iCravetv.biz and Entervision Retransmit "Held
for Ransom" and PBS - July 18, 2002
iCravetv.biz/Entervision Retransmissions
The first screenshot below shows the iCravetv front page as it stood on July 18, 2002, along with the live broadcast resulting from clicking on the link in the site's left navigation bar. The image in the lower-right corner is a moving video display. The author was initially unable to identify this image, but he noted that it lacked a station identifier logo or periodic commercial interruptions, that it proceeded for at least ten minutes, that its substance seemed to include a kidnapping, and that its genre seemed to be that of a recent movie. The author viewed its closing credits and, based on the names of actors listed (including Timothy Bottoms, Morgan Fairchild, Paul Dillon, and Debi Mazar), found that the only web pages indexed by Google mentioning most or all such actors mentioned them in the context of a movie called "Held for Ransom"; subsequent review of the start of the movie (when it later repeated) confirmed this title, as shown in the fourth screenshot below.
At the conclusion of the credits, the iCravetv.biz screen turned blue and the word "PLAY" flashed in the upper-right corner, as is standard on many VCRs. The author then saw a signal that was identified, in its bottom-right corner, as that of PBS; the signal included two animated characters flying through the air, seemingly airplanes with faces, as shown in the second screenshot below and matching with the images shown on the "Jay Jay the Jet Plane Home Page" at PBS. A superimposed on-screen slider simultaneously moved from E to B, as is standard on some VCRs when a videotape rewinds. When the tape reached B, a movie restarted; it seemed to be the same movie the author had previously viewed in part. These observations are consistent with a VCR set to automatically loop playback of "Held for Ransom," and set to show the current over-the-air braodcast of PBS while rewinding the videotape.
The author found that the Entervision.com front page showed a smaller image of the same video transmitted by iCravetv.biz. The third screenshot below shows Entervision.com as it stood on July 18.
