Was SD 16:9 ever tried in America?

I'm watching old episodes of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' on Netflix at the moment, and i cannot help but notice it's in 16:9 in later seasons. But it's not in HD. According to Wikipedia it was never made in HD either. I didn't think America tried SD 16:9, i heard they went straight from 4:3 SD to 16:9 HD. Which is true?

The odd thing is, that while Buffy is in 16:9, it looks as though it really wasn't supposed to be. The framing is clearly meant for 4:3, and i've on several occasions in a single season alone seen studio lights and gels clearly in shot, as well as crew members. A lot of the time when they use wide angle lenses, you can see horrible vignetting on the picture, and in some cases what looks like a matte box or some piece of equipment on the camera. So i'm guessing they were never meant to be seen like this. So what gives?

Wikipedia does give this explanation:



This would suggest they were never shown in 16:9 on US TV when broadcast originally.

This great article from a few years ago explains a lot and contains a few more screenshots showing how the widescreen version shows unwanted information: http://www.quadruplez.com/2010/06/essay-why-buffy-may-never-be-blu/



Wikipedia says that the BBC began broadcasting the show in widescreen starting with the fourth series, but there's no evidence on the internet of any reason for why the BBC was given widescreen copies that were subsequently only released in region 2 and 4 as bilky has quoted above, especially when it is so obviously detrimental to how the show looks. I recall reading somewhere that it was because the BBC knew it was produced in a widescreen aspect ratio and they forced them to supply widescreen copies or they wouldn't show it or something, but it's highly likely I'm just misremembering and that's not true.

It's a guess, but it would make sense that the BBC had a bit of control over getting some 16:9 copies. I recall Buffy being quite popular over here at the time, and since the show was originally on one of the smaller networks in America, it probably got just as many viewers over here as it did over there. So maybe the BBC demanded 16:9 copies as you say.

FOX and PBS had SD 16:9 I believe.

Fox launched a 480p 16:9 service when ABC went 720p and CBS/NBC/PBS went 1080i. However the 480p Fox used was only a transmission standard, they de-interlaced from 480i at the station and produced in standard 16:9 480i in the main. Some content was shot 480/24p (i.e. shot on film and edited in the 24p domain) but the masters were 3:2 480i I believe.

Fox switched to 720p broadcasting when they introduced their "splicer" system - where the network encoded 720p at the final broadcast bitrate (i.e. the network were responsible for the final stage encoding) and the splicer passed this through to the viewers at home, switching in the MPEG2 domain to a local encoder for local content AND adding local station bugs using a clever selective re-encoding scheme that worked at the macro block level.

PBS also used 16:9 SD for sub-channels I believe - as there is no real reason not to use 16:9 over 4:3 if the content is 16:9 to begin with.

AIUI there were a couple of US shows that had slightly strange post production routes. Quantel pushed a hybrid 576/24p system for film-acquired content. Effectively they proposed that 24fps film (Super 16 usually) was telecined at 576/50i (i.e. 576/25psf) using standard "PAL" telecine standards (but digital component recording). You then treated this as 576/24p during the post production process. For master delivery you played the material out twice. Once at 576/50i with 4% speed-up for European deliveries, and once at 480/60i with 3:2 pulldown of the 576p pictures scaled down to 480p. This meant European 50i audiences didn't get reduced resolution, but US audiences didn't get slow-down. I think The X Files used this technique (or something like it) - but not sure if 16:9 was involved.

The UK series Bugs used another clever post-production system to cope with 4:3 and 16:9. They shot on Super 16 - which has a close to 15:9 aperture. They telecined this anamorphically in 15:9 - and then edited in the 15:9 domain. For 4:3 deliveries they DVE-ed the final master to a centre cut-out, cropping a bit left and right, for 16:9 deliveries they DVE-ed the final master to a 16:9 full-height by cropping a bit top and bottom. Odd thinking back on it now...

'Friends' is being shown in 16:9 HD on Comedy Central. You often see edge of sets and crew.
Obviously it was originally tx'd in 4:3 SD
They must have remastered the original film prints

Can you explain that last part in less complicated language please? I'm confused.

Are you saying Fox playout broadcast HD direct to people's homes but somehow manage to add local station bugs without actually letting the local station access to the stream? How does that work?

Buffy was defo shown in 16:9 on the BBC but I don't remember any horrible effects like that. Perhaps they cropped out those parts whilst they edited it. I remember the bbc.co.uk/buffy url was burned into the credits in gill sans too back when Cult was the best site on the internet.

Friends was indeed remastered from the original 35mm film, I think they decided to go with 16:9 as being a self contained multi camera studio show it's reasonably rare for big mistakes to appear and if you can suspend your disbelief at the distinctly 480p sets you can ignore the odd boom.

Star Trek TNG is also being remastered from the original film but is strictly 4:3. Aside from messy sets the model shots of the ships are all composite shots and many of the constituent parts of these were at the edge of the 16:9 frame and therefore get cut off. Also for many of the one off sets (eg alien spaceship of the week on the viewscreen) didn't even extend further than the camera as there was no need so you'd see the plywood.

There's a nice little video here




On a side note, I find watching the model shots being made fascinating. Not just the way the camera actually tracks round a static model but how just a simple shot of the Enterprise would require one pass with the white lights for the windows, another for the blue nacelle lights, another for the red buzzard collectors and another for the blue deflector. Then finally another with no internal lights to get the detail of the model. All them composted together and then green screened onto the space background.

Meanwhile the rubber band stretch was so complex they only did three stock shots and used the same three going to warp shots for the entire run. The only reason the engines flash as it goes to warp was to disguise the change between the 6ft model (for the close up detail) and the 2ft for the rest of the shot. It's incredible the effort that went into these and I love how we can now see the sheer detail and craftsmanship that went into these shows in such clarity.

I know some people sneer but for me, being able to see every scratch on the glass top of the conference table just makes it look so much more real and tangible. Love it.

Sorry yes, as you were.

Again, I recall reading that Friends was actually shot 16:9, or at least a wider aspect ratio, safe. However, again, I may be misremembering things, and also there are a few shots where you can see cameras or even stand ins. I known there's one scene with Phoebe and Monica in Central Perk, and every time it cuts to the close up of Phoebe you can see it's definitely not Courtney Cox sitting next to her!

A few other comedies have been remastered too, such as Seinfeld although the 16mm frame was not as wide and as a result the cropping is quite bad, with Sony carefully cropping each episode: http://www.popcritics.com/2008/09/seinfeld-now-in-real-hd-on-tbs South Park have also gone back through their catalogue of episodes and rereleased them in 16:9 HD. They've done a good job but there are still some bad cases of, for example, sofas suddenly ending in the middle of the screen.

However I have noticed that at least Cheers goes out in 4:3 HD on ITV4, and even Inspector Morse repeats on ITV3 go out in 4:3 HD. So there isn't a complete disdain from the broadcasters to schedule HD material that's not in widescreen.

Murder She Wrote has also been spotted in HD

Joss Whedon is on record as being an extremely unhappy bunny about the 16:9 versions of Buffy. With the exception of the musical episode, which was filmed with 16:9 in mind, it was always meant to be 4:3 and (when you hear him talk about it) it's not just an issue of lights and crew being spotted in corners, but also that reframing his carefully composed shots often ruined the " mise en scène ."

One example he gave was of Buffy being squeezed into the corner of the frame by another character's looming foreground presence - an effect diminished by the extra space in the uncropped version.