"Mark Carver" <mark.carver@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:ihs28oF60chU1@mid.individual.net...
> On 03/06/2021 09:36, NY wrote:
>>
>> Yes I've never understood why BBC don't use the widescreen flag
>> properly and transmit 4:3 programmes (Dad's Army etc) using the full
>> 720 (or 704) horizontal pixels and the widescreen flag cleared so the
>> TV displays it as 4:3 rather than 16:9. Embedding a 4:3 picture in a
>> 16:9 frame and setting the widescreen flag means that only the centre
>> 544 pixels contain picture info, and the rest of the pixels are wasted
>> sending the black border.
>>
> I think it's so within their contribution and distribution, everything
> is handled as a 16:9 image. They've always done it that way, since mixed
> currency aspect radios have existed (1998)

I recall the big drop in BBC picture quality occuring in summer 1999 -
AIUI everything within their playout was still 4:3 before then, with
the minority of widescreen content being shown in 14:9 letterbox even
on digital platforms. Never saw the latter myself though, as I didn't
have digital TV at the time.

<MrSpook_grn9p@t03akpq0iv.net> wrote in message
news:s9clmh$n4i$1@gioia.aioe.org...
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 20:08:37 +0100
> "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>>"Brian Gregory" <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote in message
>>news:ihsmuuF9uv8U1@mid.individual.net...
>>> Then there's the mess surrounding the 720x576 digital resolution.
>>> Sometimes only the middle 704 pixels contain the picture and there are
>>> two
>>> black bars 8 pixels wide down the sides. Some channels manage to send it
>>> correctly as 704x576, why can't others?
>>
>>Why is it that there are two standards: 720 and 704 pixels? I've seen
>>cases
>>where the same programme uses 720x576 on satellite and 704x576 on
>
> https://xkcd.com/927/

And a certain computer company that has a fruit-based name works on the
principle of "we can't see a standard without ignoring it and inventing our
own".

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 21:53:09 +0100, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

> I can't remember whether it had a PAL footprint (eg coloured fringes
> on high-contrast vertical edges, and dot-patterning on saturated colours).

That's not PAL footprint. That's just cross-colour or cross-luminance.

PAL footprint was an artefact of a PAL decode (to YUV, or maybe even RGB)
followed by a re-code process to composite.

On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 20:08:37 +0100, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

> Why is it that there are two standards: 720 and 704 pixels?

One's digital blanking and the other's analogue blanking.