To SD or not to SD?
One of the great advantages of being an early adopter and dealing with a young company like VOOM, is that you get to talk to people who are actually making it happen, be it Wilt or Evan. So we can be heard, and can influence the outcome. Isn't this exciting?!!
Evan: HDNews looks great! I love this channel! You guys did a great job with it! And I really admire VOOM's "extremist" approach to showing 100% HD content only! I think this is the way to do it to make HD happen.
However, I fear there will be a moment in time when your management will face a tough decision: to show particular material in SD, or not to show it at all. And it may happen, that the material will be so important, that they will choose to show SD. If this ever happens, I think I have a good idea for you. Please pass it on to your decision-makers:
If you show SD content in a smaller window (next to the commentator), and carefully choose the most appropriate size of the window, it will have the same visual resolution and sharpness as the rest of the screen. So, in fact, it will have HD quality! (If you work in computer graphics, you should understand exactly what I am talking about). I think this could be the way to show SD content in HD quality. Instead of upconverting, you could simply reduce the size of the image and achieve the same pixel resolution. And this obviously only works for a news channel!
Again, I am not advising HDNews to show SD content. I like it the way it is: HD-only. But if you ever need to show SD, this could be the way to do it.
Just give it a thought.