NHK broadcasted two experimental programs commemorating the opening of BS digital broadcasting stations titled as "Try Both Way Television," namely "The World Best Quiz"scheduled to broadcast on December 27 and "To Japanese in 2000" on December 28. As they were recruiting participants, I applied for both programs. They sent me a post card informing me that I was pre-registered and asked me to join the programs. The post card told me how to enter the programs in details as follows:
As soon as the programs start, the applicants enter the day of birth, sex, post code and four digits figures (Those who were pre-registered were given from them. Those who were not pre-registered can write any four digit number) into small boxes on screen. When they finish the registration, the applicants can enter the programs.
But on December 27, I missed the program. Because I was enjoying the world movie music concert from 19:30. When the music program finished, I tried to catch old Italian Western movies which were on air every evening these days.
I waited for 19:30 from daytime when the program of today started. Just on time when the today's special program lead by Mr. Ichiro Furutachi started, I began the necessary procedure required to the applicants. At the end of procedure, I pushed a registration button. Then a message came out on screen, informing they were proceeding the registration. But a few seconds later, a new message came out informing my TV was not connected to telephone line and the registration was canceled. As I might be wrong on some procedure, I repeated the registration three times. But I resulted in the same errors.
The connection to telephone line was made by a service crew from Sharp, a manufacturer of adapter, who visited my home. He and I confirmed the right connection. So I never imagined it was disconnected.
Then I checked the connection by pushing a menu button and opened a communication setup. I found that it was disconnected. They gave me a message suggesting to consult with telephone company. While I was on trouble, the program was going ahead. But they seemed to be in troubles as the program did not go as they expected.
Meanwhile I noticed that Digital TV and computer's analog connection used a common telephone line. So I tried to get an analog connection from my computer but in vain. Then I finally reached a conclusion that the telephone adapter was disconnected. And I found a power switch was cut off. As soon as I put on the switch, every trouble disappeared (When I tried to cut off the floor carpet heater, I mistakenly put off the adapter's power line.) Although I did not see the program well enough to make comments, I imagined that the reason why they could not get stable statistical figures might be caused by very limited number of registered applicants. In other words, they had enough number of samples. The fact that the response of communication was not good enough might cause the mulfuction of their system. It took almost one hour and a half to solve my troubles because it worked so slow. In short, the programs were too early for getting good results. As the system response is slow, answers to questionnaires must be simple, like yes or no.
Anyway the reports on this big experiments would be opened to public, I hope.