What’s the deal with the last 2 ER episodes being in semi-letterbox format?
I had heard they were going to letterbox their shows, but didn’t catch why. However, I think I can give an educated guess.
Since they have a large cast and more action than the average show, they have more to squeeze onto a screen Letterboxing gives more room than the TV standard crop.
It seems like it has cut down on the amount of camera panning needed, though I’ll have to pay closer attention next week to be sure.
It also looks like their using a different sort of film/videotape/whatever because the scenes have looked much crisper.
Within the next five years, digital television will be here. All TV stations around the world are planning on slowly updating their equipment piece by piece, until they are fully digital, and all analogue signals will cease being broadcast.
By then, everyone in the world will need to have a digital television set to watch. They have no choice. These sets will be slightly more widescreen, and slightly flatter screened, and will be, in effect, an HDTV.
I am guessing that the television programs of today are already preparing themselves for being played in re-runs by providing a widescreen image.
Or something like that, anyway.
That would make a lot of sense, GuanoLad… remember, the sci-fi channel is (was? I never watch it) showing Babylon 5 episodes in Letterbox. I saw an ad for that and thought it was really bizarre, but the HDTV explanation works for me.
I just want to know how channels like TV Land are going to survive the switch.
In fact, I think next year marks the 10[sup]th[/sup] anniversary of digital television being five years away from being a reality.
By having black vertical stripes at the edges, I’d imagine. I’m sure some marketing dork is already figuring out how to sell that space for advertising. I’m surprised NBC didn’t capatalize on the market created by the 99.99% of us that saw ER with empty black bars at the top and bottom.
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing movies (and TV series, sports, and everything else, for that matter) in widescreen, but somehow I just don’t trust the powers that be to leave those spaces alone instead of turning every program into Bloomberg.
Then again, once we all get HDTV sets, they can’t hit us with top and bottom ads. We’ll just have to put up with side ads on “Mork and Mindy” reruns.
Hmm. Okay then, maybe it will be longer than five years. 
I do know that’s the timeframe for Australia’s changeover, but I guess it remains to be seen if they stay on schedule.
Ideally, digital signals for HDTV will be the TV standard within 5 years. Too bad we don’t live in the ideal world, eh? The huge problem w/ staying on schedule is because people don’t like change, especially when they don’t care or have to pay for it. And seeing as how HDTVs run in the thousands of dollars, I doubt a majority of the TV viewing audience will be running out to pick up a few HDTVs. I bet we’ll have digital TV thats not from satellite or cable within 20 years but 5? Fraid not.
But are they REALLY using lmovie-type cameras, or just the same cameras as before, zoomed out, with cropping?