ABC World News Tonight Kicks Off HD with Convention Coverage
On Aug. 25, World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline start broadcasting in 720-line progressive (720p) HD, first from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, then from the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the following week.


Good… Thanks for the info…
Interesting that instead of having mostly static bars (technically called Wings) when showing SD content, they actually have potentially useful information such as the day’s stock quotes and weather forecasts for major cities in them…
Dennis
Yeah… I thought that pretty cool myself. It sure beats the plain black bars…:-)
I’m perfectly capable of getting weather and srock reports that I want. I don’t need to see other stuff that I don’t want/need. Just fill the screen with the picture.
What a concept.
Someday, all video will be shot with HD cameras using a 16×9 aspect ratio, but there’s still tons of stuff shot with older equipment. I prefer something like wings to black bars.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about writing a longer post about how news works in HD. I’ve only had CNN and CNBC in HD for a few weeks, but I really like the two different approaches they’ve taken.
When CNN has HD video, it has a ticker and fills its screen with eye candy, similar to what ESPN does; they use wings when they’re in Atlanta or other venues without HD video.
CNBC has SD video all the time as near as I can tell, but a very informative stock window with perhaps too much information. I find this similar to ESPN News, though it often has HD video, where they emphasize the information rather than the video.
Different strokes for different folks…
Dennis
Here in Tulsa the local ABC quit simulcasting the SD version of their channel. They were the only HD capable channel that did that. I used that version of the channel for recording everything that was not HD. I have watched World News Tonight several times since I saw this announcement and I thought that it would be in HD, but each of the times I watched it, it was standard definition. That is here in Tulsa. Not sure if I caught it during the Democratic Convention, but definately when I saw it this week when it was supposed to be high definition it was not.