TMTV small print

With the school summer holidays messing up the morning schedules I spent this morning flicking through the TV guide just to see what was on and landed on a channel called TMTV and a programme called Early Bird, hmm? I popped up the info and got "Remember the Early Bird catches the worm" what's this?

Turning to the channel I was presented with a young women in her lingerie, a pair of stockings, and a pair of high heeled shoes; holding a phone. Ah one of those channels. A nice big premium rate number to call and an exhortation to turn up the volume as "Girl speaking now" which is an amusing lie as they just play music and you're supposed to call-in at least according to the small print. And that's what held my interest (the girl not being my type).

Now I have a 1080 32" widescreen TV which means vertically the screen measures 40cm. The number to call took up a 3cm height that's 84px, the small print took up 0.5cm that's 14px. 14px of anti-aliased text scrolling past. Now the text itself was legible just about, but the numbers listed certainly weren't. Now this isn't an HD channel my TV blows up the 576 input to 1080. So imagine a TV of the same vertical dimension, the text will take up exactly the same amount of height - the big number will still be 3cm high the small text 0.5cm however they'll be made up of less pixels. For the small print it'll be 8px. However that assumes an SD widescreen TV; make it a normal 4:3 and put it into letter box and the text will appear a little under 4mm high and be made up of just 6px.

It's difficult to emulate on a computer due to the differences in resolution, however a close approximation for a 576, 720 and 1080 screen would appear as follows.

Resize the image so it appears at a height of 0.5cm on your screen imagine it scrolling past and you get an idea of just how blurry this is. Oh and yes for some reason the middle 720 is the clearest, go figure.

Now interestingly the ITC has a standard for advertising in that text can be no smaller than 12 scanlines (pixels) high and suggests 16 for widescreen broadcasts. That means the text is just at the minimum height recommended by the ITC. Talk about cutting it close.

Just as a laugh I looked up their terms and conditions. via a Google link that bypasses the entire "Are you over 18?" screen. Oh look the information here differs to that provided on the TV. Calls cost £1.50/min - check; calls to voice short numbers also cost £1.50/min - nope, the TV said £2.00/min. Pics cost £3.00 charged at two £1.50 reverse-charged calls - nope, the TV said £4.50 via three calls.

So you look up the T&C online because you can't read it on the TV screen and get different information - neat; I wonder if Ofcom or the DTI would be interested?