Video Asylum

Posted by DavidLD (A) on May 03, 2008 at 09:02:21

In Reply to: RE: This may be a silly question But what will the aspect ratio be after the digital conversion in 09? posted by artemus on May 02, 2008 at 19:20:09

The stations broadcasting digital broadcast some stuff as SD with a 4:3 Aspect ratio and black bars appear on either side of the picture on a widescreen TV unless you stretch the picture on the set. Other stuff is broadcast in HD with a full 16:9 aspect ratio that fills the entire wide screen w/o changing the fill on the TV sets. Often shows are broadcast in 16:9 HD but commercials as 4:3 SD, and by 16:9 TV flips back and forth with side bars or not. The digital signal is noticably sharper than the analog signal broadcast by the same station (I can compare the two directly) but other than the aspect ratio I see little sharpness difference between the SD 4:3 signal and the HD 16:9 singnal. I am making these comparisons on a 32 inch panasonic LCD and I might see more difference on a 50 inch set.

broadcast HDTV is coming in just like color TV did 40+ years ago. Initially only a small % of programming is done in HD but over time an ever larger share of the signals broadcasted will be 16:9 HD