The Worst Diginet Quality Failures

[boechsner]

I have loved the rise of diginets! It reminds me of how cable sprang to life in the late 70's/early 80s. However, I feel there have been some failures along the way. One of the big issues has become quality. Turning analog into digital has resulted in some shows being presented on these networks with less than quality presentations.

I wanted to begin a log of some of the bigger failures. I believe in most cases the failure lands with the distributor. I would imagine they are the ones who have to take the original masters or whatever prints they have and turn them into a digital presentation? I guess I am not all together sure who is to blame or what the solution is but I wanted to point out some shows that need improvement stat!!

• Mama's Family on Me-TV
  For me, this has been the biggest failure. The image quality was so glitchy. Whenever there was movement in a scene, the picture got really glitchy and laggy. Of all shows airing on a diginet this for me was the biggest flop. I don't know why Me-TV settled for it, when all of their other shows look pretty good. If this show returns, it needs some fixing! I felt the Me-TV prints that they aired were unwatchable.

• It's a Living on Antenna-TV
  One of my favorite shows of all time, finally made it's way onto a diginet. I had high hopes only to find the same syndication prints that had been used throughout the 80's and early 90s with a few additional snips of scenes with Sonny singing certain songs. Not only that, but at least in the 1st season episodes, a flicker is seen throughout the entire episode anytime there is a scene/camera change. This issue is so distracting! Also, anytime there is fast movement in a scene, the quality tends to fall into the same glitchy Mama's Family issue above. The show deserves better. The show's current distributor, Paul Brownstein Productions needs to take the masters and do the show justice!!

• Night Court on LAFF
  Most of this series looks pretty good on LAFF. However, for whatever reason, the first few seasons have the same movement problem that plagues Mama's Family and It's a Living. Warner Bros. what's the deal??

There have been some shows that have ended up looking pretty great. I feel Warner Bros. did a wonderful job with Valerie/Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family that air on Antenna TV, minus a little time compression here and there. I love that new edits of the episodes were provided even restoring the original Valerie title card in it's first two seasons!! But sadly, I feel the successes are few and far between!

What other shows are suffering from quality issues on these diginets?
What should be done to fix this? Sadly, I feel digital quality kind of sucks! Or maybe it's just the poor attempts to turn something into digital that sucks??

[stevea]

The last half of season 11 and all of season 12 of My Three Sons on MeTV. MeTV may have had no choice but to accept these lower-quality episodes since (according to the CBS Syndication Bible) these episodes have no dubbing inventory for syndication.

[TeeVeeCloset]

Originally Posted by boechsner

I have loved the rise of diginets! It reminds me of how cable sprang to life in the late 70's/early 80s. However, I feel there have been some failures along the way. One of the big issues has become quality. Turning analog into digital has resulted in some shows being presented on these networks with less than quality presentations.

I wanted to begin a log of some of the bigger failures. I believe in most cases the failure lands with the distributor. I would imagine they are the ones who have to take the original masters or whatever prints they have and turn them into a digital presentation? I guess I am not all together sure who is to blame or what the solution is but I wanted to point out some shows that need improvement stat!!

• Mama's Family on Me-TV
  For me, this has been the biggest failure. The image quality was so glitchy. Whenever there was movement in a scene, the picture got really glitchy and laggy. Of all shows airing on a diginet this for me was the biggest flop. I don't know why Me-TV settled for it, when all of their other shows look pretty good. If this show returns, it needs some fixing! I felt the Me-TV prints that they aired were unwatchable.

• It's a Living on Antenna-TV
  One of my favorite shows of all time, finally made it's way onto a diginet. I had high hopes only to find the same syndication prints that had been used throughout the 80's and early 90s with a few additional snips of scenes with Sonny singing certain songs. Not only that, but at least in the 1st season episodes, a flicker is seen throughout the entire episode anytime there is a scene/camera change. This issue is so distracting! Also, anytime there is fast movement in a scene, the quality tends to fall into the same glitchy Mama's Family issue above. The show deserves better. The show's current distributor, Paul Brownstein Productions needs to take the masters and do the show justice!!

• Night Court on LAFF
  Most of this series looks pretty good on LAFF. However, for whatever reason, the first few seasons have the same movement problem that plagues Mama's Family and It's a Living. Warner Bros. what's the deal??

There have been some shows that have ended up looking pretty great. I feel Warner Bros. did a wonderful job with Valerie/Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family that air on Antenna TV, minus a little time compression here and there. I love that new edits of the episodes were provided even restoring the original Valerie title card in it's first two seasons!! But sadly, I feel the successes are few and far between!

What other shows are suffering from quality issues on these diginets?
What should be done to fix this? Sadly, I feel digital quality kind of sucks! Or maybe it's just the poor attempts to turn something into digital that sucks??

Incredible post with insightful information that i too have written extensively especially regarding Antenna TV airings on IAL. The Logo airings are fine, cut up greatly to nearly 20 minutes per episode but will take that over yes the unwatchable antenna airings. I read antenna is aware of the problem, but sometimes they just write viewers back just to pacify without anything ever being resolved.

I do relate to the early days of 1979 cable in my area with the wonderful distant signal channels coming in (In NJ I got WSBK-TV38/Boston, WPHL-17/Philly, WTAF-TV29/Philly, & the blessed WKBS-48/Philly/Burlington). Oh it all came crashing down with the syndex laws but those few years were great! And I still have some of my original VHS tapes from those channels. Laurel & Hardy week on the TV-48 11:30 Late Movie followed by the National Anthem!

Was much better than staying up all night as a young teen with tinfoil on the rabbit ears searching the UHF dial in anticipation of finding a hidden treasure over the airwaves as far as Connecticut! LOL I did the same with AM radio signals, I remember those days with such loving fond memories.

[Svenfan1234]

Svengoolie back in March & August of 2019 aired a digital print of the 1953 movie House of Wax, oddly enough also from Warner Brothers as well as shows like Mama's Family and Night Court, which had some problems of its own like some pixelation during scene transitions.

[Plater of Everything]

Three's Company on Antenna TV always has some glitchy purple and pink stuff in the lower left corner, especially during the credits.

Dear John and Paul Lynde on Antenna TV look a little bad. Dear John looks like it was recorded to consumer grade VHS, and Paul Lynde to consumer grade 8mm. But you have to take into account that those shows are rare.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by Plater of Everything

Three's Company on Antenna TV always has some glitchy purple and pink stuff in the lower left corner, especially during the credits.

Dear John and Paul Lynde on Antenna TV look a little bad. Dear John looks like it was recorded to consumer grade VHS, and Paul Lynde to consumer grade 8mm. But you have to take into account that those shows are rare.

I'm guessing Paul Lynde was converted to digital using the videotapes from back in the day. The videotapes for the missing episodes probably couldn't be found, and no one was willing to pay for mastering from the original 35mm negatives.

Again, all guesses.