What are those white marks on the left side of my picture?

     Some of our viewers using HD sets to watch CET programs may notice that on a few  episodes of Authur, there appears series of white hash marks running along the left side of the picture.  These are only visible when you are watching on a wide screen HD set.  Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to eliminate this part of the video.  On a standard analog set this part of the picture bleeds off the screen and is not visible at all.  On a high definition wide screen set is it quite noticeable.  The good news is that it is only on a few of the older Arthur programs. 

     So what is it?  Well a few years ago some of the kid’s programs on PBS had a special feature that allowed certain Arthur and Barney stuffed animals to interact with the TV.  The computer coding to allow this interaction was embedded in the video signal. 

     This was a short lived technology. Unfortunately the old programs still have the coding and in HD it is visible.  Again it is only on the older Arthur programs.

     Ah…the growing pains of  new technology.