Aaron
For every LOST fan, Tuesday nights are a big deal. Last night was no different. And while last night's episode was the best thus far this season, the viewing experience was absolutely obliterated by WBAY's pathetic Vote2010 coverage.
First off, and I'd put money on this, the demographic of individuals watching Lost last night does not care the results of Vote2010. I'd actually be shocked if anybody reading this went out and voted last night.
Roughly 10 minutes into the show, WBAY began scrolling election results on the bottom of the TV screen. As WBAY is still living in 1997 pre-HDTV days, they still do not have the capabilities to overlay an HD scroll bar over an HD image. For the remaining 50 minutes of Lost, the picture was relegated to a 4x3 screen, squished above their large election bar, and of course in SD format.
In this day and age where the consumers are demanding the beast picture quality at all times, this is practice is unacceptable. WBAY either needs to get with the times and upgrade to do HD overlays, or forget about the pointless TV election coverage altogether and post it online and only run it during their newscasts.
If I was Time Warner Cable, and negotiating for future WBAY carriage agreements, I’d definitely use this as evidence as to why their channel, especially their HD feed, isn’t worth more than a few pennies.
I’ll be downloading a proper 720p version of this episode via TVTorrents tonight so my wife can watch it without disruption. I may be choosing this route more in the future to avoid more potential issues.
With local affiliate viewership dropping quicker than ever before, you’d think the locals would be a little more sensitive to providing the best picture quality to one of the highest rated shows on your network. It’s no wonder that Netflix, Hulu, Torrents and pay cable channels are the true future of TV.
Posted February 17, 2010 10:42am in
Fox Cities TV is an independent blog and member-driven community based in Green Bay, Wisconsin and serves the Northeast Wisconsin area, including Green Bay, Appleton, and Oshkosh. TV lovers can come here to learn about what's happening in local (and national) television, interact with other TV viewers and express their opinions.
This is just as irritating as
This is just as irritating as the severe weather updates that they scroll across the screen. I always find it so annoying that they feel the need to have this on the screen nonstop. Unless there has been some kind of significant change I don't want to see this stuff. The only thing that is worst then this is when the meteorologist "breaks" into a show to basically tell you nothing you couldn't have figured out by looking out a window. I can only imagine that Vote2010's coverage was likely reporting results with 10% of the voting locations reporting.