Enough with all the clutter (graphics) on my HD screen! - Page 4

This is going to sound ridiculous. Why don't the networks just make the program breaks shorter? Concept of supply and demand. If the nets need to "refund money to advertisers" as they say... then simply air less of them. Go back to the NAB advertising limits.

Two things that could happen.

1. The commercial breaks would be so short that DVR users would be too lazy to fast forward through them
2. With less inventory, advertisers will compete more for the slots, resulting in higher payout per ad.

Obviously with fewer units, the return in revenue will be about the same or even lower in the short run. However, it does simplify things all the way around.

News radio tends to run a lot of little commercial breaks. The breaks are so short that listeners don't even have time to switch the station before the return.

side note: the amount of actual commercials is not that much more than what we had 15 years ago. The difference now is that in 1991, networks might run a single 20 second promo per half hour, while today you may see up to 2 minutes worth!

Might work ok on reality shows but scripted dramas would suffer with shorter segments. OTH it might benefit some viewers' shorter attention span

I just remembered back in the good old analog days when I used to watch "Futurama" on my local Fox station. Those idiots would slap up their lower third
FOX61
logo over the opening credits, and cover over the joke message they would slip in there each week. It drove me nuts.

I actually called in once about it and complained:

Me: Since you covered the joke over and I couldn't see it, I don't suppose you could tell me what it said.
Them: I believe it said "Diet Slurm is People..."
Me: Heheheh! That's hilarious!......to bad you completely ruined the impact of it for me..."

The splicer holds two bugs. One for a legal ID, and one for local station branding. They can allow or inhibit local control of either or both bugs at their whim. At least that's the way the two I have work.

It is only one bug. The HD feed of FOX does not have a network HD bug(although I've seen one during live shows like American Idol). There have been cases where there are two bugs. If the station forces into SD for weatehr warnings or technical difficulties, then there is the network SD logo and the local logo in the far right corner.

NESN is probably not the best example, given their increasing use of animated pops up and endless plugs for their other programming during games. I actually wouldn't put it past 'em to put something up during the whole game.

But it probably wouldn't be for a Celtics game, since the C's are on Comcast Sportsnet

I have thought of another reason these kind of ads staying on during the entire show need to be eliminated. Either they distract you or you tend to tune them out or both.

After a few minutes of getting used to the ad being on the screen each time the show comes back on, I tune out these kind of ads sometimes. However that is not a good thing if an emergency or weather warning type message is being put on the screen. I could see some people do that and tune out important messages. Especially if you have recorded a program on a recorder and you are Fast Forwarding to a certain part of a recording. The person just thinks it is another ad for the 100th time for American Gladiators or Law & Order on NBC.

-YakHDTV06

Not correct; the amount of actual commercials has gone up dramatically over the years.

A standard hour of network primetime programming in the early eighties contained 6 minutes of national advertising and 2 minutes of local advertising. Typically, 4 of those 20 second network promos (2 per half hour, not 1 as you said) also ran in an hour.

Over the course of the eighties and nineties, that steadily creeped upwards. Today, the total amount of advertising in broadcast network primetime is 11 minutes of national advertising and 3 minutes of local advertising -- plus another several minutes of network promos (the exact amount seems to vary between networks).

Yeah, that's over a 25 year period, not the 15 years of your message -- by the early nineties, ad loads were up substantially from ten years earlier, but were still much lower than what we get today.

I would be too! I was looking forward to january '08, since it is an Olympic year. I was expecting the original, transparent NBC/Olympic logo to come back. And I was expecting it to be on the RIGHT side of the screen. I cannot stand this dirty white/grey colored peacock logo. I've hated it since the beginning of last season. Especially on dark shows like L&O:SVU, L&O, ER, and Medium, that opaque logo REALLY stands out.

My favorite logo was the clear peacock w/NBC lettering under it on the right side of the screen on HD and the small clear peacock on the right side of the screen for letterbox programming.

I am glad to see the "NBC HD" logo gone. That was the most hideous thing I've ever seen! A high school student could design a better logo. That opaque white bird with "HD" superimposed next to it. I hope that eyesore never comes back!

There were no government mandated limits (I wish there were). It was a NAB type of rule. But obviously that went to hell in a handbasket.

And why not? A U.S. law that bans screen clutter would not be censorship. Keep in mind that the broadcasters do not own the airwaves, we the people do As such, we can get our representatives to represent us and not the broadcasters and pass such a law. Limit commercial/promo time as well. Get us back to at least 48 min program hours.

Apples and oranges. 8 Mbps for 720x480 video is much better than 12-15 Mbps for 720p or 1080i video. Place them in context correctly and then bitch.

In theory, nothing would stop a DVD upconversion from being 30 Mbps. Remember, the output is not ATSC, so there isn't a bitrate bandwidth problem.

The local affiliate bug in the lower right corner during Fox network HD programming is controlled by Fox LA. The local affiliate cannot turn that thing on or off. Every Fox affiliate has a custom bug loaded into the "splicer". The stations created the bug (within Fox network size limitations) and sent to the Fox ftp site. Fox then sent the bug to the "splicer".

That is why you DON'T see a Fox network bug in the lower right corner. During live programming, the Fox bug is used because the control of the affiliate bug is done via computer control with known set times. Live programming breaks do not occur at set times, so the network bug must be used.

Except for the time that Fox net master control lost control and the ID and bug were there all the time, I haven't seen our local affiliate ever use it (during primetime, as I never watch during non-prime).

During net prime, isn't local control of the bug blocked?

Yes, but the legal ID can be put in for short durations.

Um, you obviously didn't read what I was responding to. Someone was comparing watching an upconverted DVD to a network upconverting SD on their HD channel.

At the network level, the quality of SD they use is better than what you get on DVD. Therefore, if they send it out with the bandwidth they have available for HD on their HD channel, it should look better upconverted than a DVD. Take a look at the Fox widescreen SD shows they send out if you have any doubts.

And yet if South Park does it, it will a 1000x funnier. That's just the way things go these days.

Hmmm, that's interesting. Is it really that difficult to have the bug on/off commands tied in with the live programming? They obviously do it for their national bug, so I can't imagine why they couldn't just control the local bug the same way.

The networks can do all the bugs and snipes they want... during commercial breaks! That's the only time they don't, and to me it's the only acceptable time to do it.

The problem is, that would piss off the people who actually pay for the shows: the advertisers. If the networks piss off the advertisers, they're done.

Although not HD, my wife watches a few shows on Lifetime and they are now doing the promotions for other shows on the bottom 20% of the screen. My wife even commented "get that s**t off of the screen."

The "NAB Code of Conduct" -- something that many of us who are over the age of 40 remember seeing promoted occasionally by our local broadcasters back in the sixties and seventies. The "non program material" limit for prime time was 9 1/2 minutes per hour for network affiliates (12 minutes for independent stations).

It was tossed out by the courts in the early eighties as "illegal restraint of trade".

The appropriate government solution to the problem of both advertising clutter and on-screen clutter during programs would be legislation granting a limited antitrust exemption allowing broadcasters and cable networks to get together and develop limits on this stuff.

I doubt that we'd get back to the days of 9 1/2 minutes of commercials and promos in an hour -- but at least it could keep us cracking the 20 minute mark, and perhaps allow a slight (and gradual) rollback.

Advertisers upset by advertising, how ironic! lol Even they know it's annoying. They must really make alot more revenue from advertising. Mostly it only works for me for fast food if I know there is a special price of limited time thing like right Now Taco Bell has the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Most of the time though I wouldn't buy something cause of a commercial. I would say I watch more tv than anyone I know and even I am getting tired of 40 minutes of show and 20 minutes of advertising and all the bugs and snipes. I love DVD and Blu-Ray more!

The thing that p'ed me off are those severe weather warnings. First of all, my local CBS forces back into SD. Then the weather map/crawl is run complete with loud beeping noise right as the show is about to go to commercial. When the show actually goes to commercial, the map/crawl goes away right in the middle of the warning. Come on! It's a NETWORK commercial, it's not going to matter if you leave that map on. Depending on the situation, I've seen other stations that do leave the map on.

I guess I can't complain too much. At least they try to get rid of it fast and get me back to HD. And of course it's always fun when they manually switch in and out of HD.

That much I figured was true.

One could tell that the local affiliate was getting back to net late when the bug started to show up. What was interesting is that when the local to net happened, the bug went away and faded back up again.

I've never seen our local affiliate use the ID bug. I only watch during prime and that watching is limited because there are only a few scripted shows on Fox. There are way too many "reality" shows.

South Park did do it. They had a graphic of an emmy spinning congratulating them for winning and one of the characters picked it up and stuck it in a gigantic piece of ****

Nope I got that.


While the SD source might be a little better than a DVD SD source, my statement was that what the viewer gets OTA by Fox, and other OTA networks, is bandwidth (bitrate) limited. At home, the 8Mbps DVD can be converted to a bitrate that is higher than what you can get OTA. Yes, it is a direct connection between the DVD player and the monitor, meaning that one doesn't run into MPEG-2 macroblocking problems with an OTA HD upconvert.

I watch DVDs on my computer monitor, which is an upconvert to 1280x720, and the quality is excellent, void of any OTA HD macroblocking, because there isn't any. Obviously if it is a poorly encoded DVD, then that macroblocking will get you.

Drawn Together has done it too. They had a "Comedy Central" snipe for the Daily Show, which was on next. It was covering up some subtitles though, and one of the characters got angry about it.

Damn good question. I've wondered the same thing. The Fox transparant bug is extremely easy to insert at the network side. Don't know what the exact control mechanism is used for the local bug insertion. By that I don't know what it requires at the network side to make it work. It is embedded bits in the data stream that do that actual control.

No antitrust exemption required. Since the OTA use of the airwaves is a grant of federal law, federal law can come into play and say outright that in a hour the program length must be 50 minutes and 24.5 minutes per half hour show and that NO bugs/snipes/crap can appear during said programming.

Of course, this would not affect stuff distributed directly for cable/pizza-pan dish, as that doesn't use OTA frequencies. But, if OTA was limited, viewer backlash over other sources would result in their changing their ways on their own.

But, since the government is bought and paid for by the private sector these days, getting that kind of law passed would be like hell freezing over. Ain't gonna happen.