I've been watching this show with a sort of amazed fascination. One thing that strikes straight-away to someone familiar with the UK show is the technical quality of the production. It's seems real old-skool NTSC, with the dominant colours being brown and green, a set that seems to have come from a hardboard warehouse with some plastic flowers thrown in - the whole thing made for and shot in 4:3. Am I correct? It looks hideous.

Why do US TV shows still get made in 4:3 format? Is it so much more expensive to cut them in 16:9?

I'm not too technical, so I'm not sure what you mean by the numbers, but many of the US shows are filmed in HD these days. When the daytimes soaps switched to HD, they became even more colourful. I lived in Canada for many years and understand what you mean, if I flicked on a show, I could tell you if it was Canadian, American, or British, just by the colour of it. Everything filmed in the States, more so the sitcoms, are extremely colourful, followed by Canada, not as much, and then the UK, a bit drab. Now no shouting at me for saying that, I am British, but I do notice the difference definitely.

Yanks assocaite widescreen with HD, FOX causes a whole lot of fuss by broadcasting in widescreen NTSC.

I cant seen a reality show going HD any time soon, to fit a house with HD cameras would be hugely costly even for CBS who have SONY's HD backing.