What Is Static? not static electricity - tv static

[itrainmonkeys 0]

Can anyone clear this up for me? I've tried looking a little bit but couldn't find the information i'm looking for. Here's what I want to know. Why do television sets create static. Like you know when you're watching the wrong channell and it's all snow or a bunch of lines....no picture just black and white things.....what is that?What causes that? Why does that happen? Why isn't it colors and just black and white. I'm talking about like.....if you only are supposed to leave the t.v. on channel 3 - but switch it to channel 4 and it's all static and stuff.....jsut what is it? Where does it come from? Someone please help me lol. I'm curious.

[t3jem 0]

Well, I would guess that since no data is fed into the TV for that channel and therefore none of the pixels are initialized/set to certain colors they are fed random data. This random data creates the dots/fuzz instead of lines/solid colors. I'm guessing its black and white because it sets all the colors (red, green, and blue) to the same value instead of setting them differently. The TV is trying to retrieve a signal, but since there is none there it gets a bunch of electrical interference that creates the fuzz. Hope that helped clear things up .

[Mermaid711 0]

I think, but i am not sure, that is you use antennas, it is excess static in the air. Possibly the same for satalite. But i don't know about cable. Every channel is sent out on a different electric frequency. Inside the tv is a little tuner like thing that picks these frequencies up. I guess the static is what's in between, and unclear. perhaps you could google it or wikipedia it. You maay find a good answer there.

[zachwyler 0]

Actually, every TV, or rather every different brands of TV, have a specific static pattern, which it displays when it doesn't get any signal, or receives corrupted signal. The reason it doesn't have any color is because, there is no specific information being sent, so it simply displays the default pattern of static, which is made of a minimum set of instructions..

[itrainmonkeys 0]

Thanks so much guys. It's been really helpful. I must admit that I wasn't expecting too much in answers but you've all given some insight. LOL I almost forgot I asked this. Anyway thanks and i'll be checking more into it.

[galexcd 0]

It really doesn't depend on the TV itself as zach mentioned. The tuner, which is a device that signals in all the information coming through an antenna and focuses in on whatever channel it is set to. Most T.V.s have tuners already built in for your connivance, but the tube itself has nothing to do with it. When the tuner gets the data from the air waves, and there is no information on that particular wave or channel, it can't really show anything. Static is basically a mixture of your tuner attempting to receive a signal that isn't there, and some bleed through of other channels. For example if you turn to a channel with static, there's slight bleed-through from the information of the other channels being picked up from the other channels.

[Galahad 0]

TV static is a form of electromagnetic interference, that affects reception of tv signals... It is usualy man-made, or caused by natural phenomena...Every TV channel, has it's set frequency, in VHF (Very High Frequency; 30MHz to 300MHz; wavelength 10m to 1m), or UHF (Ultra High Frequency; 300MHz to 3GHz; wavelength 1m to 100mm), and rarely in SHF (Super High Frequency; 3GHz to 30GHz; wavelength 100mm to 10mm)... Now, as we know that, every tuner expects some sort of TV signal, on any of these predefined channels... For example, in Western Europe, in PAL-B TV system (PAL system has 625 scan lines, as opposed to NTSC used in US and some other countries, mostly Americas, which has 525), channel 21, has a fixed frequency of 471.25MHz for video signal, and 476.25MHz for audio signal... Niw, since the tuner is listening to that frequency, it doesn't know whether there is some sort of a signal, or not, it simply sends what it processes to the tube, which in turn, displays what it receives... If there is no signal being broadcasted, tuner will pick up only naturaly caused signals on that frequency, or man-made interruptions... Electromagnetic sparks if you wish... Something similar, that when you grab for something metallic, like a doorknob, a spark of static electricity flies between your hand and the doorknob... Same is wuth TV signal... It is sensitive electronic equipment, and it picks up on any interference it can... Like when you turn on a vacuum cleaner, and you get some sort of short interference on your TV...So, in short, static on TV is just that... Static electricity, and random interference from the environment, the absence of some stronger, concrete signal, on particular frequency...Hope I made this clear and understandable

[47Dad47 0]

The static on your TV is a view into the past for over 12 billion years ago. What you are seeing are low levels of microwaves throughout space. Astronomers believe these microwaves, whose temperature is about -270 degrees Celsius, are the remnants of the extremely high-temperature radiation produced by the Big Bang.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

TV static is a form of electromagnetic interference, that affects reception of tv signals... It is usualy man-made, or caused by natural phenomena...
Every TV channel, has it's set frequency, in VHF (Very High Frequency; 30MHz to 300MHz; wavelength 10m to 1m), or UHF (Ultra High Frequency; 300MHz to 3GHz; wavelength 1m to 100mm), and rarely in SHF (Super High Frequency; 3GHz to 30GHz; wavelength 100mm to 10mm)... Now, as we know that, every tuner expects some sort of TV signal, on any of these predefined channels... For example, in Western Europe, in PAL-B TV system (PAL system has 625 scan lines, as opposed to NTSC used in US and some other countries, mostly Americas, which has 525), channel 21, has a fixed frequency of 471.25MHz for video signal, and 476.25MHz for audio signal... Niw, since the tuner is listening to that frequency, it doesn't know whether there is some sort of a signal, or not, it simply sends what it processes to the tube, which in turn, displays what it receives... If there is no signal being broadcasted, tuner will pick up only naturaly caused signals on that frequency, or man-made interruptions... Electromagnetic sparks if you wish... Something similar, that when you grab for something metallic, like a doorknob, a spark of static electricity flies between your hand and the doorknob... Same is wuth TV signal... It is sensitive electronic equipment, and it picks up on any interference it can... Like when you turn on a vacuum cleaner, and you get some sort of short interference on your TV...

So, in short, static on TV is just that... Static electricity, and random interference from the environment, the absence of some stronger, concrete signal, on particular frequency...

Hope I made this clear and understandable

Wow, great information here. It helped a lot being that you broke it down into easier to understand ways...I hate when you look something up(as someone mentioned) online and get nothing but the real technical versions of it.

Thanks for the insight on this. It's not something I would have normally tried to find, but it never hurts to learn new stuff, .

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

Static can also be a good thing too. Anyone ever seen the movie Twister? Remember will Bill Paxton was at the driven and the TV went to static? Not only due to the lines and station being knocked off the air, but with a lighten storm if your trained with the use of the old style radars you will be able to know if there is a bad storm in or around your area. I never believed a word of this until I met a man that during WW II was training at Earl Navy Base here in New Jersey where the radar was tested and he told me this and proved it to me one summer afternoon where there was a thunderstorm in the area. Unhooking the TV from the cable, and putting the TV on a dead station, you could see the pulse of the lighting. Same can be done with an AM radio too. you will hear the crackle of the lightening.

[iGuest 3]

Also, for the fun of it because I always think this is really interesting, I read that the electrons that cause static on the tv is 1% made up of left over radiation from the Big Bang still whizzing by us. Lots of info on it on the web if you search the right stuff.

[Jez 1]

Static has always been around for many 100's of years, going way back before Michael Farraday found a method for containing power in some prototype battery device (why you have TV ultimately).The reason for this if you think of Atoms (the smallest things in the world), they rub against each other causing static electricity, that's all it is!There won't be any static in a cable TV line at all, since it's meant to be sheilded from outside intrusion, though sometimes the signal does get occasionally fragmented (I know allot about this since I am a network technician and a free software developer), the longer you have your cables for your ethernet, the more aparent the effects are for static to get into the signals and cause havoc with your network.The reason for stating being generated is because if you think an Atom has a Nucleus, which contains Protons and Neutrons, moving around the Neutrons are tiny little particles called Electrons (where do you think the word Electricity derives from?).That's your scientific answer.If you where to break an item down, take my guilty habbit as a good example a strand of smoking tobacco, if you where to keep splitting that up 1'000s of times, you'd eventually only be able to see it using a microscope right?It would if you kept reducing it's size become the smallest piece possible called an Atom, in the air there's literally 100's of atoms, containing even moisture, chemicals (chemicals logically don't have to be dangerous, they are just there, if you like Oxygen is a Chemical, it reacts with your body to allow you to live, it's like not all drugs are bad for you, infact the serious ones allow you to live a good life).Cable tv is all compressed, so you won't ever see static as the signal you're getting is entirely digital, you then need a decoder (STB or if it's integrated into your TV then that will serve this purpose), it sends out a signal under a compressed signal encoded by something called a 'codec' encode, decode is what it stands for.MP3 is a codec, MPEG-1, 2 and going all the way up to I think its 7, at University I did a research thing on security implementations using MPEG-6 because of XML data being coupled with it, good project did some quite funny things with it.Hope this clears things up.

[iGuest 3]

TV Static is actually cosmic background radiation and radio waves from all over, every direction in space. If this wave energy was not out there, your TV would be black instead of being full of static on empty stations.Space isn't empty, you just aren't looking hard enough.

[iGuest 3]

What your seeing is how Quamtum Reality really works. Scientists may or may not know this yet, But I do. The White dots are the energy of Quantum energy the 1s. The Black dots are formed when the 1s leap to another point to create a void. But Imagine that all those white dots are actually just one singulatity of Quantum energy leaping in and out of space to another point. thats what your seeing, your seeing One single point of energy jumping in and out of space and back. those white dots are made by one zero point of energy, the black dots are made when that zero point jumps somewhere else. Your seeing how the Quantum reality works and we are all part of quantum reality. In fact your made of quantum reality too, so some of those dots on the screen could also be created by you. for your also creaing your own Quantum Signal for the TV to recieve.

[iGuest 3]

What your seeing is how Quamtum Reality really works. Scientists may or may not know this yet, But I do. The White dots are the energy of Quantum energy the 1s. The Black dots are formed when the 1s leap to another point to create a void. But Imagine that all those white dots are actually just one singulatity of Quantum energy leaping in and out of space to another point. thats what your seeing, your seeing One single point of energy jumping in and out of space and back. those white dots are made by one zero point of energy, the black dots are made when that zero point jumps somewhere else. Your seeing how the Quantum reality works and we are all part of quantum reality. In fact your made of quantum reality too, so some of those dots on the screen could also be created by you. for your also creaing your own Quantum Signal for the TV to recieve.