After being the first locally with widescreen news, NBC29 of Charlottesville has gone the rest of the way to high definition. (See news release here.)

Here’s what we said when they went widescreen but not hi-def:

It’s not actually high-definition but even in standard definition it looks great on the newer widescreen TVs. Notice that there are no black bars left and right of the main picture on a widescreen TV. A Channel 29 technical staff member explains, “The reason for the near-HD quality in the studio is the camera chain is digital from the 16 X 9 CCD image sensors to your TV screen. There is no analog conversion anywhere in the system.” There’s more for the technically inclined, but for now Channel 29 fans have a great, near-high-definition picture on local news. Channel 3, below, uses black bars left and right of its main picture for now. Of course, on conventional TV’s the picture fills the screen and there are no black bars. However, there are more widescreen TV’s being sold every day.