Canucks Nation

Darren did a little digging into why the widescreen broadcast of the Canucks vs. Avalanche game last weekend had the edges cut off for regular TV viewers. Darren posted the full email reply from 'a senior television executive' to the Canucks Central forums. There's some good info there, like why the CBC doesn't broadcast both games on Saturday nights in HD, and what went wrong during the broadcast of the game in Colorado:

We generally shoot the second game with an SD digital mobile. That's because today, we have only one HD mobile, and rentals are extremely expensive. These mobiles produce a high quality digital standard definition signal. It is widescreen. This was the circumstance in the November 4th Vancouver at Colorado game. So while it is widescreen, it is not HD. That widescreen SD signal is sent back to the network centre via digital link, and upconverted for HD and edge cropped for SD. Again, it is critical that we protect safe area 4x3 in our shooting, and it was here we failed that Saturday night.Response from the CBC on Last Saturday Night's Game, We couldn't see the corners or the second point man on the PP