News channel questions

Excuse me if this should be in The Newsroom but it isn't actually about a news story. There are two questions i've been meaning to ask and I was wondering if anyone can help.

1) Why doesn't ITV News broadcast in "proper" widescreen? Those mini black bars at the side are rather irritating and it seems like it's a 4:3 image that has been zoomed.. also making the picture quality poorer.

2) I know, amongst most people, about the delay in digital broadcasting. However, I switched from BBC1 to BBC News 24 during the Lunchtine news and I noticed a delay on BBC1. I only wondered why clocks cease to exist on BBC channels due to the delay, but News 24 have a countdown. Does News 24 drag the time behind by a few seconds to make it in sync with the real time?

Thanks

Well it probably should be in the Newsroom as that is for discussion of all news presentation not just news stories.

As for ITV News, well it is just a 4:3 image that is zoomed in at the moment. Money is the main reason things haven't gone widescreen yet. But it can't be too long now before it happens.

I think the delay between BBC 1/News 24 might depend how you were watching it. On Sky alot of the regional BBC 1 channels have a different amount of delay.

As for the BBC ditching clocks because of the digital delay, from what has been said on here that wasn't the reason they were dropped.

I seem to remember that the various regions are delayed by different amounts because (somehow) it allows for better compression. There are probably all sorts of other distribution reasons - BBC in the Channel Islands is probably delayed the most because the incoming source is the South-West's Sky broadcast.

David

Yeah, it's to do with statmuxing, it works better if the sources you're trying to compress together aren't identical, so a different amount of delay is added to each. Also I guess the backhaul circuit from Newcastle is longer than that from say Bristol, so there will be a bit of delay as a result of that.

[impersonation="tvmercia"]

*wrong forum*

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