Almost 2,000 on-campus residents were without television this past weekend due to an amplifier malfunction.
For residents of the Quadrangle and Stouffer College House, a weekend without TV proved to be a mixed blessing.
After three days, television service was returned yesterday around 3:30 p.m. to Quadrangle and Stouffer residents.
Beginning around 2 p.m. on Friday, a few residents of the Quad began to send complaints to the Penn Video Network's Web site's repair request form, according to PVN Manager Mayumi Hirtzel.
"At first I didn't think it was much of a problem because there were only a few reports. Then, more messages came in and I realized something was wrong," Hirtzel said.
Apparently, one of the amplifiers that controls the cable on the southern leg of campus malfunctioned Friday afternoon. As a result, those areas of campus serviced by this amplifier were plagued by a loss of television service.
The problem with these outages, Hirtzel explained, is that PVN "does not know about them unless someone tells us about it" by filing a report.
PVN managers think changing weather patterns might have caused the malfunction. Sometimes, Hirtzel explained, when the weather becomes warm, the cable systems are impacted.
Penn outsources its cable through Urban Cableworks of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, this means if an outage is reported over the weekend, no actions will be taken until the company's workers return to work Monday morning.
Fortunately, Urban Cableworks reported to Penn's campus yesterday to restore the amplifier. However, buildings east of the Quad will remain without service until later this afternoon.
While PVN "certainly would have liked to have had this resolved before [Monday], PVN is subject to the availability of our outsourced technical consultants," Hirtzel said.
In response to PVN, College freshman Elana Hoffman said, "Maybe they should switch that," referring to the outsourcing of the cable network. Hoffman believes it would be more efficient if the cable provider was located directly on Penn's campus.
Students living in the Quad had mixed reactions to the outage and most reverted to the use of DVDs and the Internet to satisfy their television cravings.
Still, as the school year is coming to a close, most students found that the outage was little if any inconvenience to them at all.
"I've had so much work due lately that it really hasn't affected me much," Quad resident and Wharton sophomore Evan Shore said.
Shore added that the only thing that troubled him with his television occurred earlier last week, when the channel covering college basketball had very poor reception.
Other residents had a similar reaction.
"I'm pretty indifferent to the whole thing," College freshman Amy Rublin said.
Still, for some students like College freshman Jaclyn Cohen, the biggest inconvenience was that she "didn't get to watch the Nick [Lachey] and Jessica [Simpson] Variety Hour" on ABC.
