It's A Living On Antenna TV A Visual Disaster!

[TeeVeeCloset]

Decided on a new thread, as we have now aired 3 episodes upon 1/7/20 The Antenna TV airings of "It's A Living" are plagued with a disaster upon whoever did the digitizing conversion. I am stating every dissolve and camera cut strobes a frame or two into the next rendering the show useless for archiving.

I actually played back frame by frame, you see upon a camera cut the last frame studders into the next frame.

I am quite surprised that no one else is writing on this.....It is not my provider, as the commercials are fine, and every other show that i watch does not have this issue. Once Three's Company begins problem solved.

Remember this old syndicated package with the same edits from the one week it aired on TV Land 20 years ago had not been aired since. Logo airings though interrupted by countless mid sentence commercial breaks were also redone or almost remastered for the newly created credit crunch.

Now with the help from Stevea (a great poster here, I am going to quote him from another post he wrote, I don't think he will mind and hopefully comment)

"I read somewhere this becomes a problem when they try to transfer old videotaped shows to HD, and reconvert them to SD (old videotaped shows should never be converted to HD.)--I don't know if this is true."

Steve and others this is true, You see also oddly Logo & Antenna are one of the very few Not broadcasting in HD, making viewing on wonderful 36 inch 4:3 old TV's a viewing pleasure, FULL SCREEN as shot!

I guess when Logo redid the credits, they used a better lab, Btw the total run times from the Logo airings and Antenna airings remain virtually unchanged, the only difference is that yes Antenna takes their standard 3 commercial breaks and Logo has at least 4!

What a disappointment, at least all the countless hours I put into making my 80 episode best of logo set on 20 DVD's was well worth it as I planned on recording at least the Ann Jillian 3 seasons again in their entirety since Antenna does run "Bugless" but the flicker is so distracting at least to me I consider recording them is useless.

[stevea]

I'm looking at it now and this is awful. First of all it looks like it's been processed thru Filmlook (ugh!), and has possibly been converted to HD and downconverted to SD again, but this is only a guess. Virtually every camera switch is accompanied by a picture breakup, and one even had a momentary freeze. But shortly before the middle break I saw a perfectly clean dissolve.

Like I said in another thread an older videotaped show should never be converted to HD. The older videotape doesn't have enough resolution for it.

There was another perfect transition (dissolve). Then in the next scene someone is walking fast and the picture is smearing.

Some idiot has really hosed this show up. Let's hope the original videotapes are safely sitting somewhere. It's probably a little late to hope for a DVD release.

[boechsner]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I have reported this flicker issue to Antenna TV for what its worth.

I imagine they are using the same edits that Logo is using. In tonight's episode Fallen Idol, they shortened the scene where Sonny is singing I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown. TV Land had left the entire scene play with him singing.

[stevea]

I noticed Antenna has an extremely long first break for this show, filled with their usual garbage ads. You'd think they could get "normal" sponsors in primetime. But, anyway, I don't know their total program time in this case, but it almost has to be better than Logo, right?

[stevea]

Originally Posted by TeeVeeCloset

You see also oddly Logo & Antenna are one of the very few Not broadcasting in HD, making viewing on wonderful 36 inch 4:3 old TV's a viewing pleasure, FULL SCREEN as shot!

Here, here!!!

[rusty spike]

May I ask what are garbage ads on Antenna TV?

Hefty trash bag commercials or Waste Management ones?

I don't have this network so I am curious. Sorry to hear that this series is being mushed.

[MA]

Originally Posted by rusty spike

May I ask what are garbage ads on Antenna TV?

Hefty trash bag commercials or Waste Management ones?

I don't have this network so I am curious. Sorry to hear that this series is being mushed.

Junk ads such as Shriners, etc.

[boechsner]

Here is the response I got from Antenna TV on Facebook:

Antenna TV: "We took a look at this issue on the network. We can see it on one monitor but not on the one leaving the building. We have put our detective hats on and will look for a solution. Thanks for your patience."

Hopefully they will figure it out.

[AngieTribeca]

I amazes me how Antenna TV has the rights to uncut episodes of The Hogan Family but has really butchered episodes of It's a Living. There is no reason for these episodes to be close to the runtimes of the ones on Logo. Logo a terrible example of how to air classic TV. The runtimes should be at least 2 minutes and change longer than Logo's airings. I know the Alice and One Day at a Time airings were like night and day between Antenna TV and Logo.

I hope Antenna can fix the issues with these episodes or go back to the source material if it is still available. The edits are not nearly as big of a deal as the quality of the show. I watched only a few minutes of episode 4 and the slight pauses and picture break ups are not desirable at all.

[Svenfan1234]

I think the reason for Antenna's short runtimes for It's a Living is because they cut Sonny's performances at the piano because of music rights. That would make the episodes shorter.

[rcbrad]

I noticed last night that a scene was cut, supposedly where Jan was putting down Cassie's life style. Later in the show in a scene between Jan and Cassie, Cassie made reference to Jan's comments that she did not like.

We never got to see or hear what the dialogue was that prompted the follow up scene/conversation, but instead we were left scratching our heads.

It's a Living is now with a new distributor, maybe they will improve the quality of these episodes in the future.

It's still great to see this again, It's been decades for me.

[boechsner]

In some episodes songs are cut and others not. In Fallen Idol, they cut Sonny singing James Brown's I Got You (I Feel Good) but then last night in The Lois Affair, they kept him singing Johnny Mathis' Chances Are and The Twelfth of Never.

Back in the day, at the end of each episode, the Lorimar tag would play. But now on these episodes on Antenna TV, that's gone and it says Distributed by Paul Brownstein Productions.

Is Paul Brownstein Productions a 3rd party distributor like The Program Exchange or are they the main distributor? The Dick Van Dyke Show used to be part of CBS Paramount Distribution but they too show a Paul Brownstein Productions logo on Me-TV. Also, Dick Van Dyke is no longer in the CBS Syndication Bible. I guess I'm wondering, who would have the master prints for It's a Living??

[TeeVeeCloset]

Originally Posted by boechsner

Here is the response I got from Antenna TV on Facebook:

Antenna TV: "We took a look at this issue on the network. We can see it on one monitor but not on the one leaving the building. We have put our detective hats on and will look for a solution. Thanks for your patience."

Hopefully they will figure it out.

Here Here! Great work, and Im surprised they got back to you! Thanks from all of us!

[TeeVeeCloset]

Originally Posted by boechsner

Here is the response I got from Antenna TV on Facebook:

Antenna TV: "We took a look at this issue on the network. We can see it on one monitor but not on the one leaving the building. We have put our detective hats on and will look for a solution. Thanks for your patience."

Hopefully they will figure it out.

UPDATE: The "Our Man Barry" still season 1 episode aired last night 1/15/20, though the problem still existed, it was to a much lesser degree, though compared to Logo airings, still not worth archiving.

I also had hope that the episode would run longer because after the opening, the first of the three breaks did not last a full 5 minutes, it was near 3 minutes, without comparing to my Logo copy, I cannot say if anything of importance was left in, but my guess is no as the second break was now instead a near 5 minutes! So we shall see, but the novelty has worn off for me, I just wanted to report that so far one episode starting on 1/15/20 had far less digital bleeding issues, but with a fine eye they still appeared but not at every scene change or camera cut.

UPDATE TWO: The 1/15/20 information above seemed like a fluke as last night 1/16/20 quality returned to unwatchable........think i will stop updates......I think Antenna really screwed this up, I love the winter 2020 schedule and times and coupling Archie, Alice, & It's A Living in a 90 minute block as restaurant themed shows. I also like the one episode showings like the old broadcast syndicated days instead of one hour blocks, but believe the 90 minute block should have started at 6PM eastern (known as dinner time)

[boechsner]

Originally Posted by TeeVeeCloset

UPDATE: The "Our Man Barry" still season 1 episode aired last night 1/15/20, though the problem still existed, it was to a much lesser degree, though compared to Logo airings, still not worth archiving.

I also had hope that the episode would run longer because after the opening, the first of the three breaks did not last a full 5 minutes, it was near 3 minutes, without comparing to my Logo copy, I cannot say if anything of importance was left in, but my guess is no as the second break was now instead a near 5 minutes! So we shall see, but the novelty has worn off for me, I just wanted to report that so far one episode starting on 1/15/20 had far less digital bleeding issues, but with a fine eye they still appeared but not at every scene change or camera cut.

UPDATE TWO: The 1/15/20 information above seemed like a fluke as last night 1/16/20 quality returned to unwatchable........think i will stop updates......I think Antenna really screwed this up, I love the winter 2020 schedule and times and coupling Archie, Alice, & It's A Living in a 90 minute block as restaurant themed shows. I also like the one episode showings like the old broadcast syndicated days instead of one hour blocks, but believe the 90 minute block should have started at 6PM eastern (known as dinner time)

I noticed this too with the Our Man Barry episode. I noticed there were less issues in last nights episode, Kids. Interestingly, it seems the first 10 episodes produced (the 10 that aired on TV Land back in 2001) seem to be rather rough! It will be interesting to see if these issues continue in the upcoming season episodes.