Hi HD Gurus,

I am based in Los Angeles and we now have several local news casts competing against each other for HD news.

I know there is lots of discussions regarding studio equipment. But I was a little curious about on screen graphics.

When the news puts up a still photo of someone, a copy of a book, or a news article - The image is usually horrible.

Since wishful HD would be 1920x1080 -- How difficult is it for the stations to scan these images in at a 1000x1000 points/pixels ?

Is scanned computer resolutions equivalent to HD onscreen resolution ?

And the same question goes for traffic screens, weather screens, etc etc - All these are computer generated images or animations. How big a deal is it to increase the resolution so that the image shows up clearly and non-pixelated on HD ?

I mean even if they keep these type of things non-wide screen - just outputting a resolution of 1280x1024 is not an issue for most computers, so is it that big a deal for the computer generating the images ?

Thanks for the explanations that I know are forth coming.

Dave

most are still going with a 4:3 SAFE graphics paks...

heck even our local abc affl, when the weather is one, has bars on the side...

sigh...

It's really quite simple. It's always about money. The local affiliates have to be dragged kicking and screaming to spend any money on new HD equipment.

We've got a local CBS affiliate here in Cleveland (WOIO) owned by Raycom that installed a DD 5.1 audio decoder just before the super bowl and then removed it a week later. Kinda like buying an HDTV for the SB then returning it the day after to get your money back.

Paule,

But the question is -- for the simple stuff - Still photo scans, etc, etc -- Is this really a piece of HD equipment ?

Dave B

I'm sure a pro will chime in but I'll take a WAG (wild ass guess) and assume the still images whatever resolution scanned at have to go into the station's "still store" and character generator "chyron" and those are of the old 480i variety and that's why your graphics look like crap.

Plus many times the 'photos' are taken with the field video camera while taping the story and converted to a photo and stored in the 'still store'. Taking stills from a video camera doesn't work very well.

If I'm not mistaken, the comments about weather graphics would be a seperate issue, for most stations. As I understand it, most stations weather graphics are provided through a 3rd party vendor (radar images, etc) and not neccesarily the same as those done during other segments of the newscast.

I'm sure a pro will chime in but I'll take a WAG (wild ass guess) and assume the still images whatever resolution scanned at have to go into the station's "still store" and character generator "chyron" and those are of the old 480i variety and that's why your graphics look like crap.

That's a pretty good "WAG" :D

While just about any station could produce an "HD" graphic using PhotoShop or whatever, ultimately, it must "play out" through the graphics system(s) that are available in the control room. If the system can only output SD, then that's the best you're going to get.

AKA is right about the weather graphics -- those are (in every case I've seen) generated by specialized workstations. If the station doesn't buy an HD capable version, then they will have to upconvert the SD output of whatever they're currently using.

most are still going with a 4:3 SAFE graphics paks...

heck even our local abc affl, when the weather is one, has bars on the side...

sigh...

I think they eventually get an HD graphics system though. Our local (WABC) used to do that and now I noticed they have full HD graphics for weather.

I really never knew weather would be SD
The GiantOctopus graphics WUSA got in 2005 have been HD (well, SD WS until last summer) for weather, except for the doppler. Traffic's the only thing that's 4:3.