Query about picture size

It is probably down to and Spanish and Belgians who are actually producing the games.

The BBC sports programms you mentioned where they form outside the UK?

mjsmyth wrote:

I have a 28" Beko, it has served me well for the last 6 years and have no intention of going widescreen till my friends move in to their hosue and I give them the Beko.

While watching the football on ITV tonight (YIPEE!!!!), I noticed that the game on ITV 1 was shown letterboxed on my screen, but the game on ITV 4 was shown as 4:3 but with a black border the whole way around it so that it did not fill the screen. I have seen this before with athletics and some football on the bbc channels.

Anyone got any idea why this is happening?

BBC and ITV sport broadcast most programmes in permanent widescreen. Because the Chelsea match was being fimed by a Spanish broadcaster in 4:3, ITV had to add black bars to make it widescreen. They tend to do this because the studio is 16:9 and other footage from other matches may also be. They could do the whole thing 4:3, but seem to prefer it this way, otherwise you would lose whatever 16:9 material there is.

They could also zoom the picture like the do for 4:3 sources on BBC News and Sky News. This might cut off some of the picture, however, so you could lose important action.

They can't, however, switch aspect ratio during a show as this can only by done by the presentation suite. It would be very complicated to make lots of switches like this.