Party Vibe

Singapore national TV was transmitting a Formula 1 race to the EBU satellites. before the race it is normal to send colour bars and a test tone to ensure the link is working correctly, and in SG broadcasters still use analogue PAL at 25 frames/50 fields per second. In PAL countries these bars are often put over a red screen (with analogue video the red colour can overload the distribution system and make the picture look distorted, but if too low the picture will be “washed out”). Its still used today but often there is an ident block and something moving about in the red bit (to check that an MPEG encoder hasn’t crashed and stuck on a still frame).

Normally the full red bit is at the bottom (if you are above a certain age you may remember seeing these bars on colour TV in the morning before programmes started), but there is no EBU regulation about where it should be.

Someone at Singapore TV was feeling patriotic… (actually HK and CN (who both use PAL and similar flags) could have done the same stunt but Singapore like to always be first in everything :laugh_at:)