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1

Everything Else Classic TWC / Favorite blooper era?

« on: February 20, 2013, 09:06:45 AM »

So what time period of classic TWC do you all think of as having the highest frequency of or most interesting technical glitches?

For me, it was 1996–1997. This could be because I watched it a lot more during that time than other years and/or remember it better (especially since I only started video recording in '96—before it was just audio, since I mainly just cared about collecting the music). But it almost seemed at times that one couldn't go a day or two without at least some minor oddity occurring.

I'm starting to realize that many 4000-related glitches I saw during this period were actually not terribly uncommon ever since the 4000's debut, though they seemed particularly frequent here. Additionally, all throughout this period there were various sound/ad-cuing glitches, ETFs that were consistently interrupted a couple of cities in by a commercial break, and LFs that frequently ran well over the time allotted for some reason or another. On my footage, J flavors' TCF failed to finish pre-rendering in time, resulting in the third page being visibly drawn over the previous screen, then scrolling starting back with the second page, with the first never showing. Often the LFs would abruptly abort partway through and restart from the beginning for no apparent reason (usually with an associated music change or restart), causing them to run 2–3 minutes over the next segment. I don't even have a 100% glitch-free J anywhere in my footage. 

With that kind of excitement it's probably no wonder I ended up recording as much as I did at the time. And even then I kind of regret not recording even more material.

2

Local Forecast / Local Update LFs/vs. narration & mid-1997 4000 graphical curiosity

« on: February 20, 2013, 07:57:18 AM »

Going through some old footage lately has made me wonder about a couple of things. First, apparently the special “local update/severe weather”-mode 4000 LFs were introduced much earlier in time than I realized,  while Dan's narration was still used. How did this work, exactly? I'm assuming it just used the narrationless audio feed for the duration of these customized flavors when they occurred.

Also, I'm wondering if anyone noticed the subtle graphical change (apparently a minor glitch) in the lower border of the big blue background box used on the text product screens. Around mid '97 (somewhere between May-June, IIRC; I'd have to check again), the gradient changed to a solid blue color for just that border. You kind of have to look carefully to see it; compare it to the top border and the lower corners and you should see that it doesn't quite match up like it did before. I'm wondering if this corresponded to a 4000 software update of some sort. Are there any other known 4000-related changes that coincided with this? Was the glitch ever repaired after this point?

3

Local Forecast / Early 90s-era music rotation schedule

« on: January 07, 2013, 04:12:06 PM »

Hopefully some of the TWC “oldtimers” are still around for this one. Some time back on the old twcclassics forum, there was a discussion about the hourly music rotation scheme used around the early 90s (92-93 especially; I don't know which other years this also applied to). On this scheme, music supposedly played in a predictable order over an hour (or in some cases, longer) period. On my old tapes from this period, I can confirm that this largely appeared to be the case.

What's puzzled me, though, and what had not been mentioned in that thread, was that judging from my tapes it seems as though there were some occasional discrepancies in the schedule. Sometimes the songs didn't always play in the exact usual order; e.g. a couple of songs would swap places or one flavor's songs would be a playlist step or two out of sync with the others.

Maybe I'd have to try to put together some notes to show what I'm talking about, but before I do, does anyone happen to know what I'm talking about? Anyone able to shed some light on this for me?