Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Met Opera: Solar Fade

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-10-2009, 02:01 PM:

For any locations that are showing "Tosca" from the Metropolitan Opera:

Did you experience any "solar fade" today?

Our feed blacked out, right on cue, at 12:58 and came back just at 1:06. Luckily, the Met knew about this event and delayed the start of the opera to compensate.

We were prepared. I ran the calculations yesterday and we announced to the audience to expect a short loss of signal.
But, once the event was over, we haven't had any problems since.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I expect the rest of the broadcast to go without any problems.

BTW: We are not receiving through NCM. Our provider is "By Experience." The NCM (Dish Network) satellites will have different times for their solar fade due to different positions in the sky.

How did it go for your broadcast?

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 10-10-2009, 02:07 PM:

I'm about halfway through the second act right now. No disruptions yet, including the walk in. We made an announcement for the audience, and I have a digital slide loaded up in case we do loose signal. It uses wording from NCMs warning, adapted to "has happened" instead of "may happen".

Was anyone else put off by the Bloomburg rolling stock style ad they tacked to the beginning of the broadcast? Boy it ticked me off. We have a strict no advertising policy here, we go out of our way to promise that no commercial will ever touch our screen, and suddenly my audience was bombarded by a full motion tv style advertisement? Lame, Met. Lame.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 10-10-2009, 07:07 PM:

No problems with ours. NCM did post a message prior to the event that there may be a problem.

Posted by Ben Wales (Member # 92) on 10-10-2009, 07:18 PM:

Had no problem in the Two Screens I was screening the Met Opera apart from the 6min Delay on the start that was advised a few hours ealier.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-10-2009, 08:53 PM:

We did lose signal. It went out at 12:58 and came back at 1:06. Almost right on cue.

I was aware that it was coming so I found a solar fade calculator on line and input our position and satellite coordinates. The start/end times were within a few seconds of what was predicted. I had time to prepare for it.

I have a seamless switch so as I noticed the signal going out, I took to a black screen.

There were a few people who were concerned so I ended up making an announcement. I just explained that this is a natural phenomenon which happens twice per year, once in the fall and once in the spring. The people who frequent our theater seem to feel better when things are explained.

By the time I got up to the booth again, the signal was coming back. Once we were back to normal I restarted the recorders and we were good for the rest of the show.

The six minute delay did help. It takes a minute to be sure the signal is back to normal and to get the recorders going again. I would have hated to do all that under the gun.

Yeah, I was surprised and disappointed at the ad at the beginning too. I was very tempted to hit the button on the seamless switch and take to black screen again.

I could just claim that the picture went out. [Wink]

What would have really peeved me off is if they didn't give us any advance warning and let the signal go out without telling anybody.

BTW: Ben, the outage was only for North America.
It has to do with the position of the sun in relation to the satellite. When the sun traverses behind the "bird" solar radiation overpowers the signal. It typically occurs at high noon or thereabouts. If you received the transmission at a different time because of your position on earth you won't experience solar fade during the broadcast.

Go to this page and input your satellite information and ground coordinates. The calculator will tell you the times you will experience solar fade.

http://www.satellite-calculations.com/SUNcalc/SUNcalc.htm

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 10-11-2009, 01:40 AM:

I found out about it (the delay) only because I called in about our signal quality being marginally acceptable (45%) when it was in the 75% range for the National Theater feed last week. Rick told me about it then, at about 45 min to air time. Supposedly an email went out about it to all the theaters, but we did not receive one. We didn't experience an outage, but we did see a little tiling during that time. The low signal quality improved throughout the presentation until we were back up to 75% at the last hour.

I did notice however, every time they went to the interviews it would break up. I assumed it was their connection to that particular camera, because when they went back to the opera, it was fine.

I thought the same thing about the Bloomburg ad. Very tacky.