[Crwaters]

First of all, the program we were watching wasn't HD but it was a digital broadcast and I didn't see a digital OTA forum soooo...

We were watching Extreme Home Makeover yesterday on the local digital OTA ABC station (WSB, Atlanta) and we noticed there was line of flickering pixles in the upper left of my screen. Given that I have a D-ILA tv, I'm always paranoid about pixle problems so I did some looking. The problem wasn't apparent on other channels, the analog OTA or DTV local analog broadcasts. Now, I've seen hot pixles in shots from one camera during scenes of shows and I've seen them from one or two cameras in sports broadcasts but this was different. It was in all shots and scenes of that show and even in the commercials!

It was gone during the HD broadcast of Desperate Housewives later on the same channel.


Ok,

What the heck was THAT all about?


CW

 

[Morris Jones]

What you were seeing was a few lines that aren't supposed to be visible normally from the Vertical Blanking Interval. Unfortunately a lot of broadcasters' upconverters include those lines in the DTV signal.


The flicker you see is data: time code, closed captioning, or other non-video data that gets placed in the VBI where it's not supposed to be seen.


Mojo

 

[Crwaters]

I'm familiar with what you're talking about Morris and this wasn't that. This was horizontal, about a centimeter in length and a few millimeters high, and in the normal picture area.

I'm wondering if it was generated at the station, by my tuner(unlikely), or if the network.

Can anybody shed some light on how these programs are distributed to the local stations? I wonder if ABC has some huge video server that feeds the up-link or...hell, I don't know.

Whatever it was, one piece of gack or other had a glitch.


CW

 

[Crwaters]

Still seeing this artifact on the ABC local. NOT on the HD shows but it certainly there everywhere else...

 

[GregF]

I would say it's either local or equipment related, because I have been watching a lot of ABC in San Francisco lately and there is nothing like that on the screen, during local news, network news, nor network programming. I hope that helps. Hopefully the fact you don't see it during HD is a good sign your equipment is fine.

 

[Wakey]

Crwaters, I have been seeing that for the last few days on ABC..


I think it's subliminal advertising


To the best of my memory is isn't visible during the commercials, just the actual show..

 

[GregF]

Check it out, you're both in Jawja. Same station perhaps?

 

[bdm72]

I get that same thing when watching non HD programming OTA on our local ABC affiliate. Only on ABC. Maybe a widespread issue with ABC...

 

[Crwaters]

Quote:

Originally posted by GregF Check it out, you're both in Jawja. Same station perhaps?

Yeah, we'd both be watching WSB. I hear from another person here in the metro that he's seen it too. I was begining to think I ws making it up(!)

But now that BDM72 is seeing it, I wonder if it's a transmission glitch with ABC.


Wierd.


CW

 

[RonAuger]

Looks like just plain ole video breakup. Which is most likely a reception issue for you. What signal level do you get for your ABC station and what freq are they?

 

[Crwaters]

No real way to tell what signal strength I'm getting but this thing is flickering there the whole time I'm watching and the picture is otherwise perfect.

I don't know what frequency they're on...Ch 2 if that tells you anything...


Cory

 

[w9wi]

WSB-DT is RF channel 39.

 

[CPanther95]

Continue discussion in the Atlanta, GA - OTA thread.