4:3 archive being broadcast

Different broadcasters use different techniques for SD. Some convert 12F12 masters to 12P16 internally and then broadcast as 12P16 with an AFD triggering a 12F12 ARC in set-top boxes connected to 4:3 TVs ( DTT) OR ARC on play out to 12F12 and send an MPEG2 header flag that the content is 12F12 (DSat).

Some keep the content 12F12 and 16F16 on play out servers and transition via black or a graphic that works in both ratios and header flag only.

Header flag switching is tied to a GOP boundary though - whereas AFD switching can happen at any frame.

Channels which simulcast in HD and SD are likely to use the permanent 12P16 solution though - as 12F12 in HD does't really exist.

The tape was probably delivered to them as 14:9 letterbox (14L12) - and there's not a great deal you can do with that other than treat it as if it's 4:3 (12F12) material. (You could ARC it again, and end up as 14P16, but that's barely any better.)

For help deciphering noggin's post above, http://bitbucket.co.uk/work/aspect_ratios.html has a good guide to aspect ratio codes.

I think in many cases it's because the material was sourced years before UKTV went widescreen. Older QI episodes are 14:9 letterboxed and seem to have a lot of tape degradation.

Didn't they have to buy them all again in widescreen? What would have made the 14:9 copy a better investment than having a widescreen copy and just playing it out in 4:3/14:9? An older playout area presumably?

IIRC UKTV used some clapped out playout facilities at TVC for years after BBC1/2 had left.

c/f the infamous photo of the desk fan

I'm pretty sure UKTV moved from TV Centre before the BBC channels (them being less high profile should it all go wrong). Though they stayed 4:3 for a while after moving, enabling widescreen would have been more to do with the requirements of the client (UKTV) than a constraint of technology.

Their playout facilities were only a year or so older than those used by BBC1/2. The desk fan I suspect was more due to them outgrowing their apps room by adding more channels (and therefore servers etc) then it was originally planned for.

The infamous desk fan was definitely in TV Centre. I, um, recognise the apps room floor.

UKTV continuing to show 14:9 programmes could be to do with the investment involved in reversioning them. Even if they were originally supplied with 16:9 master tapes, they made the decision to ARC them to 14:9 at the time they reversioned them (adding commercial breaks, etc) - and even if they still have the original edit decision list (which is unlikely), it would be quite time consuming to do them all again for 16:9.

I was quite surprised that, at the time Flextech moved to Red Bee, they also decided to ARC material to 14:9 when they reversioned them - apparently it was a commercial decision, based on them having no plans at the time to go widescreen.

As for who moved to the Broadcast Centre first - I can't remember whether it was UKTV or the BBC channels, but their playout suites were built to more or less the same design and around the same technology.

That's interesting, I had assumed the method used by the BBC was used universally. I guess it depends what the channel broadcasts most of the time.

The thing that's most annoying I find, is when the flag kicks in too late or doesn't kick in at all, and you end up with a programme that should be in 4:3, postage stamped (on a 4:3 telly) in the middle of the screen (widescreen viewers wouldn't necessarily notice depending on if they like to watch 4:3 stretched or not). i.e. the '4:3 floater'.

Star Trek Voyager on Syfy shown in 16:9 stretchyvision. SyfyHD showing it pillarboxed.

How do you mean downscaled SD? I think you mean the difference between SD and downscaled HD?

When I say you don't need a massive TV, that's absolutely true. When I say you don't need HD, that's also true. These things are gimmicks. Ask yourself, if you'd never seen anything at a resolution greater than 720x576, would you care? I've grown up with 625 line TV and it has always been perfectly satisfactory. 30 lines would be a bit of a pain to have to put up with all the time, but 625 (or 576 in reality) is fine. Even though I have seen things at greater resolutions, I don't ache to watch tv that way. I'd much rather that they didn't keep trying to sell television to me over and over again in slightly different forms, and just left it alone so that there wasn't all this mpg blocking, resolution fudging, AR jumping rubbish.

It amazes me how the perception of proportion is something which seems to have got lost through all the years of transitioning from 4:3 to 16:9. My first job was a Saturday boy at an electrical retailer in the mid-90's - these were the dark days when there were widescreen TVs on the market but where nothing was regularly show in widescreen apart from the Brookside Omnibus (which was only in 14:9 anyway) and the odd afternoon film on BBC2. Back then however, if you set a widescreen to display a stretched 4:3 image every man and his dog would point out that the picture was squashed. Equally, if you employed any kind of cropping mode people could see that bits of the picture were cut off.

Fast forward to today and it astounds me that people can't see when the proportions on a screen are wrong, or where they are right but large sections of the picture are cut off to accommodate this - I still come across people with Sky boxes set to output in 4:3 which people are watching in 16:9 expand on their widescreen sets and don't see anything wrong. Even when viewing widescreen on widescreen sets the proportion isn't always fixed - many cheap small LCD TVs use 16:10 screens designed for computer monitors rather than 16:9 screens and so the proportions are wrong on the entire image but people can't see it.

And whilst we're on computer screens, people don't seem to notice if they're set up correctly any more either - at work we use an old EPOS system which only displays in a (4:3) fixed resolution of 1024x768 but where we have 1366x768 widescreen monitors. The company's default setup is to leave them set at 1024x768 displaying a squashed picture to make the EPOS system fill the screen - at the expense of everything else on screen being displayed in the wrong proportions. I go around changing the setup so the screen resolution is correct for the monitor which causes the EPOS system to display pillarboxed with blank spaces either side. Yet I am 'wrong' because 'Amber doesn't fill the screen any more' - they can't see that the 'normal' display setup is wrong or get my point that print preview in Word should not be displaying square-shaped previews of an A4 page!

Anyway, as to how to best present 4:3 material? For short clips 14:9 zoom is usually acceptable and gives a good compromise - you avoid changing the proportions and you avoiding have large side borders without reducing the quality too much or cutting off much of the content. But where the entire programme is 4:3, full pillarboxing with black borders either side is the way to go for me. It the gives the viewer the option of seeing the full image in it's original format, or using their TV's controls to change the size to 14:9 zoom (or 16:9 expand if they really want to) if they wish.

I don't understand the desire to try and stretch 4:3 material to fit widescreen. People understand that some programmes weren't shot in widescreen. We don't retrospectively colour in every black and white film to show on colour TV, so why do we need to stretch 4:3 shows to 16:9?