HD letterbox stacking stupidity (1 Viewer)

[Wayne Bundrick]

I'm watching the early early pregame festivities. The CBS digital feed is alive, but it's all upconverted 4:3 and windowboxed with blue graphics on the sides.

And then the "Phil Simms All Iron Team" show comes on at 1pm EST. Almost all of this preproduced program is 16:9, then letterboxed to fit 4:3, then upconverted and windowboxed back to 16:9. And if you're watching it on a 4:3 set as I am, it's letterboxed one more time. I've got black bars stacked on top of black bars and blue bars.

Joe Fullscreen, watching it on his analog TV, has to put up with the black bars he hates so much. Ironically, if Joe Fullscreen buys a widescreen HDTV set to get "the big picture" without black bars, he ends up with a postage stamp sized picture with bars on all four sides.

I don't think it can get more stupider than that.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

The pre-game studio stuff looks to be in true 16:9. I didn't bother to check out the earlier programs.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Perhaps the Poker tournament on NBC from 4-6 p.m. might offer something less as offensive?

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I'm referring to the technical presentation, not the content.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Dammit! The local CBS affiliate is bouncing around between HDTV and the crappy SDTV feed. It's been SDTV for 99% of the game so far. This is quite underwhelming!

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

No problems here in the Maconga. They've been on the HD feed since Noon.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

It doesn't seem like they really utilize the extra space and resolution for their camera work. It would be really cool if they explored some different angles since the HD resolution lends itslef to better detail and depth of field perception.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

They can't do that because the same cameras are also used for the 4:3 NTSC video, which is seen by half a billion people.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Ah, well, a shame.

 

[dan fritzen]

Wayne, I agree with you, it is irritating to see 16:9 content sent as 4:3 so we get stuck with black bars no matter what aspect ratio we our TV is.

There are a lot of commmercials as well that are 16:9 and are not sent that way, how hard is it to get 16:9 content?