Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980's?
 

I didn't get cable until 2001ish.

After a discussion yesterday with someone about the Select BBC programmes that were scrambled in the late 1980's, I wondered if the cable customers (with their ability to encrypt & decode scrambled analogue systems) offered this service to their customers.

Cheers.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Telease MAAST / Sat-Tel SAVE was used in the UK by BBC for its world service broadcasts so I doubt it.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Does it matter now if they could or couldn't though?

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

It was for BBC Select as opposed to the World Service broadcasts:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lRFAFsEg0MI

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0C5krgeHzQw

No, i'm just curious as to whether the cable companies at the time utilised their infrastructure in this way.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

BBC Select wasn't launched until January 1992 and was aimed at business professionals, nurses lawyers etc and corporate bodies so again I doubt it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Select

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

I was getting confused. BBC Select did indeed start in the nineties, it was the Discret service for doctors that started in 1988:

https://www.newscientist.com/article...bscription-tv/

I agree, it does seem unlikely that the cable companies offered these services, presumably meaning that cable customers wanting to use them had to somehow insert a decoder inbetween the analogue STB and their TV.

If this wasn't technically possible, they would have had to pick up the analogue TV signal independently of the cable signal and decode it in just the same way as other ATT viewers.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

I've just been reading some more about these BBC encrypted services.

I believe that they came about because the then Thatcher Government told the BBC to utilise their spare capacity to raise revenue as opposed to asking for repeated licence fee increases.

It started with doctors, but was then extended to include dentists, nurses & car mechanics.

This was a commercial failure and was relaunched as BBC Select in the early nineties:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Select

I remember accidentally coming across some of these tests late one night.

Apparently, so did other people who were genuinely concerned that aliens were trying to contact us! Don't forget that at this time there had never been any scrambled TV signals in the UK*.

* Apart from analogue cable.

Eamonn Holmes had to reassure viewers the following morning in his live 'Open Air' programme :D

For those who haven't a clue what I'm talking about:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=89fW2gum-B0

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lRFAFsEg0MI

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uisMEnYM2nM

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

This service utilised BBC1 & BBC2 during hours of shutdown overnight. Cable companies would have carried this in the same way as analogue terrestrial TV. All cable systems had "off-air" analogue reception equipment & channels 1 to 4 plus any additional regions were carried on an analogue bypass direct to the TV without going through the cable converter. So the necessary decoder could simply be inserted into the coax feed to the TV the way it would with a normal aerial.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Cheers, I presume that (apart from the fact that they had different encryption systems) this meant that the cable companies couldn't have sold the service to their customers on behalf of the BBC to negate the need for a separate STB.

I've only ever had digital cable, so have no experience of analogue.

Did the cable companies take an off air feed from the local transmitters and feed the signals to their customers via a separate feed to their encrypted channels?

Is this how the bypass system worked?

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Cable started with every company having a headend comprising a dish farm & a mast with a plethora of analogue TV & FM radio aerials.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2016/11/20.jpg

The signal was fed in the same way it is now, with a Jerrold cable converter box feeding the TV. This box was a lttle bigger then the current superhub 3, & was basically a channel transposer taking a cable channel from a lower frequency up to a preset UHF TV channel (rather like the output from a VHS recorder). This also included a macrovision decoder to descamble encrypted channels. The main "off-air" BBC ITV Ch4 feeds were transposed onto unused UHF TV channels at the headend in unecrypted form. These went through a metal bypass box attached to the back of the decoder, which passed the standard UHF TV channels directly to the TV without going through the box. The maximum amount of available channels available via the converter was around 60.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2016/11/21.jpg

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Thanks for such an interesting and comprehensive reply, much appreciated :)

As cable companies were the first form of pay TV in the UK, this would have been the first time that the public would have seen encrypted channels.

Were there any such things as off air slates in those days?

What did customers see on any unsubscribed channels?

I'm just wondering because of the alien contact fear regarding the BBC encrypted transmissions.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

As far as the BBC transmissions, you would see the same as a viewer recieving the channel "off-air" (more than likley a scrambled picture). On the channels coming through the converter, unsubscribed channels would default to a slate, or a preset channel decided by the cable company (channel guide, or in our case our own local cable TV channel, West Herts Television).

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Thanks, so the BBC encrypted transmissions would have been the first time that the vast majority of people in the UK had ever seen a scrambled programme!

I myself wondered what on Earth it was, but didn't think that aliens were trying to contact us after waiting until BBC1 & 2 had closed down :D

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

When my family moved into a new housing scheme in 1969 it was built in clyde valley ,aerial reception was poor so the whole development was piped up yes we called it piped tv back then , think it was rediffusion big company back in the day but it was always breaking doon so we ditched it . BBC SELECT ? :dunce:

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

It was commonplace to "pipe up" new town developments. Cable was meant to be the future, and better than tv aerials sprouting from everyone's roof. Plenty of houses still have (redundant) connection points and wall-mounted dials for switching channel.

Re: Were cable customers able to subscribe to the encrypted BBC services in the 1980'
 

Rediffusion & later British Relay cabled up many towns (including our own). However, the people that planned these services never envisaged the proliferation of TV & radio services that would appear later down the line. Many of these systems used multicore cables with one channel per cable, & many just had capacity for 4 TV & 4 radio channels. Also most of the cabling on terraced houses was surface going from one house to the next (with them being all council owned). With such capacity, & now wayleave issues these systems had no hope of survival past the early 80s.