'05 How Was It For You?

Telefís

Well RTÉ's widescreen blunders would certainly rank as the number 1 low point for me.

This entire production was pasted with 16:9-stretched 4:3 images!
Never in my life have I come across such an amateurish production by a professional broadcaster - it truly beggared belief.

Easily 90% of all archive footage shown in ''05 How Was It For You?' was 4:3, as originating for the most part from the RTÉ Newsroom which still operates in 4:3.
Yet for the sake of shooting the 'modern day' speakers/contributors, the producer decided to make the entire production in 16:9!!!!!
What ignorance, what patent ignorance - what fools work in that production company, what fools work in RTÉ's IPU to accept this sh*ite.
I couldn't bear to watch most of it, the mauled images were so God-awful.

Truly the biggest technical farce I have seen on television in a long time - and to add insult to injury, 4:3 is more suited to shooting seated speakers anyway! AND this is a current programme, one that's not going down in the annals of time necessitating it be future-proofed for widescreen!
Unbelievable.

I pity the poor fools that watch analogue stretched to fill a widescreen set - they'd have been watching doubly stretched images! :eek:

YeatsCounty

If the licence fee is increased, that might enable RTE to produce proper widescreen shows. It's a wonder they haven't wheeled that out as a reason to increase it yet. :rolleyes:

What was the #1 high and low anyway?

Laguna

TV highlights in '05... jesus that's tough. I enjoyed Lost and to be honest... I can't really think of anything else off hand!.

EamonnKeane

Live8 voted as best thing of 2005? Bob Geldof referred to as "the closest you'll get to a living god"? What a load of shoit.

Lump

Coverage of London Bombings was a highlight for me... In the fact that the coverage was good on the BBC, not the event itself.

John

vibrant

I taped this by accident (I thought I was going to tape the news recap of the year, not something voted on by the general public) and thought it was a pretty dull affair. I'm not at all technically knowledgeable, so the widescreen/analogue debate is pretty much over my head - but do RTE really think that the public cares what the AA Traffic girl thinks of today's current events? The "talking heads" they pulled out for that programme were a joke... the editor of the Westmeath Independent?! Come on! I know that bona fide celebrities are a bit thin on the ground over here, but surely they could have got a few RTE "personalities" or something? I suspect that RTE were looking to make the programme on the cheap and didn't want to pay any Equity rates.

SprostonGreen

vibrant wrote:

The "talking heads" they pulled out for that programme were a joke... the editor of the Westmeath Independent?! Come on! I know that bona fide celebrities are a bit thin on the ground over here, but surely they could have got a few RTE "personalities" or something? I suspect that RTE were looking to make the programme on the cheap and didn't want to pay any Equity rates.

I hear ya, that ex news reader, where has she been hiding, put her back.

Telefís

Who's this now?

Agreed about Emma Caulfield - talk about fitting the blonde stereotype.
Her observations were the most mind-numbingly inane drivel I've heard in a long time, and coupled with that D4 accent... :eek: :mad:

Scobie

Telef&#237 wrote: »

This entire production was pasted with 16:9-stretched 4:3 images!
Never in my life have I come across such an amateurish production by a professional broadcaster - it truly beggared belief.

I agree. Unforgiveable. When the newsroom go widescreen what are they going to do with archive material? I think they need some good i.e. competent vt editors.

Telefís

You think???
Not to mention an entirely new crew of technical staff across the board!

You've no choice but to crop 4:3 material for 16:9 - broadcasting reports in 4:3 which contain archive material just isn't possible (nor desirable in the context of an otherwise 16:9 bulletin).

Now in most professional organisations they 'pan and scan' the image - which means instead of just nastily cutting the top and bottom off a 4:3 image, you 'float' the image, or move it up or down adjusting it so the cropping is as least damaging as possible. As usually is the case, the 4:3 image is moved to the top of the 16:9 frame to preserve people's heads - like here:

Here's Una in a nice 4:3 frame:



And here she is after what RTÉ will do to it should it ever be rebroadcast in 16:9. Being the lazy feckers that they are, and going on what they currently do, they'll just lop the top and bottom off the image, wrecking that beautiful framing, taking away the all-important headroom, and overall destroying the picture composition :mad:



And this is what should be done:



...all of the top of the frame kept, and just lots of the bottom chopped off.
The same goes for archive reports, and much older stuff from the 60s, 70s and 80s of course. But they can't be arsed, not even for very important archive footage in special reports - couldn't care less.

Telefís

Indeed, at the minute RTÉ can't even be bothered to crop at all for the likes of Prime Time - they just broadcast archive or newsroom footage as this :eek:



...just as was done on 05' How was it for You? !

And if you're one of those people who watch 4:3 analogue stretched (you know who you are ), you'd end up with this - doubly stretched!!



Any self-respecting broadcaster in the UK, even small commercial stations, would be shot dead for doing this, and this is our national broadcaster!
It is unreal what RTÉ gets away with over here.

limerick_man

Wow, ye really actually care about that?!?
I didnt know anyone actually really could give a cr*p! Interesting!!!
I have a widescreen tv, if the picture is cut off... i just change the shape, usually its i have it on either Widescreen or Smart, but if its really bad i just flick through the sizes til its grand!
Takes two seconds, deal with it!!!

Telefís

And I wonder why RTÉ couldn't care less......