Cue Dot?

Did anyone see the little tiny white rectangle in the top-right of the screen (safe area) on BBC One South West; on the trailer for The Split? Was it some kind of cue dot?

BBC One South West HD ? Is that a thing?

At what time? that promo has been on in virtually every junction recently


No, but that doesn't mean that if there was a cue dot that it's not being used as part of work to create that service so it's probably worth mentioning

However that isn't the case as far as I know

Some regions use a character such as double quotes (in white - top right or left of screen) to confirm whether or not they are in circuit. I've seen some English regions do this recently. BBC NI have used something similar at times - such as last year when their BBC One NI con suite seemed to crash just before they were due to broadcast a live local programme ('Nolan Live'). They must've done a bit of reroutibg to get the programme on air (albeit a few minutes after it started). There was a visible picture glitch when (presumably) the con suite was put live again - and something akin to double quotes appeared briefly, top right of screen. Presumably a means of confirming that the con suite was indeed back in control.

Well considering BBC South West is one of the regions alongside London and the NW that has undergone a major refurb recently, this is technically true. The region is HD ready, it's just BBC One HD in England is not region ready!



Did it look something like this (above)? It used to appear in the days of the old analogue rebroadcast tests - think it was/is used for identifying circuits/feeds.

Sorry - I meant SD of course. But no, it was a very very small white rectangular box, in the 4:3 safe area at the top right. Just after the local news late last night. It faded out just before the promo came to an end.

Surprised that it faded out of it was after the local news, when the obvious purpose would be to check that the local studio had been switched out of circuit

Interesting to know whether it also appeared on the Channel Islands feed ?

Sometimes used as a 'confidence check' by regional stations, something subtle to check if your circuit appears on the 'off air'. It may be a simple disaster recovery check by the playout providers? Replacing the usual routing/output to the reserve and then back to normal to ensure the system works as intended.

Much like the magenta 'BM' used to appear on BBC 1 when The Mill of Shame would do a disaster recovery function.

Interesting times ahead, hopefully the HD regions can get their programmes out as such soon. It's been long enough, and while cost is the impeding factor surely it's cheaper to replace now obsolete PAL/early digital hardware used throughout the regions.

Leeds use a cue dot when they soft opt, they put it over the network pictures through their gallery, go into circuit then once they are satisfied they fade out the dots.

If South West were doing the same thing (but they check they are no longer in circuit) you would expect the dot to just disappear rather than fade out.

I saw this again tonight on BBC One North West, just around the point where it joined the national weather after the late news. However, before I could take a picture, it disappeared. When I rewound a few seconds to be able to see it on-screen (for the purposes of taking a picture for here), it didn't show. At all. This leads me to believe that maybe it's an overlay, similar to the ones used by Sky or BT on their sports channels. Again, it was a small white rectangle in - I believe - the 4:3 safe area and at the top-right of the screen. Did anyone else spot this?

I believe you're referring to the (very tiny) white dot that often appears on BBC One - I believe it's related to the red button prompt in some way. I've seen it appear quite a lot.

N.B. I think it only appears on satellite, and not on Freeview (though I may be wrong).