I’ve always noticed that there seems to be some sort of difference between ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS–and I’m not talking about the networks’ programming or content. For example, when the networks are all broadcasting the same thing (e.g., a presidential speech), I can tell if I’m watching it on ABC, NBC, or CBS without looking at the channel indicator. There seems to be a visual and audio differences in the way they’re broadcast. For example, programming on CBS has a brighter appearance and the audio seems to be at a higher pitch than on ABC or NBC. And, I’ve noticed this is true regardless of network affiliate or if I’m watching on cable, satellite, or free TV.
I wish I could’ve explained these perceived differences better but I don’t have any technical expertise in the nuts-and-bolts part of television and am not familiar with the terminology. In any case, has anybody else noticed this difference or is it the result of some sort of neurological disorder? I hope there’s somebody who’s worked on the tech side of American broadcast television who can answer this question for me.
When you’re watching a joint broadcast, you’re watching (and listening) to a “pool” feed. The President’s speeches are actually produced by - if I remember correctly - the Army Signal Corps.
The broadcast and cable networks take that original signal, feed it through their own equipment, to their own bureaus, through their own satellite loops and down to their own stations. It’s only natural you’ll see and hear variations switching from one channel to another.
If that drives you batty, try watching anything using one TV set to a broadcast channel and another set to a cable channel. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve noticed a significant lag on the cable channel, so I must assume there’s some universal difference.
I’m a media technician, though not a video specialist. Their technology is more or less the same. The differences boil down to tuning. Their engineering separtments have developed their own performance parameters, which won’t be identical. There are things like color balance and color temperature which will be tuned slightly differently. Different microphone selections and something called equilization will result in slightly different audio tonality.
Another factor to consider is YOUR local network affiliate and/or your cable provider, which retransmits the network feed. Regardless of the signal provided from the network, the local station is going to change its characteristics to a greater or lesser extent.
Where I live, NBC’s picure is darker than the other networks, both broadcast and cable.
The time delay between different signals is a function of how many times the signal has to be bounced between ground and satellite. Even though we think of things as being instantaneous, the speed of light comes into play over long distances.
Thanks for the answers. I’m glad other people have noticed the differences between the networks besides me.
Of course, if the differences are attributable to the engineering department in each network having their own audion and video performance parameters, that does raise the follow-up question of whether these different performance parameters are deliberate (i.e., the networks do this as a subtle way to distinguish themselves from one another and perhaps give a certain “feel” to their programming).
DirecTV seems to always have lagged slightly behind the cable channels. The TiVo makes the signal lag itself when watching “live” TV. On the same cable channel in the bedroom and the satellite channel on TiVo in the living room, there’s often up to a six or seven second delay.
DirecTV has to compress their signal, bounce it off a satellite to my dish, be decrpyted and decompressed in the reciever, go to the TiVo for recompression and recording, and then decompressed again for video display. Whew. Oh, and for some reason Channel 4 (NBC here in SE Michigan) gets all static-y from the TiVo (known problem, no cure as far as I know).
Of course, this signal lag makes censorship easier to impose, too. There was an upstate New York Fox station that always, and I mean INVARIABLY managed to have a short burst of snow and static during a specific part of a specific episode of the Simpsons, no matter how many times it was shown by them.