Your first question poses a bit more than just playing a video tape. With a live drawing you have a) cameraman, assistants, a producer, director, and possibly some live audience, if WBAL permits, b) the independent accounting firm that certifies the drawing, and c) lottery personnel. It would be feat indeed to keep everybody quiet.
Now, PRETESTS are tests to determine the fitness/randomnness of the machine and ball set. Each ball must weigh within +/- .095 grams of the average weight of the set. A terminal printout here in Texas with five printed lines weighs about 1 gram. If you take that printout and cut it into 100 equal portions it would still WEIGH MORE THAN THE TOLERANCE ESTABLISHED FOR ANY SINGLE BALL USED IN THE DRAWING.
In Texas, there are 4 pretests. That is 12 balls. If 5 of those balls are the same number, it doesn't HAVE to mean there is any deception or that anything wrong with the ball itself. But someone would perceive it to be so. Of course, one would have to inspect the ball to determine if there were any damage or alterations.
Digits do come up three, four, and five draws in a row more than you think. If you look back through the history of your game you'll see it. There have been a couple of times that a number came up 6 draws in a row of the Texas Evening Pick 3. This past week, 7 came up 5 times in four draws, and 2 came up three draws in a row. It's random, no guarantees.
PRETESTs don't pay. I know that going in. Their purpose is only to establish the ball sets and the machine are in good working order and that everything is as random as can be. Call it public assurance, if nothing else. I would be surprised if a few of the PRETESTS didn't match the winning number over 5000 draws, but I'm not going back to check. Of course, the actual live draws have produced the same digits, back to back, a few times.
I'm not a $20 player. The most I've ever played on a single number is $6 a few years ago with my son when we were convinced there was no way we could lose. $360 later we won $290. I suppose the heavens would have to open up and an angel present me the digits on gold tablets before I'd play $20.
I did check this past weeks's PRETESTS and yep. 080, 675, 756 came out. I played those numbers boxed. How does that me feel?
Indifferent. I'm not betting on the PRETESTS. Not concerned with the PRETESTS. They have no bearing on the numbers I'm holding. And what about the person holding a $20 ticket, who sees the number come up in the PRETESTS, tosses the ticket, and then the numbers come up in the live drawing?
Overall, people with RNG drawing want ball drawings because they are more predictable. And certain people with ball drawings are always trying to find something wrong with the ball drawings which will lead to RNG.
The only real solution to that problem is the same as when we were kids. If you don't like the rules, consider it unfair, misleading, corrupt, crooked, or have a problem with the way it is conducted, don't play.