Is anyone else amuzed by the trips and stumbles CBS2 is going thru with HD?

I can't believe a big budget operation like CBS2 is having so much trouble with their new HD...

* They've got that HUGE Best Buy showroom floor news set, and the anchors look like tiny salt and pepper shakers on a buffet table.

* The "safe" area for placement of anchors (I'd use the word 'talent' but you know...) seems to be 640x480, with a whole lot of 'filler' news set clutter on the left and right sides. So much for those of us who thought letterboxing was bars on the top and bottom, now the opposite equivalent seems to be filler on the left and right sides.

That in itself is not bad, because I just took some 720x480 material I shot last year, and put it on a 720x480 anamorphic sequence, and put some "filler" graphic on the left and right sides and it looks awesome! So thanks, guys, for the how to tip! And for setting a broadcast community standard.

* I can now see the the threads in the anchor's clothes, but I can also see that there apparently is more stuidio lighting required, as when they do a closeup, the anchor's pupils are white, from all of the white light reflected off of their eyes. Looks like Little Orphan Annie comic book.

I wonder how chaotic the engineering department there is, building that new set, building the new control room? I have fun doing this as a one man shop, but I wonder how much drama plays out every day as 50 guys try to figure out how to deploy a new set of standards?

Is a big shop too nutty for words with 50 or more people wrestling for their way to do something to serve an audience watching on everything from a brand new Plasma to great grandma with a B&W?

* The other day, Johnny Mountain was standing at the weather Plasma, and reached in 2 inches to point out something, and fell out of the spotlight on him!!!! With his sense of humor, I'm surprised he didn't say "And in case you missed it outside, we just had a solar eclipse!".

* Does Laura Diaz wear hair? In HD it suddenly doesn't look natural. New standards means new answers!

I am please to see that HD doesn't automatically mean we can see wrinkles and acne scars!

-- moved topic --

Growing pains.

There is a story about the reeeeely early camera tubes--the iconoscopes and how they worked. First, they were not sensitive at all, so they took tons of hot incandescent lighting on the set. Then, it turned out they were sensitive to near infra-red light, invisible to the rest of us.

With all that light and heat, the actors would wear as few clothes as they could get away with, leading to shots where you could see straight through shirts and pants.

I bet nobody at RCA Television Systems thought of that....


Very large corporations don't move very fast. That and broadcast companies are trying to shrink as fast as possible and the first group to go after the production assistants is the engineers. Everything is hired out.

Then, the camera operators (if any) are told to "protect" all formats, which means the only guaranteed successful picture is a 4:3 chunk out of the middle of the 16:9 image. Also keep in mind that certain European television formats are neither.

So yes, it will be amusing for a while.

Koz