I can still remember when a handful of commercials produced in the US were mastered on 2” reel to reel video and my mentor use to talk about the days of releasing on 16mm. Eventually all of that was replaced by 1” video and then came the tape formats like Betacam SP and a handful of short lived digital formats with names like D1, D2, and D5. While most of these formats improved what we saw from our couches, it was still the same old low-resolution signal known as NTSC or standard definition. However, some time in the early eighties, people started talking about High Definition. Fast forward the tape-deck to the turn of the century and the dream of a few technical engineers had become reality. However, even with HD TV sets rolling in to the local Sears, there wasn’t much that could be watched on one until just the last few years.

Today, nearly all TV shows are produced in HD and a recent poll by Leichtman Research Group says that 69% of US households have at least one High Definition set. So if this is the case, why aren’t all commercials being produced and released in HD?

This is where it gets complicated. Many local TV channels still don’t have the equipment or the broadcasting power to deliver the HD signal and in most markets those channels have only recently settled on HD standards agreed upon by the local broadcasters. This leaves commercial producers in a strange situation. Do we produce in HD or in the out dated NTSC format? The current way of thinking is to do both.

Though it can be a pain, most of the spots that we are producing at Stevens Design & Animation will have multiple masters for both standard definition and HD. I have recommended to all of our clients that, even if they can not use an HD master in their marketplace, they probably ought to design the spot for HD with a re-cropped SD version. We have even been able to re-constitute some older spots at the full 1920x 1080 resolution. 

The transition to HD has been much slower than we would have predicted a few years ago but, it has finally made its way here. We have come a long way since releasing commercials on film and reel to reel video. However, I suspect that HD probably won’t be the last format that we have to master in. Let’s hope it stays around longer than BetaMax!

Thanks

Tim Stevens

Directing Animator