TG4 Widescreen

Mossy Monk

don't know when it happened but TG4 is widescreen, or at least was at lunchtime anyway. i have only seen a widescreen programme. not seen a 4:3 programme to see how they are showing that

watching on cable in Dungarvan btw

radiospan

Yeah I think it's been W/S since Monday(ish).

Saw a TV show on it last night, it looked like it was originally in 4:3 but zoomed to 16:9 (there were very very thin black bars on the left and right)

Quinnsey

Hopefully this means they will resume showing their 4:3 programmes in 4:3 and not clumsily cropped for widescreen.

Mossy Monk

Quinnsey wrote:

Hopefully this means they will resume showing their 4:3 programmes in 4:3 and not clumsily cropped for widescreen.

some film on now and it is cropped. looks terrible. black lines on teh top, bottom and to the right of the screen :mad:

Phen

They seem to have a new ident too - similar to what they had but a bit different. They might have more that one - I'm not sure yet.

Rick_

They have totally messed up their widescreen transfer.

Last night a 16:9 programme was being shown but was cropped as if it was a 4:3 programme zoomed up to fit 16:9, so you had extremely tall skinny people on screen with their heads chopped off.

I think TG 4 should have spent a bit more time testing their widescreen capabilities before fully launching it. They're cropping EVERYTHING into widescreen. EVERYTHING! Arrrgghhh!

Paddy

Quinnsey

I sent this email to TG4's Technical Manager Neil Keaveney:

Dear Mr. Keaveney

It’s great to see TG4 switching over to widescreen broadcasts. However it seems that you are now showing all 4:3 programmes cropped on the top and bottom in order to fit the new 16:9 format. This can quite distracting, as it not only harms composition but can also obscure important information. The process of zooming also degrades the overall picture quality of the source. In cases where a film is shown from an already P&S source, it can become almost incomprehensible with such a large proportion of the image being cropped.

The standard policy for most TV stations is to broadcast programming in the ratio it was designed for. Could you please tell me if the current process of zooming in 4:3 programming to fit the 16:9 ratio has become the stations policy? Or is it simply a technical glitch during the switchover?

Many Thanks!

If it irritates you as much a me, it might be worth sending an email yourself!

I'll post the reply (if I get any).

Quinnsey

Here's the response:

Hi Quinnsey, thanks for your e-mail. After much discussion and
investigation into widescreen over the past year TG4 decided on the
following practices regarding widescreen production and transmission.

All internal production should be switched to a single format (16:9) and
all 4:3 programmes should be treated to pass through the production and
transmission chain as a single format. There should be a minimum loss of picture quality and picture size for all
4:3 programme material.

We convert 4:3 programmes to 14:9 pillarbox in order to pass it through
the 16:9 production chain. This process does crop the top and bottom
slightly (6%) but you should not experience a loss of programme titles / supers
or any on-screen critical information. Having large black vertical bars on each side of a 4:3 image, was considered unacceptable to most people viewing on 16:9 sets and also stretching the picture to fill the 16:9 viewing area was considered equally unacceptable.

14:9 pillarbox was the format arrived at, which is a compromise between
4:3 and 16:9 but with minimum loss of quality and picture size. You should
be seeing small vertical bars on either side of any 4:3 programmes being
broadcast? If this is not the case you might some how be zoomed fully in
to fill the 16:9 screen?

Our station policy is never to zoom in on 4:3 material to fill the 16:9
screen. We try and provide our customers with the best compromise when
viewing 4:3 programmes and to keep it as close to the original composition
as possible.

I hope this helps!

Best Regards

John Higgins

(Chief Engineer TG4)

What I don't understand is this "You should be seeing small vertical bars on either side of any 4:3 programmes being broadcast? If this is not the case you might some how be zoomed fully in to fill the 16:9 screen?"

On my digital reception everything is in 16:9, I don't see any pillarboxing on 4:3. Is this just the case with me?

A very decent reply, although I would disagree with the idea that "Having large black vertical bars on each side of a 4:3 image, was considered unacceptable to most people viewing on 16:9 sets". Just me perhaps.

Mossy Monk

Quinnsey wrote:

We try and provide our customers with the best compromise when
viewing 4:3 programmes and to keep it as close to the original composition
as possible

"we try"?

why not broadcast 4:3 as 4:3 then like everyone else does. what TG4 is doing is very sloppy. anything i have seen in 4:3 is cropped. converting 4:3 to 14:9. WHY????????

Rick_

Seeing as over 90% of their programming is in 4:3, what they are doing is nothing short of disgraceful. 4:3 should be left as 4:3, 14:9 should NOT be used, and 16:9 shown as 16:9, not cropped as if it was 4:3 material.

This is a total mess. It's put me off watching TG 4 now, no joke.

Paddy