14:9 Television

To fit 16:9 or 4:3 pictures onto a 14:9 television, a compromise would have to be made. My point however is that less picture is lost (or less black lines would be needed) in the conversion of 4:3 to 14:9 than from 4:3 to 16:9. Less picture is also lost in the conversion of 16:9 to 14:9 than from 16:9 to 4:3.
So thin black bars (or slight zooming) would always be needed on a 14:9 television as oppossed to the more extreme zooming (or more extreme cropping) needed to fit a 4:3 picture into a 16:9 television or the reverse.
A 14:9 television would be a better compromise.

that's defeat the whole purpose of the so called benefits of widescreen, I say so called simply because we haven't benefited at all, and I can tell you why.

ITV News is still made in 4:3. It's cropped to 14:9 on digital ITV, but it's still 4:3 on analogue & the ITV news Channel.

The internal feed ia also 4:3, so what's the point of ITV cropping it to 14:9?

because it's still the same horizontal res and we won't benefit until we get HDTV?

I don't know why, it may benefit those who watch on a Widescreen TV who can't be arsed to change the picture. But this isn't the first time they've done this, they used to do it on Emmerdale until it was filmed in 16:9, same goes for a couple of other 4:3 shows, though oddly they never did it on Coronation Street which only started being filmed in 16:9 in 2002.

I've always wondered that. At the moment 16:9 is the same horizontral res as 4:3, so surely if anything we're actually losing parts of the picture rather than gaining anything with 16:9? Please correct me if i'm wrong here.

They used to do it with Trisha as well. It's very odd, why don't they just put it out in 4:3 like everyone else?

No, you're not losing anything. Both 4:3 and 16:9 are *exactly* the same resolution as each other - the shape of the picture is different, and that's what matters. Absolutely no resolution is lost - until you start blowing up bits of the picture to fit a different size.

For what it's worth, I'm very pleased with the move to 16:9 - because I think it produces a picture more pleasing to the eye.

And I still think the idea of a 14:9 TV is one of the most bizarre I've ever come across. It seems like a lose-lose situation - *nothing* would be displayed properly.

In theory we should benefit, but we don't if you think about it because these days there is no height in the shot, therefore you see heads closer to the top of the screen etc, but we see as much left and right as we would in the 4:3 picture.

At university, there was an ITN cameraman, he said that the framing should have the subject with enough height on the picture, but since widescreen we see less of this now.

If you watch through a 4:3 TV, this is particularly noticeable, just look at the GMTV weather forecast, you can't even see Andrea's legs these days, while in the 4:3 days you could!

The point isn't that it would be perfect, but that it would provide a better compromise for displaying both 16:9 and 4:3 material. On a 14:9 television, viewers would see thin vertical lines at the side of the screen during 4:3 broadcasts and thin horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the screen when displaying 16:9 broadcasts.
This is better than the current situation where black bars twice this size are needed at the sides of 16:9 television to display 4:3 material and bars also twice the 14:9 size are needed at the top and bottom of 4:3 televisions to display 16:9 material.

Consider it mathematically. The amount of screen covered in black bars when a 4:3 broadcast is displayed natively on a 16:9 television is 25% ( 16x9 - 12x9 = 36 ).
On a 14:9 television, the amount of screen covered in black bars when a 4:3 broadcast is displayed natively is 14.3% ( 14x9 - 12x9 = 18 ).

So when displaying native 16:9 and 4:3 material, 14.3% of a 14:9 television's screen is covered by black bars. This compares to a 25% black bar coverage when a 4:3 television displays 16:9 images and when a 16:9 television displays 4:3 pictures.