MORE Post-Outage TV Gremlins

     That weekend Oahu-wide power outage apparently caused other problems with our television transmission that we continue to discover.

      The other day I mentioned the strangeness of another channel's foreign-language programming showing up on our channel. More recently, our master control center has been flagging. We're seeing video stutters and we're hearing audio garble. Our VP/Content Delivery, Steve Komori, says the outage-related losses in our master control room include a database server, hard drives, and other equipment necessary for us to send out consistent data. He uses a technical term--haywire!--to describe what's been happening in our system as a result of TV gremlins set loose by the outage.

      We're committed to quality, and it's very frustrating to see these disruptions in viewing.

      There's never a good time for a major power failure, but the timing on this one was particularly bad for Hawaii TV broadcasters gearing up for Hawaii's digital transition, now a week away. We'd like to have a nice stable situation so that over-the-air viewers can set up their new converter box systems and test them.

      On behalf of PBS Hawaii, I want you to extend apologies for the bumpy ride in our TV transmission and  assure you that we're working very hard to correct the problems.

      As always, we are available to answer your questions. Please call PBS Hawaii's viewer services specialist, Christina Kanemoto, at 973-1187 or write to us at email@pbshawaii.org.