4:3 archive being broadcast

AIUI there IS 4:3/16:9 signalling on HDMI - but only reliably implemented for SD resolutions where 720x576 can represent either a 4:3 or 16:9 image. This is why Sky boxes properly flag 4:3 and 16:9 content in AUTO mode (where they output 576p for SD channels and 1080i for HD channels).

Unlike most FTA receivers Sky boxes don't allow you to chose to pillarbox 4:3 SD content when configured to output 1080i permanently (presumably because they know that "some" Sky subscribers won't like their screens not filled…)

i thought it signalled 576i rather then 576p or does this only happen in auto mode?

If my Sky box is anything to go by, on Auto mode they seem to insist on sending 576p, only sending 576i if the TV signals it can't support 576p.

This used to be quite annoying as the Sky box used to do the deinterlacing, which was nowhere near as good as the one on my TV. Thankfully when they rolled out the Linux based EPG it changed to sending the interlaced image to the TV, even though it has incorrectly stayed signalled as 576p, which my TV deinterlaces anyways.

Sky HD boxes certainly used to only output 576i content as 576p over HDMI in AUTO (and 720p or 1080i in fixed mode) - and did a not-very-impressive de-interlace job on it. ISTR that you could persuade a Sky box to output 576i by some EDID trickery - but that it wasn't clean 576i and instead a 576i conversion of the 576p de-interlaced image…

Why didn't the boxes output 576i? Mainly because when Sky HD launched 576i was still not universally supported over HDMI (576i was not originally included in the HDMI spec, and caused problems because it's sample clock rate was too low. 576p was supported - and runs at twice the rate. 576i was added by sample-repetition fro 720x576 to 1440x576 ISTR - sending every sample twice with the display discarding the duplicates.)

I've notice itv and stv haves no policy on broadcasting the correct ratio.

Last week stv cropped the 1991 presenter In the studio but not the news report.
Last night whats in the box clip was cropped.

Shame on both of them....

Really? 'Shame on them'??

I've not idea what the STV example you gave is but the latter I assume was on It'll Be Alright On The Night. I assume they took it from a previous best of compilation. ARCing it like that didn't affect the clip at all.... nothing of note was cut off and the joke still worked.

I suspect the 'news report' was done like that because the report had a caption? It's fairly normal to pillar box footage that contains graphic because doing it the other way cuts them off

The report had no Graphic, the news person DID have a graphic and half of it was cut off..

UKTV's playout facilities at TC weren't 'clapped out', in fact they were specifically built in about 1997 for UKTV when they launched (and when, at the same time, the BBC won the contract to playout UK Gold). There were two control rooms with continuity booths and full transmission facilities (slide stores, astons, vision mixer etc) and a central playout area where a supervisor and a number of operators looked after fully automated playout of all the other channels. At launch, Gold was joined by UK Style, Horizons and Arena (the area was known as SHAG TV by some!), then came various other channels, +1s and UK Play which incorporated live programming from TC10 (?). This playout area was actually a lot newer than the area where BBC 1 and 2 was then being transmitted from and was SDI Digital. It was in the same bit of TC where World and Prime were transmitted from (with MUCH older infrastructure, even then).

I think the order of the move to the Broadcast Centre was BBC World/Prime, then BBC Three/Four, then BBC One/Two, then UKTV, which phased it's move from TC in 2005.

Incidentally, the area where UKTV came from at TC did have some 16:9 monitors in the stack - but as no-one really made Grade-1 widescreen monitors at the time, they were domestic Sony CRTs... The CDTA was apparrently widescreen-capable but as the vast majority of the material shown on UKTV was 4:3 origination and most viewers still had 4:3 sets at the time, the decision to stay 4:3 and version the tapes in 4:3 was made and not changed until after the move to the Broadcast Centre.