Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Technical questions

I'm curious to know if anybody else watched Monday morning's TCM showing of Flirtation Walk. I hadn't seen the movie before, and noticed there were several points of the movie where it looked as though there were problems either with their digital transfer, or with sending the signal to people's cable/satellite boxes. The picture wasn't pixellated, and it wasn't exactly in slow motion; instead, it was more like the old cartoon trope of a character about to flee, in that the character sort of stretches before suddenly leaving. I've got DirecTV, and don't know if this was an issue at TCM's end, or in sending the signal from Atlanta to DirecTV's headquarters (in which case the problem would probably have been noticed by users of other satellite and cable servers), or from DirecTV's sending the signal from their end to their own satellite, or in my satellite box. I've noticed the problem from time to time on TCM, but not very often.

Second, I watched the beginning of Mon Oncle yesterday at lunch. I was surprised to see TCM run the "TV 14" rating card before the movie, as I don't remember anything that would warrant a TV 14 rating. I figured it was just a mistake, but was even more surprised to see that TCM's schedule lists Mon Oncle as having a TV 14 rating. Now, I know that different channels have some latitude in determining what rating to give a program, but even if TCM is more conservative in deciding what's suitable for young people, giving Mon Oncle a TV 14 rating seems a bit extreme.

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