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Radio-Canada's news operation goes 100% Widescreen


KKyuubi

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Well, this week was a big week for Radio-Canada (the french arm of the CBC), from what I'm hearing, all their news and current affairs programming is now in 16:9 Widescreen, and even their 24-hour news service RDI has gone Widescreen! Even more interesting - it's all letterboxed on the SD feeds! Even on RDI which doesn't even have an HD/Widescreen version. This is very interesting, also noting that Radio-Canada always letterboxes any widescreen programming on their SD channels (they do have an HD version of Télévision de Radio-Canada OTA in Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto)

 

Think all networks should letterbox HD news programming to this degree?

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Yeah I noticed this week that Telejournal Alberta was in widescreen on Monday. Centralization of master controls isn't all bad. :(

 

And yes, the other broadcasters SHOULD do letterboxing once they move forward with HD. Forget the 4:3 safe areas and just start taking up the entire screen space.

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Letterboxes annoy me a bit but so do graphics that go right to the edges on widescreen (for some reason it doesn't seem right). Most of the news services here just use 14:9 which is a reasonable compromise between the two.

 

Is widescreen common for news programs in Canada? Very, very little programming isn't widescreen in Australia, although we don't have as many in HD (mainly national programs).

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Letterboxes annoy me a bit but so do graphics that go right to the edges on widescreen (for some reason it doesn't seem right). Most of the news services here just use 14:9 which is a reasonable compromise between the two.

 

Is widescreen common for news programs in Canada? Very, very little programming isn't widescreen in Australia, although we don't have as many in HD (mainly national programs).

 

No, it's not common. In fact, Radio-Canada is probably THE first national broadcaster to be broadcasting news in 16 x 9.

 

CityTV in Toronto I believe was the first TV station to broadcast their news in HD/16:9.

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Is widescreen common for news programs in Canada? Very, very little programming isn't widescreen in Australia, although we don't have as many in HD (mainly national programs).

 

No, it's not common. In fact, Radio-Canada is probably THE first national broadcaster to be broadcasting news in 16 x 9.

 

CityTV in Toronto I believe was the first TV station to broadcast their news in HD/16:9.

That's quite odd..I take it Canada is going the US route with respect to digital TV (meaning it's either quite good HD or very dodgy analogue, rather than the European/Australian/NZ system of having analogue>SD>HD)?

 

Because most major news bulletins (even some regional ones) are in widescreen but it's only the national bulletins here that are HD. (Morning shows, some daytime/late news bulletins.)

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Seems like that for Canada, we're sorta mixed - some operations are planning HD and some are going SD widescreen. Also, fun fact - Ironically, Radio-Canada is actually doing BETTER than CBC Television. They are still being beaten by TVA (which also has been doing some HD stuff too), but hey, quite odd indeed.

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