Channel 4 bring back DOG to their SD channel

Channel 4, some years after they got rid of it on there, have brought back the big ‘4’ DOG to their flagship channel on SD.

What’s a ‘DOG’? It stands for ‘digitally-originated graphic’, unless you listen to the less-enlightened, who can’t grasp hyphenated words, and they say it’s a “digital onscreen graphic” when it’s already onscreen so you don’t need to say that (Duh!)

Anyhoo, I know they’ve had it on HD for as long as I can remember, as well as C4+1. However, more recently, the 4HD logo on the former used to appear only on HD programming (for the stupid who can’t tell the difference), but has been on everything for some time.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched C4 SD regularly (only in the kitchen if the signal’s breaking up) but, yesterday, I noticed the huge ‘4’ in the top-left during Channel 4 News. On asking about this on a forum, it turns out it appeared again a few weeks ago, which shows how often I watch the standard definition variant of Channel 4.

Oh, and given the football which was on C4 tonight. That meant the news was on More4, instead… where no DOG was present!

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The last time C4 put this on permanently was when DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) started, in 1998, a few years before it was known as Freeview. People power got rid of it, as did the same for BBC1 and 2, the former showing, for example, “BBC ONE NORTHERN IRELAND” crawling across one variant of the screen.

ITV was the only channel who didn’t bring one in at the time, until a few years ago, following the rebrand move back from ‘ITV1’ to ‘ITV’.

However, does this mean they’ll bring one back to Film 4??

Y’know, it IS possible just to press the ‘i’ button on your remote, if you don’t have any idea what channel you’re watching… and if you STILL don’t know, then unplug your television, put it back in the box, and take it back to the shop, because you’re clearly too stupid to operate one.