scott
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Posts: 174
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Post by scott on Mar 6, 2011 16:30:12 GMT -5
I turned on ESPN at 4:00 to watch Baseball Tonight, but ESPN is showing the NBA game that is airing on ABC. I thought maybe there was breaking news coverage on ABC and they switched the game over to ESPN. But ABC is also showing the game. ESPN even has the ABC bug in the lower right corner of the screen. The ABC feed is on both the SD and HD ESPN channels. ESPN2, U and News all have their normal programming, per whats listing in the guide.
The ESPN stream on espnnetworks.com has Baseball Tonight, which is what's scheduled on ESPN.
Since the online stream has the correct programming, it seems like this is something TWC is doing and it's probably not on ESPN's end. Can anyone with DirecTV/Dish Network check to see what's airing on ESPN?
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Post by xzi on Mar 6, 2011 18:04:36 GMT -5
On DIRECTV earlier it was a slate about "solar flares in spring and fall can interrupt signal" on both ESPN and ESPN2 for a bit earlier (not consumer's dishes, but ESPN's presumably since I had a signal).
Maybe it was related to that.
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scott
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Posts: 174
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Post by scott on Mar 6, 2011 18:05:16 GMT -5
When the NBA game ended (about 5:55), the ESPN feed switched over to the last 5 minutes of Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter started at 6. I can't figure out why they "blacked out" (for lack of a better term) Baseball Tonight in favor of the same NBA game that was airing on WTEN. Weird.
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scott
Full Member
Posts: 174
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Post by scott on Mar 6, 2011 18:15:02 GMT -5
On DIRECTV earlier it was a slate about "solar flares in spring and fall can interrupt signal" on both ESPN and ESPN2 for a bit earlier (not consumer's dishes, but ESPN's presumably since I had a signal). Maybe it was related to that. You must've posted that as I made my last post after I didn't see this until after I posted. Your theory sounds possible but I don't think it was on ESPN's end because the normal programming was streaming on espnnetworks.com, which normally streams the exact ESPN feed (minus commercials). |
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Post by steveb on Mar 14, 2011 0:23:30 GMT -5
What you are referring to is actually called "Sunfade", not solar flares. It happens twice a year (spring and fall) when the sun comes into direct alignment with the satellite you are relying on to receive your programming. The signal gets knocked out by the RF noise coming from the sun. The earth rotates and the signal slowly comes back.
As a radio broadcast engineer, I dealt with this all last week.
It lasts anywhere from 5-20 minutes depending on location and other variables (dish size, angle, etc). It occurs between 6-8 days consecutively, with the worst degradation occurring in the middle of the window. Time Warner likely made a switch temporarily until the signal came back. It could have been a combination of an NOC site experiencing an outage, then Time Warner dealing with their outage. Switching back and forth doesn't make sense, so they probably filled the gap with ABC until the outage was over, and the game was over.
Alot of broadcasters usually air taped programming for an hour/half hour while it occurs, or they get a temporary feed from elsewhere. They've become so good at it that you don't even notice in most cases. It happens to different satellites at different times/locations. If the network isn't airing syndicated programming via satellite, they don't have any problems.
In the analog days, the signal used to "fade" and you'd notice distortion for a few minutes (sparking) until losing the signal, then distortion again until earth rotates enough for the sun to move away. Now that we are in the age of digital carriers and streams, you get a little pixelation, and then the signal simply drops out until the window is over. This leaves most broadcasters needing to compensate for almost 15 minutes of programming.
On top of that, the tones or closures that are inserted into a network's audio signal that trigger local commercials/ID's on cable systems or local affiliates get missed during the outage window, which means they have to be triggered manually. It's really a number of people in alot of places pushing switches to make everything seamless during the outage.
You probably now know more than you wanted to about it, but maybe this was interesting info for some.
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