Behind the scenes of Live With Regis and Kelly's HD upgrade will be a new high definition control room, plus new HDTV studio and handheld cams. Not getting replaced for the resolution bump? The set, unlike Entertainment Tonight's new digs Broadcasting & Cable reports Live is just throwing a fresh coat of paint on what's there and moving forward. Unfortunately it seems the state of HD syndication ready local stations is still in disarray, so it may be some time before you actually get a look at the improved broadcast in your area, but everyone else should be more than taken care of January 5.

We know, you're all politics, sports, tech and other "serious" subjects when it comes to your HDTV programming schedule, it's just you have this...friend who watches daytime syndicated programming. Tell your "friend" that talk show hosts Ellen, Oprah (only a year after initially rumored) and Dr. Phil will all make the jump to glorious high definition. Later in the day, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider make the jump to 720p/1080i (depending on your local station and if they're ready to handle syndicated HD at all), complete with newly built sets and likely a few extra layers of makeup. Anything else your "friend" is still waiting to see get a resolution bump? Check after the break for a video tour of ET's new HDTV-ready digs.

Read - Dr. Phil
Read - Entertainment Tonight & The Insider

Arriving as a spinoff of the InteractiveDad.com online magazine, Interactive Dad TV positions itself as a syndicated news segment, produced in HD, with news stories aimed at fathers between 24-54 years old. Sure there's plenty of parenting content on most local news stations already, but according to iDadTV they're usually aimed towards mothers. All the same, be on the lookout for your (recently gone HD in most cases) local newscast airing these HD clips in the U.S. and Canada.

Now that HD has been around for some time, we're seeing more and more reruns of HD shows (the industry calls reruns syndication). Just because a show wasn't originally presented in HD doesn't mean it can't be syndicated in HD, as we've seen with Seinfeld and more recently Star Trek: Enterprise. Unfortunately for local broadcast stations and HD fans everywhere, additional equipment is needed to syndicate in HD. This is above and beyond what they've already acquired to pass on the network HD feed or even produce their own HD. So, just because the show is syndicated in HD, doesn't mean you'll actually be able to enjoy it. Now we can add Two and a Half Men to the short list of syndicated HD shows, that you may or may not have access to.

Starting on March 27th Sony will start to syndicate HD versions of some of the most popular syndicated shows on Television, including Seinfeld, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Syndicated shows are one of the last to go HD mostly because of the challenges involved in distributing the content.

Unlike most network content syndicated shows are downloaded to the affiliates via satellite and saved for later when they will be shown and commercials spliced in. This poses all new challenges for networks and content providers. The other problem is that many shows that are syndicated today were originally aired before HD was widespread. Lucky for us most of these shows were originally produced with film, which makes it possible to go back to the source and remaster it in HD, since film has more resolution than HD does. But unfortunately as we have seen with DVD, not all transfers are created equally.

No word yet on which networks will take advantage of the new HD programming, stayed tuned for more and please let us know of sightings.

Before you ask; Seinfeld was 4x3 and HD isn't going to change that.
As a TWIHD reader once pointed out, not all HD is 16x9 and not all 16x9 is HD.

via [AVSForum.com]