1. A method of detecting a uniform image in a digital video signal made up of a series of video images, comprising: segmenting a plurality of the video images, each of the plurality of video images segmented into a first number of cells, each cell comprising a second number of pixels, a pixel having a pixel intensity value representing the intensity of the pixel; generating a plurality of cell contrast vectors each associated with one of the segmented video images, each element of the cell contrast vector associated with one of the cells and comprising the standard deviation of the pixel intensity values for the pixels in that cell; and generating a uniform image detect signal for a video image in response to the cell contrast vector for that image, the uniform image detect signal indicating a uniform image in the digital video signal.