I was just watching Aliens (for me it’s still the ’80s action flick) on Channel 4 but then something went wrong. Whenever there was a muzzle flash, the frame rate fell through the roof. Practically every scene where the guns are fired was unviewable, as the picture stayed still for a long time.

The problem was obviously at the broadcaster’s end, not in our television or reception. There are two weird things about this. First of all this wasn’t your normal digital disturbance – no blocks, just missing frames, like watching a video clip with a large bitrate on a slow net connection. Second, this was a unique situation, and it hasn’t happened before or since. (A documentary about the series was broadcast right after the movie and there the same bits of footage looked okay.)

All this would suggest that there was a problem in the encoding of the movie. Perhaps I oughta email C4 and ask them for a proper explanation. Not much use whining about stuff here posthumously.