Is your local news in full widescreen?

At this point, local stations still shoot for center cut and will for a while yet to come until the converter box sets are gone.

Nope. It's all in 4x3 SD in my market, unfortunately.

With the exception of WRAL and some of your larger-market stations many local news stations are still trying to figure the whole HD thing out, some are still slow to switch so moving to a 16:9 framed paradigm is probably going to happen at a staggered pace over a very long period of time. Right now one of the big issues with local news is the myriad of different places footage can come from and a lot of legacy gear and production mentalities. Fox News and CNN are huge operations with lots of resources at their disposal to accommodate anything new or out of the ordinary that comes their way quickly.

A typical local newscast might have only a handful of HD 'experts' and one of these is probably an old crumudgeon still bemoaning the loss of 2 inch tape and plumbicon tubes. At some stations the reporter herself is actually shooting, cutting and fonting their own packages and even control room functions these days are largely automated with maybe two or three people running the show (again a big difference from cable news) somewhat stifling the technical know-how necessary to put a show on the air that's flexible. I know of one local news station where the weather guy also delivered pizzas on his day off to make ends meet. That local news has become HD so quickly in so many markets is more a testament to the rapid change of technology, but this is still a huge mountain to climb in some places in a lot of ways.

Here in Boise, 3 of the 4 channels that run local news are widescreen SD and the 4th (Fox) actually does HD. Fox seems to have got ahead of themselves though as their videos all look like they have had a stretch/crop effect applied, just the studio shots are HD. It would also be nice if they would show primetime properly as they end up windowboxing Fox primetime a lot.

In my stations situation, we want to do 16:9 framing and not 4:3, but with so many converter boxes in the market, every time a letterbox show comes on, the phones go crazy. Until the phones calm down, we will still frame for 4:3 wasting the left and right wings of the HD signal.

Right now we are running about 80% 16:9 format video in our newscasts. So we want to use the full picture, and that is one of the issues we are fighting right now, "black bars all around" syndrome.

I work as a news editor at the Fox affiliate here, and we just did the switch to HD yesterday. As an editor, I hate having to worry about 4x3 framing, but like foxeng, we're pretty much stuck with it.

All of the local news programing on the main channels in the Chicago market is 4:3 full screen via AT&T U-Verse here in Chicago with the exception of the local Fox station, WFLD. However, OTA WMAQ's NBC Nonstop subchannel has their SD newscasts center cut in 16:9. Based on the ways I keep my TV's set to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio on all SD channels with only 16:9 on the HD channels, I hate letterboxing because I either have to 1) watch a tiny picture with black on all four sides or 2) set the picture to fill the screen and heavily degrade the image.

This also becomes an issue with weather and traffic maps. What information is okay to be cut-off for the SD audience. I've seen many a weatherman point at something on the radar or weather map that only the HD people could see (which would suck if that thing was a tornado). Worse yet wander out of 4:3 safe area and being partially cut-off seems to be a common occurrence as well..

And then with sports you get into the issue of whether the station can take in HD feeds and if not should the highlights be pillarboxed or scaled. FOX Sports has thrown a real monkey in the works by going 16:9 centric because if you are in a center-cut environment something is going to be compromised -- either its letterboxed (or windowboxed) or chopped.

I saw your on line pictures of your set being built. Very nice set! Lots of monitors I see. We have 13 on camera monitors on our HD set, smallest being 42 inch (4 of those) with the average being 55 inch and the biggest 65 inch (2 of those).

You have to at least give FOX its props for pushing 16:9 framing. Yeah, it is a real pain in the *ss, especially for a FOX affiliate that does 8 hours a day of local news! I just can't wait for the majority of the viewers who still have 4:3 displays to stop complaining about letterbox. At that point, we would shift our AFD code for newscasts from 4:3 center cut to letterbox and start using the full screen. I am afraid that still may be 5 years out for us. From what we can tell, in our market, it is about 50/50 display aspect ratio. It will take that long to weed out those 4:3's in not only OTA converter box households, but cable households that have moved the old Sony 27 inch 4:3 from the living room to a basement or office. The second TV location is the one we hear the most complaints about.

Our GM was HIGHLY disappointed when she heard we were not going to be able to use the full screen because of the converter box 4:3 receive systems. But we deal with it. I have noticed that many of the FOX O & Os have gone to letterbox on their AFD code and are using full screen formatting. Two that come to mind that I have seen is KTTV and WJBK.

I have noticed that sat tours are now beginning to be offered in SD widescreen AND a few in HD! Got a call from CBS Distribution the other day asking if we could take HD sat tours. I take THAT as a good sign on sooooo many different fronts.

Thanks, we're loving the set. I believe there are 41 monitors, although several of the smaller ones (twentyfour 22 inchers!) just have a couple of looped sources, not switchable. There is a three-pack of vertical 50 inchers, and we haven't even used the six-pack of 42 inch plasmas yet! Lots of options with the movable monitor packs and mobile pod, interchangeable back-drops, etc.

In the Fresno, CA market, all but the CBS affiliate do the local news in HD. On the local CBS news, while still in SD, many video segments appear "stretched" vertically, much like an unstretched anamorphic DVD - leads me to think that the affiliate is now using HD cameras for remote stuff in prep for an eventual HD switchover.

All 13 of ours are selectable with 3 of the 55 inchers turned on their side to make a very LARGE video wall to either display one large picture across all three or three individual pictures in them. It can get pretty complicated for the directors.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/art...HD_Cameras.php

Now if we could just get Allbritton's WJLA (DC) to start doing news remotes and promos in HD we'd be all set. They have the most half-assed HD news in Washington.

While all our local news is HD(CBS, ABC, FOX, and NBC) only Fox uses the whole 16:9 frame. The other channels are 16:9 but everything(including the station bug) is in the 4:3 frame, just fluff beyond 4:3. NBC does utilizes the 16:9 frame for the local temps graphics which go beyond the 4:3 frame.
Kudos to FOX9 and shame on the other so called 16:9 broadcasts

I emailed fox 41 in Louisville, KY and they said they were not going to put graphics in the 16:9 area. I was watching Wave 3's KY Oaks coverage and the graphics should've been outside the 4:3 area because it was letterboxed on the standard definition channel

All the Cleveland news show have been widescreen HD for years. Some still use a few widescreen SD cameras for on location shots. The exceptions to the above are some stations with weather warnings, school closings or election results scrolls then it's SD with borders. One station replays it's 10 PM news after 1 AM in SD.

^^^yes mine and I believe most stations are broadcasting 16:9 but the issue is what's beyond the 4:3 frame and for the most part it's just fluff with anything meaningful(including the station bug) well within a 4:3 frame. IOW we really aren't gaining anything useful with 16:9 on most stations

Widescreen (16:9) Standard Definition is surprisingly good if it's sent straight into a HD system.

WJBK is neither letterbox nor full 16:9. No Detroit stations are doing full 16:9 news.

Interesting. I had seen a tape that showed WJBK had. I have seen KTTV off air so I know they are.

I checked before posting just to be sure, and they are definitely still 4:3-safe graphics.

Even though the post #1 does a good job of explaining what this thread is about, I think lots of people are thrown off by the thread title. What I think this thread is getting at isn't whether the station is broadcasting 16:9 but rather if it's fully utilizing the 16:9 frame. A big giveaway is where the station puts the graphics, especially the station bug, but that alone doesn't mean they are utilizing the 16:9 frame. When I stated that in my market only FOX utilized the 16:9 frame(even though CBS, ABC and NBC broadcast 16:9) the graphics and station bug was one sign but another is how they frame shots. Only FOX has anything important past 4:3, (something that you would miss, graphics, anchors, etc.) if you only watched it in 4:3. As post #1 stated, most stations seem to be basically shooting in the 4:3 frame and letting fluff go into the 16:9 frame.

To avoid confusion I wonder if the title of this thread should be changed to something like: Does you local news totally utilize the 16:9 frame or do they shoot 4:3 safe?
I know it's sometimes hard to tell if the station is truly utilizing the 16:9 frame or if they're just shooting 4:3 safe but what I did was to put two small white dots below my screen at the sides of the 4:3 frame. Doing this it's quite obvious if anything important is really beyond it or it's merely overshot.
I did the same thing on the right side of my screen to mark the 2.35:1 letterbox area, which coincidentally is the same area when a 4:3 program is letterboxed. If a 16:9 program is broadcast postage stamp my dots also mark where all the corners will end up no the dots aren't actually on my screen but rather the plastic that goes around the screen.