Analogue TV memories

A neighbour down the road had a ‘chipped’ analogue receiver I seem to remember. They’d get UK Gold, Sky One, Sports, Movies et al without a subscription. Seemed to work without any issues at all until they ‘changed the codes’. That’s what my neighbour called it anyway and they’d have to get the box re-chipped! Of course, they also managed to do this on digital but that’s for a different thead!! People used to sell the old NYNEX and Cable and Wireless boxes down the car boot for a fiver! Haven’t seen one in ages though... The original ones had very square edges while the newer ones had a more rounded modern look! Not sure if these boxes were uniform across the country with the various different providers?

Was 16:9 widescreen ever used/attempted on analogue?

14:9 squeeze was the norm on analogue.

Yes - D/D2-MAC (which are analogue systems) had both 4:3 and 16:9 functionality (with 4:3 centre-cut for compatibility - with panning vectors) HD-MAC which carried 1250/50 HD used D/D2-MAC compatible analogue 16:9 with digital 'helper' data in blanking.

Composite Laserdiscs with 16:9 anamorphic squeeze were also released.

PAL Plus took a 16:9 source and letterboxed it to 16:9, encoding additional picture information on subcarrier at black level which allowed an improved 16:9 signal to be delivered (Higher than the 432 lines of vertical resolution you'd get with just letterbox).

The Japanese HD-MUSE compression system used in the 90s was also based around analogue video carriage on satellite.

I know that. But was full 16:9 ever used/attempted?

The german public broadcasters ARD and ZDF used PALplus for Movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvYLi28HrEc (a little announcement explaining the service, from 1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDq95DbHvsg (engeneering tests, according to the video description this was recorded via ZDF's Grünten transmitter in 1993, als notice the upper left portion of the test card at 3:02)

As mentioned above with Pal+ yes. Only Ch4 used it on analogue terrestrial. Brookside and 15-1 were two of the programmes that used it.

On a 4:3 TV you’d get thick black bars top and bottom and on a (correctly set up) non pal+ widescreen set you’d get a picture filling the screen but without the increased resolution that Pal+ provided.

Granada also conducted a few PAL+ broadcasts from Winter Hill

There were plenty of non-PAL+ full letterbox broadcasts later on, by the time you got to the 00s it became common for films and US imports to be shown in full 16:9 letterbox, on BBC & Channel 4 anyway, don't remember ITV or Channel 5 ever doing it.

Conversely, sport seemed to always be shown in 4:3 on analogue for some reason.

I remember an episode of Brookside at the time, in which Max Farnham had just bought a new widescreen TV and was showing it off to the neighbours. It seemed like a slightly crowbarred in scene – presumably part of an attempt to encourage widescreen uptake, given the programme was broadcast in 16:9.

I think because a lot of it had to be 4:3 safe for overseas use, it was presented that way too for analogue domestic consumption.

An exception was C4 racing I think ?

Interesting.