Thursday, April 19, 2012


TV is dead.  It is.  I saw the proof just yesterday during the latest episode of 30 Rock playing from my DVR.  See for yourself:




See?  Told ya.  And for those of you who aren't fluent in the jargon of making television, that little screen will tell you only one thing:  TV is dead.  (It also means the pictures that were connected to that shot aren't connected anymore) Don't even watch any further, because we've now crossed a line that can't be backtracked on.  We've exposed the person behind the curtain.  And it's only a matter of time before all quality in television is completely erased.

There I was, watching 30 Rock, happily skipping through the commercials 30 seconds at a time like every other schmo with a DVR these days, and I caught that frame of MEDIA OFFLINE.  And if you've spent any amount of time with any form of editing system (like I have), it's a picture that screams out at you "SOMETHING IS VERY FUCKING WRONG HERE", and it's impossible to do anything but become alarmed.  

I said aloud "no fucking way" and rewound and fast-forwarded and frame-by-frame jogged until I landed on the picture of failure.  I shook my head.  I chuckled.  I couldn't believe my eyes.

There used to be a bunch of us huddled in a freezing cold room looking at monitors in weird cross-hatch blanking measuring interval world, or not even looking at the picture at all but instead getting green vector lines laser burned into our young eyes as we QC'd spots.  You'd definitely see a goddamn picture of something that only showed MEDIA OFFLINE if you were looking to make sure the VITC was on lines 14 and 16 or 16 and 18.

Or later there would be four of us in the film transfer room each choosing a quadrant of the 4 by 3 screen to stare at without blinking for 30 seconds to make sure there wasn't a piece of dirt for like one single frame out of 30 (not 24 you soft punks) per goddamn second.   If some frame came up that said MEDIA OFFLINE in some crazy-ass blood red, you think one of us would probably see that? Hell yes we would.

But now it's all over.  No need to care about quality I guess.  Maybe I'm taking things a little too far.  Yeah, it was only one frame, but this little tidbit showing itself during a hugely popular show like 30 Rock is a bad omen.  TV is dead.  I'm gonna go make some more TV.