Stupid local affilliate stations!

Well as you may know I live in the DeepSouth(R) and we have a lot of weather around here. All four major network stations in the Mobile/Pensacola market broadcast in HD and it's wonderful. Unless the wind is blowing. Or it's raining somewhere. Or there's a hurricane somewhere in the Atlantic Basin. Or somebody just "forgets" to flip the HD switch. Or any of a thousand other things happen.

In the interest of looking like they care about the safety of their viewers, these stations insist on running informational crawls, weather maps in the corner, and other various types of screen clutter.

OK, I can live with some of that. If there's a tornado in my neighborhood I want to know about it. The problem is, none of these stations have yet upgraded their graphics generators to support HD. So anytime they want to put any kind of local content on the screen, they fallback to an SD signal, pillarboxed, without the Dolby Digital(R) audio. I did not buy an HD set and surround sound audio system to watch this kind of butchered content.

Of course, weather events seem to occur only during prime time network shows, and amazingly the conditions drastically improve whenever it's time for commercials.

Hey local stations! Two of you have a fulltime weather station on one of your subchannels. How about just reminding the viewers on a regular basis of that subchannel's existence. And please, upgrade your graphics equipment.

Food Network HD

Thanks to "dystopika" for these images which illustrate the phenomenon of Stretch-O-Vision. Says dystopika, "A lot of people somehow don't *get* what "stretch-o-vision" is, so I thought it'd be a good idea to make some graphics to illustrate the distortion."










dystopika continues:

I understand that some people (many people?) actually call to complain to the cable companies when the picture DOESN'T stretch out to the sides. They're somehow blind to the distortion that happens in Stretch-o-Vision, and they prefer it to OAR.

But if the cable-company argument is that they're trying to appeal to the broadest (lowest) common denominator, I don't get why the major networks can manage to avoid the Stretch-O-Vision deal. The Hallmark Channel HD even uses side-bars to show their older movies-of-the-week.

I've watched a bit more of the Food Network HD and the newer, genuine HD content looks good. But even their own network promos are still in stretcho. You'd think they'd've created a few FN HD graphics to launch the channel.

It's like how friggin Showtime HD reverts to stretcho in between programs...

An overview of what this site is for.

What's the problem?

There are two major ways broadcasters are making their programs unwatchable. While there is much argument as to which is more offensive, there is widespread agreement that it needs to stop. The third problem is educating those who don't see anything wrong with the first two problems.

Problem 1. s t r e t c h -O- v i s i o n
This is where a broadcaster decides that viewers want their entire 16x9 high-definition screen filled, even when the program is upconverted 4x3 standard definition content. The result is a s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d and squished world filled with short, obese-looking people who ride around in low-rider cars with oval wheels. We advocate OAR (original aspect ratio) as the only acceptable way to present the content, anything else is a distortion of the producer's original intent.

Take a look at the logo at the top of this article. It is an example of stretch-O-vision. How round is the circle?

Most (if not all) widescreen TVs have a "zoom" function that will allow the user to fill the screen if they so desire. Broadcasters should leave this choice to the individual viewer instead of force-feeding them unwatchable content.

The worst known offenders used to be TNT-HD and TBS-HD but they actually seem to be improving. Other broadcasters are now doing a more insidious stretch where the middle portion of the screen is in the correct size, and the left and right sides are stretched out to the edge. Examples include HGTV-HD and FOOD-HD.

Problem 2. bugs, popups, squished/squeezed credits, voiceovers
Television broadcasters are always looking for more and different ways to advertise. We all are used to the idea that there are periodic breaks within the programs we watch, during which commercial advertisements are shown.

Recently broadcasters have taken to more offensive methods to promote their upcoming shows and try to keep the viewer from changing to a different channel. These include but are not limited to:

• A popup ad obscuring the bottom third of the screen after every commercial break, to remind you what program you are watching.



• Additional popup ads to tell you about what is coming up next, other shows they are promoting, even products they want you to buy; again obscuring the bottom third or more of the screen.



• When the program is over, the credits are squished so small and scrolled so fast they are impossible to read, even with a DVR in "freeze frame" mode. The rest of the screen of course is used to advertise something while the credits roll by - or in a particularly ridiculous fashion, one channel is known to start the NEXT movie while the credits of the PREVIOUS movie are squished at the bottom of the screen, rendering BOTH movies unwatchable.



• The few networks that don't squish end credits (are there any left?) always manage to talk over them, promoting something else they want you to watch later.



• All the while, the little "bug" is in the corner to remind you that you are just a stupid TV viewer who wouldn't know what channel you were watching if they didn't keep telling you. If there is a new program coming on in a few days, then you might see text like "[insert name of show here] Tuesday 8/7central" above the channel bug for the entire duration of what you are trying to watch.

Problem 3. users who don't know any better.
Some don't see the problem. Others actually inflict it on themselves. See this article for an example of this phenomenon.

What can I do?
Unfortunately there's not a whole lot an individual can do. You can complain about it in online forums, complain to the broadcasters, complain to their advertisers; complaints in forums are "preaching to the choir" while complaints to broadcasters and advertisers mostly fall on deaf ears. Our goal is to change that and provide many ways that you can let the broadcasters know their practices are not acceptable and need to be changed. If enough people are complaining, hopefully they will do something to shut us up.

Check this site often as we get it up to speed and hopefully build a community of informed viewers who want to positively influence the television industry.