Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

In the late 90's Cambridge Cable came to the area, several people didn't want cables on their wall.


Cambridge Cable went bust and was taken over by the parent company Anglia Cable, then this became NTL then Virgin Media.


In the loft somewhere are the Scientific Atlanta and Pace boxes.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Where I live, TV aerials were banned by the local council during the 80's/90's so a "communal aerial" service was provided to every house which gave us the normal 1-4 channels plus a few extra basic cable channels without a cable box.

You could subscribe to other premium channels and a cable box was provided which just had a single knob on the front to change the channel (I think it supplied about 20 extra channels). It was quickly discovered though that if you acquired a TV that could tune beyond the normal UHF 21-69 range most of these channels could be received for free as they were unencrypted!

Eventually, the service was taken over by a company called Telecential, which replaced the old boxes with the well known Jerrold/General Instrument cable boxes and ended the free ride!

Telecential became Comtel and then NTL.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

what were the "extra basic cable channels"?"

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I believe it varied area to area, but a TV directly plugged in to the network where I was would get (at various points in history) get the United Artists multiscreeen, The Box, Live TV, BBC News, Sky News and at one point in the latter days of analogue it got Sky One!

(Edit I’ve realised he’s talking about something else slightly)

From what I vaguely remember I think it was Sky One, CNN, a random channel showing news and adverts for local businesses, and then some radio channels that could be listened to through the TV (possibly a couple of the BBC Radio channels and 2-Ten fm).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

iirc people living in Milton Keynes also were not able to erect television aeriels and had to get their television from a cable service.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Correct - Milton Keynes had a cable system operated originally by the Post Office (later BT) IIRC. For many years planning rules absolutely forbade external aerials of any kind.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

has this now changed?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

It isn’t the case now, and it wasn’t the case by the time digital switchover occurred, so the rules must have been relaxed decades ago now.

I wonder if it had something to do with the famously crud cable network which NTL inherited and was frequently the source of complaints on the original version of this forum.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

That was the old Videotron network that was part of Cable&Wireless, before it was then acquired by ntl. Back then only a basic digital service was possible, no interactive or on demand so the cable boxes were stuck on an old software verson with internal modems that couldn't be used. It wasn't until around 200 when that network was finally upgraded.

I have a friend who one time told me he had a cable ready TV that went up to 1000..

He scanned all the way up and found music in the 800s (I guess because music is not incrypted he could see it in the clear)

He also said he found a test pattern on 140

Ah man!!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

It did surprise me that cable took so long to launch on demand services. If they had launched them when they launched their digital services it would have given a USP on Sky and onDigital/ITV Digital.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Return path was used for retrieving ppv purchases , your STB could normally store 4 events , so if you blocked the return path and bought four events you couldn't buy anymore without them being cleared via the return path.

I used ACC-4000 mainy for sega tv , but I was a Scientific atlanta guy (SM20/HEC) and a cabletime (VAX) guy .

Back then there was no scanning for unscrupulous equipment , but just monitoring for people who might be pumping out frequencies that might have disrupted the return path.

I love this thread!!!!

I am so happy I have as much stuff as I do recorded from analogue cable!!! (Looks and sounds much better than the movies official tape usually)

But I do have a couple things recorded from OVER THE AIR!! (They had thier VCR hooked to an OTA antenna) I found them at salvation army :)

1) ET - 1982

This was recorded from a local channel in my area in 1991 and it is goregous!! (Channel 6)

2) Quick change - 1990

This was recorded from THE SAME CHANNEL in 1996 and is goregous (The official tape of this movie is "Digitally processed" and looks like crap)


Im pretty sure both are OTA because of how much noise is in the video.....

Especially ET ..... I Cant move ET to another tape because the audio drops too much,its not worth it.....

I did Copy QUICK CHANGE to another tape in SP mode (It was SLP) and there is not as much noise..........

Regardless of the noise,I wouldnt have either movie this good otherwise....... (Both audio and video wise)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Anyone remember the Viewline cable tv service in parts of Oxford which pre-dated the Ridiffusion network?

Does anyone remember when cable companies starting just assigning thier digital locations to the analogue tier??


My cable company used to show ALL ANALOGUE ON THE ANALOGUE TIER (Channels 2-80 or whatever) then sometime after 2000 thay just assigned the digital location to the analog # (If Disney channel was assigned to 360 (digital) the same location would be converted to analogue and assigned to 33 also........ (When It was straight from C-band/OTA before)

Some stuff waas gotton RIGHT OUT OHE AIR on my system..... Channel 10 was OFF AIR(Recieved at the cable office via OTA) and one night it was raining and the conditions were just right and when channel 10 went off the air,another channel 10 came skipping in from rochester NY..... Only happend that 1 night,it was interesting..... (I watched the cosby show on it)

And then the same thing happend on channel 17 one night,after the local one went off air I saw channel 17 (WPHL) skipping in.. (They were barely tripping the video filter but they made it)

I have that on tape...... Its snowy and you can barely see it but it IS there.... Im amazed it cleared the video filter the cable company had on most channels... (So when the local channel went off you didnt see anything (A white hash screen))

It was a commerical and then the WPHL TV sign off message......

Thats probably the farthest skip I have seen (Channel 17 being the highest in freq) I dunno where they are (Penn I think) but it was nice seeing them....

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I was actually the guy who switched off the analogue headend in the cable company I worked at , if memory serves me correctly it was a good two years after the launch of digital . We want from rapid STB for channel surfing , clear pictures to over compressed super sluggish pace boxes , bit of a backward step imo , but it was the race to be 'digital' I think now with v6's and 360 boxes and very good compression of HD services 18 years later digital is finally a better experience in some ways over analogue . Channel surfing isn't as quick , picture quality on HD is better , SD's are worse , but we have vod , replay tv , online tv services , now the problem for TV on the whole is broadband using up the RF spectrum.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

when did you do that DDDD?

---------- Post added at 15:04 ---------- Previous post was at 15:03 ----------

what channels were they recorded from?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Im thinking it was around 2005 for the Scientific atlanta headend and 2007 for cabletime , I might be a few years out thought , NTL still had analogue when they merged with telewest which was 2008-2009 .

For telewest tho true analogue was gone around 2001 as the analogue services where derived from the digital headend and then converted/descrambled back to analogue and then modulated which went out to customers. As a lot of the analogue satellite transponders started disappearing and transponders with digital services started appearing in there places.

Both were recorded from the same channel: Channel 6 (A CBS station)

I dunno if I mentioned this but one thing I loved about analogue cable is The audio was MONO which really helped on Mono movies.......

The Breakfast Club in 1985 is Mono for example and I have that recorded from HBO and its goregous. Its amazing what I can hear in the background.. On the MCA tape I couldnt hear anything in t he background,the audio was horrible..........

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

On that point, from what people remember, were the analogue cable services offering stereo sound before terrestrial which started on the BBC in 1991.

What I do remember is that Bell Cablemedia offered a radio service, and this included FM feeds for the music channels, Sky Movies and Sky Sports 1. It also featured 5 Live and the other BBC and independent stations available in the area at the time a few megahertz higher than the actual frequency. The signal was plugged into the back of your hifi. I presume other cable companies also offered this.

I presume that satellite equipment was stereo compatable from day one.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

ComTel Oxford offer serveral radio channels which could be linked up to the hifi - MTV audio was available there too.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

The FM radio feeds were obtained from local FM broadcasts, hence the channel shift to a higher or lower frequency to avoid possible interference. MTV/Sky Movies/Movie Channel feeds were taken from analogue satellite sound subcarriers. When NICAM stereo TV services were introduced, the BBC/ITV/C4 terrestrial services could easily be transposed to the cable output frequencies. For the other satellite derived channels cable companies started fitting NICAM encoders to their headend modulators, again using the satellite sound subcarriers to source the stereo audio. I remember making several complaints in the early days of the NICAM services, as the engineers were sometimes a bit sloppy wiring up the encoders & would get the left & right channels the wrong way round.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

we had 2 boxes I had 1 in my room what was cable Exclusive channel and the computing channel ?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

It was indeed and I had Bell CableMedia too. As soon as the cables were laid down my road, got it installed in 1991.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

The exclusive cable channel was Wire TV. I don’t recollect the computer channel.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

For me, it was called Jones Computer Network or something like that. It was Canadian, like the cable co.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Jones Cable UK - they were originally from Colorado (Jones Intercable), then JI had a partial takeover from Bell Canada (when they became Bell CableMedia in the U.K.), then BCM became Cable & Wireless Comms (I implemented/remedied the Bytel billing system 94-97 at Leeds/Harrogate/York, Watford, and Encom in London Docklands).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Hugh can you remember what year Jones cable hit Leeds? I took it straight away, back then it was a guy going door to door flogging it. I suspect it was 1994/5 but could easily be wrong. If it was pre Christmas 93 it must have been around longer than I realise.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

There was some office set up work late in 1993, but the majority of staff started in 1994 - I joined them the first day they opened the Seacroft office (Monday 3rd January), as employee number 50 (then spent six months down in Watford).

The network build didn’t start until 1994.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I started with Nynex as an engineer whilst they were still building the switch in Warrington, as soon as it went live i had cable installed and have been on cable ever since. I have seen a massive amount of changes since then. I remember installing a local ISP with a 2Mb line via copper to be shared amongst their dial-up customers. At that time, they were getting the best there was.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Ah yes, all the billing system changes and changes and changes....those were the days.;)