Question:
Am seriously thinking of buying a widescreen TV and was trying to sell the benefits to family and friends today whilst watching wimbledon.
We started to watch the men's final on a small standard 4:3 TV via normal analogue broadcast and then compared it to the picture on the widescreen tv watching it via the sky box on the digital broadcast. I had expected to be able to see more picture on the widescreen tv when watching via sky but it looked exactly the same ie you didn't see anymore of the court / picture?
Also tonight I noticed when watching wimbledon on my 4:3 TV at home via analogue the picture took up all of the screen and yet when I flicked to BBC1 to watch groundforce I noticed that there was a mini letterbox effect ie small (but noticeable) black bars top and bottom.
Does this indicate that wibledon is broadcast 4:3 but that groundforce (or any prog that can be seen to have this mini letterbox effect) is broadcast in widescreen?
If this is the case does this mean that the advantage of watching for example groundforce on a widescreen tv via digital broadcast is that you eliminate the mini letterbox effect or do you get to see more picture currently hidden by a 4:3 TV?
I hope the above makes sense?? - Yours confused but hoping to be educated on the differences between a 4:3 TV v widescreen TV v 4:3 analogue broadcast v 16:9 digital broadcast...
:confused:
If they have 14:9 black bars on analogue, they are usually full 16:9 anamorphic on the digital channels.
UK TV channels being the exception (UK Gold etc)
All new british programs are being filmed in Widescreen (16:9) - but most are only broadcast this way on Freeview/Sky and even then the decoding box needs to have a option to switch from 4:3 to either 4:3 letterbox or 16:9. With the tennis you weren't really missing that much extra court as the regular 4:3 picture gets all the relevent singles court in the picture.
I've noticed the "mini" letterbox effect on analogue, and it could well be a 14:9 display to help people with analogue widescreen sets get a wider display without too much pictureloss.
Programs from Abroad (including football filmed in Europe and US TV) will normally be in 4:3 as they don't really go in for widescreen in the states.
Originally posted by kiran_mk2
Programs from Abroad (including football filmed in Europue and US TV) will normally be in 4:3 as they don't really go in for widescreen in the states.
Yep, many Champions League matches (that are not hosted in the UK) all broadcast in 4:3 :gag:
Shocking to say the least. :oh-hum:
Just like the World Cup last year which was 4:3. Altough every major TV manufacturer was promoting their wide screen tvs so you could watch football on wide screen with added realism. :nono:
dont get that asadmm..the only way you could do that would be to stretch and distort the frame or zoom and loose definition, not to mention the top and bottom of the picture, the whole point of a wide screen tv is to give more of the picture not less.
Just to answer your question about Wimbledon in widscreen. Yes it was, and yes you would have seen more of the picture (watching it from a digital source, anyway). My guess is that your Sky box was not set to 16:9 mode. In widescreen, the onscreen graphics are usually set inside the 4:3 'safe' area, so you would have seen the parts of the picture to the left and right of the graphics.
Don't get me started on Sky ones poor attempt at widescreen broadcasting :oh-hum:
Originally posted by dcmax37
dont get that asadmm..the only way you could do that would be to stretch and distort the frame or zoom and loose definition, not to mention the top and bottom of the picture, the whole point of a wide screen tv is to give more of the picture not less.
Exactly the point he was making, i think. They were promoting their widescreen tv sets using the world cup as a selling point, but the world cup wasn't in widescreen. Bad boys.
Originally posted by soberion
Just to answer your question about Wimbledon in widscreen. Yes it was, and yes you would have seen more of the picture (watching it from a digital source, anyway). My guess is that your Sky box was not set to 16:9 mode. In widescreen, the onscreen graphics are usually set inside the 4:3 'safe' area, so you would have seen the parts of the picture to the left and right of the graphics.
Don't get me started on Sky ones poor attempt at widescreen broadcasting :oh-hum:
Yep - can confirm soberion's post. BBC's Wimbledon output on Digital satellite is definitely 16:9. You see more of the court to the left/right of the usual 4:3 picture.
If you couldn't see it then your TV/digibox is configured incorrectly.
WRT Wimbleden(and snooker) you don't see meaningfully more on widescreen, they frame it so that the court(just) fits in the middle 4:3. Also notice that they could lock of the camera for 16:9, but they add some unneccesary(from 16:9 pov) panning to keep the ball in the 4:3 area when it goes of court. For my bedroom tv I ended up flicking the digibox to 4:3 normal(p&s) for Wimbledon.
Thanks guys - but am now a little confused. If watching wimbledon via digital do you see more of the picture on a widescreen TV or not.
on the widescreen tv I was looking at you appeared to miss off the bottom left and right hand corners of the court when looking down the court. And if anything you saw a fraction more of the right hand edge when the widescreen TV was in 4:3 mode?
Does this mean the Sky box needs some adjustment?
In my student house, we had a Digibox and a 4:3 tv. I prefered to watch in 16:9 letterbox mode but I couldn't get my housemates to do this, so the box was mostly in full frame mode.
The tennis in 4:3 showed the whole court except for the bottom right/left corners. On switching to widescreen out put, the whole court (and more eitherside) was viewable. This meant that the camera could have been fixed - the only reason it moved from side to side was for the benefit of 4:3 viewers.
However, as has been mentioned, without a widescreen set, the score was impossible to read and there was no real need to see the extra picture at the right and left, but yes: there was more picture if you switched to widescreen.
Originally posted by petegee
Thanks guys - but am now a little confused. If watching wimbledon via digital do you see more of the picture on a widescreen TV or not.
on the widescreen tv I was looking at you appeared to miss off the bottom left and right hand corners of the court when looking down the court. And if anything you saw a fraction more of the right hand edge when the widescreen TV was in 4:3 mode?
Does this mean the Sky box needs some adjustment? Definitely. It means your digibox is set to output 4:3 Normal, and then you tv is set to one of those :gag: stretch modes to make the 4:3 fill the screen. You saw slightly more in 4:3 mode due to it eliminating overscan on the sides(the parts of the image hidden just beyond the edges of the screen).
Your digibox should be set to output widescreen.
We started to watch the men's final on a small standard 4:3 TV via normal analogue broadcast and then compared it to the picture on the widescreen tv watching it via the sky box on the digital broadcast. I had expected to be able to see more picture on the widescreen tv when watching via sky but it looked exactly the same ie you didn't see anymore of the court / picture?
Also tonight I noticed when watching wimbledon on my 4:3 TV at home via analogue the picture took up all of the screen and yet when I flicked to BBC1 to watch groundforce I noticed that there was a mini letterbox effect ie small (but noticeable) black bars top and bottom.
Does this indicate that wibledon is broadcast 4:3 but that groundforce (or any prog that can be seen to have this mini letterbox effect) is broadcast in widescreen?
If this is the case does this mean that the advantage of watching for example groundforce on a widescreen tv via digital broadcast is that you eliminate the mini letterbox effect or do you get to see more picture currently hidden by a 4:3 TV?
I hope the above makes sense?? - Yours confused but hoping to be educated on the differences between a 4:3 TV v widescreen TV v 4:3 analogue broadcast v 16:9 digital broadcast...
:confused:
Answers:
If they have 14:9 black bars on analogue, they are usually full 16:9 anamorphic on the digital channels.
UK TV channels being the exception (UK Gold etc)
Answers:
All new british programs are being filmed in Widescreen (16:9) - but most are only broadcast this way on Freeview/Sky and even then the decoding box needs to have a option to switch from 4:3 to either 4:3 letterbox or 16:9. With the tennis you weren't really missing that much extra court as the regular 4:3 picture gets all the relevent singles court in the picture.
I've noticed the "mini" letterbox effect on analogue, and it could well be a 14:9 display to help people with analogue widescreen sets get a wider display without too much pictureloss.
Programs from Abroad (including football filmed in Europe and US TV) will normally be in 4:3 as they don't really go in for widescreen in the states.
Answers:
Originally posted by kiran_mk2
Programs from Abroad (including football filmed in Europue and US TV) will normally be in 4:3 as they don't really go in for widescreen in the states.
Yep, many Champions League matches (that are not hosted in the UK) all broadcast in 4:3 :gag:
Shocking to say the least. :oh-hum:
Answers:
Just like the World Cup last year which was 4:3. Altough every major TV manufacturer was promoting their wide screen tvs so you could watch football on wide screen with added realism. :nono:
Answers:
dont get that asadmm..the only way you could do that would be to stretch and distort the frame or zoom and loose definition, not to mention the top and bottom of the picture, the whole point of a wide screen tv is to give more of the picture not less.
Answers:
Just to answer your question about Wimbledon in widscreen. Yes it was, and yes you would have seen more of the picture (watching it from a digital source, anyway). My guess is that your Sky box was not set to 16:9 mode. In widescreen, the onscreen graphics are usually set inside the 4:3 'safe' area, so you would have seen the parts of the picture to the left and right of the graphics.
Don't get me started on Sky ones poor attempt at widescreen broadcasting :oh-hum:
Answers:
Originally posted by dcmax37
dont get that asadmm..the only way you could do that would be to stretch and distort the frame or zoom and loose definition, not to mention the top and bottom of the picture, the whole point of a wide screen tv is to give more of the picture not less.
Exactly the point he was making, i think. They were promoting their widescreen tv sets using the world cup as a selling point, but the world cup wasn't in widescreen. Bad boys.
Answers:
Originally posted by soberion
Just to answer your question about Wimbledon in widscreen. Yes it was, and yes you would have seen more of the picture (watching it from a digital source, anyway). My guess is that your Sky box was not set to 16:9 mode. In widescreen, the onscreen graphics are usually set inside the 4:3 'safe' area, so you would have seen the parts of the picture to the left and right of the graphics.
Don't get me started on Sky ones poor attempt at widescreen broadcasting :oh-hum:
Yep - can confirm soberion's post. BBC's Wimbledon output on Digital satellite is definitely 16:9. You see more of the court to the left/right of the usual 4:3 picture.
If you couldn't see it then your TV/digibox is configured incorrectly.
Answers:
WRT Wimbleden(and snooker) you don't see meaningfully more on widescreen, they frame it so that the court(just) fits in the middle 4:3. Also notice that they could lock of the camera for 16:9, but they add some unneccesary(from 16:9 pov) panning to keep the ball in the 4:3 area when it goes of court. For my bedroom tv I ended up flicking the digibox to 4:3 normal(p&s) for Wimbledon.
Answers:
Thanks guys - but am now a little confused. If watching wimbledon via digital do you see more of the picture on a widescreen TV or not.
on the widescreen tv I was looking at you appeared to miss off the bottom left and right hand corners of the court when looking down the court. And if anything you saw a fraction more of the right hand edge when the widescreen TV was in 4:3 mode?
Does this mean the Sky box needs some adjustment?
Answers:
In my student house, we had a Digibox and a 4:3 tv. I prefered to watch in 16:9 letterbox mode but I couldn't get my housemates to do this, so the box was mostly in full frame mode.
The tennis in 4:3 showed the whole court except for the bottom right/left corners. On switching to widescreen out put, the whole court (and more eitherside) was viewable. This meant that the camera could have been fixed - the only reason it moved from side to side was for the benefit of 4:3 viewers.
However, as has been mentioned, without a widescreen set, the score was impossible to read and there was no real need to see the extra picture at the right and left, but yes: there was more picture if you switched to widescreen.
Answers:
Originally posted by petegee
Thanks guys - but am now a little confused. If watching wimbledon via digital do you see more of the picture on a widescreen TV or not.
on the widescreen tv I was looking at you appeared to miss off the bottom left and right hand corners of the court when looking down the court. And if anything you saw a fraction more of the right hand edge when the widescreen TV was in 4:3 mode?
Does this mean the Sky box needs some adjustment? Definitely. It means your digibox is set to output 4:3 Normal, and then you tv is set to one of those :gag: stretch modes to make the 4:3 fill the screen. You saw slightly more in 4:3 mode due to it eliminating overscan on the sides(the parts of the image hidden just beyond the edges of the screen).
Your digibox should be set to output widescreen.
1 2