I've realised that talking about good ideas for tv shows and awards do's and stuff is not quite in keeping with the remit of this blog, so here's something really boring - the Aspect Ratio.
When a tv show is finished, ie edited, it has to be turned into some kind of hard copy from which it can be played out to tv sets – either a tape or a dvd which gets sent to a broadcaster – the really boring bit is sorting out the correct aspect ratio in this crucial transfer process, so that the picture doesn't appear distorted or heavily cropped when it hits the screen.
These ratios 4:3, 14x9, 16x9, super wide etc etc, offer a number of different ways you can view moving pictures incorrectly. This is an infuriating but unfortunately necessary bit of techno rubbish, brought in by the advent of widescreen tv; widescreen - which is only good for watching films and maybe football, although even Sky Sports don't bother shooting football in widescreen, so do we bother with any of it?
Technology is moving the wrong way for the medium. Apart from films and wildlife programmes – what is the point of High Definition tv? Sharper and sharper pictures of property shows and ice-dancing? Anyone who works in tv will vouch for the fact that production budgets are only going one way and that's down. So the production values of conventional television are hardly likely to improve much. And given that the growing demand in moving images is for the UGC stuff you might watch on a window on your laptop or on a tiny mobile screen, HD seems the very worst way to absorb it.
We recently piloted a show which, in part, scoops up funny/shocking internet stuff for people who can't be bothered to find it themselves. Even in an edit suite on a small monitor, the internet stuff looks terrible. But imagine watching this stuff on HD.
There's only one solution - Sony and LG and Hitachi and the rest are going to have to introduce retro technology, maybe an analogue replicator box or have a fuzzy button on the HD telly to be able to enjoy low quality vt properly. And maybe this is Alan Sugar's chance to get back into to the market by re-introducing his classically shoddy tv-cum-video-cum-dishwasher unit for £29.99.
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