OK, I was watching the Frontline/American Experience special, “The Mormons” part 2 last night and I’m trying to understand something. The watermark in the corner noted that this was in HD. When I watched it, a lot of the name and titles were cut-off, ie “torian” was “Historian.” How do I know? Because it was on again tonight, but now in letterbox where I could see everything I couldn’t. However, how was this weird “full-screen” effect from the previous night done?
There was a thread about this not long ago. The retransmission of HD signals was being improperly handled at many PBS stations. Rather than show the whole image letterboxed, they would crop it down to 4:3.
They do it with Antiques Roadshow, too. It’s not that you’d notice it unless there’s a chyron on the screen (they cut off appraiser’s names and parts of the valuation chyron all the time).