Advances in Technology - Format (Coronation Street)

Picture Format

From 1960-1969 the programme was broadcast in 405-line Black and White, it was displayed in 4:3 SDTV size, which was common of most if not all of the household in Britain.

In 1969 it was broadcast in 576i Colour in SD in 4:3 size until 2001 you could still watch it in Black and White however and 4:3 would still be common for a large majority of houses in the U.K.

In 2002 the size of the picture was scaled up to 16:9 SD because there was a huge rise in the amount of widescreen tv's in Britain, However it was still broadcast in 576i quality.

2010 saw the start of a new era for 'The Street', the HD era the picture quality was upped to 1080i High Definition but still on the scale of 16:9, it was broadcast on the ITV1HD channel and if you had a SDTV you could still watch the 576i colour version on ITV1.

What has changed with HD?

With the introduction of HD filming, many things have had more detail added, most notably are the chimneys on the houses, they used to be made out of fibreglass because the set couldnt support brick, however in HD you would notice the lack of texture, so in preperation for HD support was added for real brick chimenys to be added to the set.

makeup and set making will have been tightens up as any inperfection will now be noticed where as before you might have got away with a small blemish because of the poor quality of the picture.

What impact has HD had on production?

The switch to HD has made working on Coronation Street much easier, now that the cameras are filming straight onto 64GB HD SD memorycards the images can be cut and edited as soon as filming is complete, there is no waiting, for instance there is a editing vehicle on set so as soon as a card is full up the editing team can start work on the show immediatly, this is crucial for a fast paced production show like Coronation Street. This allowes the actors more time to get a scene right, and also the editors can take more time to get the perfect transition.

What is the impact of HD on Coronation street?

High Defenition has transformed the way the public watch Corrie, The shows first HD Broadcast attracted more that 500,000 viewers to ITV1HD channel on monday the 31st of May.

The change of Coronation Street has had a major effect on the amount of viewers, the Coronation Street sandwich in-between Britain's Got Talent both sides made nearly all other main channels viewer ratings were slashed considerably. This has given Corrie and also ITV a huge boost.