Widescreen issues

Yes, that's by far the best compromise. My Grundig TV will only zoom up to 16:9 so you clip bit off top and bottom of a 14:9 LB picture, but even then it's not too much of a problem in most cases if you want to use it.

I remember that for a while before Emmerdale went 16:9 ITV went through a phase of continuing to shoot it 4:3 and transmitting it 4:3 full-frame on analogue, but zooming it up to a 14:9 pillarbox on digital and flagging it as widescreen. That usually works for News 24 with foreign news footage, but it did lead to some unfortunate scalp-cropping incidents in Emmerdale which was quite obviously framed for 4:3. Perhaps it was a decision made close to transmission when the episodes had already been in the can for a while.

It was only of passing interest and amusement to me, but it should have mattered more to my soap-addict wife. Par for the course, she couldn't see anything different about it.

Don't knock it, Barney.

I know it's well technical but I'm finding it fascinating.

Is it? I've only seen this as a result of poor decisions made by CBBC & CITV who have decided viewers don't like black bars (authough I doubt they've ever consulted- or informed viewers of what they're for). Eveywhere else, 4:3 is shown as 4:3.

I'm not sure when this started with Emmerdale, but it was happening when we first got digital in March 2001. Emmerdale was 4:3 for 9 months after this, so the production team would defiantly have been aware of it being shown this way when it was filmed.

Yep - Trisha was the same for a while - shot in 4:3 but 14:9 safe.

In the case of CBBC it was done so that the whole sequence could be transmitted with a 16:9 flag, rather than constantly switching between 16:FHA for the studio links and 4:3CCO for the cartoons. If there was going to be an aspect ratio switch it wouldn't be possible to do any of the clever (depending on your point of view) DVE tricks with end credits. No kids these days want to sit and watch entire end-credit sequences without anything else to keep them interested, and I would guess that the usual contractual obligations apply to transmitting the credits. The fact that they are shrunk back and illegible doesn't seem to matter!

Yep - can you imagine the nightmare of trying to run CBBC as a mixed aspect ratio network with that amount of sophisticated presentation?

My comment to CBBC & CITV was that they won't pillarbox rather than aspect ratio switch. With comments to end credits though, I've got a video I taped back in 1994 where in most cases, the end credits run in their entirety with no announcements or anything. On 2 or 3 occasions they run behind the presenter (though looking at what I taped, it seems Phillipa Forrester & Toby Anstis were the only presenters in 1994, bar Ratz!)

As am I, Nick - I feel like I'm viewing behind some strange two-way mirror type dealey though.

This would also require aspect ratio switching.

Pillar boxing on CBBC means patterned bars, which are added to make the picture 16:9, therefore no ratio switch(?) It's a bugger though, if you want to watch on a 4:3 telly, or tape the programme in 4:3, you have to fumble around putting the box into center cut out. And of course, you loose resolution, although that appears to be the case anyway if all that technical chat is to be believed. I always thought it was 4:3 as 4:3, and 16:9 as 16:9, but it now appears it is 4:3 as 16:9 and with a center cut out signal sent.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago. It would still require aspect ratio switching.

If 12P16 material with curtains (which is what you're suggesting) is sent to analogue in 14L12 there would be visible curtains at the sides and black at the top and bottom. If sent to analogue as 12F12 then 16:9 material would be unacceptably cropped. The current solution is the best one.