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We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Twenty-odd years ago I worked for a company that was building the first digital cable TV (DVB-C) platform in their home country. The initial playout (converting analog to digital and putting it out on the network) was built quickly and by trial-and-error, so it wasn't the prettiest build I've seen (not the worst one either). The goal was always to, once they got it working properly, build an proper version next to the first one and cut over services.

Everything on the service was working as expected, except that some lower-interest channels at irregular intervals would show three-second bursts of pixellation/blocking, recurring some five-to-fifteen times, before clearing up. This happened a number of times per day, pretty much always within working hours, very rarely during evenings/nights (we had people watching 24x7, recording every instance to find a pattern). A lot of work was put into figuring this out, ranging from tightening / replacing all connectors, switching between primary and backup feeds, up- and downgrading encoder software, looking at incoming satellite signals and anything you can think of. Since it was only a handful of not-very-essential channels it was decided that they'd go ahead with the launch and planned rebuild of the playout farm, albeit slightly delayed due to the troubleshooting.

After cutting over the services, everything worked fine - no pixellation on any channels. It was only when they dismantled the first build that they found one of the engineers' missing DECT phone that was jammed behind one of the encoders. Apparently, everytime someone tried to call it the actual ringing induced some form of noise into that particular part of the rack. How that phone kept its charge for three weeks is anyone's guess, since the identical ones us mortals used wouldn't last past lunch on a regular day.

(Anonymous to avoid finger pointing.)

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