Comedy Central to air Friends in true HD

yep the thing now is you can see previously unseen footage of people and expressions that we obviously we could never see before as previously the only central character would have been in view in 4:3, obviously this is what the director intended. I think at one point I saw a camera in one of the episodes.

Yes - in almost all cases the director was framing and shooting for 4:3 viewers. I often wish the shows were remastered in 4:3 pillarbox in HD, rather than re-framed to 16:9.

Isn't Comedy Central a satellite service? If so Ofcom have very little control over it, other than ensuring that if it is uplinked with a UK licence, it doesn't breach UK regulations with regard to content (impartiality, religion, hypnosis, product placement etc.)

It's up to Parliament to give Ofcom greater powers if this is to happen - but it won't, because most broadcasters and politicians want fewer regulations applied not more. Plus there are still lots of other 4:3 services uplinked from the UK - and you can't have one rule for one, a different rule for the other.

If the service was a PSB on gifted spectrum, I could agree with you.

But this is a pay TV on spectrum they pay for - why should they be forced to broadcast content in a particular way? If you don't like it, you aren't forced to pay for it... Watching pay TV in 16:9 isn't really a human right is it? I can think of far more important things to regulate.

The One with the Stripper has the 'Pyramid' gameshow footage in 4:3 with pillarbars, similar to when Barney went on The Price is Right on How I Met Your Mother.

Oh no, hold on, they've cut to a shot after the game finished and it's in HD.

so it looks like only the stuff shot in the studio is HD? theres been quite a few instances when shots have suddenly become soft.

Most of the shots are in HD, some shots look they are recorded on videotape and go SD and cropped - although you only usually see these shots for a few seconds. Yes it's a bit annoying but would you rather everything use the HD shots or make sure that nothing is messed with? (I acknowledge that not every shot is the same as the original SD versions, but you get what I mean).

No I don't mind at all, it's a shame its taken so long in the first place, why Channel 4 or E4 never showed it or maybe the distributor didn't make it available until now.

Channel 4 or E4 never showed it because they would only have gotten it when the contract was renewed - if they had renewed the contract for 2011, then we would have probably seen HD/widescreen copies on Channel 4. For example, Sky Two and Three only became available on cable when Virgin Media signed a new contract with Sky in November 2008. Previous contracts wouldn't have covered that.

It's taken them so long because the original shows were edited on videotape, which means that Warner Bros. had to go back to the original film master copies for every episode of each of the 10 seasons consisting of (usually) around 24 episodes. Which when you think about it, is a lot of TV.

Looks like they've re-made the some of the opening titles from scratch. The shots of Joey and Rachel differed from the original series 8 version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_5VBQjClYI&feature=related

Just had a look at the HD titles against the one you've linked to on YouTube, they've chopped off top and bottom of the titles, I'll see if I can screenshot it so I can illustrate it better.

I'm sure C4 edited Joey's lines about underwear in the series 5 thanksgiving episode on now.

I just watched the Chandler and Monica wedding ep on Anytime, and normally at the end of the first of a 2-parter we'd see the fountain clips in place of a final scene, but on the HD version they had a preview of the next part instead.

A minor detail, but that was definitely different from what was on Channel 4's copy.