Why do some channels broadcast in 4:3 and others have poor quality while in widescreen?

The answer to this question is connected to the answer of question 2, it is a matter of bandwidth, more popular and important television channels are allocated more bandwidth, though no channel’s bandwidth is limited (except BBC1).

The Hits (18) and TMF (21) broadcast in 4:3 or “square screen”, as opposed to 16:9 “widescreen”, this saves a lot of bandwidth.

You may have noticed during “4Music Sundays” on The Hits the aspect ratio changes to 14:9. 14:9 is commonly used as a “BBC compromise format” on BBC World (not available in Great Britain), used so it can be stretched to full widescreen or shrank to 4:3.

On The Hits, Channel 4 utilise left over spectrum space to broadcast in 14:9, though they can’t broadcast in full widescreen, due to there not being enough Channel 4 and The Hits spectrum to broadcast in 16:9, if they were to broadcast in widescreen picture quality would be sacrificed.

Links
Freeview
Freeview Channels
Wikipedia: Freeview  

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