# Any way to eliminate the crawler at the bottom of the screen?



## Redhaze737 (Oct 1, 2006)

Is it just me, or does anyone else dislike the update crawler at the bottom of the screen on ESPN, Golf Channel, etc? Hello, a large percentage of sports TV viewers have DVR's of some make or model. We are probably recording that event you're spoiling at the bottom of the screen.

It would seem in this day and age of internet and DVR's the sports channels would get we don't want them to spoil our viewing.

First, what do you think?

Secondly, any way to eliminate the crawler with a filter? It must be a specific part of the broadcast. Wishful thinking on my part I suppose.


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## farmermac (Jan 31, 2012)

I'm with ya. You can Put some duct tape on your tv :-D


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## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

What gets me is the bugs telling what channel is and in another corner what's on next or what ever. They get bigger every year


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Corner bugs?!?!?! WHERE?!?!? I'd love a return to the corner bugs!

I get 1/4 screen cover-ups across the bottom. It's especially bad on history channel - they always pop up when there's something showing hiding all that information.

Try losing the bottom quarter of the screen - all that information is just *gone*. Try it on Pawn Stars or American Pickers and right when they display information about stuff, boom it pops up.

They need to update the title and action-safe areas for crap like this.

Wait until an anamorphic film ... they could've used the black bar space, but noo....


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

1/3 screen ads for P&G products is next, just wait.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

It's their content they are broadcasting. They can do what they want to the screen. I doubt it's going to change. They have no reason to change it.


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## takeshi (Jul 22, 2010)

Redhaze737 said:


> It would seem in this day and age of internet and DVR's the sports channels would get we don't want them to spoil our viewing.


What does the "day and age of the internet and DVR's" have to do with it? It was previous days and ages that these crawlers and bugs didn't exist. If anything, they're products of this current day and age.

There's nothing you can do about it aside from complaining to the networks but I wouldn't expect much results from it.



Redhaze737 said:


> It must be a specific part of the broadcast. Wishful thinking on my part I suppose.


Wishful thinking != must. It's embedded in the video. Video isn't broadcast in layers that you can choose to enable/disable.


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## cannonz (Oct 23, 2011)

Worf said:


> Corner bugs?!?!?! WHERE?!?!? I'd love a return to the corner bugs!
> 
> I get 1/4 screen cover-ups across the bottom. It's especially bad on history channel -


 I was watching them while typing that. The 6'' tall channel bug (like you say not even in corner anymore about a 1/4 in screen) and top covered with ad for show coming on another day


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

It's in layers if you could get into the ESPN studios. You could turn it off there. But they probably wouldn't like that. Otherwise, yeah, it's rendered to video, one flat signal, before it's encoded.

It would be interesting if someone made use of ATSC caption streams to implement a ticker instead of rendering it to video. I think they have all kinds of capabilities that no one is using.


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

Redhaze737 said:


> It would seem in this day and age of internet and DVR's the sports channels would get we don't want them to spoil our viewing.


They believe they are doing just the opposite of that - enhancing your viewing experience. So why would they stop making it better for you?


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## stlbluesfan74 (May 2, 2012)

scandia101 said:


> They believe they are doing just the opposite of that - enhancing your viewing experience. So why would they stop making it better for you?


I don't think they are making it better for me. You are probably correct in saying that they believe they are making it better. I say lose that stuff at the bottom of the screen. If I want to see a score, I'll just check on my phone.

If anything just pop it up maybe once every half hour. Just not constantly.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

If they want to make it better, how about adjusting the title and action safe areas so all that text doesn't get covered? All they have to do is get the new guidelines and adjust everything.

If I'm lucky, they'd cover up the program text after the text appears - I could always pause the show and finish reading. But usually it just shows at the right time to cover the text and lasts just a bit longer. So now I'm missing out.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Worf, you appear to be talking about something different than the rest of us.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Nah. There's the crawler on some TV stations, and many others are doing the whole 1/4-1/3rd screen banners that fly across the bottom at the worst possible moment. Slightly different, but those station banner bugs are probably even more annoying than just a crawler.

Then again, I suppose the next "innovation" would be a crawler that pops up and covers half the screen at times.


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## shipspeed (Dec 11, 2006)

love this idea


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

That is the network's solution to the DVR commercial skip "problem". Just overlay the bottom part of the screen with commercials. That will show those smarty-pants DVR users!


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Works great for movies - instead of showing two black bars, ad space!

And when displaying a 4:3 program, use the side bar for ads too!


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

See if your tv has a zoom feature. I can zoom in on HD content, though I rather not as it cuts to much off the top and bottom.


The crawlers don't bother me. It's all the text on the screen. For example, does science channel really need to have "All new through the wormhole with morgan freemond tonight 10:00pm" On the screen above their logo.

That is just a crazy amount of text on the screen!


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

wmcbrine said:


> It's in layers if you could get into the ESPN studios. You could turn it off there. But they probably wouldn't like that. Otherwise, yeah, it's rendered to video, one flat signal, before it's encoded.


Yeah, about the only thing end user equipment could do is let you set an adjustable height black bar at the bottom of the screen (rendered over the video display).

That wouldn't get you the screen realestate back, but it'd act like virtual duct tape and cover the scrolling text. (Probably should be 'per channel', or just unset totally when you change channels. Otherwise you'd always be missing the bottom bit of your shows)


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

You could adjust the vertical position and height picture settings on your TV to get rid of the ads.


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## Nugent (Jan 20, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> It's their content they are broadcasting. They can do what they want to the screen. I doubt it's going to change. They have no reason to change it.


I demonstrates the respect they have for their own product and their customers, nothing more.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Nugent said:


> I demonstrates the respect they have for their own product and their customers, nothing more.


We are not their customers, the advertisers are.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Yeah, we are not the end users, we are the product being sold to advertisers. Every remote action we take is recorded by TiVo and the data mined is offered to anyone that wants to pay for that data.


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