Bye, bye analog… Hello DTV!

The long awaited transition to digital TV is history. KOMO TV is now broadcasting a 100% digital signal over the airwaves. However, for advertisers and production companies, there is still a lot of confusion surrounding this topic when it comes to delivering widescreen content. One of the most asked questions is “why does my widescreen commercial have black completely surrounding the video when viewing on an HD set?” The simple answer is that your onscreen graphics/text are out of the 4:3 center cut area which means your video has to be shrunk down so that everything fits within the 4:3 area. This results in a letterboxed image on 4:3 TV sets and a postage stamp size video on HD sets. You may ask why should I still be concerned wtih 4:3 safe areas now that the digital transition has happened? Simply because cable and satellite companies are still delivering 4:3 signals and most are center cutting their signals. To learn more about properly formatting your video for delivery specifically to KOMO, click on the ‘Widescreen Guidelines” tab at the top of the screen.

HD Formats

KOMO TV is now accepting HD commercials for broadcast. Acceptable formats include: MPEG2, AVI and Quicktime in 1280×720. HDCam tape is also acceptable.