Broadcast

One of the hidden secrets of the television industry is: you can never get decent TV reception inside a broadcaster. Our own aerials are always shot, so one must recourse to the ‘house ring,’ which is a company-local cable system. It carries, usually, the studio feeds (so you can watch what’s going on with, say, Countdown), tied-line link feeds (‘from our studio in Hull’) and off-air channels. If the company is also a broadcaster, there’s also usually a ‘transmission out’ feed. Which causes all the problems, because what goes up to, say, Emley Moor, arrives back about 200msec later. Which causes a right royal ghosting nightmare on any bog-standard domestic set hooked up to the system. In my present office, I actually get a better picture by unplugging the aerial cable from the wall outlet and dunking it in my tea. I must stand very still, about three feet in front of the telly, and then it’s not too bad.

At my current home-away-from-home, meanwhile, ‘TV’ is a 2″ handheld LCD thing with a telescopic aerial. It’s surprisingly good.

Quality viewing. Marvelous.