Cold Case Oddity

[Evilmumrah]

This has happened twice with Cold Case on CBS. This is gonna be a bit hard to explain, but right at the beginning for the past two weeks a scene showed up that didn't belong. Tonight I checked where it showed up in the actual program and it was 37 minutes in. In other words, a scene that should have been, and was, about half an hour into the program, somehow got transported to the very beginning of the recording. If anyone watched the program this week, it was the scene where Rush and Jeffries are talking to the black transvestite. It showed for about thirty seconds or so and then after a bit of pixelation, went back to the regularly scheduled program. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in the Outer Limits, or possibly the Twilight Zone, or something. Has this happened to anyone else? By the way, my HD feed is OTA.

Lynne :confused:

[videojanitor]

What station did you record from? Some CBS stations record/play the feed back from servers -- it's possible that something got messed up on their end.

[broken back]

NFL games have been late into other shows delaying the start of Cold Case. We have had to wait and see when 60 Minutes started. to set programing.

[phox_mulder]

What station did you record from? Some CBS stations record/play the feed back from servers -- it's possible that something got messed up on their end.

Our HD delay servers have been known to do that on occasion.

I'm going to guess that the OP is in the Mountain Time Zone.


phox

[Evilmumrah]

Our HD delay servers have been known to do that on occasion.

I'm going to guess that the OP is in the Mountain Time Zone.


phox


Bingo! :) So its that I am in the Mountain Time Zone and not the Twilight Zone, eh? It was just really weird.

[TyroneShoes]

...right at the beginning for the past two weeks a scene showed up that didn't belong. Tonight I checked where it showed up in the actual program and it was 37 minutes in...
This is a classic situation of a local Master Control Operator not paying attention.

Typically the show is not delayed by NFL, but when it is, the automation playlist may need to indicate a different source for what would typically be the network source, such as a delay server or a record/playback server. The original playlist is created assuming no delay. When the program is delayed by live sports, the MC Op has to go in and diligently change the source in the playlist ahead of air, otherwise the automation may switch to a network feed that is not delayed properly, and what is supposed to be the first segment of a program can in reality be 37 minutes deep into the undelayed version (which is typically dead-rolled from the top of the hour, so it is playing back off line, or "in the mud"). Not what any of us had in mind.

If the op forgets to do that, viewers get treated to an unscheduled preview of something later in the show until the op figures this out and switches to the proper source. With any luck this will remind the op to change the source for the remaining segments so the problem doesn't reoccur, at least within that delayed program.

The same sort of thing can also happen without automation, where the op manually switches to the source he normally would go to, only to discover too late that an alternate source is needed due to the NFL runover. Happens all the time.

[Evilmumrah]

So this would appear to be an HD phenomenon, then? I ask because I had the episode recorded on my Media Center PC (redundancy in case of failure, LOL) and it was perfect. I guess if it happens again next week, I will just watch the opening segment on my PC and then the rest of the episode on the TiVo. Thanks for your info, by the way. :)