After looking through the forums I have a couple of questions for you:

Some posts have mentioned problems with your implementation of widecreen TV as not being "true widescreen". What if any problem is there with your current 16x9 standard and what percentage of programming is actually in16x9?

Do the 100mhz TV's eliminate the perceived 50mhz flicker problem that some posters have mentioned?

When I receive "BBC America" programming it looks just awful. I suspect that this is due to some conversion or compression before it gets here, as your PAL broadcasts are supposed to look better than our NTSC material. But why is BBC World News in such an odd aspect ratio, something like 5:3? Very good news show but someone should ask that lady to smile once in a while.

Well there's lots of definitions of "widescreen". Specifically, "widescreen broadcasts" (a 16:9 anamorphic picture, as seen on TV or DVD), and "original aspect ratio" widescreen - many channels pan-and-scan footage to use more/all of the target 16:9 TV shape, whether it's 2.35:1 movies reframed to 16:9 (reframing sadly being the norm on non-subscription movie channels), or BBC news channels cropping 4:3 footage to be 1.66:1 (the odd aspect ratio you refer to?) for a 16:9 news show. Different channels deal with different aspect ratios differently though, so whether the aspect ratio of the source material or the target TV shape takes prominence is a channel-by-channel or programme-by-programme descision.

Thank you, I was referring to programming produced for television rather than feature film broadcasts. I think the 1.66:1 ratio you are referring to is the odd ratio that we receive for some BBC America programming. Hopefully, everyone will standardize on 16x9 for TV and OAR for films but I am not betting on it.

In the US, widescreen material is broadcast by using a resolution of either 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixels which have a true 16:9 ratio.

In the UK, what happens is that "widescreen" material is broadcast with a traditional 4:3ish ratio resolution of 720x576 pixels.

The "widescreen" image is achieved is by squashing the horizontal plane when broadcast, which a "widescreen" TV then stretches back out so that it looks about right (albeit with a loss of horizontal resolution). Digital set-top boxes will interpret what is being broadcast and knowing what type of TV you have (ie 4:3 or 16:9 tube) then letterbox/crop the picture if necessary so it looks right.

Some broadcasters (like the BBC) will go even further and broadcast normal non-widescreen, 4:3 programmes in an even lower resolution of around 520x576 pixels.

With the exception of most news programmes, and older archive material almost all programmes broadcast on the terrestrial channels are widescreen.

Is BBC America available in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, or does it only broadcast in 4:3?

When a channel broadcasts only in 4:3 it's quite common for the broadcaster to request a 14:9 letterbox cropped version of the 16:9 original - in other words, what you are seeing is a 4:3 picture with small black bars on the top and bottom. This practice is quite common in the UK, unfortunately. As well as not getting to see the whole picture, vertical resolution is wasted, and since the STB treats the material as 4:3, there is no way for 4:3 viewers to get a 'full screen' version either.

AFIK, BBC America is only available here in an NTSC format. It is in 4:3 or letterboxed into 14x9, or 16x9 aspect ratios as you described. Some providers may crop it differently but no HDTV providers are yet offering a widescreen version, only very poor SD versions. The PBS network does air HDTV versions of some programming that was produced jointly with the BBC, such as "Walking with Dinosaurs". This looked terrific and I believe it aired in 1080i. Having watched BBC America in most parts of the USA, it sadly looks worse than most stations.

Ratam

All current Programming on the BBC is 16*9 INCLUDING News -the only place in the world. The other "public service" channels also tend to be Widescreen - all Adverts on these cahnnels are.

Hence what you get on the BBC World News which is simulcast on BBC FOUR is the 14*9 version of it.
In the UK the analogue service always takes a 14*9 version of the 16*9 Widescreen.

100 HZ scanning can get rid of flicker BUT as it interpolates it usually makes any MPEG or moving pictures look worse! I think we can (just) live with the flicker until larger screens come along ....

625 line PAL (576 active) is far better than 525line NTSC (480 active) and 625line Widescreen is good despite theoretical reduced Horizontal resolution.

The quality - there may be so much equipment concatinated that it woudl be hard to tell- particaulaly if you are on analogue cable. If you are on Digital cable - is it any diferent on the BBC America on demand service ?

I have not seen the "on demand service" you mentioned but have watched BBC America using OTA reception in NTSC & ATSC, in both analog & digital cable, and on DirecTV DBS while using a variety of SDTV and HDTV equipment. The programming was good but it mostly all looked bad. No doubt that the source material is of good quality but it is getting degraded somewhere along the way. Thanks to all for your posts.

If you think 100Hz would remove the flicker you get with 60Hz you should see out 50Hz! Many BBC shows are available on DVD if you want better quality, can you play Region 2 PAL discs? Most of our players can do Region 1 NTSC with a hack. BBC produce many programmes in HDTV for international markets, but its a shame they dont transmit them in the US as, unlike the UK, you do have High Def. The quality of the conversion can vary a lot as with the conversion you have to drop 100 lines and more problematically convert from 50Hz to 60Hz and so interpolate extra frames.

I do not have a noticeable flicker problem in our 60hz system, just curious about how your equipment works over there. Many posts mentioned the 100Mhz sets as being an unsatisfactory solution, and "technologist" has clarified that. There is no demand here for region-2 compatible equipment , this would probably be used by people moving here who already owned DVD's. There is a large selection of BBC DVD's that are available to us in the region-1 format. Some DVD's may be region-2 format only but I am not aware of them.

There are two sources of BBC productions here, BBC America and PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). BBC America has the poor PQ that I mentioned. They offer a variety of news, drama, and comedy programming that was probably created for your domestic market . PBS had a small amount of BBC programming, consisting of news, science, and nature shows. Except for the news, these PBS shows have good PQ and some of them are broadcast in HD.

I guess that if my "oldish" UK spec Widescreen Sony is NTSC/PAL (50/60Hz) compatible, then the same thing or similar must be over in the States. My first DVD player (pioneer 515) was also R1/R2 (with the US style phonos on the back - not the Euro/uk scart), so it could play native R1 USA films straight to the Sony tv in NTSC output. If you could get a mutli-standard tv over there + a modern R1/R2 dvd player, you should be able to order UK R2 dvd's and play them back over there.


Dave

What I'd like to know is who decided that we should all be buying widescreen TVs in the first place? We must have the highest proportion of widescreen TVs vs. regular ones in the world easily. I personally don't understand the need for them but we did buy one partly because it was so difficult to find any regular TVs and because everything seems to be broadcast in widescreen now it's better that we got one.

When did the BBC decide to start doing everything in ws? It all seemed to happen very quickly. I can't understand why anyone would have wanted to buy a widescreen TV before everything went widescreen, but presumably the reason TV went widescreen was because of the popularity of widescreen TVs.

I've forgotten what I'm saying now.

Well Widescreen was originally decided on films years ago, and for the new "phase" of tv's it was decided to go 16x9

Its a shame that no SKY channels are broadcast in W/S exept movies and sport.

dont forget about sky one thats in wide screen some times. and the bbc channels are.

And to think I never notice any 50hz flicker!

We seem to manage OK with 24 frames per second at the cinema.

So 25 frames / 50hz looks pretty good to me.

The poor quality from BBC America, will be the same reason why many American programmes look so bad over here, so washed out, out of focus etc etc, it's down to conversion from one format to another.

The BBC decided to go along the all Widescreen format in 1998, when Digital TV was launched in the UK, from that date all new programming HAD to be made 16:9. Other channels followed pretty quickly.

I've never seen TVs on sale here that could also display PAL. Some DVD players can show PAL but that's more of matter of standardizing a player for different markets. I've never known anyone that had any PAL content they wished to watch, that didn't emigrate to America. The market for such capability just isn't there in a significant way.

Who are they then producing the content for. The American market is the largest market for HD. There's Australia but that's obviously a smaller market.

Practically speaking, it isn't in any significant way. The years I watched PAL content the quality difference between the two, under ideal and normal conditions, was negligible.\

Actually cinema projectors use a double shutter (every frame is shown twice), so the actual refresh rate is 48Hz. 24Hz would be unbearably flickery.

48/50Hz flicker is only really noticeable if you look for it. NTSC flickers as well, not quite as much as PAL, but it is noticeable if you look for it.

In a few years all flicker arguments will be redundant, because modern displays such as plasma/LCD TVs and digital cinema projectors have the sample-and-hold characteristic: the pixels do not fade, so the screen does not flicker.