smalljoshua Posted November 12, 2011 Share Posted November 12, 2011 Just a quick one hopefully guys. For those of you that don't watch, the XFactor live broadcast was delayed by 10 mins tonight due to technical difficulties later explained as a power outage at the BT tower. I don't have a clue how TV is routed in the UK but is it possible for a single power outage at a single routing point to cause this problem? I know that BT Tower handles some of this routing if what I've found on t'internet is correct. I would have thought something like a hardware failure could take the feed out whilst the dead unit was replaced but I'm assuming that the explanation was just dumbed down for the public. Does anyone know how the routing system works? It a power failure able to do this? Does anyone know the actual reason for the outage? (that is, if you're allowed to say) Cheers in Advance. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted November 12, 2011 Share Posted November 12, 2011 Most kinds of "technical hitch" are not that at all, it's just a phrase used to cover things up. Occasionally the hitch may be technical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smalljoshua Posted November 12, 2011 Author Share Posted November 12, 2011 I was thinking that myself, forgetting whether it was actually a technical hitch the for a second, would someone be able to point me towards somewhere where I could read up on how the system works for Broadcast video distribution. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 For obvious reasons, the telcos and broadcasters are not particularly keen on publishing where their infrastructure lies, and how it all fits together. BT Tower is obviously one of the main communication centres in London - there are others of course. These networks will be designed with lots of resilience in mind, but you can't model every possible failure mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nothingatall666 Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I suppose the easiest way to know if it was a 'power cut at the BT tower' is to ask if anyone saw it without any lights on at this time.. Surprised that if it was true, they don't have backup power. surely it would do a lot more 'damage' than not being able to deliver Xfactor to our rooms (which, I see as a great thing) A spokesman for BT said: "We can confirm that there was an unusual power spike this evening which disrupted services from the BT Tower for a short time. We are looking into the circumstances behind the outage." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosxuk Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 From another forum:Any technical bods around tonight? If it was indeed a problem at BT Tower, are there any backup events for the lines themselves going down? I mean you can prepare for studio powercuts etc, but the facility connecting studio to TX? They sorted it out somehow so I'm guessing they got lucky or have another (more expensive?) backup for events such as this? Losing a whole show would have been a disaster. Though very worse case scenario could Fountain record the show as normal and run the tapes to ITV TX? Thanks for reading this probably naïve posting! I hope I can indeed point you in the right direction as I was deal with the lines from Fountain's end and it was indeed a power failure at BT Tower at around 20:00 this evening that caused the problem. All lines were lost out of the Tower to Chiswick Park. We have 2 main circuits straight into Tower then are passed onto Chiswick, one for ITV1 and one for ITV2 then we have a Switchable Back Up Microwave Link circuit which goes via Crystal Palace, BBC Television Centre and into Tower then onto Chiswick. As the problem was with Tower this evening we very swiftly uplinked via Satellite from TVC into Chiswick and Chiswick also latched onto a Satellite feed intended for TV3 in Ireland. By the time the first break was reached in the Emergency VT however power had been restored at Tower and our main circuits were available again. Chiswick had an extra 2 Back Up circuits up for the entirety of the two shows from TLS Lines and the aforementioned Sat feed intended for TV3 which didn't go anywhere near Tower for fear of a repeat of the problem. We are always able to re-route signals so the show would have gone to air anyway if the Tower problem had continued and the Satellite back up was the next option on our list. On site at Fountain we run a back up generator so any national grid power cut shouldn't be noticed at all with the generator picking up the entire load for the show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I suppose the easiest way to know if it was a 'power cut at the BT tower' is to ask if anyone saw it without any lights on at this time.. Having visited the BT Tower on numerous occasions, I can confirm that they have multiple layers of back up power. However, it's almost impossible to design a back up power system that is 100% resilient. There's always some point of failure that can pop up and bite you on the posterior. Just to give an example, the TV company I worked for had a system that included a huge UPS and 2 generators. If there was a power failure, the UPS kept all technical gear and computer systems going for up to 20 minutes. If both generators cut in, there was enough power to keep the whole building going indefinitely. However, if one of the generators failed, there was automatic load shedding to send the available power to "mission critical" areas to keep us on the air. There was key operated manual over-ride for the automatics so, if something became more important, we could route power as required. However, this required several sources of power to run through one control panel and, you guessed it, on one occasion, this single point of failure failed and had to be bypassed, taking us down until we could do so. I don't have the details of the BT Tower other than knowing they have even more layers of protection than we did--but at some point the various power sources have to go through a panel that sends the power to the racks of gear...and anything humans build can go wrong! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 ...the TV company I worked for had a system that included a huge UPS and 2 generators ... several sources of power to run through one control panel ... single point of failure failed ...We had an similar system which often went as far as having two mains feeds appearing in a single equipment bay and even as far as pieces of kit which had two power supplies in fed from those mains feeds. The DC power rails in the kit were then dioded together on the PCBs. Which can still fail as a backup strategy. Show me someone who claims their system offers totally redundancy and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand the nature of failures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlyfarly Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Show me someone who claims their system offers totally redundancy and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand the nature of failures.Also flippantly known as an "AOG" (Act of God) or more simply "s*** happens". ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pritch Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Just to give an example, the TV company I worked for had a system that included a huge UPS and 2 generators. If there was a power failure, the UPS kept all technical gear and computer systems going for up to 20 minutes. ...which provides us with a nice little demonstration of how the thing can go horribly wrong. It's not a massive problem if one of the generators fails to cut in - the UPS will ride through shorter outages anyway, and if it doesn't, there's always the second generator. However, if the UPS fails to cut in for some reason, then you could have a wait of several minutes before the generator(s) are up to speed, and providing power to the kit. I've seen it before (and I'm not for one minute suggesting that this is what happened at the BT Tower) where battery maintenance has been neglected - in a previous day job where I had access to network alarms, we sometimes saw a chain of events that involved the kit reporting "I've lost mains power, but it's alright, I've got batteries!", and then three seconds later, losing the element completely because of how poor the batteries were! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timd Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Don't remind me about dodgy UPS batteries! I've found some of the kit I look after more stable without any UPS protection, at least they come back up after a power failure! Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Others have already confirmed that yes, the BT Tower does indeed have multiple power fail protection devices. SOME of the measures in place will allow for a relatively seamless switchover to allow a nil or minimum disruption to services fed through the network nodes. But let's look at that quote from "A spokesman for BT said: "We can confirm that there was an unusual power spike this evening which disrupted services from the BT Tower for a short time. " No mention of a power FAILURE. Now if that was in fact the case, then power spikes can do more damage to equipment online at the time, and protective measures to guard against such things would likely cause breakers (or other protection devices) to cut out/in and isolate the kit likely to be affected. In that sort of scenario, it's entirely possible that the on site engineers were unwilling to restore power routed to some racks until they had isolated the cause and/or made provisions to prevent a recurrence. With this in mind, a 15 minute outage is pretty good going. On a separate note, I did have to chuckle about the comments on the Sky report. X Factor fans were left furious after the Saturday night live show was delayed by 15 minutes - due to technical difficulties.Thousands of people took to social networking website Twitter to voice their anger as producers were forced to air footage of the ITV talent contest's initial auditions in place of the scheduled programme.The official X Factor Twitter account said more than 30,000 tweets per hour were being posted about the "technical difficulties".It comes as the show's producers battle to boost its ratings, which have been lower than previous years.Among those unhappy about the delay was VeeVaVoom1, who later posted on Twitter: "So #XFactor was scheduled at 8.15, it's now 8.50pm and technical difficulties or not- we have only seen one act!""I think the 'technical difficulties' were a deliberate sad attempt to increase ratings."And FootyCath said: "Am I the only one that thinks technical difficulties are entirely within your control for you to sort out?!?"I can't say I'm an X-Factor fan but my daughters enjoy watching, so I get to see a fair bit of it when I'm in. That said, they wouldn't be among the throng who were up in arms because of a short DELAY!! I do despair at the sad lives of those who are so entwined in the on screen antics of a handful of wannabes that they bleat so furiously about something so UNimportant in real life!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanhill Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I do despair at the sad lives of those who are so entwined in the on screen antics of a handful of wannabes that they bleat so furiously about something so UNimportant in real life!! Amen to that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramdram Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 T-I-c warning...shirley HMG uses this sort of media thing for population control...ahem...a fifteen minute "outage" should result in a baby boom around August 2012...but perhaps I'm just being cynical... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I do despair at the sad lives of those who are so entwined in the on screen antics of a handful of wannabes that they bleat so furiously about something so UNimportant in real life!! That one sentence says it all. Thank you for such a succinct summing-up of the whole sorry episode, Tony! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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