When does NBC plan on going widescreen for their news and sport networks? MSNBC and CNBC are still in 4:3 for SD while CNN, HLN, ESPN are 16:9. Makes sense for CNBC, MSNBC, The Weather Channel, NBC Sports Network to be using 16:9 by now.
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NBC Cable Widescreen For SD
- Thread starter radiolives
- Start date
Pat Cook said:
Comcast, Charter, and TimeWarner cable companies do not squish the 16X9 feeds. They zoom. Usually the graphics are centered in a way that they are watchable and not chopped off. As long as most television sets are old-style, non-flatscreen, non-HD, the cable companies will do this. I still have crotchety elderly relatives who scream at the "bars" on their Faux News, ESPN, and CNN channels.
In my area, Comcast gives me network feeds from two cities. The Sacramento NBC defaults to letterbox during prime-time entertainment programming (but not for football, hockey, reality, daytime, news, overnights, or local programming). Chico NBC is full screen all the time. NBC On-Demand seems to mirror the Sacramento feed, letterbox-wise). The Sacramento ABC station just went fulltime letterbox about a month ago. All day, all the time, black bars. I love it. Chico ABC, as well as ABC on-demand, is all fullscreen. CBS is fullscreen all the time on both feeds.
If i use OTA rabbit ears, the Chico CBS/NBC stations are HD-feed and view as letterbox on old-style televisions.
There are a number of points in the distribution chain where decisions are made about how 16:9 content will be formatted for 4:3 display.
At the network or station level, content producers can use AFD (Automatic Format Descriptor) code that's supposed to tell distributors and in some cases even devices downstream how to handle their content. NBC seems, in my experience, to use AFD most aggressively. AFD can work dynamically - if you have a program that contains graphics that are not 4:3 safe (like Fox's score boxes, for instance), the program might contain an AFD flag calling for letterboxing, but then the spot break might include spots that are 4:3 safe and can be center-cut.
At the cable system level, you might have equipment that recognizes the AFD codes and reacts accordingly, or perhaps not, in which case the equipment might be set up to automatically center-cut, or to letterbox, or even to squeeze. So much depends on how attentive the cable company is, and on how well broadcasters monitor the returns of their own feeds and lean on the cable companies to get it right.
Much depends, also, on whether the program provider is still supplying a separate SD feed, or whether it's gone 16:9 HD exclusively and is depending on distributors to downconvert for legacy 4:3 displays. Fox's cable channels, CNN and ESPN do the latter now; MSNBC, among others, provides an SD feed and continues to keep its graphics 4:3-safe.
And at the consumer's end, there are plenty of opportunities to mess things up. Most OTA DTV tuners or converter boxes include some sort of zoom/letterbox functionality. My Zenith/Insignias include a "set by program" mode that I think recognizes at least some AFD coding. My Sony HDTV includes some auto-zoom functionality that's supposed to recognize when there's postage-stamping going on and fix it.
At the network or station level, content producers can use AFD (Automatic Format Descriptor) code that's supposed to tell distributors and in some cases even devices downstream how to handle their content. NBC seems, in my experience, to use AFD most aggressively. AFD can work dynamically - if you have a program that contains graphics that are not 4:3 safe (like Fox's score boxes, for instance), the program might contain an AFD flag calling for letterboxing, but then the spot break might include spots that are 4:3 safe and can be center-cut.
At the cable system level, you might have equipment that recognizes the AFD codes and reacts accordingly, or perhaps not, in which case the equipment might be set up to automatically center-cut, or to letterbox, or even to squeeze. So much depends on how attentive the cable company is, and on how well broadcasters monitor the returns of their own feeds and lean on the cable companies to get it right.
Much depends, also, on whether the program provider is still supplying a separate SD feed, or whether it's gone 16:9 HD exclusively and is depending on distributors to downconvert for legacy 4:3 displays. Fox's cable channels, CNN and ESPN do the latter now; MSNBC, among others, provides an SD feed and continues to keep its graphics 4:3-safe.
And at the consumer's end, there are plenty of opportunities to mess things up. Most OTA DTV tuners or converter boxes include some sort of zoom/letterbox functionality. My Zenith/Insignias include a "set by program" mode that I think recognizes at least some AFD coding. My Sony HDTV includes some auto-zoom functionality that's supposed to recognize when there's postage-stamping going on and fix it.
Scott Fybush said:
I've stayed at several hotels recently that have a Philips TV (don't know if its a hotel specific model or not), that auto zooms to eliminate black bars, whether it stretches, zooms or a combination of the two. You can change the setting with the remote, but it reverts back to auto when you change the channel. It gets annoying when there's a widescreen program, followed by a 4x3 commercial, followed by a 16x9 postage stamp, then back to full 16x9 - the set tries to make the zooming smooth (rather than just jumping the format).
J
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
I personally enjoy the fact that NBC Sports Network does not force me to watch
hockey scrunched-down in a letterbox on my two non-HD sets.
Not everyone in this world is an early adapter.
hockey scrunched-down in a letterbox on my two non-HD sets.
Not everyone in this world is an early adapter.
there a several yet to be adopters, many will hold on to their old tube sets for years after they're obsolete
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
w00t said:
I just recently threw away a set that gave up the ghost. I bought it just prior to the start of the
Gulf War in 1991. You CAN get more than 3 years out of an appliance, I tell ya.
FreddyE1977 said:
Yeah, and what's all this about color TV - what's the rush?
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