Q in Widescreen

Noticed the other day whilst flicking through that Q is now in widescreen. The only problem is that the quality on my TV appears to have declined since doing so. Not just the music videos but the graphics are difficult to read.

I find this with 4Music sometimes too - seems to be a bit of a step backwards.

Anyone else noticing a difference?

Have the idents changed as well? Last time I looked they'd been using the same ones for about 5 or 6 years.

Yeah they changed last week. That fire ident has finally gone.

Perhaps in switching to 16:9, Q has kept the same bitrate and number of pixels, which when stretched over a wider screen area, gives a poorer resolution.

This is particularly noticeable on channels which use the reduced 544x576 resolution. The UKTV and Virgin channels looked particularly bad when they first went widescreen, but they've since increased their resolution.

As far as I know all the Box TV channels use 544x576, resulting in the softer picture on 16:9.