Hidden Test Card W on Freeview

steveo67

Established Member
Joined
Jun 5, 2002
Messages
117
Reaction score
56
Points
83
Location
Helsinki, Finland via Hampshire and Glasgow
Doesn't work on all boxes/IDTVs but worth a shot. Might be useful for setting up your TVs levels.

1. Select BBCi channel 105
2. When BBCi appears press Yellow within 30 secs
3. Select another channel
4. Select BBCi channel 105
5. When BBCi appears press Green within 30 secs

A screen with the word 'Secret' will appear in the top right hand corner

6. Wait until the status page appears
7. Enter 3, 3, 5, 8, 2, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue
8. Wait another 30 seconds
9. Test card W will appear
 
I get as far as the status page, but then with step 7 the screen goes black and thats it :(
In the status page i have the option to select region ei se,sw ect then 'test' but it brings up a warning and im too chicken to select it. lol. on an echostar box
 
So that's where the little girl, her doll and the noughts & crosses has been all these years - locked away more securely than the Crown Jewels! And that amazingly long string of letters & numbers on the status screen - what's that all about? (Unfortunately, I didn't see the word "Secret" - I was following Steveo67's instructions too closely!)
 
This tipped me off late last year and luckily Brother in Law works for the beeb. Took him 2 months to come up with any info - seems very few inside beeb know about it.
 
Got to the region select screen and put in the wrong code, had to hard reboot! Will try it again on my Toppy when I'm not recording. Interesting to see the Beeb are hiding stuff, what else is out there!?
 
Works on Pace Twin.

Came over all nostalgic!
 
Well this works on my Panasonic PX70 fine and also on my Thomson box in bedroom which in the tuning menu show the box being tuned to BBC engineering channel
 
Nice one!
 
Works on my Pioneer 5090 TV:clap:
 
....and on my Digifusion FVRT200
 
And it works on my Bush DFTA3.

But surely if we are controlling an incoming signal it will work on ALL boxes?

Where it seems not to work (are there any examples?) it may be because it is very picky. I find that in haste to yellow/greem within 30 secs one must still wait for the actual broadcast text to appear, and not respond to internal responses to merely selecting "105". But I think wait only for the text on the left, not for the colour images on the right.

I only sometimes get "secret" - often got straight to "status page".

Sometimes "33582rgyb" simply leads to channel 82.

And the final wait is surely longet than 30 secs? And you must be patient during black screen.

Anyway; having got to the little girl, what can I do with her (bearing in mind that I am not Gary Glitter)? Is there supposed to be a coloured line across the top above the grey/white screen? Or do I need to recentre - if I can find out how?

I seem to have a bit more right than left - but again - what to do and do I care?

And the greys seem pale - but digital is always less intensely coloured than analogue? Mine is!

And it says "Wideband" But seems to be 16:9.
 
Holy crap gonna try this as soon as I get in!
 
OK on Panasonic DMRES20D. Can't record it though.
 
I tried this on my Goodmans PVR when the posting first appeared in January, and it worked OK. I've just tried it on the Polaroid LCD Freeview TV we've acquired since then, and it works on that too. I imagine that some younger Forum members are seeing this little girl for the first time, but those of us who are older remember her - in B & W of course - from as long ago as the 40s or 50s, and she may even date from the earliest, pre-WW2 days of TV.

What would be even more welcome though would be a magic formula for retrieving the potters wheel that used to be broadcast in the old days, on the many, many occasions when TV transmission broke down! (Thinking about it now, I realise that those breakdowns must have been in the studio, or between the studio & transmitter - otherwise how could we see the potters wheel - but they were certainly frequent.)
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
It was Sylvia Peters on the test card when we first started testing colour from Alexandra Palace in 1955.

I hope Carol Hershee isn't a Forum member, as she wasn't even born then. :eek:
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom