Posted by AnthonyR on 01/17/07 14:16

Hey Barry,
Can you try tuning to NBC news with a direct HD tuner (off the air) and see
if it is still not 16:9?
Maybe the cable feed is downsampled to 4:3 for regular broadcast and
distribution.

I see this as something TV broadcasters can do in near future to gain direct
tuning viewers, bypassing cable for clarity.
My neighbor has done this already as a broadcast HD signal is much cleaner
than a compressed cable HD signal.

And once they get you to directly tune to their station chances are you'll
stay there longer than flip around hundreds of cable channels.
It's a though.

AnthonyR.


"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:45adba25$0$9625$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> I'm sure that the image is coming from a digital HDTV camera, but they are
> not using the full width. And, by the way, although I'm pretty sure it's
> NOT what they are actually doing, there ARE some 4:3 formats that are
> approved HDTV formats. One of them is 1024x768, although I don't think
> that any of the networks are actually broadcasting in that format at this
> time. 640x480 progressive scan at 60Hz refresh is also an approved
> format, it's not considered to be HDTV but it's more than twice the
> information content of conventional NTSC analog TV.
>
> There are also some approved formats that explicitly presume non-square
> pixels, although I don't think that any of them are being used either at
> this time.
>
> Joshua Zyber wrote:
>> "Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message There's
>> really no debate to be had about this issue. If the nightly news were
>> shot on High Def video, it would fill your 16:9 TV. All HD video cameras
>> are natively 16:9 in aspect ratio. For example, The Today Show recently
>> switched to HD production. Compare the same program on the SD channel and
>> the HD channel. Then take another look at upconverted nightly news and
>> see if you're really so impressed by the level of detail present.

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