Full circle

[JW]

While flipping past the football game on Fox Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the bug with the score and time remaining was no longer visible in SD. (When I switched to letterbox to check, it was up in the corner, unreadable to me.) So the network that developed the Fox Box no longer thinks it's important enough for SD viewers. I understand that's a less and less important piece of the audience, but it also means that all other things being equal, I'll watch the game on CBS.

[Diner]

On Monday, August 31, 2015 at 5:54:11 PM UTC-4, JW wrote:

While flipping past the football game on Fox Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the bug with the score and time remaining was no longer visible in SD. (When I switched to letterbox to check, it was up in the corner, unreadable to me.) So the network that developed the Fox Box no longer thinks it's important enough for SD viewers. I understand that's a less and less important piece of the audience, but it also means that all other things being equal, I'll watch the game on CBS.

 

Actually, it's been that way on Fox for years - probably since the DTV transition in 2009, or at least not long afterwards. I have a cathode ray TV, and I always have to switch to my HD DVR in order to see the score when I watch games on Fox.

 

-Tim

[David Lynch]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 8:04 AM, Diner <bway...@gmail.com> wrote: 

Actually, it's been that way on Fox for years - probably since the DTV transition in 2009, or at least not long afterwards. I have a cathode ray TV, and I always have to switch to my HD DVR in order to see the score when I watch games on Fox. 

IIRC, Fox spent far more than the other networks in the time before the digital switchover getting its affiliates and as many cable/satellite operators as possible equipped to transmit and receive Active Format Description coding so that downconverted SD feeds could switch back and forth between letterboxed and center-cut automatically depending on the format of what was being broadcast, so I think they've been working for a while off of the assumption that if they want something to be seen widescreen, it's going to be seen widescreen.

But otherwise, the question of picture size seems to be a bit of a mess. For NBC Sports, whether things are 4:3-friendly seems to depend on what sport you're watching (football: yes, soccer: no). "ESPN on ABC" is formatted for center-cut 4:3 even though ESPN on ESPN was one of the first non-premium networks on my cable system to go to 24/7 letterboxing and directors will often let the action fill the whole width of a 16:9 screen. CBS seems to be far more consistent and conservative than the rest about never going outside of the 4:3 safe zone in both sports and entertainment programming.

--

David J. Lynch
djl...@gmail.com

[JW]

> Actually, it's been that way on Fox for years - probably since the DTV
> transition in 2009, or at least not long afterwards. I have a cathode ray
> TV, and I always have to switch to my HD DVR in order to see the score when
> I watch games on Fox.

For the last few years, just enough of the Fox Box has been visible to remind me that it's there, without making much useful information available to 4:3 viewers. Now it's gone completely.

This isn't really a complaint (time marches on), but more an observation that the network who introduced the continuous score display that sports viewers now take for granted has made it unavailable to a portion of its audience.

[Bob Jersey]

The excuse (which came from the electronics industry, not programming producers or providers) is that HD sets are as affordable now, as CRT sets were in the 70s.

B

[Adam Bowie]

I would imagine that somebody somewhere has done some research and determined that x% of households now watch on widescreen televisions (or at least TV's that are usually switched into widescreen mode), where "x" is a large number that's fairly close to 100.

Can you still buy 4:3 TVs? Rear projection models?

I think in the UK for a long time everything was kept 4:3 safe, and for the last few years of analogue transmissions, everything had thin black borders top and bottom (14:9 ratio). I think for a while some of the SD versions of channels kept their graphics in slightly different places to the HD versions - it wasn't a straight down-conversion. But in recent years, if you have a cut-out 4:3 image, then you're missing all the score boxes.

And to be honest it makes sense. Having the box floating "in the middle" of the picture is odd if the vast majority of viewers are seeing a 16:9 image. 

Adam

PS The cheapest HD sets in the UK are way cheaper than CRT sets ever were. I remember going out and helping mum pick out our first colour set sometime around 1985 (yes - really!), and it cost much more than a supermarket cheapie is today.

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Bob Jersey <bob.in...@juno.com> wrote:

The excuse (which came from the electronics industry, not programming producers or providers) is that HD sets are as affordable now, as CRT sets were in the 70s.

B

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[Henry Fung]

ESPN on ABC is using the new scoreboard boxes which looks incredibly bad when the boxes are formatted for a 4:3 view.  For some reason, probably due to rights issues, the "ABC" bug is also displayed at all times on Goal Line. 

[Mark Jeffries]

On the other hand, WFLD only runs local commercials and syndicated shows made in SD in 4:3--everything else is in 16:9.

The eccentric part I've noticed with NBC is that all of their scripted programming and ads are in 16:9--news and reality are in 4:3.  Haven't really checked on sports lately.

Mark Jeffries
Saints Spotlight Editor
spotl...@gmail.com

--

[Bob Jersey]

Mark Jeffries, to David Lynch:

On the other hand, WFLD only runs local commercials and syndicated shows made in SD in 4:3--everything else is in 16:9.

The eccentric part I've noticed with NBC is that all of their scripted programming and ads are in 16:9--news and reality are in 4:3.  Haven't really checked on sports lately.

I saw parts of the NASCAR Cup race last Sunday... 4:3 except for a couple of commercials.

B