why is ITV1 and 2 in 14:9

I know! NTL get proper ITV widescreen (or 4:3 in my case) so we have the option of how to watch our ITV rather than in crappy 14:9:

Aah, so that thing I mentioned about adjusting it bia the Services menu will be available in the nest few days, yeah?

Give SKY & ITV achance ppl, we have only just got ITV & ITV2 added to the EPG so their still working on full widescreen, I won't be watching it in widescreen anyway as we've always got the box in 4:3 mode!

Just home we get 16:9 on Sky soon for ITV1 and ITV2

Isonstine - Do not believe UTV have sorted out the WS switching problem. It has been stuttering nicely today but having that for a second or so is better than 14:9 on a WS TV. Clearly, the problem must be quite subtle and difficult to find. Perhaps it requires a SW rewrite/fix??

Regards

Well that is strange! It was working fine when I was watching it last night. I couldn't see any problem. Maybe they've switched back to the standard switching method, instead of another one which was working fine.

I have some fantastic Granada in-vision continuity from around 95, using the old ident with the arrow and G coming from the bottom of the screen, and a great ident that was too.

BTW - and I can't be arsed starting a new thread about this - if anyone wants to see some Channel 4 bricks/blocks idents that I haven't found on other sites then say now. I found a tape with 'Paris Live!' on the other day and it has some old Channel 4 News Summary idents, some French idents and a few Channel 4 french idents on it.

Lovely Thomas. I'd love to see those if possible - I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to put it on your webspace, then everyone could see them.

There is apparently a fault on one of the pieces of equipment NTL use to switch between 4:3 and 16:9 on Sky Digital. As they can't change aspect ratio they are using 14:9 letterbox to broadcast 16:9 shows in 4:3.

UTV have a different system as they have to send their pictures across the Irish Sea using a different type of vision and sound circuit - so they had always planned to be different. Their system works!

Apparently the fault bit of kit is likely to get new software soonish - then all the other ITVs should start broadcasting proper 16:9 pictures. (Apart from Channel - who are a 4:3 only station I think as there is no DTT on the Channel Islands cos they are too close to France)

Of course, SMG's system was also compatible, as was London's when it was made available to NTL (the other ITV stations' system is currently incompatible).

SMG and Carlton have resorted to sending the analogue feed to NTL because of the glitching problem, no doubt being caused by some nasty hard-switching somewhere. As I understand it the UTV feed is not routeable to the analogue feed for whatever reason and hence the channel is in widescreen when in fact it acually shouldn't be until NTL get the problem sorted out...

At least you get all 4:3 shows uncropped. On Digital Cable and ITV Digital a huge amount of 4:3 shows are cropped. Emmerdale, Trisha, Family Fortunes , Dont try this at home, Loads of regional programmes, even the odd bulletin of regional news. Practically everything thats 4:3 except Coronation street and the ITN News.

I think that will be only until the widescreen switching gets sorted, as during the tests the same shows were cropped, like on digital cable, and on Friday UTV were showing Catchprase cropped, like digital cable were.