LethalWolfe said:
Most TV shows are not in widescreen. In fact, very few TV shows are in widescreen. There's thousands of hours of original TV programing and very little of it is not 4:3. And there's even less if you only count "true" 16x9 (i.e. producing content in 4:3 and then lettering boxing it doesn't count as true 16x9)
The transition is happening but it's going at a snail's pace. Honest to God few people, relatively speaking, really care enough to pay it. In spite of all the hype and buzzwords there is an under-whelming demand for HDTV and widescreen.
I would say it's growing faster than that. But maybe not much faster.
Since I got my widescreen TV, I've started paying attention to widescreen programming. I've noticed that a lot of NBC's shows are now formatted that way (like ER and Conan O'Brien's show). Of course, they're letterboxed when broadcast, so people with 4:3 TV's won't see distortion, (meaning there's less resolution than a 4:3 program), but people that tune in to the HD broadcast (if you have an HD tuner or digital cable) see it as true wide-screen.
But you're right that, aside from a few signature programs, the broadcast networks are not moving all that quickly. Some of the cable channels are moving faster, but most of them don't have HD broadcasts, which makes you wonder what the point is. (At least they're proper widescreen shows when the DVDs come out
)
