In Australia, Channel 7 has broadcast rights for the Olympics. And the ads say this year is the first time the Olympics have been recorded in HD. Hooray!

And this is what we see on Channel 7 in HD.

Apart from the obvious fact that the 7 logo is almost totally opaque, they might as well have put the logo in the middle of the screen. I’d probably see more of the actual swimming action that way.

Then you have all the other info on screen, all in the 4:3 space. And this is the HD channel. There is this thing called widescreen - perhaps Channel 7 have heard of it?

I don’t just blame Channel 7. I blame the IOC. They should have mandated that the bid winner for broadcast rights had to put any on screen displays in 16:9 space, not 4:3, for any HD broadcast. And any station identifier should be made transparent, and placed in the outer part of the 16:9 space.

Here’s what we should have got:

Yeah, we wish.

Sure, Channel 7 invested a lot of money in getting the Olympics. It is cheaper for them to use the same graphics on screen for SD and HD broadcasts. In fact, it’s probably just an upscaled SD image on their HD channel. But Channel 7 could have used these Olympics to show the world what is possible with the technology. Start with proper use of widescreen. Move on to imaginative ways to tie into the internet. But nope - we got the basics.

And apparently the first week of the Olympics consists of just swimming.

Hang on a minute. Widescreen? Wasn’t the X-Files TV series created in 1993?

Channel Ten in Australia have started showing the X-Files TV series from the beginning. On their HD channel (Ten HD).

Great news if you like the series. But when you watch it, you may find something doesn’t quite feel right. Everyone seems to be a little too close, like they are encroaching in to your personal space. There seem to be a lot of extreme close-ups in the show and at times the stars have parts of their heads cut off.

So, what’s going on?

Well, Channel Ten, in their ultimate wisdom, have decided that people won’t watch the show in HD unless it is widescreen. So, they’ve taken the 4:3 show (the first few seasons were filmed in 4:3), and chopped off the tops and bottoms, stretching it out to give the appearance of a widescreen programme.

Here’s a clip from the episode last week:

And here’s that same scene from the original broadcast:

No wonder everything seems so close.

You’ll notice though that it isn’t fully widescreen - it looks like even Channel Ten staff noticed the clipping if they made it fully widescreen, so they cut it back just a little.

So why am I complaining? I’m offended when people mess with original content. And the point is that Channel Ten don’t get technology.

Widescreen TVs come with a button you can push to tell it to zoom a 4:3 programme to fit a widescreen TV, if that is what you want. So why force everyone to view a bastardised version of the programme when you can offer people choice?

But then it’s the same issue all the TV stations have with technology. I can work out what channel I’m on by pushing the “info” button on my remote - yet they continue to ruin the viewing experience by putting the station identifier on the screen and saying it helps people to know what station they are watching. That Ten HD watermark is huge!

It seems there isn’t a single network with any respect for TV programmes anymore. Revoke all their Free To Air licences!

Last week, Channel 9 gave all Australian viewers a sneak peak at “Hole in the Wall” - a new celebrity game show based on a segment from a Japanese game show called “Tonneruzu no Minasan no Okage deshita“. It was a sneak peak, as apparently we will be seeing more of it once the Olympics are over.

I love my Japanese game shows. Probably the highlight of every trip I make to Japan. And for years I’ve been saying on these trips: “We should take some of these shows to Australia - people will love them!”. So when I heard we were getting this show I was excited.

And then I realised we weren’t getting an entire show. Instead we were getting a segment of a show (Brain Wall), stretched out to make an entire show. Mistake number one.

So, the idea of the show is that contestants (celebrities) stand on the “Play Area”, and walls come toward them with shapes cut out - and they have to fit through the shapes, or get pushed in to a pool. You can’t really get that wrong…can you?

Well, here is an example of a “Hole” in a wall.

And now let’s take a look at the male celebrities Channel 9 chose for the first episode.

Notice anything (apart from the fact that the male body in spandex is rarely a good look)? Yes, at least two of these guys (Jacko and Tim) are obese. And look at the hole in the wall. No matter how hard you try, those guys will NOT fit through that hole.

And there is the second problem. It is only funny the first time you present the contestants with holes they can’t fit through. If you continue to do that, it just isn’t funny. And half an hour later the guys had scored a big fat zero.

So Channel 9, you need to actually do a bit of work if you want something to work in Australia. You can’t just buy all the props from Japan, slap it all together and hope it will work. You may not have noticed, but generally Japanese blokes are much skinnier than your average Aussie blokes. So you have to build new props (with cut out stomachs for Jacko and Tim to fit through apparently), or only choose skinny women as contestants (don’t get me started on the sexist comments the host made about the women in the show).

As usual, Channel 9 are idiots. They don’t deserve rights to the show. They don’t deserve a free to air TV licence. And that watermark is still annoying.

I should point out though that the show rated very well. Perhaps like me people were expecting more. I can’t see it lasting as is.

Just when you thought that finally Channel 9 had settled on a watermark to use, they surprise us all with their incredible creativity. And this is the result.

That watermark is so good, we need to take a close up look at it. And by close up, I mean let’s look at this thing as it would appear on your reasonable sized TV screen.

You’ve gotta love that!

What an absolute typographical nightmare. The H is cut off, but the D isn’t, so the whole circle-thing is lopsided. In fact, the first vertical stroke of the H appears to be longer than the second, though it might just be an illusion brought on by having the H cut off in that way. Spacing is inconsistent between elements, and the font itself is so vastly different from the font used on the 9 that it sticks out like dog’s balls. The watermark now takes up even more space, and of course is still in the 4:3 space.

Why would Channel 9 do this? Well, clearly they haven’t the creativity to come up with something unique, so they’ve copied the 7 HD watermark. But in Microsoft style, they’ve changed it slightly to try not to look like they’ve copied it (”Let’s use a circle instead of a square!”) and ended up with something cheap and nasty.

Channel 9 - laughing-stock of the industry.