FreeLists / opendtv / [opendtv] Re: News: Nielsen Gives Fuzzy Picture of HDTV Penetration

["John Shutt" <shuttj@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
> That's it. As most new sets on sale now are 16:9,
> and not the wide variety of apsect ratios you keep claiming, I'll
> predict that the 4:3 shows will dwindle in time.

An odd thing has happened in the US market as opposed to the European 
market.
In Europe, 16:9 PAL sets have been around for many years, and the Europeans 
developed a signaling method using data in the vertical interval to indicate 
if a particular program was transmitted in anamorphic 16:9, letterboxed 16:9 
within a 4:3 frame, or full frame 4:3.  Because of that, you will find a lot 
of true 16:9 SD programming there in DTV as well.
In the US, with possibly one or two obscure exceptions, we have not had any 
NTSC 16:9 sets for sale to the US public.  Therefore, all SD programming is 
4:3 exclusively.  I would estimate that half of cable programs today are 
letterboxed, but not one channel is in anamorphic SD 16:9.  This makes 
sense, since the US never adopted or adapted the European vertical interval 
screen format signaling to NTSC.
Once analog is turned off in 2009, this situation will not change.  There 
are too many legacy SD cable channels and television sets to change this 
trend.  Therefore, even though anamorphic 16:9 is an ATSC SD format, it is 
rarely if ever used, and will continue to remain so even as more 16:9 sets 
are sold.
In the US, 16:9 will forever remain the exclusive domain of HD. 



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