TBS HD



  • My Comcast system now carries TBS in HD.  They're showing reruns of The Office.  That show is filmed in HD and NBC broadcasts it in the usual 16:9 HDTV format.  If you watch NBC on a standard definition TV then you see a letterboxed version.

    When TBS HD broadcasts old standard definition programs they stretch them to fill the screen.  That really annoys me; my set can do the stretching itself but I prefer to watch shows in their original aspect ratio with black sidebars.

    For The Office, TBS takes the low definition, letterboxed 4:3 version and stretches it to fill the 16:9 screen.  So it is both stretched and has black bars on top and bottom.

     



  • @AlpineR said:

    My Comcast system now carries TBS in HD.  They're showing reruns of The Office.  That show is filmed in HD and NBC broadcasts it in the usual 16:9 HDTV format.  If you watch NBC on a standard definition TV then you see a letterboxed version.

    When TBS HD broadcasts old standard definition programs they stretch them to fill the screen.  That really annoys me; my set can do the stretching itself but I prefer to watch shows in their original aspect ratio with black sidebars.

    For The Office, TBS takes the low definition, letterboxed 4:3 version and stretches it to fill the 16:9 screen.  So it is both stretched and has black bars on top and bottom.

     

     

    My cable company only offers standard def (i know, I really need to move to satellite).  For the local channels though, they take the HD 16:9 version and crop off the sides.  It's great.



  • TNT-HD (another Turnel channel) also does this and it drives everyone nuts. 

    I will confess and say that I do tend to "stretch" the 4:3 feed to fill my 16:9 screen in many cases.  However, this is not a choice that should be made for everyone.  If somebody really wants to watch stretch-o-vision, they can tune to the nonHD version of the channel and let their TV do the stretching.  However, if they send the signal down the pipe as 16:9 stretch-o-vision, the end viewer can do nothing to change it.



  • That is just dumb.

    I was quite disapointed when I got my first widescreen TV. I though everything was 4:3, 16:9 or 2.35. Then everything I saw on my old TV with black bars would fill the screen, except 2.35-movies. Oh how wrong I was.

    In my country the main channels have learned to embrace widescreen, and is actually both creating and broadcasting in 16:9. But there is a movie-channel that should get an apathy-award or something. Let's not discuss the content, that's another problem.

    A movie-channel should be targeting people who likes to watch movies. People who likes movies most likely have widescreen. But EVERYTHING is sent in 4:3, letterboxed if needed. Even 2.35-movies is sent letterboxed. That's 326 lines on PAL. Even 700 MB movies is better than that.

    It's an analog channel, and English is not our native language, so almost every movie has embedded subtitles.

     

    Discovery Channel is also a bit weird. When I got my first widescreen TV I quickly noticed that some channels (like Discovery Channel) has black bars on 4:3, but not enough to be 16:9. But's why all widescreen TVs has a 14:9-mode (I think), wich is just between 16:9 and 4:3 (12:9). Or so I thought. 14:9 crops too much for me, so with a widescreen TV I get black borders on all sides on Discovery Channel.
     



  • @AlpineR said:

    For The Office, TBS takes the low definition, letterboxed 4:3 version and stretches it to fill the 16:9 screen.  So it is both stretched and has black bars on top and bottom.

    BTW, what if you change your TV settings to "zoom", wouldn't that solve it? (Except from the lost vertical resolution.)



  • Long story short, we need a set of buttons to setup a custom unbaring template for the picture.
    That and ban analoge tv.



  • I know it prolly would be difficult (if not close to impossible) but it would be great if it could just be broadcast with as much definition as possible and your tv would translate it as needed. I know its unrealistic, because no matter what, some resolutions would appear stretched or pixalized.



  • @henke37 said:

    Long story short, we need a set of buttons to setup a custom unbaring template for the picture. That and ban analoge tv.

     Sure, why don't we just ban analogue tv so our senior citizens can't watch anything anymore.



  • @pitchingchris said:

    @henke37 said:

    Long story short, we need a set of buttons to setup a custom unbaring template for the picture. That and ban analoge tv.

     Sure, why don't we just ban analogue tv so our senior citizens can't watch anything anymore.

    Don't worry.  They're on it.   By 2009 grandma's bunny ears won't be bringing her the "stories" anymore.



  • HD formatting samples

    (1) Original Original

    (2) Letterbox Letterbox

    (3) Stretch Stretch

    (4) Zoom Zoom

     NBC HD broadcasts in format (1).  NBC standard definition is letterboxed as in (2).  TBS HD stretches the letterboxed version to (3).  If I zoom with my TV then I'll see (4).

    History Channel has changed their formatting to 16:9 HD.  But my Comcast cable only carries the standard definition broadcast which appears as 16:9 programs letterboxed onto a 4:3 screen.  I can zoom that image to fill my screen with a loss of resolution but in the proper aspect ratio.  Unfortunately, I think that History Channel has reformatted their older shows to 16:9 by cropping the top and bottom off of a 4:3 original.  So the final result is zoomed and vertically cropped for old shows and a reduced resolution version of (1) for new shows.



  • I'll give you a WTF... We've had a satellite HDTV receiver for a little over a year.  In that time we've had a whopping 3 channels that were HD.  They just added a whole lot more but they're unwatchable because the freakin receiver can't decode fast enough.  The old HD channels still work fine.



  • @bw13a said:

    I'll give you a WTF... We've had a satellite HDTV receiver for a little over a year.  In that time we've had a whopping 3 channels that were HD.  They just added a whole lot more but they're unwatchable because the freakin receiver can't decode fast enough.  The old HD channels still work fine.

     You need a new receiver.  Is it decoding speed, or the fact that they changed codecs?  I know Dish network had to do some push to move to mpeg4 instead of 2 to enable more HD stuff.



  • @Uter said:

    Discovery Channel is also a bit weird. When I got my first widescreen TV I quickly noticed that some channels (like Discovery Channel) has black bars on 4:3, but not enough to be 16:9. But's why all widescreen TVs has a 14:9-mode (I think), wich is just between 16:9 and 4:3 (12:9). Or so I thought. 14:9 crops too much for me, so with a widescreen TV I get black borders on all sides on Discovery Channel.
    I think this is an artifact of NTSC->PAL conversion. Anyway, if you find the way to the service menu of your TV (google it), it may have settings for how much the middle mode stretches the picture.


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