On 22 August, Quincy the Raccoon asked:
What in the wooooorld was that?! I wanted to see EF PRIME, not some..... whateverthatthingwas.... Shoo shoo! (I think that was on day 2)
"That" is a
Test Pattern. In the ancient early days of television, before flat-screen or even color technology, Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display s required alignment. the test pattern was traditionally broadcast after the end of daily scheduled programming but before the station went off the air, to provide TV repair technicians in their repair shops with a standard collection of images to align or calibrate TV receivers. These included a crosshatch screen to adjust linearity (all the squares are in fact square, of uniform size in all areas of the screen, and all vertical and horizontal lines are straight; when color TVs came into use, that all three electron beams converged to form single white line instead of diverging into not-quite-overlapping RGB lines), a gray scale, a screen resolution scale, and color "swatches", to help diagnose misalignment or other issues requiring repair.
Test patterns are no longer needed, as first shop test equipment became relatively cheap and available, and modern digital HD has rendered them almostly unnecessary (like TV repair shops themselves), but they are still used in studios to check and compare studio monitors.
Essentially, EF1 is a broadcast studio...and when there is no other programming or the video source feed is lost, this is what the system is programmed to transmit in its place.
...Or so I believe, as I'm not involved with the EF1 operations.
~VulpesRex, ancient electronics technician
"
Real radios glow in the dark!"
