did a local channel go hd

[dodger72]

i was watching my local nbc, knvn, last night and it was acting like it was in hd. what i mean by that is that the program was full screen but some of the commercials were shown with pillar boxes on the sides. i know directv has no plans to put this market in hd so i thought it was strange.

 

[Mr Tony]

its probably something the network is doing. The station while being in HD Directv only has it in SD. I have seen the same thing on my "locals" (Duluth, MN) which D* doesnt carry them in HD. They manipulate the format depending on program

What's worse is when the station shows in 3 different formats. My mom has Minneapolis locals and on her D12 (SD receiver) the news has the black bar on top and bottom (where they take a 16:9 pic and put it 4:3)....some commercials are in 4:3 (fills screen) and some news articles are letterbox (postage stamp) where there is black box around the whole thing

gets very annoying

 

[dodger72]

the local news had pillars too so i dont know got my hopes up

 

[charper1]

The aspect ratio doesn't determine if they are broadcasting in HD or not. and being HD doesn't mean all programming will be 16x9 or wide-screen (in general) either. Sadly there is just no consistency.

 

[Mr Tony]

exactly.

There is a station about 70 miles down the road (KEYC Mankato, MN) that has Fox subchannel (only channels in the market)
Fox is black bar hell the whole day except for Fox national programming. Then its 16:9 480i widescreen

Heck the CBS & NBC in Duluth broadcast their news in "digital widescreen"...not HD