<p>From Oct. 4 to 12 in North America, for what to some TV viewers may seen like excruciating spans of time, perhaps as long as five minutes, the sun will align with some TV satellites. When this happens, like an eclipse in reverse, it may snuff out the transmission.</p><p>Called a solar or sun outage, it happens around the equinoxes, twice a year.</p><p>"A solar outage is the sun being behind the satellite from where we're picking services up, and the radiation from the sun interferes with the transmission and signal acquisition," explains Julio Cardiel, director of operations at Comcast's national video distribution and operations in Centennial, Colo. "It can be anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes, 5 minutes, depending on the specific service that we're talking about."</p><p>There is little you the viewer can do to minimize the effects of this scourge, but luckily there are people like Cardiel spread across the country, who take advantage of "geographic redundancies" to switch from one satellite feed to another to mitigate the sun's effects.</p><p><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/tech/NATL-Cable-on-the-Fritz-Blame-the-Sun-172809261.html">Keep reading...</a></p>