Hello,
I will begin by saying that I rarely watch commercials, as I generally DVR most shows. However, I choose to watch sports live, and I have noticed for some time now that there are many HD (or at the very least widescreen) commercials being aired during NFL broadcasts that are pillar-boxed. Why would the advertisers (networks?) choose to do this? It is very easy to spot by looking at the top of the screen, often the pillar-box does not quite cover the entire image on the left and right of the screen, like the pillar-box insert is not quite tall enough. I can see that there is a continuous moving image behind the pillar box on each side. It would seem to me that if the commercial was captured widescreen, it should be shown that way. Or if I am not meant to see the action behind the pillar-box, why isn’t it covered up entirely? Is this how the commercials are distributed, or are the networks inserting pillar-boxing for some unknown (to me) reason? I believe that I have seen this happen on all of the NFL broadcasting networks.
Thanks for the insight.
-Jakes

I've never seen this, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that the networks are not simply overlaying pillar bars on HD commercials. You're seeing something else.

I agree, it's kind of strange. Seeing what we know to be an HD spot run as an SD 4:3 is odd, especially if it's coming from the network feed. I can understand that when it's a local spot and the local station does not have the ability to playback in HD. The only other reason that I'm sure we will hear about here is that the advertiser has chosen not to pay a premium to air their spot in HD.

You're probably not seeing video at the top of the pillar bar. It's probably time code information, but it's so thin, it looks like moving video. The commercial was probably upconverted to an HD format (or loaded into an HD playback server) while retaining its 4x3 image and the pillars were added to that. Sometimes the pillars aren't tall enough to completely cover the overscan area of the image. That's where you'll see things like time code data. You'll also see the top of the very little sliver of the right and left of video that is covered up by the pillars (but not as much as the width of the pillars) to make sure there is no black line on either side where the image ends.

I can assure you, NO network would ever lay pillars over an HD commercial. They wouldn't get paid.

My guess would be that the OP is seeing this on FOX. For years, people have commented about the video that can be seen at the top of the pillar bars during upconverted material. Many arguments ensued about whether or not a particular show was actually in HD, but was not being shown that way.

Below is an example of this. The "junk" that goes into the pillar area appears to be a zoomed-in duplicate of the first few lines.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.th.jpg (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.jpg)

I've never seen this, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that the networks are not simply overlaying pillar bars on HD commercials.How can you be so sure? That's what CNN HD does and sometimes they screw up, leaving the side pillar bars on during HD programming.

My guess would be that the OP is seeing this on FOX. For years, people have commented about the video that can be seen at the top of the pillar bars during upconverted material. Many arguments ensued about whether or not a particular show was actually in HD, but was not being shown that way.

Below is an example of this. The "junk" that goes into the pillar area appears to be a zoomed-in duplicate of the first few lines.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.th.jpg (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.jpg)
I haven't been able to see if this shows up at a station's MCR, but I think that some of the "junk" at the top of the screen actually comes from the re-scaling in the STB. Converting any incoming format to another (say, 1080i) can cause these issues. That said, there are often a lot of "vertical interval" signals that find their way to an HD display, even though they aren't used for anything worthwhile in that set. Captions, "first and ten" data, and other junk often make it through. (Captions could be used on an SD feed to an old TV, though.)

The truth is, broadcaters aren't monitoring their feeds for this stuff, and viewers often have "better" displays than the broadcasters do. The video path from station to the home screen isn't as simple as it used to be, and quite frankly, many stations couldn't be bothered to check it out, much less fix it.

This is something that has been in the FOX feed since the launch of the splicer system. The SD upconverts contain a couple of lines of stretched video at the top of the screen. It is visible at the output of the FOX receiver and is not due to anything happening in the STB.

Could the top few lines of video be "non pillarboxed" to ensure closed caption data etc. burned into the VT survives intact rather than getting squashed and having black bars put either side (which would render it meaningless downstream?)

This is something that has been in the FOX feed since the launch of the splicer system. The SD upconverts contain a couple of lines of stretched video at the top of the screen. It is visible at the output of the FOX receiver and is not due to anything happening in the STB.
I suspect something is up in the Fox upconverter in LA, but it I wouldn't bet the farm on it. I've seen this on other channels as well, not just Fox. Curiously, it looks different on 720p signals, which I convert to 1080i in the STB. Sometimes other lines show evidence of MPEG encoding, meaning they went into the active picture area of an MPEG encoder. Luckily, even though everyone in my house knows what those other lines are (really!) they aren't too bothered by them. Hence, no desire to find the cause or use an overscanned picture format.

My guess would be that the OP is seeing this on FOX. For years, people have commented about the video that can be seen at the top of the pillar bars during upconverted material. Many arguments ensued about whether or not a particular show was actually in HD, but was not being shown that way.

Below is an example of this. The "junk" that goes into the pillar area appears to be a zoomed-in duplicate of the first few lines.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.th.jpg (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7166/junkattopjq7.jpg)

This is a good example of what I am seeing, and I have seen it on channels other than FOX. I know that I see it on CBS quite often. I never thought that it appeared to be stretched video, but I will have to look closer tonight. It probably would have helped to mention that I do keep my overscan very low, and that I am not referring to the black and white flashing that can sometimes be seen at the top of the screen. Also, it only appears on some commercials, not all of them.