More and more programmes in the UK are being made in widescreen. If you are a viewer of analogue television you can spot most of these being shown in 14:9, ie with narrow black lines top and bottom. Viewers to digital terrestrial (DTT), digital satellite (D-Sat) and digital cable can view these programmes in 16:9 widescreen, whether they own a widescreen set or not.

However, in my opinion, there is no point in having a widescreen set unless you have digital, or if you have a DVD player and plenty of widescreen DVDs.

It appears to me that most people who have bought a widescreen set have no idea how to watch it properly. They seem insistent to fill their screen up with picture, so what they end up doing is distorting the image, or zooming it in to a ridiculous degree.

We need to get away from this mentality. A widescreen television should be used for viewing, where available, widescreen images. Traditionally shaped images (4:3) should be viewed as such.

Who is showing widescreen programmes?

The BBC led the way in transmitting 16:9 material. The vast majority of new output on the BBC's channels is made in this format, including the news. The other terrestrial broadcasters have been making great strides though - much of ITV1, ITV2, Channel 4, E4, S4C and Channel 5 are now transmitted in 16:9.

Even Sky are finally waking up to widescreen - Sky One now has occasional 16:9 broadcasts, and more Sky movie channels are going wide, while Sky Sports 1/2/3 have been wide for some time. However almost all other digital channels, including the most popular like UK Gold never show widescreen material, even when it is available.

How to watch a 16:9 transmission on a 16:9 set

Easy - make you sure your digital set-top box is set to 16:9 mode, your television is set to 'Auto' mode and the two are connected by a SCART cable. When it detects a 16:9 signal it will be shown as such, and you'll be able to see a lovely widescreen picture.

If you are a widescreen television owner try to watch digital as much as possible in preference to analogue, in order to benefit from widescreen transmissions. They are identified as such in Radio Times and on the on-screen programme guides.

REMEMBER - anamorphic widescreen pictures are NOT available on analogue transmissions.

Now here comes the problem...

How to watch a 4:3 transmission on a 16:9 set

4:3 transmissions will continue for a long time yet. Most digital channels do not generate a 16:9 signal, and even on the main channels like BBC1, there will continue to be repeats of older programmes made in 4:3, as well as a minority of new shows. So how best to view these programmes on a widescreen set? There are a number of options.

4:3

Once again, if you have left your television in 'Auto' mode, then this is how a 4:3 picture will be displayed. This the only truly acceptable way to watch a 4:3 programme on a 16:9 screen, often known as 'pillarboxing'. Some may consider the black bars may be rather heavy, but I personally do not find this at all off-putting. You get to see the entire picture as it was intended to be seen, nice and sharp, with no distortion and no zooming.

16:9 Stretch

Absolutely revolting! Why would anyone want to see the world like this? There is no justification whatsoever for the existence of this mode. It should be deleted from all widescreen televisions. Unfortunately many shops like to show their display televisions like this, leading many people to believe widescreen means short and fat people.

16:9 Zoom

Probably the most commonly used option among non-digital viewers. And just like 16:9 stretch, I find it abhorrent.

Did you really buy a widescreen television in order to see 25 per cent less of the picture? It's very unsightly - people's heads disappear off the top, captions disappear off the bottom. Not only that, there is a considerable loss in resolution leaving you with a soft, blurry picture. Remember - what you are watching here is not, and never will be, widescreen!!!

The only time this option should be used is for zooming programmes shown in 16:9 on analogue (some films are shown this way, but rarely in prime time). But this is not genuine widescreen. Watching the same transmission on digital will give you the same image but using all 625 lines on the screen (well, actually less than 600 are used for the picture, but that's another story). This is genuine widescreen and will give a sharper, greater resolution picture.

Bear in mind, if your tv is set to Auto/4:3 and you are using a SCART cable, whenever a 16:9 picture is shown on a 4:3 transmission, within seconds it will zoom it up to fill the screen. This makes the zoom option completely redundant, but can be a bit annoying at times.

14:9 Zoom

Bit of a compromise here, a half-way house between 16:9 and 4:3. Only acceptable for watching a 14:9 analogue transmission (or on a digital channel such as UK Gold which shows widescreen material in this format). But once again there is a loss in resolution.

If you really cannot stand the thick black bars of 4:3 mode, I suppose it is acceptable to view 4:3 material in this format. You don't lose too much picture top and bottom, but captions can get perilously close to the bottom of the screen. In fact, BBC News shows 4:3 source material in this 14:9 format.

Widescreen televisions usually come with a variety of other options such as 'justified' or 'smart' mode which stretches the edges of a 4:3 picture but leaves the centre section untouched. But again, why distort the picture just so it fills the screen up?

How to watch a 16:9 transmission on a 4:3 set

Unfortunately it seems the majority of widescreen television owners do not own a digital set-top box. Vice versa, most digital viewers are watching on 4:3 sets - including myself.

4:3 Full screen

On digital satellite, digital cable and older digital terrestrial set top boxes, there are two options on your set-top box - 4:3 and 16:9. 4:3 'full-screen' mode will, obviously, show traditionally shaped programmes in the traditional way. But 16:9 pictures will also be shown in 4:3. This means you get to see less than you would see on analogue television, where you would see it in 14:9!

4:3 zoom is not as abhorrent as 16:9 zoom on a widescreen set, but captions do have a nasty habit of disappearing off the side of your screen, and pictures framed for 14:9 or 16:9 can often look cramped in 4:3 mode. (Invariably, virtually all widescreen channels place their permanent on-screen logo, or DOG, in a position where it can be seen whatever mode you are watching in).

16:9 Letterbox

Understandably many viewers dislike watching 16:9 pictures in so-called 'letterbox' mode, and if you watch on a 14" set, everything starts to look rather small (I need binoculars to be able to see BBC weather maps in widescreen on my 14" set!). However I feel it is the only viable format - once again, it is the only way to see the programme as it was intended.

The thing to watch out for here is for any channel not using a switching signal (only S4C that I am aware of, and this may have changed). In this case you will see a 4:3 picture in so-called 'postage stamp', and you will need to make use of your 'WIDE' button (if you have one on your remote) to zoom it up to full screen. (Nokia DTT box owners can press the 'big' up arrow button followed by the red button to switch between 'full-screen' and 'letterbox' modes).

Many of the newer digital terrestrial boxes now incorporate a 14:9 letterbox option, which is, of course, the perfect compromise. The picture will then appear on your screen as it does on an analogue transmission.However the introduction of 14:9 letterbox seems to have replaced the 16:9 option, meaning that viewers on a 4:3 television no longer have the option of watching the full width of the picture without investing in a widescreen set!

In conclusion, I can say the best thing to do if you are a digital widescreen viewer, is set it to Auto/4:3 mode (you must be using a SCART cable to connect television and digibox), and leave it where it is. You will then see 16:9 transmissions in 16:9, and 4:3 transmissions in 4:3.

If you are an analogue-only viewer, and have no interest in any form of digital television, there is little point in buying a widescreen set now. The government believes it will be able to switch off analogue transmissions in 2006 at the earliest - highly unlikely I think, there is little chance of switch-off before 2010. So if you buy a 4:3 set now, it will probably last out analogue transmissions.

Widescreenitis

I mentioned earlier that the BBC leads the way in widescreen broadcasting. But we are getting to the stage where they are leading too far, and are now suffering from a severe attack of widescreenitis - a disease which has spread throughout the whole corporation.

The policy now appears to be that everything must be in widescreen - no matter what. Fair enough for new programmes with new content. However if the programme contains elements made in 4:3, for example archive material, these have to be dealt with in some way. The answer usually is, to chop huge chunks off the top and bottom to make it into 16:9!

The I Love the 70s/80s/90s/00s series was a prime example. The programmes consisted mostly of 4:3 archive clips, cropped to 16:9, the only new material being talking heads, which don't benefit from widescreen at all! So why make it in 16:9?

Classic clips are regularly being butchered in this way, without any regard to the original picture, or the intentions of the original programme makers. It also means widescreen viewers are treated to doses of hyper-zoom scary vision! If you've ever seen clips of Sir Robin Day's interview with Margaret Thatcher, cropped to 16:9, you'll know what I mean. And yet no one seems to care.

The compromise is, as ever, to crop to 14:9 - used mainly by BBC News. But even this is far from perfect. The 4:3 analogue viewer gets the same size picture as it would be in 4:3, but with narrow black bands at the top and bottom. The 16:9 digital viewer gets black bands at the left and right. But as for the 4:3 digital viewer, well, let's demonstrate.

Take the example below from CBBC on Choice, and an episode of the children's classic Mr Benn. The original picture is shown on the left. Cropped to 14:9, the 4:3 viewer has two options - 16:9 letterbox (centre), or 4:3 zoom (right). Neither is satisfactory - you either get black lines all the way round, or else a horribly blurry, zoomed-in image which loses all four sides of the original picture!

Now I come to mention it, CBBC has been hit by a particularly nasty dose of widescreenitis. Until September 2001, CBBC continuity from Studio 9 was in 4:3, with 4:3 programmes shown in 4:3, and 16:9 programmes shown in 14:9 on analogue and the signal switched to 16:9 on digital. No problem then. But when CBBC changed to 16:9, the ludicrous decision was taken to make the whole of CBBC's output 16:9 (14:9 analogue). This means all 4:3 programmes, still in the majority on CBBC, are now cropped to 14:9, as shown by the images above. If they could switch between formats before, why can they not do so now?

I am certainly not against the move to widescreen production. True 16:9 pictures really do look better than 4:3 - but the treatment of archive material is deplorable. Programmes containing a considerable amount of 4:3 material should be made entirely in 4:3. End of story. Widescreen programmes that may need to include an element of 4:3 should show this either in 4:3 with patterned sides, or at a push, 14:9. But, programme makers, please don't ever zoom to 16:9!

You are giving people bad advice!

You are giving people bad advice that will ruin their expensive televisions if they follow it. TV manufacturers state that not more than 15% of your total viewing time should be of programming that doesn't fill the entire screen, otherwise you will get uneven aging of the phosphors (or pixels) and ruin your television.

William Guenthner