Talk:UHF (film)

Vandalism?
Second paragraph in Plot Section, first sentence. "Nutzy" in "Uncle Nutzy's Clubhouse" is a hyperlink to the Wikipedia article on "Nazi." Vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.152.73.159 (talk) 16:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Name
I believe this film is called "UHF" in all English-speaking countries, not just the USA.


 * Scratch that, sorry - it was called "Vidiot from UHF" in Australia. It was definitely called just "UHF" in the UK, though. 217.155.20.163 23:47, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, the term UHF is not US-centric - it stands for "Ultra High Frequency", and means the same thing to all native speakers of the English language. 217.155.20.163 23:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes but the term has a different meaning specific to the US, That of a low budget station. Basically because TVs weren't required to have a UHF Tuner before 1968. It still took longer for the UHF Stations to be popular in the bigger markets. The Concept of Channel 8 in the Movie being a Network station and U62 as a low budget Independent. Tsubasa 18:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

See A Trail of Bleached Bones and the UHF morgue for the fate of some of the earliest UHF broadcasters (UHF TV had indeed existed in the US since 1952, even if no one could receive it). It was not uncommon for networks (of which NBC and CBS controlled the lion's share of audience and revenue) to avoid UHF or even remove their content from existing UHF stations as soon as a VHF affiliate became available. The requirement for UHF tuners in new US TV's appeared in the All-Channel Receiver Act, passed into law in 1961, so the channel should have existed on TV's sold after 1964. Nonetheless, of the initial UHF pioneers who signed on in 1954, most did not survive and the few that remained struggled as independents or with weaker networks. The old twelve-channel models could be dumped in Canada and México beyond 1964, much like new-but-obsolete analogue TV's are being dumped there now. Even with the tuners eventually standard, their selectivity was so poor that stations were being spaced six channels apart instead of two. Antennas also were built to a compromise design, where even the huge deep-fringe model claimed "100 miles VHF, 60 miles UHF", and the shorter wavelengths still don't make it around the edges of obstacles particularly well. The higher up the dial, the worse things became; images were often a mess of snow and ghosts. Often a station on a high-UHF channel would move to a lower channel if one were open due to a rival going out of business. From 1964 (when manufacturers were first required to include UHF tuners as standard equipment) to approximately 1987 (when mechanical tuners began to be displaced by varactor tuning with remote control on most models), the standard configuration of a US NTSC-M TV receiver was that it had two tuning dials with separate twin-lead antenna inputs. One dial had 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-U and the other had 14 through 83, typically in an awkward format where one had to tune through (originally) 70 channels of which most were empty to find the few local stations on the band. The name "U" "62" is a clear reference to this configuration, as the main VHF tuner had to be set on "U" before the UHF tuner could be used to attempt to tune the station. All controlled mechanically, and with no provision to automatically skip over any empty channels.

The United Kingdom, when it went to 625-line colour television, left the old monochrome system on VHF (where the frequencies eventually would be replaced with DAB digital radio) and put all the new stations on UHF. That didn't happen in North America and, because there only were a dozen possible VHF TV channels, they became rather valuable - enough so that one need not ask WHYY a broadcaster would leave the state rather than be caught dead on a UHF channel that few could receive properly. Most of the good VHF assignments were already taken by the mid-1950's, while the rest of the channels were mostly empty. Fourth networks such as Dumont could not survive on UHF alone unless they offered something specialised and different from VHF stations. Dumont folded in 1956 and was not relaunched until 1986, under new owners and retaining only a group of core O&O stations of the original - a few of which had survived as independent stations after the original network's demise. Some educational and ethnic channels survived, National Educational Television (the forerunner of PBS) was one of the rare bright spots in an otherwise dismal UHF picture of that era. Most of the channel 70-71-72-73-74-75-76-77-78-79-80-81-82-83 stations were just underpowered repeaters of stations on other channels and these frequencies were lost to analogue mobile telephone systems in 1983. The DTV transition in the United States will end in further loss of UHF channels (52-69), most of which have already been auctioned to wireless telephone and network operators. The remaining UHF spectrum is beginning to become valuable, now that low-VHF has proven to be plagued with impulse noise and hamstrung by restrictive power limits for digital TV. At this point, more US stations have applied to move (or move back) to VHF 7 (one channel) than to all of VHF 2 through 6 combined. The less restrictive power limitations on UHF (a station can apply for up to a million watts) are finally beginning to make it look a little more attractive to broadcasters, although it still does not deliver the hundred-mile range of the snowy old analogue-VHF stations as anything but an very occasional fluke for viewers on the ground. Unfortunate. Still, a U62 would only stand to gain because whatever new frequency they get assigned digitally couldn't be any worse than their old one; it might even give them a VHF station. It's low-VHF stations that are the losers in the digital transition - stations that typically have been broadcasting for fifty years or more. And yes, if a station is willing to throw five megawatts of effective radiated power at a U62 audience, someone's bound to pick up the signal, even if it's just some once-obscure station like WWJ-TV. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Twinkie Wiener sandwich?
What? Why is this even here? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SuperGerbil (talk • contribs) 21:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC).


 * Removed section. Is only a corollary to the film and has no place in the article, except maybe a brief mention in the trivia section. "UHF introduced the Twinkie Weiner Sandwich." Soonercary 20:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Let's see what other information we can delete! Long live Wikipedia! 71.131.228.29 04:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Added Cast
Just added a short cast list, please reformat it and add any other characters I missed Crazyboy899 (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

australia
though it was famous in australia, why the heck don't we have it on DVD yet?!

=(


 * Yankovic said that he "doubts seriously" that a UHF 2 would ever be in production, stating, "...if a major motion picture studio puts a big pile of money in front of me, I'd have to consider it, but... I just kinda think it's not gonna happen."

Well, no, of course there can't be a UHF 2. That's a VHF channel. UHF 14 anyone? --66.102.80.212 (talk) 19:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Crispin Glover?
Wasn't it Christopher Walken who wanted to do the "seal" commercial, not Glover? Or am I wrong on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.232.48.152 (talk) 14:10, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Song reference? I don't think so.
Under 'References to songs', it mentions that the car was referencing "It's All About the Pentiums". It could not have been a reference to the song since it was released 10 years after the movie. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.245.40.123 (talk) 23:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Deleted scenes
Looks like a legitimate section to me. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 12:56, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I definitely agree with the removal. We're not supposed to replicate the DVD. I could accept a single sentence that described in general that the DVD included deleted scenes.  Mentioning any more than that would be appropriate if they've been discussed in independent sources. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:55, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup, agree with the removal. The only case to add in specifics of any scene is if it got coverage by a independent source as something notable about it - which I doubt exists for this work. --M ASEM (t) 15:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Alternate version of scene with Kuni "You Caucasions so stupid!"
Growing up in Australia I remember my friends and I used to watch this film often on rental VHS. My recollection in the Wheel of Fish scene is that when the contestant lifted the mystery box and found it empty, Kuni shouted "You Caucasians so stupid!". I thought I might be imagining this but I asked my friends who also saw the film in the early 90's and this is also their recollection, but the DVD version has him saying "Stupid! You so stupid!". I wonder if anyone else in other parts of the world recalls this line? Back then as mentioned in the article the movie was marketed in Australia as The Vidiot from UHF. I can't find any reference to this version on Google or IMDB. Perhaps the scene was altered due to possible concerns. Please leave a message here if you remember this version. Simgrant (talk) 05:51, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

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Word Crimes
The article says the Word Crimes music video has George Newman's name on a test. I don't see that. But I do see George Newman's name as a reddit username. Bugefun (talk) 02:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)