New youtube videos

[WeatherSTARIII]

About 8:40. Listening to it again, it doesn't really speed up, I think I was just getting used to how it sounded slower! It does definitely stop as if the tape got stuck though...

Maybe it was an slightly damaged VHS or Betamax tape or something. Dust, dirt, or any other debris could play a role on why the music wasn't sounding so good. If a tape is damaged but still able to playback, the audio pitch here could slow down (or in some cases speed up) durring normal playback without fast forwarding. I've seen this happen before with other VHS tapes.

[joseph_sobora]

Here's more Prevue Guide, this time from June 22, 1991. (Wow, 20 years ago already!):

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkNkELr6fks
Part 2: (Also includes "Network Spotlight" for "Wild Things" on Discovery Channel)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhWPrPKCm6k
and
Part 3: (With "Prevue Tonight", this time with a different announcer!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P1CFTIZWIQ

[tin]

About 8:40. Listening to it again, it doesn't really speed up, I think I was just getting used to how it sounded slower! It does definitely stop as if the tape got stuck though...

Maybe it was an slightly damaged VHS or Betamax tape or something. Dust, dirt, or any other debris could play a role on why the music wasn't sounding so good. If a tape is damaged but still able to playback, the audio pitch here could slow down (or in some cases speed up) durring normal playback without fast forwarding. I've seen this happen before with other VHS tapes.

I did wonder if that might be the case, but checked the video and it appears to play at the right speed (for example the seconds tick over exactly on the second). If the video was damaged the picture would be similarly slowed down no? Also the same music within prevue tonight section is noticeably faster. Finally at the bit where it stops and starts again (like the tape got stuck), the picture and hiss from the video tape/off air reception continue. I can only conclude it was broadcast like that - whether or not there was actually a problem at Tusla, I can only speculate.

Also I noted with the first of the newest videos (very nice BTW whoever's doing these) the music cuts off mid-flow, towards the beginning of the video and again the 11 minute mark. There's silence for a bit, and the music re-starts from the beginning (rather than this sort of temporary pause of the earlier videos). After the intro and the first 4 bars it gets noticably bassier (on both occasions) and as it progresses through the 10 minutes or so loop, it starts to sound really rough (again on both occasions). When it begins again it sounds much brighter. Sounds a bit like the tape was getting slowly knackered at Prevue HQ and they were just patching it up, or had the teaboy remaster a new one!!

Regarding the speed, compare this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybx1HDMw6wk with this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkNkELr6fks

heheh, I've turned into a slight-problem-with-the-music geek

[nwgatwcfan]

heheh, I've turned into a slight-problem-with-the-music geek

I think we figured that out already, tin.... just joking....

Anyway, you would think that at the expense of the cards they created to put into the Amiga and the complexity of the Sneak Prevue channel that they would have used a normal CD player for the music from their HQ in Tulsa instead of using a Tape system? This is 1991 we're talking about here. A professional CD player at the time couldn't have been more than $300-$400? Then it could have been programmed to play the same song over and over.

When I was a kid watching Prevue Guide, I had always thought that the computer created the sound from like a .wav file or something like it. (The first generation sound does sound a little computerish..) But I do vaguely remember this problem with the music back in 1991. Ours did the same thing with the slowing down of the music. Ours was like the one in the videos and would go out constantly. Ours would be out for several days at a time. So, the background music was played constantly. And I am pretty sure I remember this tape problem from back then. I was the computer geek and waited and waited for the program listings to come back up. So my TV would stay on the channel just about all day. Also, this was about the same time that our local Prevue guide system stopped showing the full half-screen ads and promos for Prevue Tonight, etc.... Our cable company must have gotten the cercopithecoids from that one cable company in California that you saw in the Saddest Prevue Guide Ever video. Unfortunately for ours, they stayed around for a long, long time.

Anyway, one last thing that I also remember was towards 11pm at night and in the early morning hours, the music would go just a tiny bit faster than normal than during the day. I don't know if this was something anyone else had noticed...

Thanks,
Steven

[tin]

Woah, that is all quite bizarre isn't it? I just thought even if it was a tape (i'm presuming a big industrial tape thing rather than a casette player? surely?) they would sort it out. In these new videos it's broken in May and it's still broken in June!

About the music itself, I am pretty sure it was broadcast by conventional means, but just thought the original music sounds like it comes off a computer at some point. I'm pretty sure a very accurate rendition could be done in an Amiga .mod at least. However after analysing this most recent interesting music problem a bit closer I realise that prevue tonight has the same music in the intro, but a bit more jazzed up (a few extra peeows and stuff over the top). What does this mean? Maybe it was composed in a similar method to the killer tracks stuff, and played off something more high tech, just the person who did it hack a knack for making their tunes sound like they were played out by a computer?

All of this flakeyness seems quite odd, but kind of is in the same track as the software being flakey all the way through. I can't believe yours lost listings for several days? Surely that's unacceptably unreliable for the cable co? Mind you as you already said maybe they just didn't care. Did it's reputation for dodgyness harm it any? Much as I love the fact it was done with Amigas, it is gutting to see that it has a reputation for crashing! It strikes me also that now we know how the data was delivered over satellite, surely the troubleshooting technique should not be that the engineer has to keep rebooting and looking at the diagnostic page, but tune the receiver into the audio subcarrier the data and check it was coming through loud and clear. Maybe not. Maybe the software would still not work well.

[nwgatwcfan]

All of this flakeyness seems quite odd, but kind of is in the same track as the software being flakey all the way through. I can't believe yours lost listings for several days? Surely that's unacceptably unreliable for the cable co? Mind you as you already said maybe they just didn't care. Did it's reputation for dodgyness harm it any? Much as I love the fact it was done with Amigas, it is gutting to see that it has a reputation for crashing! It strikes me also that now we know how the data was delivered over satellite, surely the troubleshooting technique should not be that the engineer has to keep rebooting and looking at the diagnostic page, but tune the receiver into the audio subcarrier the data and check it was coming through loud and clear. Maybe not. Maybe the software would still not work well.

TIn, around where I live in GA the people in our area are not as techniogically inclined as people from other areas. The people that ran our cable (which at the time was a one system cable company - there was no competition) did not really care whether things were fixed on a day to day basis or not. Basically you either had their service or you didn't have cable. So the listings, as nightmarish as they were, did not harm our cable company because they knew they were the only ones around. DirecTV didn't really start until the mid-1990s, so there were no alternatives except C-band. (Believe me, that thought crossed my mind several times when I was a teenager to get a big dish). For our cable company, they worked 8am to 5 pm hours and no weekends. Anything that happened after Friday night, would not be fixed until early Monday morning, even if then.

Tin, if you remember the YT video of Prevue Channel from 1996 with the Satellite Listings, that was from my cable TV where it went out on a Friday and was not fixed until early Monday morning.

Thanks,
Steven

[AriX]

Also I noted with the first of the newest videos (very nice BTW whoever's doing these) the music cuts off mid-flow, towards the beginning of the video and again the 11 minute mark. There's silence for a bit, and the music re-starts from the beginning (rather than this sort of temporary pause of the earlier videos). After the intro and the first 4 bars it gets noticably bassier (on both occasions) and as it progresses through the 10 minutes or so loop, it starts to sound really rough (again on both occasions). When it begins again it sounds much brighter. Sounds a bit like the tape was getting slowly knackered at Prevue HQ and they were just patching it up, or had the teaboy remaster a new one!!

I would agree with you, except for one problem: the exact same thing happens around 15 seconds in! So the tape or whatever must have actually been like that at that point for some reason.

[tin]

Also I noted with the first of the newest videos (very nice BTW whoever's doing these) the music cuts off mid-flow, towards the beginning of the video and again the 11 minute mark. There's silence for a bit, and the music re-starts from the beginning (rather than this sort of temporary pause of the earlier videos). After the intro and the first 4 bars it gets noticably bassier (on both occasions) and as it progresses through the 10 minutes or so loop, it starts to sound really rough (again on both occasions). When it begins again it sounds much brighter. Sounds a bit like the tape was getting slowly knackered at Prevue HQ and they were just patching it up, or had the teaboy remaster a new one!!

I would agree with you, except for one problem: the exact same thing happens around 15 seconds in! So the tape or whatever must have actually been like that at that point for some reason.

Confused! that's what I meant by "towards the beginning of the video and again the 11 minute mark". I don't mean it got knackered during the one video we saw, just suggesting that over a period of time it was getting knackered, or they had remastered it badly, and we get to see it in that state in this video.

Not that it's really important or anything, this music/tape geekery is getting too much even for me

[AriX]

Confused! that's what I meant by "towards the beginning of the video and again the 11 minute mark". I don't mean it got knackered during the one video we saw, just suggesting that over a period of time it was getting knackered, or they had remastered it badly, and we get to see it in that state in this video.

Not that it's really important or anything, this music/tape geekery is getting too much even for me

Ah, got it - sorry for misreading!

[Matthew Joseph]

Here is another clip (even it is from April and May(uploaded), it is even new) from Buenos Aires, from January 1, 2000 (first day of 2000)

TV Guide Channel - 1 January 2000 (Part 1)(Cablevision) (15:14)
TV Guide Channel - 1 January 2000 (Part 2)(Cablevision) (11:30)
TV Guide Channel - 1 January 2000 (Part 3)(Cablevision) (11:13)

Note: You cannot download this videos in YouTube downloader (or other YouTube downloaders) because it's very big to download a 15 minute file.