Admittedly this isn't just the BBC at fault, but....

Not having bought a widescreen TV yet (shame on me), I have taken to watching widescreen programmes letterboxed.

At least this way I see the whole picture, admittedly seeing the picture somewhat diminished in height (by one third to be precise).

However, I get upset when I see (normally foreign) sports broadcasts coming through in 4:3, where the BBC simply put black blocks left and right, and then broadcast as a 16:9 signal.

Obviously, I am then seeing a border around the whole of the screen, reducing my picture to 9/16 of its original area (nearly a 50% reduction!).

On some broadcasts (ITV has sometimes, but not always been good about this) where they have a 4:3 picture to broadcast, they will broadcast it straight 4:3 (you can see their output switch from the letterboxed widescreen to the full-screen 4:3).

What can be done to sort this out?

Correction: by one-quarter, to be even more precise...!

I am sadly still still in 4:3 land too - and this relly bugs me. It happens when the main programme (i.e. Grandstand French Open, ITV Champions League) is broadcast in 16:9, so that when they switch to the studio from the foreign feed, the full widescreen picture can be seen. They don't seem to switch the aspect ratio signal during the same programme. Don't know why - it can be done when the ads come on...... (e.g. during Big Brother 4:3 for programme, goes 16:9 for the ads .)

Never used to be a problem when I watched ITVDigital (or now Freeview), as all I had to do was press the "Wide" button to change the aspect ratio. With Sky, I have to go through the bleeding Services menu. The same with subtitles too....

Roll on my new widescreen TV I suppose......

It happens when 4:3 material needs to be transmitted within a 16:9 programme, for example when an overseas broadcaster is not supplying a WS feed.

Current thinking is that it is a bad thing to have switching between 4:3 and 16:9 during the one programme.

So you would have to broadcast - say Match of the Day in 4:3 rather than WS, for one game if it wasn't in WS.

The effect on the viewer varies as some have their 16:9 TVs on various auto zoom settings which alleviates it a bit at the price of distorting the pictures.

Best thing is the side bars annoy you is to go back to 4:3 in the box set up.

It will eventually sort itself out when all big events are in WS around the world...

Me, I'd rather watch the pictures as they come in as I don't feel that my TV has to fill every bit of the screen all the time.

couldn't agree more with that final sentiment there, jim.

i too prefer to watch programmes in letterbox , but last years world cup was broadcast in 4.3.i thought it was ironic because a lot off tvs are made in corea and japan.also electrical stores made a big deal about getting widescreen tvs for the world cup

Yes, the Beeb and ITV had billed last years World Cup as "The Widescreen World Cup" until about 3 days before the event when it became apparent that the incoming pictures were going to be in 4:3 format! A lot of money had been spent on advertising the event as widescreen and they had even gotten TV shops to market the widesceen sets especially for the cup! Talk about the egg on some people's faces when Japan said that the worldwide feeds were to be in 4:3 NTSC format!!

Crap pictures, crap colours and no widescreen.

Actually the World Cup was available worldwide in a High Definition proper Widescreen feed (no anamorphic squashy-vision rubbish) or an analogue 4:3 feed.... the BBC chose the analogue feed, apparantly because there were more camera angles available from the analogue feed than the high definition widescreen feed.

Indeed France 98 was also available in a limited capacity in an HDTV widescreen format (a joint effort between NHK and the EBU) but Japan was the first where all matches were available in a high definition widescreen format.

Interestingly the Japanese had a 3D "virtual stadium" setup where several ultra-high definition cameras were installed at certain matches and relayed the game to special HDTV cinemas elsewhere in the country.

At the same time as the Japanese are broadcasting this by satellite to their country, the BBC are messing around trying to convert (badly) some NTSC 4:3 feed because it apparantly has more camera angles for their stupid studio commentators to waffle over no doubt

a few companies got told off for false advertising after selling their widescreen tvs to 'see more of the action'.
then with the feeds in use, it became apparent that you actually wouldn't...