• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

TBS Baseball in 16:9 on SD feed

See the "Fox Graphics" thread on this same board - with an increasing proportion of viewers owning HD screens, most program producers are moving toward producing all their programming in 16:9 aspect ratio, without necessarily feeling compelled to go to the extra expense and hassle of making sure their graphics and camera shots are "center-cut safe."

The TBS baseball graphics this year are produced in 16:9, and are not designed to be "center-cut" for full-screen 4:3 viewing.

TBS is only the latest in a growing number of networks to begin letterboxing 16:9 content for legacy 4:3 viewers. All the Fox channels have been doing it for a while, ESPN does it as well, and eventually everyone will be doing the same, if they're even providing separate SD feeds at all.
 
I thought the excuse TBS used for stretchovision was consistency, Wouldn't they want that for the SD feed? Will they start showing Everybody Loves Raymond reruns in 16:9 stretchovision on the SD feed?
 
Still trying to figure out why Geico doesn't air their commercials in HD (you see "TBS HD" or "TNT HD" bars around them).
 
When TBS eventually dumps its separate SD feed (as it will do eventually), then "Raymond" and whatever else is still airing in stretchovision on the HD feed would presumably show up stretched-and-letterboxed for SD viewers, sadly enough.

As for the Geico ads in SD, that's apparently the way they're still being produced. I don't believe I've seen those ads in HD anywhere. (Unlike Progressive, which produces the Flo ads in HD but apparently sends only SD versions to some networks; you'll see Flo in HD on the big three networks, but in SD on MSNBC, for instance. I have no idea why.)
 
Someone needs to break it to them that there are still a heck of a lot of us out here
who own old-school CRT type televisions under 25 inches diagonal which do not have
the zoom feature. (I have one which is actually new enough to have an ASNT tuner
built in)
 
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

If you're happy with your under-25-inch CRT set (with an "ATSC" tuner, not "ASNT"), more power to you. Nobody's compelling you to buy a new one. It will continue to function for years to come, and I hope it brings you much enjoyment. (I also suspect that somewhere in the menu you'll find a setting to change the aspect ratio. I have a cheapo 14" flatscreen TV/DVD combo in my kitchen that's 4:3 with an ATSC/QAM tuner, and it has an aspect-ratio setting in its menu.)

But the world is changing around you. The "heck of a lot" who don't have HDTVs yet? It's not as big as you think it is, and it's shrinking quickly. The Consumer Electronics Association estimated in August 2010 that HDTV penetration in the US was already at 65%, and that was more than a year ago. A lot of cheap flatscreens have been sold since then, and the industry has looked at those numbers and those trends and concluded that the future of television production and distribution is going to be 16:9.

Fight it if it makes you feel better, but you're tilting against a pretty big windmill at this point. (Consider: I just took a look at TVs at walmart.com, sorted by price from lowest to highest. Even the cheapest - a 9-inch "Axion" portable for $68 - is 16:9, and there's not a CRT to be seen anywhere in the list of 326 products. I found only one set on the list that looked like it might be 4:3.)
 
Scott Fybush said:
See the "Fox Graphics" thread on this same board - with an increasing proportion of viewers owning HD screens, most program producers are moving toward producing all their programming in 16:9 aspect ratio, without necessarily feeling compelled to go to the extra expense and hassle of making sure their graphics and camera shots are "center-cut safe."

The TBS baseball graphics this year are produced in 16:9, and are not designed to be "center-cut" for full-screen 4:3 viewing.

TBS is only the latest in a growing number of networks to begin letterboxing 16:9 content for legacy 4:3 viewers. All the Fox channels have been doing it for a while, ESPN does it as well, and eventually everyone will be doing the same, if they're even providing separate SD feeds at all.
Click to expand...
Meanwhile you've got channels like MSNBC who seemingly think it's somehow funny to *bOuNcE* back & forth between 16:9 & 4:3 in a heartbeat (And it's not just during the commercials either. I've come to expect that)

On top of that, they do the *bOuNcE* thing during THEIR SHOWS too as they switch shots. Drives me CRAZY !!! :mad:

If MSNBC is going to do 16:9 during their shows, then they should DO IT ALL THE TIME, FOR EACH SHOW & DURING THE ENTIRE SHOW !!!!!

MEMO TO NBC - Quit the *bOuNcE* thing. It makes you look bad.....

JMO.....

Cheers & 73 ;D
 
Considering the era we're living, it's ridiculous that there are still SD channels broadcasting in 4:3 format, when their HD channel is broadcasting in 16:9. It seems there are many people around thinking 16:9 is something exclusive of HD channels, showing they don't know much of European TV.
 
I do have 2 HD sets. The video definition and sound fidelity just keep getting better and better every year
(though strangely, my hearing and eyesight do not).

It just seems wasteful to toss out perfectly good appliances because of decisions made 30 steps above
my pay grade at the FCC and in network boardrooms. If I were running TBS I would want to keep my
programming looking good to the maximum number of viewers possible.

Then again I had some really nice little portables which became interesting looking paperweights on 6/12/09.
 
Pat Cook said:
MEMO TO NBC - Quit the *bOuNcE* thing. It makes you look bad.....
Click to expand...

MSNBC is 16:9 all day, every day (with the exception of some legacy weekend documentary content).

I assume you're watching on a 4:3 set, or at least watching an SD feed, and seeing the picture "bounce" between letterboxed and center-cut? What's happening is some bad implementation of a technology called Automatic Format Descriptor (AFD), which is meant to tell legacy 4:3 displays (or, in this case, cable systems) how to deal with 16:9 content. In the case of MSNBC, they should be - but are not - stripping the AFD data that comes in with some of the incoming satellite feeds that are 4:3.

That doesn't matter to those watching in 16:9, and it doesn't matter to many watching in 4:3. But for some watching in 4:3, there's gear at either the cable headend or inside the TV that responds to that AFD data and switches the screen from letterbox to center-cut or vice versa. My guess is that there's something in your Comcast headend responding to the AFD data and "bouncing."

This, too, shall pass: within a few years, all those SD feeds will (or at least should) be history.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
It just seems wasteful to toss out perfectly good appliances because of decisions made 30 steps above
my pay grade at the FCC and in network boardrooms. If I were running TBS I would want to keep my
programming looking good to the maximum number of viewers possible.
Click to expand...

They do. Decisions at places like TBS aren't made on whims, or on the basis of message-board chatter. If they've moved their graphics to 16:9 without making them center-cut safe, I guarantee you they have data to tell them that the "maximum number of viewers possible" - or at least the majority of the viewers their advertisers most want to reach - are now watching on 16:9 displays, or via distribution channels that can handle 16:9 downconverted to letterbox 4:3 SD.

And you'd be surprised, I think, at how many of those second and third sets have also been replaced with flatscreens in recent years in kitchens and bedrooms all over the country. (Mine haven't, yet, but that's more a a function of how little I use them than anything else.)

I agree with you that nobody wants to toss out a perfectly good appliance. I'm fortunate here in that Time Warner Cable hasn't pulled the plug - yet! - on its analog cable service, so I still get 50 channels or so of SD service to the bedroom and kitchen sets and the one in my upstairs office. I've never been terribly bothered by letterboxing.
 
As long as it's not stretchovision, I don't really care about letterboxing. Did some focus group tell TBS that stretchovision was a good idea. This was the same channel ran colorized movies
 
FreddyE1977 said:
Then again I had some really nice little portables which became interesting looking paperweights on 6/12/09.
Click to expand...
Think that's strange? I've got a power supply that I'm using as a ground plane for a mag mount antenna for my Ham Radio Handie-Talkie ;D

We Hams are so resourceful ;D

Cheers & 73 ;D
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom