SilverWook said:
I've only found one that broadcasts in 16:9 ... but some of the old shows like Charlie's Angels are horribly cropped 16:9 remasters.
I'm sure many of those old TV programs wouldn't be horrible in widescreen if they did them right ... by going back to the negatives.
The Star Trek (the original series) remastering for HD was a herculean effort and a missed opportunity for an awesome widescreen version. In those debates, the "integrity of the director's framing" is the oft-made argument but that is a phony defense (it's always a money issue of tight-wads who roll in the dough).
Here's a Star Trek you have never seen unless you have a film strip. This is was the way the cameras photographed it:
The reason you never saw this much was because it was framed for television -- the so-called "Director's framing" of the shots:
But you never saw even that much (at least, when it aired on the TV's of it's day) because the imprecise analogue technology forced a tighter "safe area" to guarantee what could actually be seen. This is the true "Director's framing":
So making a widescreen Star Trek means merely extending the edges of the safe area to the edges of the remaining image on film. Sure it might need the inevitable fix-up, but as this sample demonstrates, the TV show was cleanly shot:
