Comedy Central Extra now in widescreen

Just turned to Comedy Central Extra, they appear to be transmitting a widescreen picture in a 4:3 frame, if you stretch it, you can see the DOG is now the same place as Comedy Central HD, and they're now showing the widescreen copies of Everybody Loves Raymond (with the text in the 16:9 safe area).

Unfortunately, Frasier, which is in 4:3, was in 14:9. So it looks like it's going to be another channel that can only broadcast in 16:9 and will crop its archive programming to 14:9.

No change on Comedy Central. Extra is obviously their testing ground.

Yes it's simlar to what the Discovery Channel and 3e do, broadcast in 16:9 but with a 4:3 flag set. Some TV's automatically will switch it to 16:9. As a regular CC extra - very happy about this.

I think CC would argue that the HD channel is already in widescreen, so Extra will be their next priority as there is no widescreen alternative available. My guess is they'd do a Sky and promote the hell out of their HD channels while decreasing the quality of the SD ones.