4:3 pictures on a widescreen TV

[pooksahib]

The BBC are currently running a series called "The 70s" which features lots of telly clips from that era. All the clips fill up my widescreen TV without any obvious sign of distortion - how is that done? When repeats of old shows are shown e.g. Top of the Pops on BBC4, the picture remains 4:3 with black bars to either side. Why aren't such repeats broadcast in proper widescreen?

[murraymints]

don't know..but it is a great programme..also the music one that follows...

[Hopkirk]

I think you are losing the sides of the picture, without realising it.

[beso]

They simply enlarge the picture to the full height and crop the sides. It is easy with some content particularly nature scenes. With other content it can reuslt in important parts of the picture being lost.

Surely you can remember seeing movies made for wide sreenn displayed on a television and the people speaking almost out of view.

[bibblebub]

probably for the BBC4 programme they have added the black bars to make the picture 16:9

[Hopkirk]

Oh hang on, perhaps it's the top and bottom lost, not the sides.

[sunny-dave]

It's the other way round ... a 4:3 picture is cropped at the top and bottom to fill a widescreen TV.

Alternatively they may be using a 'smart' algorithm which keeps the centre of the picture in the correct aspect ratio but stretches the edges to fill the screen. This works quite well, since we tend to concentrate mainly on the central portion of a widescreen TV, but can look a bit weird if the camera is panning slowly across a scene.

[pooksahib]

Thanks all. It must be a damn smart algorithm as the result is very convincing.