Enough with all the clutter (graphics) on my HD screen! - Page 11

Actually, it's on the lower right here - at least during Smallville, which is the only one of those three I watch. Or at least it was last time I watched it. But like you said, it's practically in the middle of the screen, so what's the difference.

That's the absolutly worst of the stationary ones that I've ever seen - and it's huge, too.

In fact, I've been convieniently "forgetting" to watch a lot of the episodes since they started up with new ones lately - and I think it's because I've just stopped getting enough enjoyment out of them to be worth putting up with that thing. It's nearly impossible to really concentrate on just the show. It's a dirty shame. I hope a lot of others are feeling the same way.

NBC is worse. It is on the wrong side of the screen and it has been light grey/white since fall 2006. It used to be clear.

You can't miss it surfing. I also admit I have been checking to see which channels are putting up these D*** promo bugs. LMN's is huge and appears to also use the actual logo of the movie about some Green River killer. Everything (HD and SD) is going to look like Bloomburg TV very soon with crap on every side of the screen showing network, upcoming shows and so on. And some local stations place their logo next to the broadcast network logo/promo bug too.

CW is promoting new episodes of shows 4 weeks out via the bug.

Lifetime is extremely bad also. My wife watches Reba and Still Standing in the afternoons and it is very annoying.

I too have been watching less & less od the "CW"...

They have way too many commercials, plus they play them super loud (or do they play the show too low?). They'll show an ad for an upcoming show...Then a pop-up appears across a large portion of the screen reminding you of that up-coming show (yes, it's th esame one they just showed a commercial for!) and then to add salt to the wound...

They put up their LARGE "CW" icon with an ad right above it for some other show.

They are everything that's wrong with TV....

Same here. Lifetime Movie Network is not widely available, AFAIK, beyond Verizon Fios and maybe U-Verse, but surfing by, I stopped because that bug for an upcoming Capture of the Green River Killer movie is freaking huge. It was so obnoxious that I have been checking the channel from time to time and it is there every time. I think LMN must have that promo up 24/7 or close enough to it. These bugs & on-screen promos are getting out of hand when even Lifetime leaves them up all the time. If enough people complain and make a public stink about it, the networks might start cutting back on them. Until then, they will keep putting them up to see how much they can get away with.

I can't tell you how many times I've missed something on South Park because the freaking stupid ad for Futurama or some other show was on. This most recent time was when Cartman pooped out of his mouth for the first time. Luckily (heh) they did it a few more times in the episode. But when it happened my wife said "well, what was it?"

If that's all your CW affiliate does then your lucky. The MyHD affilliate here in Phx switches to SD and then stays in SD for an entire segment with the logos up. After the next commerial break it goes back to HD. It generally does this two or three times during a movie.

That is 2 nights in a row of "CELEBRITY APPRENTICE FINALE IN X DAYS." Takes up just as much space as those Olympic Rings under the NBC Peacock. What are they trying to accomplish with this latest ad bug? Why do I get the feeling about 30 days before the Olympic Games start we will see the following:

OLYMPIC SUMMER GAMES IN 30 DAYS

then the following night:
OLYMPIC SUMMER GAMES IN 29 DAYS

then the next night:
OLYMPIC SUMMER GAMES IN 28 DAYS

then a day after that:
OLYMPIC SUMMER GAMES IN 27 DAYS

and on and on and on until the Opening Ceremonies when NBC will then put the following:

OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONIES IN 14 DAYS

One day later:
OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONIES IN 13 DAYS

Next day:
OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONIES IN 12 DAYS

Yet a day later:
OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONIES IN 11 DAYS

and on and on until the day of closing ceremonies. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel???

I'd imagine it will be more like:

OLYMPIC SUMMER GAMES IN 30D 16H 24M 12S 86MS

I was checking out NBC last night, and CW's definitely worse than what I saw. NBC's isn't up nearly into the middle of the screen like CW's.

I hardly watch any primetime network programming, so I haven't been as subjected to it as some, but at least it wasn't on the late night talk shows, so I didn't complain. But last night for the first time I noticed that NBC has started putting it on those, too, so I'm swearing off those now for as long as they remain there, however long that is.

So it looks like strictly Letterman, Ferguson and Kimmel from now on (not that I ever watched Leno much anyway).

That's for us commercial skippers.

(You should see their Kids WB bug. It's not transparent and says "All New!" above it.)

I noticed the ad bug on Leno Monday night. On Tuesday, it was only on Conan and Last Call. I really wonder if Leno or anyone from his show had something to do with that bug disappearing? That bug better be gone when Conan starts new shows as well.

Maybe the Kids WB bug should say...
Stay In School
Learn To Write
Don't Do Drugs
Respect Your Parents
in large, bold, bright white characters

The thing that really cranks me about the WB/CW is the local ID bugs. Whenever the Kids WB bug is on, the regular "WBNX-HD" bug cannot be overlayed so they put the local bug on the LEFT side of the screen. Plus there is the "EI" bug in the top right corner. I know the "EI" bug is a recent rule, but it is a $%#& rule. How about combining it into one, smaller bug?

So you've got 3 corners worth of bugs going at once? Holy jeez.

How about the new Ghost Hunters pop-up that covers between 1/3 and 1/2 the screen on Scifi HD. Even then most of what is blocking the screen is an empty background texture. The actors heads are barely treading water and the hunters heads are nearly as big, making it look like they're guest stars on SG Atlantis, maybe as wraith hunters.

Probably my next biggest peeve is the ultra loud commercials on UHD. Especially the gratuitous heavy metal thunder of the Jeepworld commercials, followed by the crashing brass balls of doom. It really gives my receiver a workout and sometimes causes the sub to unexpectedly kick in. Especially after a particularly mellow scene in the show I was watching.

I have to have my thumb hovering over, either the mute of skip buttons. It still scares the dog out of the room if I don't anticipate it and some of the blast gets through.

I mentioned before how the ad bug is as big as the olympic rings underneath the peacock logo. I looked again and I see now I was wrong!! It is bigger than those olympic rings.

The only good news lately on the NBC situation is that Criminal Intent at 8PM on the local NBC affiliate here is not on tonight due to a locally produced show meaning one less hour tonight of this ad bug garbage on NBC.

I suppose they will start using the ad bug next after the Apprentice Finale to promote or torture us with PSYCH and MONK coming to NBC. No one will watch these shows for long on NBC. That is why they are already on their cable owned networks.

The "next big thing" for NBC will be "ALL AMERICAN TELEVISION" summer with "Family Feud" "American Gladiators" and the new "Knight Rider" (plus the usual reality crap).
Read more here (after the part about the Jericho finale ratings)

Wow. And I can't believe there are some on this board that actually argue that television nowadays is better than it ever was.

Most of what's on television is, and always was, crap. The only way to judge which era is batter is to look at the best programming and ignore the rest. By that criteria, I believe that television is better now than ever.

My biggest peeve is during LOST. Our local puts up "possible minor flooding" then shows a map of a few counties. Hey! Those people know the river is up. Problem is WQAD must go to SD to show it. THen they leave it up for 2 minutes.
Bob 61231

I hope you took the time to complain to your local affiliate.

$5 says the affiliate responds that overlaying weather information is part of the "serving the public interest" requirement of their broadcast license, if they respond at all. HD keyers are not cheap and tend to be a low priority upgrade since most stations still consider HD secondary to the analog broadcast. I hate weather spam as much as the next person, but at least it serves a purpose, unlike REAPER NEW EPISODES TUESDAY APRIL 22.

But at least REAPER NEW EPISODES TUESDAY APRIL 22 is overlayed in HD.

Only 23 more days until new REAPER episodes! How far out are the networks going to go to promote shows?

Well, as mentioned above, Smallville was a new episode, yet the CW still had to tell us there are new episodes in a few weeks.

Are they going to start promoting shows in for the fall soon?

This all started on 9/11/2001.

TV Channels felt guilty if they continued "business as usual", so they decided that it was okay to show "Seinfeld" if they added a crawl at the bottom of the screen with news tidbits about 9/11. This practice spread like wildfire, and was innocuous and relatively well-intentioned.

But, it created a new horrendous paradigm - that it was reasonable for viewers to ignore the main programming on the channel. I think that idea borders on insanity - you spend millions of dollars to present programming, and then you intentionally distract your viewers from that programming.

But this is part of a larger trend in TV production - the complete disregard for the human being watching the program. A great example of this is the trend over the past 5-10 years towards images that are entirely unwatchable by human optic nerves connected to human brains. 20-something video editors use new digital technology to create astounding successions of images - other editors are admiring of their technique - but the result is literally unwatchable, and occasionally physically nauseating. Add to this, an epidemic in the use of disorienting zooming by cameramen. Nothing gives more of a sense of "you are there" than a slowly moving camera that mimics the real-life perception of a human being, and nothing immediately breaks that sensation more than a split-second zoom.

Programming is aimed at the AAD youtube generation - it's only going to get worse. How soon till we have 10 min episodes?

I thought they were close to that already...