For the past few weeks, there's been what I can best describe as a flashing band of "noise" that appears intermittently during Project Runway on Bravo. It could be on other Bravo shows too, but this is the only one we watch regularly. I haven't seen it on any other channel.

The show is filmed with some scenese filling the screen, and some in letterbox with black bands at the top and bottom (with the Bravo logo overlapping the bottom black band). In a fair number of these letterbox shots (50%?), there will be a narrow band (perhaps 20% of the black band?) at the bottom of this video noise.

I've confirmed we get this on both our TVs, one of which is receiving it as 720p HD, the other Analog. The source of both is Comcast cable (San Francisco peninsula area).

Given the symptoms, I have to assume this is upstream somewhere. The question is, how far? Comcast? Bravo? Is anyone else seeing this?

If it were at the top of the screen, I would have suspected you were seeing time code information. However, since it's at the bottom, and only during the "letterbox" material, it could be an issue with how they actually crop the video. Perhaps they're using a DVE that doesn't scan all the way to the bottom on the screen and no one there is viewing the video in underscan mode to have seen it in post.

Other than that, the only other explanation is it's a special coded message to their only viewers... ;)

I've never seen any noise on "PR" on Bravo HD with Dish other than standard compression artifacts. BTW, "Project Runway" is not a HD show.