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  1. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    I just witnessed something that was unbelievable. For my PBS station in my area they have a standard analog channel and a seperate HD channel. However I just watched their broadcast of a show called "ALLIES AT WAR" and the show was in 16:9 widescreen!!! I double checked my aspect ratio settings and it was set to "original ratio" so I knew it was not pan/scan stretching but actually 16:9! I recorded a minute or two of it to a .tp file so I'll be able to do more analysis shortly.

    One more note - It is a 480i broadcast so that verified it was over the sd channel. Here is a screen shot:




    EDIT - Ok here's a screen shot of the .tp file from GSPOT:



    How can it be 4:3 when it was shown as a true widescreen video on my computer? It was set to original ratio yet it filled the entire screen properly with the border bars! This is screwy somehow. Usually watching a 4:3 show it has what I guess are called pillar bars on the sides as well as the bottom to make it so its not squashed or stretched. This is really bizarre.

    EDIT 2 - I know this can't be letterboxed because I've seen Enterprise on my local ABC channel via syndication and that was actually 4:3 and it looked really small because it was the 4:3 portion of the screen but even smaller because it had the hardcoded borders with the video inside it. Am I making any sense here???
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  2. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    yada313,

    speaking on the Star Trek: Enterprise ..

    About three years ago, I made a discovery comment on this fact.
    I had found (via my DirecTV satellite) that they were using a 4:3 source
    and hard-boared it, top and bottom w/ the tipicle black.

    How I was able to discover this was probably on account of a simple user
    error on their part that wouldn't have been cought via tipicle tv viewing.
    But thanks to odd-ball behavior of some capture cards, at the time I was
    using one, it had captured more than usual, the area, and it revealed a
    bad hard-boardered bottom, where you could see the video 2 pixel lines
    just under the boarder they put there, still playing as the show was
    airing. It was an eye opener.

    This is suppose to be a widescreen presentation. At least, that is what
    I thought it was -- a true widescreen, 1.78 or 1.85 AR.

    But, what they did, was take their 4:3 footage, and scammed us with 16:9
    setup. Now, I don't know if *that* source, from the time I discovered it
    and before, from its beginning, that the source was a true 4:3 source,
    but then later, they changed setups and it was 16:9 ever since.
    I thought it was funny, because all I would hear from member here and there,
    was that this source was a widescreen source -- to be taken as true widescreen.

    But, just because something is presented as something, in this case, widescreen,
    does not mean that it is not. If the presentation is set forth to be 16:9,
    and is aired that way, and you never saw the original source as any lessor,
    (not that it matters) ie, 4:3 AR, then that is what is it, a 16:9 source.. as
    long as it is properl6 converted to, it is.

    Now, your example above is quite obviously a 4:3 AR source, but converted to
    a 16:9 and weather it was made Anamorphically or Letter-boxed doesn't matter
    all that much. The end result is a widescreen presentation.

    As I was saying..

    Your example demo pic above leaves me to believe it is 4:3 AR, for the simple
    reason it was in B/W, and a tipical documentation type source, not to mention,
    an older source.. but converted to 16:9 AR for this broadcast. How it was
    done is not important. (it could have been done in their broadcasting airing
    equipment at the time)

    Question:

    How did it display on your widescreen tv set ?

    ** fullscreen widescreen, or (aka, 1.78 AR)
    ** widescreen w/ some boarders

    I would say that it had to of been in fullscreen widescreen view, because a
    true widescreen is 1.78 AR and would fill up your widescreen tv set.

    But, if it were w/ some boarders, then it would have been either a 1.85 or
    2.35 AR. But I'm pretty sure it was 1.78 AR.

    -vhelp 3948
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Here our PBS station has an analog NTSC channel (usually 4:3 but lately more shows are 16:9 lettebox).

    Also the HD channel that shows both true 16:9 HD and 16:9 upscaled SD (no letterbox). Most PBS stations show the HD satellite feed with no local content.

    There is also a DTV SD channel that shows 4:3 480i and 16:9 letterboxed 480i.
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  4. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks vhelp.

    First of all I don't have a hdtv set. Just a fusion 3 hdtv capture card.

    I was fooling around with it a little more and I usually just use it to record a few OTA HD programs now and again. But I started looking at some analog channels and it looks like it will display them on full screen regardless of the fixed format.

    I think what I was getting confused with was letterboxed 4:3 on the HD channels versus letterboxed over the analog channels. The nonletterboxed analog channels appear to be normal fullscreen with no boxing at all. But if its hardcoded top and bottom (the smaller 1.77) then it gives the "impression" of being 16:9.

    It looks like I may have misinterpreted it since the settings were "original ratio" but the capture cards normal default setting for analog seems to be full screen.

    EDIT -
    Originally Posted by eddv
    There is also a DTV SD channel that shows 4:3 480i and 16:9 letterboxed 480i.
    Really??? So maybe I wasn't imagining it???? Interesting.
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  5. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Here is what they look like.

    DT_1 channel (HD+upscaled SD) Note logo is in the picture.


    DT_2 channel (SD) Note logo in the letterbox area.
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  6. Member MozartMan's Avatar
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    This is how PBS-HD from Comcast looks in my area, full 1920x1080 widescreen resolution.
    (click on the picture to see the full frame at 1920x1080)

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  7. Member Conquest10's Avatar
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    True 16:9 has the station logo well within the frame.

    Here PBS is only 720p.
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  8. Member MozartMan's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Conquest10
    True 16:9 has the station logo well within the frame.
    What exactly do you mean by that?
    (btw, I uploaded image again because it got corrupted somehow).

    This is how I got that image:

    1. Recorded from Motorola DCT-3412 HD DVR to my PC using CapDVHS via FireWire.
    2. Played in MPC to find the good frame, then saved as BMP file.
    3. Then resaved as JPG with 7% compression.

    NO re-encoding, NO re-sizing involved.
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  9. Member Conquest10's Avatar
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    That was meant for Yoda. In his image, the logo is resting right on the edge of the frame meaning that it was a letterboxed image.
    His name was MackemX

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  10. Member edDV's Avatar
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  11. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Conquest10
    That was meant for Yoda. In his image, the logo is resting right on the edge of the frame meaning that it was a letterboxed image.
    Thanks. So meaning the logo was played over the bars and the picture simultaneusly versus being embedded in the actual video itself. Gotcha.
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  12. Also remember that there is a standard called 16:9 at 480i. This is basically standard video in anamorphic mode that should be shown full screen on a 16:9 monitor. This is commonly done at the local PBS station here as well. They take the 1080i 16:9 video and downconvert it to 480i 16:9. This is done to save bits then they do multi-casting on one on-air channel.
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  13. Member Conquest10's Avatar
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    FOX does that with their Saturday baseball. Its 480i at 16:9 but they upconvert it to 720p.
    His name was MackemX

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  14. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Conquest10
    FOX does that with their Saturday baseball. Its 480i at 16:9 but they upconvert it to 720p.
    We have the local Fox Sports Network on cable here in the San Francisco Bay Area. They often originate in 720p/59.94 from a real HDTV truck but other times upscale 480i to 720p.

    We're also fortunate to have the Comcast SportsNet. They use 1080i HD trucks for local events.
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  15. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    Here in Europe we had once something called "PAL Plus". It was a typical PAL broadcast with a buid in pulse that use to switch on some TVs with SCART connections the aspect from 4:3 to 16:9. Maybe they used that with NTSC somehow???
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  16. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by SatStorm
    Here in Europe we had once something called "PAL Plus". It was a typical PAL broadcast with a buid in pulse that use to switch on some TVs with SCART connections the aspect from 4:3 to 16:9. Maybe they used that with NTSC somehow???
    Not exactly in NTSC. We have letterbox broadcasts and wide TV sets that will fill the screen from a letterbox.

    In SD Digital TV (ATSC) full 480p (29.97, 23.976 or 59.94 fps) is possible but nobody is broadcasting it. SD channels are usually 480i. HD channels (720p or 1080i) carry the 16:9 SD upscaled to HD.
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