SD
Here's a novel idea - why not do nothing alone and just show 4:3 material in 4:3, without curtains, without cropping, without anything? AIUI, it's supposed to be BBC policy to transmit 4:3 programmes with a 4:3 AFD set so that, to the viewer, it appears to be a 4:3 transmission. And that was a good policy, that way, people with 4:3 sets can see the programme the way it was meant to be shown, whilst those with widescreen sets can choose between framing/cropping/stretching themselves. Yet the BBC seem to be constantly making exceptions to it and deciding that whole blocks of programming should, in one way or the other, have all 4:3 content altered to accomodate 16:9 in some way. First it was 4:3 footage in the news, then it was the regional news programmes (many of them are produced in 4:3 but are then cropped down to 14:9), then it was CBBC blocks (and the two channels), now it's daytime. Just leave 4:3 material alone and show it the way it was made!
I think we've been through this very recently in another thread.
CBBC was always an exception to the rule because it works in a different way to BBC ONE/TWO with no dedicated presentation area in the accepted sense. Widescreen switching is not practical in these circumstances, especially when the end credits of a 4:3 cartoon are DVEd into a 16:9 studio link. I have yet to see any major safe-graphics problem from zooming old Hanna-Barbera cartoons into a 14:9 pillarbox!
Similarly aspect ratio switching during a programme would look a complete mess, which is why 4:3 news clips are zoomed up, although as you quite rightly point out, the English regions which are still operating in 4:3 produce to account for 14:9PB transmission anyway, so you're not losing any content by having the picture zoomed.
In the brave new world of the Broadcast Centre, material is only ingested once, so if 4:3 material has been curtained for 16:9 transmission that's how it'll exist wherever in the building it's used.
cwathen posted:
Quote:
No - it's not a technical problem - as marksi said, 4:3 Schools programmes on BBC TWO and CBBC are supposed to be shown with "curtains" within a 16:9 frame on the digital platforms. (I imagine that on analogue they are shown 4:3 centre cutout, but I may be wrong on this.) The thinking behind this was that many older schools programmes are quite text heavy and that cropping them to 14:9 (like they do with kids programmes for the CBeebies channel) would lead to things like mathematical formulae etc being chopped off.
Here's a novel idea - why not do nothing alone and just show 4:3 material in 4:3, without curtains, without cropping, without anything? AIUI, it's supposed to be BBC policy to transmit 4:3 programmes with a 4:3 AFD set so that, to the viewer, it appears to be a 4:3 transmission. And that was a good policy, that way, people with 4:3 sets can see the programme the way it was meant to be shown, whilst those with widescreen sets can choose between framing/cropping/stretching themselves. Yet the BBC seem to be constantly making exceptions to it and deciding that whole blocks of programming should, in one way or the other, have all 4:3 content altered to accomodate 16:9 in some way. First it was 4:3 footage in the news, then it was the regional news programmes (many of them are produced in 4:3 but are then cropped down to 14:9), then it was CBBC blocks (and the two channels), now it's daytime. Just leave 4:3 material alone and show it the way it was made!
I think we've been through this very recently in another thread.
CBBC was always an exception to the rule because it works in a different way to BBC ONE/TWO with no dedicated presentation area in the accepted sense. Widescreen switching is not practical in these circumstances, especially when the end credits of a 4:3 cartoon are DVEd into a 16:9 studio link. I have yet to see any major safe-graphics problem from zooming old Hanna-Barbera cartoons into a 14:9 pillarbox!
Similarly aspect ratio switching during a programme would look a complete mess, which is why 4:3 news clips are zoomed up, although as you quite rightly point out, the English regions which are still operating in 4:3 produce to account for 14:9PB transmission anyway, so you're not losing any content by having the picture zoomed.
In the brave new world of the Broadcast Centre, material is only ingested once, so if 4:3 material has been curtained for 16:9 transmission that's how it'll exist wherever in the building it's used.
