I sent Sky Sports an email at the end of last year:

Question: Re: SuperBowl XXXVIII As CBS have stated that the SuperBowl in Feb '04 will be broadcast in widescreen HDTV can you confirm whether Sky Sports will be using this feed to give us a widescreen broadcast. You used to show the Scottish Claymores NFL Europe games in widescreen (like most of your sports coverage these days) and it made quite a difference to the viewing experience. It would be nice if Sky Sports could do this for the SuperBowl. Thanks Lewis Wernham

I received the following reply in my inbox today:

Dear Lewis Thank you for your email about the NFL Super Bowl and please accept my apologies for the delay in responding. I can confirm that this NFL Super Bowl broadcasting on the 1st February 2004 on Sky Sports Extra will be available in Widescreen. Thank you again for your interest in sky. Kind regards Margaret Tannock Viewer Relations

Woo-hoo! OK, so it's not HDTV like you lucky Americans will get but I'm very happy with this news. Hopefully next season will see some of the normal games in widescreen here.

FYI, widescreen broadcasts on our digital TV services work the same as anamorphic DVDs. The picture is full-frame, but squashed horizontally so as to use the full resolution of widescreen TVs (1024x576 pixels). People with older 4:3 TVs can set their STBs to either letterbox the picture or crop the sides off for a full-frame 4:3 picture.

I think the pics below show quite nicely why I'm a big advocate of widescreen sports broadcasts

16:9 full-frame on a widescreen TV


16:9 letterbox on a 4:3 TV


4:3 full-frame on a 4:3 TV