What just happened?....

Just a few moments ago, on Question Time discussing China, just finished on a topic when the picture went weird, and the program resumed from a point 5 minutes ago.

The program has replayed up to the point where it went wrong now, without any problems. But since there was the 5 minute "repeat" that just happened, maybe before the end of the program it will cut off....I honestly dont know.

I have it on good authority that the Chinese 'jammed' this programme from being simultaneously transmitted within mainland China (and I assume Taiwan...), Whether this caused the effect - was there a 'delay' ?

Well the programme ended normally. It looks like something happened to the server playing out the programme (did someone hit the rewind button).

This happened on Kilroy a few years ago and someone on here said something like it was the server resyning? I don't know what that means

Digital technology cannot at the moment, and probably never will be totally reliable. You can't beat good old fashioned mechanics!

I seem to remember seeing tapes and films breaking all the time on tv when I was a kid. A hard disk server is way more reliable.

And neither was the old technology either.

Weird the BBC website says:



So why a server in the loop, for a delay presumably but why?

All programmes are played from server - although if there's no time to put a programme on server they can come straight from tape.

Question Time does usually require edits - for legal issues (not that relevant in tonights case I suspect due t the subject matter) or to clean up mistakes from the live recording.

The last time Question Time came from overseas - The US Election special; a server (Not the same sort as is used to play out programmes) had to be used because the programme was staged in Florida not long before it was due on air (due to the time-zone diffrence) so the programme could be turned around quicker. Depending on what setup you have it is possible to record, edit and transmit a programme simultaneously - i.e. the programme starts on air before the end has been recorded.

Ah... so head clogs, tape chews and film breaks were just figments of my imagination?

TV technology has become *massively* more reliable over the last 20 years or so. There are far fewer breakdowns now than there ever were in the days of entirely manual TX from VT or film. Broadcast servers very rarely go wrong, and when they do it's usually because of human error somewhere along the line...