Today, December 11, three nationwide television channels of the Public TV of Ukraine - UA: FIRST, UA: CULTURE and UA: CRIMEA - will change the current format of their broadcasting to widescreen - 16:9. Abandoning the 4:3 frame format, broadcasters will also partially update their graphics. These changes will be another step towards the transition to Public broadcasting in HD (High Definition) format.
"For a television channel, which the state has not allocated money for equipment for the past 6 years, this is a very serious leap forward. The last time we calculated the budget for the transition to 16:9, it was more than $500,000. And now we are implementing this transition without any help from the state. We managed to make the new budget smaller - everything has become cheaper than 5 years ago, we have connected more "brains". But most of all, in fact, we were helped by cooperation with grantmakers. Otherwise, we would not have moved in this direction, - says the Chairman of the Board of PJSC "NSTU" Zurab Alasania. - Over the past two years, several grantmakers have contributed to our equipment - this is the US Embassy, Deutsche Welle, and the Council of Europe. This is how we gradually gained the necessary number of cameras that shoot in 16:9 format."
Technical Director of PJSC "NSTU" Yuriy Boychuk added: "We have long been lacking video processors - equipment that should change the signal format. We were helped in solving this issue by our colleagues from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. And thanks to Eurovision, we have a complex of studio cameras that solved the issue of studio production."
The change in the format of these three television channels is not instantaneous, it was preceded by a test period. First, in October, the news complex was switched to 16:9 format. During this time, all organizational difficulties of the transition period were worked out. Since some of the materials of the television channels remain in the 4:3 format, and some are already recorded in 16:9, it is very important to combine them successfully. In particular, it took time for employees to get used to working in a different mode.
Any digital television receiver receives signals of different formats. To view widescreen format on a TV with a 4:3 screen, the tuner compresses the image to the required size. "Digital" subscribers (both satellite and cable) have a signal that comes from the receiver to the TV, which corresponds to the format selected in the settings. Subscribers receiving an analog television signal have the image reformatted by the receiver of the main station of the cable provider.