Monday, October 05, 2009

ITV DVB-T stations - poor film transfers

Twice in the last couple of weeks I've sat down to watch a favorite film and realized what a terrible job ITV do when it comes to ITV 3 & 4 (actually - a few months ago the copy of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure I watched with the kids on ITV 2 was similarly afflicted).
The Scarlet Pimpernel (the 1982 romp with Jane Seymour and Anthony Andrews; "Sink me, your tailors have betrayed you"!) last week and Clint Eastwood Unforgiven about a month ago were both put out in 4x3 with very clear 1" C-format artifacts on them. Hasn't it been fifteen years since we started to do film transfers at 16x9? Wasn't that mandated by Ofcom when the Beeb saved DVB-T in this country from ITV's incompetence in the OnDigital debacle? Relying on telecine sessions you did back in the early nineties just won't do now - and even if you do have the cheek to just copy the 1" transfer to DigiBeta at least have the courtesy/engineering ability to line up the last VPR3 in your transfer area!

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