Strange 4:3 pillarboxing

When BBC Sport had a last minute reprieve of their globe logo in 1997 (when the new BBC logo launched), the pictures on analogue remained 4:3. However, if you watched on digital, they would often show live 4:3 footage with the animated blue swirls background (used on their usual full screen graphic slides) in the pillar boxes. The problem was that most of their footage was still 4:3 at this point so it was quite a distraction and was there most of the time - especially on Grandstand. It seemed to be ditched after a few months though and they went back to using plain black bars again.

It would have been far better (too late now) to make the unused space as seen on a 16:9 display, when showing 4:3 material, user definable. If people then want bright pink bars, or some swirly crap, or that frosted glass 'repeat' nonsense, then they can. The broadcasters should have been mandated to also transmit black bars, and bingo, everyone happy. It's a very similar argument to the pseudo stereo one, over in the NICAM thread in the Media and Tech sub forum

I think the only real solution to the "my TV isn't filled" argument is just to not broadcast any non-widescreen programme on any channel ever again. Problem solved, on the part of the broadcasters anyway, but bad news for anybody who knows how this stuff is meant to be watched. I despair.

I think a suitable quote from The Simpsons is applicable for people who seem allergic to black bars on their TV sets - "let me reassure you your fears are groundless and your complaints moronic".

I think in Germany such sitcoms are either broadcast in 4:3 or cropped.

Now TV (the music channel) also does exactly the same thing. Though most of the videos are shown in 16:9 some are shown in 4:3 with the blur borders either side.

It could be an American thing. Their channels have some interesting ideas to fill the screen 'real estate' when there's 4:3 content - logo'd pillars etc. One of the first bits of HD I saw was an American sports channel in a bar over there which made itself 4:3 safe by adding extra facts and statistics (the sort of stuff that Sky Sports News has in its graphics) into the pillars. Worked quite well and gave something extra to those with HD


The early days of BBC Knowledge did something similar. It didn't have any aspect ratio switching, it was all in 16:9. However there were a lot of 4:3 programmes, mainly old educational stuff. On the output of the 2 D3 tape machines (back then everything in 4:3 came off D3, everything in 16:9 came from Digibeta) there was an ARC to add pillars and another unit that added a graphic to them. Each had a different design, kinda related to the channels graphics of the time

I suppose they other argument for black bars is that it frees up bandwidth, which might help the possibility ropey 4:3 archive material not to have too much additional compression

Reality is that the processing power of the SoCs used in c.1998 DVB-T/S boxes wouldn't have allowed for a decent quality blur or similar treatment - and there were very sensible reasons to use 14P16 on archive rather than 12P16 (mainly to do with 14L12 analogue compatibility and allow for round tripping) which would have been tricky to handle.

It would have been very difficult to engineer an end-to-end path that would preserve signalling data within a show too (to handle 4:3 content within a 16:9 show) - it would probably only have worked in a Playout area for entirely 4:3 shows (so wouldn't have helped with the BBC Sport issue)

Same with SpongeBob. I was recording it this spring and I saw it. It’s not too bad considering that it’s a cartoon. And they should put the DOG in the 4:3 safe area, it looks very odd.

If i tuned in and saw that i'd think i was watching a clip show instead of a full episode.

Not the worst idea but are we going to move to "widerscreen" in the future - an increasing number of dramas seems to be 2.35:1 now.

Friends managed to move the black bars for the Comedy Central screenings and re-master them in HD.