>> Interesting. I *watched* the snooker, and it didn't appear to be in 
>> widescreen. (Or maybe that's just FreeSat?)
> 
> I watch it via my Sky box (that's the same signal as FreeSat isn't it?) 
> and I certainly didn't notice any stretching (it would be quite obvious 
> in snooker because there are lots of perfectly spherical objects in view 
> all the time).  What made you think it wasn't widescreen?

The lack of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen on my 
grandparent's 4:3 CRT. Maybe they were there and I just didn't notice? 
Certainly when you watch a 4:3 signal on a 16:9 screen that's errantly 
configured to distort the image, it's pretty damned noticable!

>> There seems to be a great lack of the sciency type of programs I like 
>> these days. We used to have great shows like Rough Science, Scrapheap 
>> Challenge, Local Heroes, Horizon, BBC Wildlife, etc. Now there's just 
>> Brainiac... which is rather lame.
> 
> Scrap heap challenge was good fun, but it got a bit annoying when they 
> obviously planted useful stuff.  Like "oh look there's a complete 
> working V8 engine that's just lying here under this rusted car shell".

Yeah, well, that part of the show was *sliiightly* tenuous at times. But 
the whole concept of "OK, we need to mash together a machine to do X... 
how the hell do we actually do that?" was really neat.

Unfortunately the show slowly drifted from being about the science to 
being about the personallity clashes, differences of opinion, mutinies, 
etc. that I don't give a damn about. Why is it that today everything has 
to be about "reality TV"? Just get on with the engineering!

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