 28" Philips widescreen is 58 cm wide and 32 cm high, making this a bit more than a 16:9 configuration with a 26" diagonal. It is set to automatically utilize the maximum screen estate at all times, making for some serious stretch at times when viewing 4:3 transmissions.

At first when I converted from my previous 4:3 telly, I felt the stretch looked decidedly odd. Yet I persisted and in time I have gotten completely used to the distortions to a point, where I have to spend conscious effort to see the artifacts. Ie. the Earth hovering in space does look round to me, unless I look *really* carefully at the picture.

Your mileage may vary.

Frank N.

[mickjjo]

This "Widescreen TV" idea is as old as a very old thing , The BBC were experimenting with a 7:4 "Widescan" ratio 48 years ago, Claiming no technical snags . Half a century later and it's still not quite right.... .

Regards, Mick.

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by mickjjo

This "Widescreen TV" idea is as old as a very old thing , The BBC were experimenting with a 7:4 "Widescan" ratio 48 years ago,

Wow

Interesting that FJC said: "It is well known that the industry is in need of some new development to revive public interest", i.e. it was presented as something of a marketing ploy even back in 1958.