BBC Hull had their cue dots out twice tonight over Watchdog, all to prepare for the regional news this Is What We Do trailer.
Annoying thing is that Hull opts-out out of sync with a very noticable jump and its network feed is 14:9.
BBC Manchester also do the same thing, but I notice it only ever appears on Analogue, the cue dot is seen in the top right hand side of the screen, being laid over the 14:9 bar. Digital doesn't seem as bad, caught the opening to the 6 on Analogue the other Night and when they went to the opening titles there was a massive jump, where as on Digital, there might be a slight blip.
It wouldn't be so bad if Hull opted out at a junction but they just seem to plonk them in randomly, so often a word gets cut out of a sentence when they opt out and you hear one twice when they opt in.
I bought a machine to generate cue dots off E-bay for 99p.
Totally pointless. Works though! Ironically my TV has so much overscan (or underscan, whichever it is) you can't see the dots so I had to hook it up to my computer's TV card to see it.
Keep searching e-bay! When I bought this one (about 2 years ago) the same guy was selling about 3 at once. It's fantastically retro, with big industrial style lamps, switches and handles. It's only 1U high but goes back far and weighs a ton. You can choose to have a dot appear either in the top left or top right (or both).
I just don't know how everybody manages without one of these.
BBC Manchester also do the same thing, but I notice it only ever appears on Analogue, the cue dot is seen in the top right hand side of the screen, being laid over the 14:9 bar. Digital doesn't seem as bad, caught the opening to the 6 on Analogue the other Night and when they went to the opening titles there was a massive jump, where as on Digital, there might be a slight blip.
Manchester apparently has a cue dot in the overscan area all the time they are opted out. There was a theory that this was something to do with the transmitters on the Isle of Man taking Caldbeck for the main RBL feed but switching to Winter Hill during opt outs. The suggestion was that this cue dot was involved in triggering the switch of feeds.
Going way back, YTV implemented something similar with the TTTV Bilsdale transmitter in 1993 when the permanent opt was first set up (previously it had been hard-switched from the Newcastle gallery). There was quite a large, permanent left-hand cue-dot on Bilsdale transmissions for a good 2-3 months.
Plus cue dot type graphics have been used as part of surveys when they have phoned people up to ask which subregion they receive.
Rather than "are you on Emley, Belmont or Sheffield" they would put a cue dot on say the Emley subregion only and phone up and ask if the punter could see the dot or not.
Does anyone else in the Central region remember a little white transparent square which used to appear at various times in the bottom left or bottom right corner of the screen? It wasn't in the overscan area - it was very much in the safe area, and often would be there across all programming for weeks on end in the late 80s/early 90s.
Any ideas what this was for? Was it again for market research purposes and identifying sub-regions?
