BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

Why are there black bars? 720p is the exact same aspect ratio as 1080i.

There seem to be thin ones top/bottom and thicker ones left/right.

I think there's a virtual Andrew Marr set too, used for pre-rec interviews, and presumably contingency use. Wasn't the set the Daily Politics used while Millbank was being refurbished more like Studio B than Millbank? Possibly originally intended as a contingency for the Sunday Politics.

Sounds like it may lie in the play out server settings. The server could be told to essentially not make any changes towards the recordings. This type of thing has happened here at my PBS station as well.

But the question should be why wasn't the show recorded in 1080i? Especially if it's a house production - where everything should be set up in the same format.

They did the same last week on the NC as well, even though Talking Business was produced from BH.

Do you mean 720p? 720p is 1280x720 and is the same aspect ratio (and for a lot of content effectively quite difficult to tell apart from) 1920x1080.

There should be no black bars anywhere if it is a straight upscale - as they are the same ratio. If there are black bars top and bottom and different width black bars left and right then that suggests (assuming the display isn't differentially cropping) that something has gone awry. Unless you are looking very carefully on very demanding material 1080i25 and 720p50 (aka 1080/50i and 720/50p) are pretty similar in quality terms - particularly on talking heads at BBC News bitrates...

You'd possibly see black bars left and right with poorly handled SD (where 720x576 has been scaled to 1920x1080 rather than 702x576 - which is the actual 16:9 active picture area in SD - with black bars padding either side).

One area where things can go wrong is that 1920x1080 isn't actually recorded in most digital systems in that format (as it isn't a nice MPEG multiple). Instead 1920x1088 is recorded, with 8 lines padded with black on recording and cropped on replay. That can sometimes cause very small amounts of scaling errors if it is handled incorrectly.

However it sounds as if something worse has happened in this case - and I think I've seen something like this happen before. Could be that the show has been delivered in an odd ball format - particularly if it was edited off-site in the field...

** EDIT - just seen the screen grab. That looks like a poorly handled 576i SD up convert, possibly from a down convert with the downconverter probably doing the right 1920x1080 to 702x576 with a 9 sample black pad each side to generate 720x576 (which won't be seen on an SD set as that should only show the 702x576 portion), but then the 720x576 (not the 702x576) portion scaled back up to 1920x1080 - giving you black bars each side in the 1920x1080 frame.

So many people think you should show the full 720x576 frame - you shouldn't...

For comparison, here is a PTC shot from yesterday.

What else is that studio used for?

Meet the Author I think?

Is it being shrunk and shifted up to make room for the ticker, for some (probably obsolete) reason?

What you can see is about 5% shorter than it should be, suggesting the picture extends about 2/3 of the ticker's height, under the ticker.

I thought it was 704x576 rather then 702x576 which is what vlc shows for some SD channels on Sky.

Norman Smith gets about . . . he was in the studio on Victoria Derbyshire this morning for much of the programme, now he's outside the Cabinet Office reporting on the rumours that Andrea Leadsom is about to quit the Tory leadership race.

http://i64.tinypic.com/jtmn3m.jpg

15 minutes in a cab?