Challenge - June 2016 onwards

All Star aired years after the ITV network switched to widescreen. I don’t think there would be any issues there.

Also, coming back to your earlier point, Season 11 would have been around 1990/1991 IIRC. The network did experiment with aspect ratios around that time period, namely with one or two Granada shows being made and transmitted in 14:9. I don’t think that was the case here but it could have been edited later on for airing in other countries.

None of the Les Dennis episodes were made in widescreen, not even the final series from 2002. The Andy Collins daytime version was though.

It looks extremely squashed- not like 4:3 where the black bars suit the picture, and not like 16:9 where the black bars are non-existent.

Try watching it in the afternoon and you’ll see what I mean.

Do you mean squashed vertically or horizontally? Was everyone looking tall and skinny or stumpy and fat?

Squashed horizontally.

The same thing happened on a few Strike It Lucky episodes they bought and a handful are in the wrong aspect ratio there, and don't look right no matter what you do.

I think it could be just poor quality control at their end, presumably the material they've reacquired they've had new prints or files or whatever they get these days and somebody's copied it across with the wrong tags or whatever so it stuffs the playout. Presumably, not entirely sure how its works but its probably safe to assume playout has to know whether to go 4:3 or not and to my mind the easiest way is to tag it as 4:3.

Today’s eps were much better- though don’t think 16:9 is the right aspect ratio for FF either, 4:3 suits it most.

But after that whole 14:9 mess I’m glad they fixed it.

Speaking of FF they have been showing series 11 from 1991 (I think) since last week and they are new to Challenge.

Well "new" isn't the right word as that series has been on Challenge numerous times since the late 90s, though it has been a while since they've last shown it.

Yeah I know, was saying the first week or so of episodes were awfully cropped into a 14:9 horizontal aspect ratio, rather than 4:3 or 16:9.

Talking of (Les Dennis) Family Fortunes, is there a statistic of how many cars/holidays were won in total throughout the years? It's interesting as a kid watching originally it seemed like they were finding the 5 top answers regularly but now watching them on Challenge it actually seems quite a rare occurence!

I don't know what the stats are for Family Fortunes but the odds of winning are tipped in favour of the production, sometimes significantly.

Crystal Maze it is documented only had 24 teams who won (seven of whom "won" under the first series prize format), with more than 100 gold tokens, out of the 83 teams who took part, that's only 30%. The newer series used the first series "winning" format (ie you win if you get <100 but more than 50 gold tokens) but even then its a much higher winning ratio, closer to 62%, albeit over a smaller number of episodes.

Other shows fare worse, CITV's Knightmare only had eight winners across its entire eight year run, an average of one a series but of course nobody won it in the first or third series, and two teams won it in the second series. There were 69 teams who had a crack at Knightmare, so that's only an 11% chance of winning.

I dare say more mainstream shows where the outcome is less predictable (like Tipping Point for example where you're relying on physics for the most part) may be closer to 40% winning ratio. Something like The Chase is probably pot luck on what questions you and the Chaser get and what knowledge, same for Pointless.