Jeopardy Chirons (text-based graphics), and some design alternatives for the character generator.  Please discuss and share your thoughts.

Here is what a Jeopardy category looks like in Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed (note: the show actually uses Swiss 921, a font which I do not have on my computer). Note that Jeopardy limits itself to 3 lines, and always conforms to an unseen 4:3 aspect ratio — even though HDTV 16:9 was officially adopted in 2006.

Here is what a long Jeopardy clue looks like in the ITC Korinna font. Note that Jeopardy limits the number of characters per line in order to conform to an imaginary 4:3 aspect ratio — even though HDTV 16:9 was officially adopted in 2006. Old habits die hard.

Due to the nature of broadcast video routing and mixing systems, a video source can be hidden or revealed, made partially transparent, moved around, scaled up or down, or have some effect placed upon it. Video routers and mixers cannot fundamentally alter the contents of the source material, because they do not understand that the source material is text. The above mockup is the result of scaling the category and clue frames to fit within a frame. Now the category is small and has a lot of dead space around it, and the clue is noticeably smaller than the original.

The above example can display a longer category and clue at full size, but it requires Jeopardy to have a second version of the clue—one that fits on a single line—to mix into the video stream.

Here's an example with a very short category that fits on one line....

When paired with a clue that's equally short, the cards look ridiculous. This, I believe, is why Jeopardy says it cannot find a nice way to put the category and clue on screen. However, I would love for someone who actually does broadcast video operations for a living to prove me wrong and tell me about systems that *can* do dynamic resizing of text at this scale (over 70 different video sources mapped to 40+ monitors, plus multiple different mixes for judges, writers, podiums, studio TVs, host, etc)