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.

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 .

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.

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..

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.

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.

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