Do not attempt to adjust the picture. From Oct. 4 to 12 in North
America, for what to some TV viewers may seen like excruciating
spans of time, perhaps as long as five minutes, the sun will
align with some TV satellites. When this happens, like an
eclipse in reverse, it may snuff out the transmission. Called a
solar or sun outage, it happens around the equinoxes, twice a
year. "A solar outage is the sun being behind the satellite from
where we're picking services up, and the radiation from the sun
interferes with the transmission and signal acquisition,"
explains Julio Cardiel, director of operations at Comcast's
national video distribution and operations in Centennial, Colo.
"It can be anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes, 5 minutes, depending on
the specific service that we're talking about." There is little
you the viewer can do to minimize the effects of this scourge,
but luckily there are people like Cardiel spread across the
country, who take advantage of "geographic redundancies" to
switch from one satellite f