BBC One HD This Autumn

Yep - that should be OK for shows that aren't BBC One simulcasts, but those that are will need to be re-entered I assume. As BBC One HD is not yet in the Sky EPG it's a bit tricky to do this for shows that will be moving from BBC HD to BBC One HD like The Apprentice, The One Show, Doctors, Holby City etc.

Someone rated it 2 stars?

My recently purchased DVB-T receiver insists on zooming a 16:9 picture to 14:9 when I switch to letterbox mode, which means I no longer have any means of watching 16:9 letterbox. It only does this on BBC and ITV channels, so presumably this is something they are sending as part of the signal - so if they are going to carry on doing that, they should continue to cater for 14:9 safe areas even after DSO.

I always used to set the digibox to 16:9 TV and then let the television itself do the letterboxing which most tellys are capable of.

What you are seeing is indeed triggered by the broadcasters. Each broadcaster can send out an Active Format Descriptor, which tells your TV/receiver what aspect ratio the picture is and how it should be viewed, so for example BBC/ITV signal that shows can be cropped to 14:9 when you use letterbox, and E4 overrides pan and scan insisting on full letterboxing. If after switchover the broadcasters move to using the full 16:9 frame, they simply have to change this to do the same as E4.


Completely understood, however for the BBC HD DOG they do use the full frame but seem to use the safe area for SD which assumes more overscan horizontally than vertically in terms of pixels (same in terms of %). This results in quite a gap between the left side of the screen and the DOG on HDTV's, which seems unneccessary for a channel that isn't intended to be viewed on an SDTV. This is in contrast to the DOGs used by ITV1 HD and C4 HD, plus the latest revision to the BBC One HD DOG, which are further to the left of the screen.

Not had any peculiarities with Format for many years, WS always appears as 16:9 on all channels. Seems to me that your receiver is interacting with your box in a strange way. I'd check output on the box and input on the TV set ups.

Suspect your receiver either ignores some or all AFDs.

The BBC and ITV flag 14:9 safe material as such - so some AFD-friendly receivers will output this in 14:9 letterbox rather than 16:9 letterbox. The Beeb DO flag non-14:9 safe stuff (movies mainly) as 16:9 safe and AFD-driven receivers will letterbox this stuff to 16:9 letterbox.

4:3-safe 16:9 content - in theory - should be output as a 4:3 centre-cut - but there was a mistake in the original AFD guidelines in the DTG book that means this stuff is also often output 14:9 letterbox.

What your STB does is probably dependent on whether it properly interprets AFDs - or just partially deals with them.

Surley the AFD issue under discussion is only applicable when the box is set to feed a 4:3 TV set ?

One solution is to set the STB to 16:9 output, and (as long as the 4:3 TV set has its own 'scan crush' mode) let the TV decide jump to 16:9 mode itself ?

The BBC ONE HD 'region' schedules are now on the BBC Website .....

here's wednesday's opening night ….

WWW.BBC.CO.UK/BBCONE
31-Oct-2010 @ 22:34

Be interesting to see what happens on BBC HD between Wallace & Gromit and Jimmy's Food Factory.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/schedules/hd/2010/11/08

Interesting to see 18:00-19:00 just billed as "BBC News at Six" without being split at 6:30. I'm wondering if they'll just show BBC News channel at 18:30 with the caption at the bottom telling people to switch to BBC1 SD for local news.

The same for BBC News at Ten.