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OTA digital tv broadcast quirk - any explanation?

post #1 of 2
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My lcd tv tunes in the local digital channels well enough -- with one strange quirk. Exactly 3 minutes into LOST, every week, the signal suddenly vanishes. I have to flip away to another channel and then flip back. Usually it need about a minute before it says there is a channel there, and then always it is fine for the rest of the night.

And mind you, this is always 3 minutes into the new episode of Lost. The previous hour (which they repeat from the previous week) will have fine reception from whenever I tune it in (usually a half hour before the new episode starts). So it is not my set itself acting wonky from being on for 3 minutes. It is something about the broadcast that occurs 3 minutes in.

It is always at the same time.

My imagination has me wondering if there's something that happens to broadcasts a few minutes in to a program -- although what it would be, I have no idea.

All I know is that I miss the fourth minute of LOST every week. (At least I'll have something new to see when the discs come out.)

Whether this happens to other shows, I do not know, since I only watch Lost on that particular channel. Other channels, I have not noticed this quirk.
post #2 of 2

Re: OTA digital tv broadcast quirk - any explanation?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Will_B
My lcd tv tunes in the local digital channels well enough -- with one strange quirk. Exactly 3 minutes into LOST, every week, the signal suddenly vanishes. I have to flip away to another channel and then flip back. Usually it need about a minute before it says there is a channel there, and then always it is fine for the rest of the night.

And mind you, this is always 3 minutes into the new episode of Lost. The previous hour (which they repeat from the previous week) will have fine reception from whenever I tune it in (usually a half hour before the new episode starts). So it is not my set itself acting wonky from being on for 3 minutes. It is something about the broadcast that occurs 3 minutes in.

It is always at the same time.

My imagination has me wondering if there's something that happens to broadcasts a few minutes in to a program -- although what it would be, I have no idea.

All I know is that I miss the fourth minute of LOST every week. (At least I'll have something new to see when the discs come out.)

Whether this happens to other shows, I do not know, since I only watch Lost on that particular channel. Other channels, I have not noticed this quirk.

Although 11 years old digital OTA broadcasting is still not nearly as glitch-free as analog. In fact it's about at the point where analog was in the early 50s as far as station's ability to consistently deliver a totally reliable signal.

The rule of thumb back then on the old 17" Admiral was that when the picture messed up the first thing to do was try another channel--if it was ok then the problem was at the broadcaster's end. The same applies now to digital OTA broadcast.

In my area some channels still have occasional problems--one will occasionally start breaking up exactly every 7 minutes, for example, for no apparent reason. My local PBS channel almost never has correct psip data.

Station engineers are still learning about this stuff.
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