Attention Comedy Central Extra!
The fact that you are unable to show an episode of Not Going Out made this year in anamorphic widescreen - instead having to show it letterboxed - is embarrassing. The fact that you also have a horrendously ugly DOG in the top-left is just the icing on the shit sandwich. There is not a chance in hell I am watching something like that.
God knows I love broadcast television. I’ve always loved it - and I love it so much that I’ve ended up working in it. But it’s things like this - terrible widescreen issues, horrific DOGs, condensed-to-nothing title sequences, credit-squeezing, a total disrespect for the programmes themselves - that make me long for a future of downloads, where there’s at least a chance that some of them might get better…
About this entry
- By John Hoare
- Posted on Saturday, July 11 2009 @ 12:47 am
- Categorised in
- Tagged with comedy
- 1 comment
A-fucking-men. The slow trickle across cable/satellite television of even being bother to broadcast in widescreen was a huge sticking point for me. Still are.
It’s worse over here, though. In the UK it’s easy to broadcast the 4:3 and the 16:9 on the same signal, and that can’t be done here in the US for some reason. So networks are faced with a decision - have two versions of the same channel, or don’t bother. Guess which option they usually go for. Yep, you’ve got it - secret option number three: film your shit in widescreen anyway, and then broadcast it lettereboxed on a 4:3 network with the bug overlapping the cocking letterboxing and the picture at the same time. So we get stretched widescreen on our widescreen television on the SD channels.
By Ben Paddon
July 11, 2009 @ 7:43 am
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