Widescreen

Partially right, yes programmes originally transmitted in 4:3, unfortuanately now get the zoom and crop treatment, eg cartoons on CBBC, however where you are wrong is with 16:9 transmissions, now on a 4:3 TV, 14:9 is a useful format as the viewer would not have to witness the deep letterboxing if you are watching 16:9 letterbox on a 4:3 TV.

Even the Athletics was SD, or rather, the standard "International Signal" was. The HD was an addon, albeight on a much larger scale than any other sport covered. There were lots of HD cameras everywhere, we even had one out on the sailing, but being sent back as an analogue pal radio link to shore.

Oh I see, I still hate it though, I think programmes should be kept in it's orginal format, I hope this ratio gets ditched, when we go digital by 2010.

As I understood it, the HD coverage was an addon for everything except the athletics?

I was under the impression that they were cunning with the athletics, in that they deployed HD cameras, and took the SD outputs into the 4 or 5 scanners cutting the various SD track and field mixes, but were able to take the HD feeds from these cameras into a single HD scanner and create a single HD athletics mix from the same cameras? (Effectively they had to ghost mix one of the SD cuts?)

Effectively the HD athletics feed was still an add on (in that the core feeds were still SD), but didn't require a second set of cameras (as the cameras providing the SD mix were also available in HD)?

I'm not sure of the correct terminology, but some programmes can be tx'ed as 'protected' 16:9 - even if you've told your box that it's connected to a 4:3 tv, it'll display as full letterbox (16L12).
As Harshy says, some digital boxes will display non-protected 16:9 content as either 14L12 or 12F12, depending on the settings.

I think widescreen programmes for BBC Prime are supplied as 14L12.

Yes BBC Prime have the same policy as UKTV as regards to Widescreen, so BBC Food must do the same.

Virtually all of the specialist cameras (i.e. rail based, radio linked) were SD. IIRC the only exception was one of the two cameras on the home straight, one of which was a super slo, and the other HD.

None of the other rail cams (vertical & horizontal) were HD (mostly sony 550's), and since most of the radio linked cameras were on 'D-Cams', which at that point could only do HD in lab conditions, they couldn't have been either (i.e. hand helds, stedicamms, wirecams).

The track & field events had access to 70 cameras, thats a lot of HD cameras!

That's very interesting about Parkinson - good on him for putting up a fight! 4:3 is far superior for the human form, hence generally all studio production. And he's absolutely right about the distance between guests too. 4:3 can 'partition off' guests so much more better.

This is what irritates me about widescreen - nobody cares for the composition of the talking head anymore, the very staple of conventional television. In the BBC's 'The Widescreen Book' 3rd edition 1997, they mention in an entirely fleeting fashion with this single accompanying image:

"Shots which are less satisfactory [in 16:9] are single talking heads, but dressing the frame helps."

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y37/RTE1TV/Widescreen2.jpg

That's it! 70 years of convention thown out the window, and all they can say is 'dressing the frame helps' !!

Obviously one has a myriad of opportunities shooting in the field to compose 16:9 relatively nicely, as above, but so much studio production, from interviews to chatshows, to magazine, to news and current affairs - everything depends on the mid-shot or MCU. Widescreen just cannot and does not handle these as well as 4:3.
Of course 16:9 has its virtues, but I for one prefer 4:3 for television.

Not on this site, but in general I'm sick of hearing 16:9 is the best thing since sliced bread, while 4:3 is an antiquated and impractical work of the devil

Tube sets don't help the perception - if more sets had the true (or at least more apparent) 4:3 proportions that LCD monitors have, there wouldn't nearly be such a rush to change over.
The slightly elongated square is a lovely format.

Yes I still prefer 4:3 for TV Studio production, as they is more height in the framing, you lose it with 16:9 composition.

Do you lose height or do you gain width?

4:3 is a completely inferior format for most TV productions.

The myth of it being better is, to quote a famous member of this place, that of a "sad Luddite freak".

Personally, I would prefer widescreen to be 2:1 as the visual information can be so much enriched over the legacy format. Arguing that 4:3 is better than 16:9 because it makes people fill the frame more is absurd - why not have 3:3 or 2:3 - that would do the job so much better.

And I don't have to wear a dress to think that.

No it wouldn't - you wouldn't have the looking room, nor would you have the scope for any wider shots.
Of course 4:3 is superior for framing the upper body - with 16:9 in order to avoid vast expanses of looking room or space either side the subject as per BBC News, you have to get in way too tight to an MCU in order to fill the frame - the studio prod mid-shot is as good as dead now with widescreen. No directors are willing to oull out to that degree as it makes the subject relatively much smaller in shot than in 4:3.

The only advantage to 16:9 in studio discussion is two-shots - virtually everything else is better suited to 4:3 - mid-shots, MCUs, over the shoulder, raking shots, and even wide shots for performances and whole-studio wides if you're set is quite small.

What directors are now doing to 'get over' the mid-shot problem is filling the frame more at the expense of headroom. Headroom is virtually non-existant now and looks appalling in my view. Chopping part of the hair off works very well in close-ups in 16:9 but that is all.
By far the worst aspect of 16:9 is the loss of headroom on the mid shot - just horrendous.