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Strange Widescreen format on ITV Meridian with Sky+
I'm seeing a very strange widescreen format effect on ITV Meridian. Only on this region, I've checked ITV Grampian and don't see the problem. And only on a Sky+ box, not a normal Digibox.
My Digibox (Sky+) is set to 16:9 format. When the ITV picture is in 4:3, my Panasonic widescreen TV seems to detect something that switches it into a Wide zoom mode, even thought there are no black borders. Even stranger, it shifts the whole picture down, cutting off the bottom of the picture (about half the S&S Banner), and revealing various white dots/dashes at the top of the screen. When it goes to adverts (in 16:9), it correctly switches to anamorphic 16:9. If I pause playback on Sky+, the picture switches back to a normal 4:3 display. Press play, and it switches back to this strange format.
Are ITV perhaps experimenting with different switching flags, or have they just got it wrong. Is anyone else seeing this effect on ITV Meridian or any other ITV regions? Or perhaps this is a bug introduced with the new Sky+ software?
My Digibox (Sky+) is set to 16:9 format. When the ITV picture is in 4:3, my Panasonic widescreen TV seems to detect something that switches it into a Wide zoom mode, even thought there are no black borders. Even stranger, it shifts the whole picture down, cutting off the bottom of the picture (about half the S&S Banner), and revealing various white dots/dashes at the top of the screen. When it goes to adverts (in 16:9), it correctly switches to anamorphic 16:9. If I pause playback on Sky+, the picture switches back to a normal 4:3 display. Press play, and it switches back to this strange format.
Are ITV perhaps experimenting with different switching flags, or have they just got it wrong. Is anyone else seeing this effect on ITV Meridian or any other ITV regions? Or perhaps this is a bug introduced with the new Sky+ software?
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Comments
Matt
This is just a theory, but it's becoming damn annoying. Only seems to affect studio type programmes, not films, etc. However, good to see that Sky/Pace are exploring new widescreen switching options, but perhaps they need to tell ITV Meridian how to use it properly.
A bit of research here suggests that ITV Meridian are sending "0100" in the Group 1 section of Line 23, indicating 430 active lines, with TOP position.
All the BBC 1 English regions (except London) carried L23 WSS
signals until a month ago. This was passed by my Sky+ box, and
confused the TV (1996 Sony WS) when a 4:3 programme was broadcast. Some older w/s TVs incorrectly inturpret the 4:3 L23 sigal as a command to go into 'Smart' mode. I've not noticed the problem
with Meridian via my Sky+ box, I'll watch a 4:3 programme (The news)
later and see what happens. I think if anything the issue is with Meridian, and not the Sky+ box. As with the Beeb the L23 signal is used internally but should be blanked before it hits the uplink.
Anyone interested can see my detailed explaination of why this is wrong here.
Hopefully they'll take notice and fix this, but would suggest others email them as well. I'm assuming this affects non-Sky+ digiboxes as well, although I got no replies at all to my thread on the normal Satellite forum.
Got the following reply from the Duty Office
Result !
I looked at around 18:30 and neither Meridian News, nor
the ITN news exhibited the problem.