Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Jul 21, 2021 11:00:50 GMT
I was like you Sparky, I badgered my Dad to get Cable for UK Gold/Sweeney although quality wise wasn't as good as the free to air signal we got for the main channel's sure Telewest as was bodged the installation.
With Cable in it's early days did anyone get a white line at the side of the screen at all?
Nynex installation wasn't exactly amazing. They caused no end water leaks, gas leaks and power cuts while installing the cable infrastructure. Ironically, about 5 years later - the installation was old hat - and new cabling and equipment had to be installed again.
When they came to install at the house, all the cabling was run externally and a hole drilled to take the cable into the required rooms. They may as well have sellotaped the cables up. The holes they drilled were about the size of a Railway Tunnel.
Shortly after, there was a blackmarket of the Scientific Atlanta decoders - which had been re-chipped so they could receive all the premium channels. And it was alleged - much more.
You could pick them up via a bloke in the pub for about £50. (I never had one).
A I knew someone who brought one purely to receive the Scandinavian Channels - no doubt expecting non stop broadcasts of unedited porn films. He was quite annoyed when he discovered the Scandinavian channels just showed whatever their equivalent to Eastenders was.
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Nightfly
Screenwriter
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Post by Nightfly on Jul 22, 2021 0:41:26 GMT
If I recall there was Eurosport, Parliament Channel, one called Landscape, Travel Channel, Weather Channel,
I remember the Weather Channel. I think it was the one that had cameras in various cities around the world which with the current temperature and the city would change every 30 seconds or so. I suppose it was a forerunner of those multi webcam sites that do the same job these days. My first taste of satellite TV came about simply because I moved into a house which already had a Sky dish and I bought a box for a fiver from Ebay just to watch the free to air channels. Shortly after, Freeview came to our area and I took out a subscription to a service called Top-Up TV. The receiver had a smart card and it was a bit like a poor man's Sky via the Freeview aerial. Gold was one of the channels, but the downside was that airtime was shared, so you would only get 6 hours of one channel then it would be handed over to the next. There was a home/living style channel we liked, but it would be on during daytime hours when we would be at work, so by the time you got to watch it you would catch half and hour and then find it would be ESPN's turn. I think I stuck with it for 6 months and then finally bit the bullet and redirected the money to Ole Mr Murdoch with a Sky cars. Apparently Top Up TV lasted 10 years ! I think I still have the old TUTV box in the loft.
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Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
Posts: 2,784
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Post by Sparky on Jul 25, 2021 12:55:15 GMT
If I recall there was Eurosport, Parliament Channel, one called Landscape, Travel Channel, Weather Channel,
I remember the Weather Channel. I think it was the one that had cameras in various cities around the world which with the current temperature and the city would change every 30 seconds or so. I suppose it was a forerunner of those multi webcam sites that do the same job these days. My first taste of satellite TV came about simply because I moved into a house which already had a Sky dish and I bought a box for a fiver from Ebay just to watch the free to air channels. Shortly after, Freeview came to our area and I took out a subscription to a service called Top-Up TV. The receiver had a smart card and it was a bit like a poor man's Sky via the Freeview aerial. Gold was one of the channels, but the downside was that airtime was shared, so you would only get 6 hours of one channel then it would be handed over to the next. There was a home/living style channel we liked, but it would be on during daytime hours when we would be at work, so by the time you got to watch it you would catch half and hour and then find it would be ESPN's turn. I think I stuck with it for 6 months and then finally bit the bullet and redirected the money to Ole Mr Murdoch with a Sky cars. Apparently Top Up TV lasted 10 years ! I think I still have the old TUTV box in the loft. Talking of Satt TV...
While emptying out an old Cinema (very long story) - I found a 2000ft can of 35mm film - no markings - so took it as opposed to chuck it. A mate looked through it for me and found it was the Pilot edition of the "Simpsons" - which had been distributed to cinemas across the country to show before a certain film (possibly Who Framed Roger Rabbit) in 1989. Somehow this film hadn't been returned. (No markings as to where it should go etc). Around that time, SKY was launched in the UK.
I still have the can and film.
Also discovered was a 1937 Pathe Newsreel - can't do much with this as the film is nitrate, which is potentially dangerous - so is stored in a metal can and case.
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