Analogue Cable Memories
 

Hi!

I grew up with the analogue cable service (CableTel, which then became NTL and is now Virgin), I'm still really fascinated by it! (don't judge!)

When we switched to digital in 2002 (NTL had a purple/pink EPG on digital, Pace box, +I loved when they did updates, fascinated me!!), I asked the engineer if we could keep the analogue box because I really felt it would be historically relevant somewhat (I was 8!!!), said 'no' but still have the 'Jerrold' remote somewhere. Wish I could have just said why I wanted it. We had the old box since 1998/99.

The box was a GI CFT-2100/2000, am I right in thinking these got sold to companies in less developed countries in the end? I tried looking it up on YouTube a while ago and these boxes were mainly being used in foreign places (in 2012 at least) so I assume that's where they all went?

Something else interesting, all the manhole covers on the pavement here, all over where I live still say GI/General Instrument/CableTel (may have seen a Jerrold one somewhere). Panels on the outside and inside walls of the house say CableTel. Kind of weird to think all the wiring is the same after ~20 years, still works and is capable of carrying so much different information so well.

Another memory I'm fairly sure I have is seeing a Sky Digital EPG frozen on Cartoon Network once? I'm guessing some channels got routed through a Sky box at a head end? And fairly sure a while before that, OSD text and static from a Sky Analogue box being broadcast on one of the channels. In probably about 2005 (grandmas house) I remember seeing a Windows 95 message box being broadcast on a few of the channels in the 40-50 range.

Quality operation huh! Wondering if anyone could confirm/explain these experiences. I'd also love to have one of those GI boxes back sometime just for the sake of it, despite it being useless..... Memories! If you have one, plug it in and put a video on YouTube! There's nothing detailed or good quality ATM. (And is Ireland still using these things?)

Freeview is somewhat similar to the service now in terms of channels available, and the locality of it. Regional channels etc, just lacks interesting things like PPV/Front Row, old cartoons and sport. We never used Front Row but I think I remember seeing it.... you'd call up a phone number and they'd enable it on your box?? Correct me if I'm wrong!

Before interactive EPGs were a thing, I remember in 1999 coming home after a day out and just staring at this channel which displayed an EPG and music. Can't remember if/when that got phased out.

I liked messing with the menus. But what did the F button do?? Engineer purposes? Frequencies? No idea never pressed it.

Anyone go through nostalgic patches wishing this stuff was still around or just me? Lets face it, it wasn't THAT great, but it was and still is cool to me. Hoping someone that would actually know the internals of this stuff would be able to answer! :Sun:

Welcome to cableforum :)

I love analog cable!!!!!!!! (Analogue anything really)

I have several movies on VHS recorded from ANALOGUE CABLE!! (Some are from analog TV (OTA))

Alot of movies have been ruined on VHS especially in the USA,from digital video crap to filters,the movie looks flat and void!! (Its really very sad)

I just got 2 movies I have loved for years that I wanted from analogue cable as the movies were ruined on official VHS media!

1) The Goonies - 1985 ('Digitally processed' on official VHS media and looks like crap (thin,etc))

Watching this over analogue cable (Cinemax) is goregous..... The video has depth and the sound is goregous........

2) The breakfast club (1985) - Also ruined on offical VHS media (Video is flat and disgusting)

Watching it over HBO (26/12/86) is goregous!!!! (Video has depth/sound is goregous)


I LOVE ANALOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Nothing better :)


We used to have a SCIENTIFIC ATLANTA (Model 85XX (We had a couple different model #s)) cable box in the later part of the 80s and thru the 90s.......

I also had Regency Boxs and Jerrolds..... I think my favourite is the SA box..

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Thanks! That's wonderful to hear. And would be great with a good sound system and a CRT.

We still mainly used CRTs when HDTVs became a thing in about 2007-2010 and I always thought even though the resolution was lower, the quality and vibrance was unmatched. And because CRT TVs use bigger pixels you don't get any pixellation/stretching as you do when upscaling to cover an equivalent area with loads more smaller pixels on an HDTV.

Beautiful!

P.S. I only knew of the GI/Jerrold boxes which might basically be the same? The remote I managed to keep is Jerrold but the set-top box was General Instrument :)

I believe they are... The scrambling modes are compatibile.....

I love CRTS .. The BEST tv to ever be made :)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

RWCable I also have fond memories of analogue cable. I was only a kid when I used to get Children's Channel and Sky Channel - I loved watching the cartoons. But it had to go because the local cable company that had taken over the MATV network in our area had begun to charge for the service and my parents didn't want to pay so they got an aerial.

I missed my cartoons and it created a kind of nostalgia. When I was in my late teens, I ended up experimenting with analogue (and later, digital) satellite to get some of the channels back (by then my parents moved to a non-cabled area) - and I became interested in the tech itself, much more so than the content.

I never had a Jerrold box at the time the service was live - but I did end up getting to work with them on work experience, which was amazing. I got to go to the headend, visit customers out in the field with the techs, help install and remove attenuators, even overheard baby monitors and cordless phones coming back up the return path at the cabinet. (The wavetek-pro spectrum analyzer had a speaker built in). I saw how it all worked, from the NDS sat receivers to the scramblers and modulators, all the way down to the scruffy white cables running unprotected under lawns with T-pieces in the exterior walls of the houses.

To answer your question, the F button means "Function" and it had various uses. It was mainly used to display the serial number in Hex pairs in order to call someone at the headend when setting up or replacing a box and having them send a "hit" through the network to enable it.

I remember once we were in an area that had both an old build system and a new build - the old build was still active at the time and an amplifier had gone dead. when we removed the cover, an ants nest rolled out and plopped onto the pavement, ants scurrying everywhere.

Fun times and the best work experience I could have had! Shame there's nothing on TV any more, the content's not worth the license fee in my opinion.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Thank you! That sounds amazing, wish I could've done that for work experience. Analogue was still around in my area (final months) at the time I did work experience. Now I wish I tried working for VM or something. :(

Digital is what I'm more used to, but the methods used to deliver analogue cable (despite its disadvantages) from source to head end to the TV set, I think are fairly genius in concept.

So cordless phones interfered with the connection from house to cabinet? On the flip side, I had a Sega GameGear with a TV tuner. The signal coming out the RF wire of our cable box to the TV was so strong I could wirelessly tune into the current channel from a few rooms in the house!

Was there a return path for the analogue cable boxes?
Was the F button used for anything else? Any other functions available?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

RWCable,

Analogue cordless phones used to operate around 27 - 35Mhz which was within the band of the return path. Often, houses had unterminated Coax connectors in their living rooms which would pick up stray signals. That was the new build system, however. The older system was simply a nest of wires, ultimately coming from a nearby hill, amplified in small grey pillars around the street. It had no return path and supported up to around 550MHz (hence the name Jerrold 550) - although such converters were in use on both the older and newer network.

The analogue cable boxes did support a return path, but it was only used on the new build star networks built in the 90s. There was a module which clips onto the back of the box over the coax connectors called a talkback unit which could be used for ordering pay per view events, etc. Not everyone had one of those, however.

I think the F button could be used to manually map channels from the allowed bouquet to specific channel numbers. I can't really remember seeing it used for anything other than displaying the serial number of the box, however. I think you have to press F and then key in 0, 2. I could be wrong though, this was a long time ago. It didn't do anything too fancy beyond that as far as I remember, but some boxes supported extra features, such as timers. The program selection was delivered to each box individually via a "hit" which would map channels and decide which ones could have their vertical blanking signal reintroduced in order to "unscramble" the picture.

There was something to do with a P/B indicator which had something to do with a "barker" channel - but I can't remember what that was intended for.

The whole system was General Instrument / Motorola and was operated by a central controller known as the ACC-4000. You can still find the manual for those online. I doubt anyone uses these systems any more and there's nothing really secretive about how it works. The whole setup is really basic.

EDIT: I might have been wrong about the P/B thing http://www.eddiesegoura.com/cablebox.htm

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I was with Bell Cablemedia originally, think that went to Cable and Wireless, then NTL, now VM. (someone need to looks into VMs monopoly these days....)

The box was a Jerrold and incredibly hot - it provided central heating for the room ! Treated myself to cable in time for the 1996 Cricket World Cup ! Of course didn't tell Mrs K. that was the reason, until it was all too late to cancel ! Didn't take telephone till much later, remember they provided free dial up internet but was very slow to roll out - as soon as it came to my area they decided to charge - still aggrieved about that one.

One of the most memorable cable analogue nights was when the Adult channel became unscrambled for everybody :D Someone lost their job I guess, but there was a lot of very satisfied/pretending to be outraged customers ;) Took ages for anyone to report it for some reason....

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

There's still lots of analogue cable used elsewhere in Europe

Thats good to hear!!

I remember one time taking my SA box to my cousins house in connecticut and hooking it up..... I got some pay channels he didnt usually get as those channels were enabled in my box... (I got lucky on that system... The cable data from the head end was on the same freq as my cable system (106.5))

The box said DC (Data Current) when I checked for data (nd means 'No data'))

If you had the box hooked up and it didnt get any data for 3 days it would disable itself.....


Channel 1 was active in my box as my cable co used 1 (Pointed @ channel 99) that system didnt use channel 1 and it was re-programmed to default within mins of hooking it up to that network. (Channel 4a))

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I bet your house/flat is like an antiques shop! haha

Ahhh thank you for such kind words my friend :)

Ya we had to call and order PPV stuff on the analogue SA boxs.....

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

lol, Mr Trotter, indeed...…….:D

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

@Onramp, thank you! These talkback modules, any idea what they looked like? I don't believe we had one. Also, if a return path was generally not present on analogue, would the company have been able to scan for modified or unscrupulous equipment and how? I looked up the ACC-4000, it's a computer that controlled the boxes right? Did you ever use one? What was the OS? I definitely saw a Windows 95 screen being broadcast on channel 40-something in 2004/2005 (was supposed to be displaying a static message from NTL, but a message box was stuck on top).

@Mr K, brilliant stories! Thanks :)

@spiderplant which countries generally? I'd go there, not for the scenery, not for the culture or anything I should supposedly be interested about, but simply for the fact they have analogue cable and I want to experience it once more lol

Another thing, obviously some digital information was transmitted to the boxes, like channel lineup, numbers, names, subscription etc. No doubt GI/Jerrold could have added a basic EPG and used that for reminders/planning. If that happened and the security was somehow better, we'd probably still be using it/able to purchase an analogue subscription today or at least 5 years ago (not that that's necessarily a good thing).

And, when Virgin Media updated their Liberate boxes from the Sky-lookalike blue (NTL) to the black and yellow interface, it reminded me a lot of the old GI/Jerrold interface, esp. the mini-guide in relation to the MENU on the GI box. Wonder if they took inspiration? On a side note, the current V6 boxes are a little bit reminiscent of the old GI boxes on the exterior. I miss having the 24hour clock on the front LCD panel, it was extremely useful (for knowing if you were gonna be late for boring school b/c you were busy watching cartoons lol) and I was gutted when that wasn't available on the Pace and Samsung digiboxes.

Would be nice if they could make a simple super quick interface, like the GI boxes had, with channels in the single and double digit range, interesting pop-up channels all year round and a nicely done touchscreen remote for navigation and planning. But I'm just daydreaming. Anyone use the landline anymore? Imagine if they revived Front Row and you could once again order movies by phone. I'm absolutely not sure, but crazily enough that might prove more engaging and interesting than on-demand if it was also available. I wouldn't be surprised if they advertised it well & got you to visit the trailers channel and call for a free movie, if that boosted the sales of PPV films.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Germany still has a huge amount of Analgoue connections, as do Ireland.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Johnny come lately - I was with Jones Cable in Leeds before BCM took them over (I also worked at Jones Cable/BCM/CWC).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

The talkback modules were just a shiny metal box faceplate that fits over the cable input - although - now I think of it - that might actually be a UHF passthrough thing because there was also a cover on the back of the box for slotting a module into.

The ACC-4000 ran SCO Unix according to the instruction manual. It would have had a Motif user interface. The Windows 95 thing you saw was probably a local TV channel that temporarily didn't have powerpoint open to show ads.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Our Jerrold unit had that metal box tacked on the back. At the time we were using a multi-band, multi-standard TV and it could tune quite a number of the channels separately to the box.

Premium channels used a crude form of "encryption" consisting of inverted sync pulses.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

When was that Hugh c1932 ? ;)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

1949, sorry, 1994.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Snap, think we got ours in 1994 or 1995. A salesman came to the door and I bit his hand off I was so keen. Seem to remember there was a bit of an uproar at the time of the cabling project as people said they were killing the trees in my area by damaging the roots (Meanwood back then).
Then when broadband came it was seventh heaven. I remember 200k, there may well have been lower speeds before that but anyway it seemed like witchcraft after the misey of dialup. :D

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

@Onramp that seems like a likely scenario. Thanks so much for the info!

@heero_yuy was the encryption/scrambling for premium channels different from standard ones? E.g. would Sky Box Office use a different method from, say, Sky One?

P.S. guys I have an old news report about Milton Keynes and the Virgin/BT cabling dispute. The video is from 2011/12 & features quick clips of a guy changing channels and using menus on his General Instrument box, in good quality. As it's not on YouTube anymore I'll reupload it later/tomorrow and post here.

If anyone has one of these boxes, it'd be amazing if you could capture the menus and interface on direct video capture instead of a camera and put it on YouTube.

Screenshot from video:

I knew 1 cable company (United cable) that scarmabled EVERYTHING (Even non-pay channels) -- I guess they wanted to make sure no one got free service!

Then in the 90s they started unscrambling some of them........

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

IIRC there wasn't anything more sophisticated on the NTL cable network as regards encryption.

I do know that Sky went to a more cunning encrytion that at an apparently random point along the TV line the video gets inverted, synch and all. Different point on every line.

The exact point was controlled by a key card and a pseudo random generator and so if you had the key you could decrypt the signal.

Naturally there was a busy black market in cloned and pseudo key cards.

One anti-copying trick that was used on film channels was to insert several lines of peak white during the frame retrace fairly randomly. This is where VCR's set their reference recording levels, as the video here is normally at black level, this would ruin any attempt to record off air.

Most CRT TV's blank this retrace set of lines so the effect wasn't visible on screen.

Incidentally this is why older TV material is 576i and DVDs generally in 576i or 576p rather than 625i. The "missing" lines are the frame retrace period (24.5 lines) needed by the older CRT TVs and other than a few lines being "stolen" to provide the Teletext service contain no video.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

We used to run our digibox through a VCR. We ordered something from on-demand and the picture was just static and black and white grey bars going up the screen like crazy. I'm assuming this is my experience of that even though we weren't copying! I always wondered how that worked, cheers :)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Since you mention that situation, the old cable cabinet by our exit to the grid road happened to be open the other week, so I had a peek inside to see what was there (didn't touch, of course!)

There was a single yellow fibre optic cable entering a media converter labelled "MK-TV Spine" followed by the spine number. That box had a co-ax cable coming out of it, into a large amplifier and power injector. At the bottom of the cabinet, the two large coax cables had been physically cut. Presumably by BT when VM no longer renewed their lease in 2012 (or whatever happened). There's little to zero chance that network will be reconnected assuming Cityfibre do actually run FTTH in the whole town.

As for the encryption, as far as I remember, the vertical sync signal gets stripped out and placed somewhere in the teletext portion of the signal (vertical blanking interval) in some inverted form. Then, if the box is authorised to do so, it re-inserts the signal. The situation whereby a VHS recorder can't read the signal is named Macrovision, and I think it involves some similar trickery. I'd imagine the Jerrold/GI boxes would output a macrovision protected signal for VCRs.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Our towns wired ariel was failing and Cambrigde Cable came in and update the entire Ariel network, those that wanted it got cable TV those that didn't just kept the 4 channels (BBC1, BBC2 ITV & Channel 4.)


These went Tit's up and where taken over by the parent company Anglia Cable.


Later NTL the VM.


I remember on CC having both Sports & Movies for £10pm.


But recording went to one channel, that was the channel the box was set too.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Oh yes, that was the other thing the F button did. You could change the UHF output channel number.

Was it sending out raw digital? (That would produce that on an analogue device)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Noooo, digital box -> VCR via RF -> TV via RF. As it was an on-demand film I can see why it would be protected from recording using the Macrovision method. We weren't recording, it's just convenient to have your VCR connected to the digibox and TV so you can record and playback anytime. They probably should have given a warning message though because it freaked me out at the time lol

Btw I remember one morning in 2005/06 when BBC were doing a news report about HDTVs or their testing of HD broadcasts. Momentarily they said "this is what it would look like if we sent HD to your current equipment" and it was pretty much like that lol, but less "natural" looking. I think they also said if you have a computer, your monitor is likely to be HD which amazed me at the time lol, and is true in a sense. I also remember them introducing the famous 3D weather maps we've been staring at for 13 years.

Would it still happen with STB -> VCR over SCART/Component instead of RF?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I have a SCART from our VHD box feeding my Sony HDD/DVD recorder and its SCART feeding a modulator. (Works even on standby) Never seen any disruption on the slave sets.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Analogue cable clips start around 2:50 minutes with an archive clip from the 1970s, then a clip showing someone using a CFT-2100, which were still being used in Milton Keynes in 2011/12. BT (which owned the cabling) refused to upgrade the cabling for Virgin Media's digital services. I believe the analogue service in Milton Keynes was stopped in 2013/14.

If anyone has a General Instrument CFT-2100/CFT-2200 box plug it in and make a video!!! :)

Btw as landlines are still analogue, how much bandwidth are they taking up? I take it there's no special equipment multiplexing the signal from house to street cabinet?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

You need to enter it like this: [youtube]j6nZIdb8dc8[/youtube]

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Done. Cheers! :)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

If anyone did happen to maybe have one of those or a similar model, they might not want to own up to that!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I would!! It's like a lot of old tech, not really much to look at now, but I do appreciate it for what it was at the time. Thinking in terms of how we had 5 terrestrial channels, these things could open up a world of viewing and information, provide primitive near on-demand, be remotely managed, and joined on to a network of similar equipment. The delivery mechanism is basically one wire to your house where all this takes place. What we have today is basically the same, but really refined.

The primitiveness of it interests me because it was really pushing the limits of what you could do with analogue tech, e.g. the multiplexing of dozens of channels, the encryption/scrambling and decoding of such signals etc, and the little digital bits are interesting to me as well.

These boxes basically turned what you had, which was a TV with variable reception quality and limited things to watch into kind of, "windows of the world" and seeing these things work provided a nice insight into the possibilities of technology. That's how I saw it growing up anyways, still fascinates me

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I had several until last year. I'm afraid they went in the skip. Didn't realise anybody cared!

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Probably just me! Did you ever try plugging them in after the switch off? Oh and did anyone work on the analogue switch off?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Probably not just you, I'm also quite enthusiastic about this subject. Want to start a cable company? :D (seriously though, I would, but it's not cheap).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Let's do it. Next cable billionaires.... And we'll have UKTV Gold and Dave. They'll be begging for us

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I never even plugged them in before switch off. I've only ever worked on digital.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Comtel installed my cable with a black I think it was a 4000 box many years ago.


It had a pass thru for analogue TV

Indeed.....I love this thread!!

I didnt realise anyone cared about analogue cable/TV as much as me!!

It was simply beautiful and having stuff recorded from it is goregous :)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

You need to aim higher!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I had a Scientific Atlanta box and remember getting excited whenever YOU HAVE A MESSAGE popped up on the screen.
Most of the time it was just a 'refer a friend' type offer though.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

That's really cool! I don't think ours ever did that (it might have had that feature, not sure)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

There was a 'message' button on the remote that you pressed when it popped up on screen. In the days before email etc, it could have been a great way to communicate with customers about new channels. It was rarely used though, and as I mentioned, mainly referral offers. From memory, it was probably used once or twice a year max and I cant remember it being used at all in the last few years before I upgraded to digital (2000).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

We had Comtel here too - still have the Comtel branded phone sockets on the wall.

We had two tv boxes installed and already has satellite tv.

When they thought they had finished the install I complained about the poor picture and gave an example on screen. They said it was a perfect picture and I agreed - so I switched away from the satellite box to the cable box and they saw what I was complaining about - and they agreed.

When we got it Comtel were about to launch their own ondemand film service - but it never happen.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Oh the memories of Rediffusion cable in 1984.
We had a box on the window sill with a dial of A,B,C,D etc to change the channels.
Not many channels in those days, Screensport,Music Box,The Movie Channel,The Childrens Channel and maybe a couple more that I can't quite remember.
Then it was NTL and now Virgin Media. In between that we had BSB briefly.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

That would have been fantastic at the time. Did they really have The Movie Channel all that time ago? I thought that first made its appearance on British screens when BSB launched.

We first got multi-channel TV when the cable company at the time laid its cables in our area. That must have been about 1996 and the company was Telecential. They were a good company, but customer services deteriorated when ComTel took over a few years later.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Indeed what wonderful memories especially Music Box.:)

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...it was Diamond Cable before ntl:

I remember in the 80s when my cable system first got HBO.... They issued special descramblers to customers to unscramble it....

And I remember having a black and white tv with a FINE TUNE slider on it and I used to be able to fine tune scrambled signals in enough to watch them....... (If there wasnt anything on the next higher channel was the easiest)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I do remember before we had cable TV installed I used to connect my Sega Game Gear TV adaptor to my TV aerial.

I could switch between UHF/VHF

While on VHF I got a sports channel and saw live the crash that killed Roland Ratzenberger.

Also on my new TV in my room I was scanning for the TV channels and found one IIRC called Galaxy, which was a BSB channel.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

There was a film channel from Rediffusion, or it could have been one called TEN, 'The Movie Channel' that you're thinking about did indeed start on BSB. It then moved to Astra under the ownership of BSKYB after the 'merger', before being renamed and absorbed completely into Skys general portfolio of film channels.

---------- Post added at 14:17 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------

VM are to move their telephony service over to VOIP:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...broadband.html

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

TEN: The Movie Channel launched on Redifusion in March 1984 and a second film channel called Prem1ere launched less than six months later.

TEN: The Movie Channel closed and was quicky replaced in June 1985 by MirrorVision. MirrorVision that lasted less than a year being being taken over by Prem1ere.

Prem1ere carried on until 1989 when it closed as it was unable to compete again Sky and BSB for film rights. By this time it was carried on satellite but for cable operators only and was one of the first pirated film channels.

Bravo and HVC were also film channels exclusive to cable from September 1985 - Bravo later changed format and carried other programme and moved to satellite.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Some interesting information there ozsat, I never knew that Bravo was initially a film channel. By the time I first saw Bravo in (I think it came to analogue satellite in 1993), it showed a mixture of films and general entertainment programmes. Many were in black and white and their marketing phrase was 'Timewarp Television'. After some time it was decided that they could increase their ratings by scrapping all monochrome material and showing colour programming only.

Interesting that years later Talking Pictures found a gap in the market for historical films and programmes.

Do you know if HVC was any connection to the video rental store (I think it was HVC, or was it MVC) and if Prem1ere had any connection to the German movie channel Premier that was on analogue satellite in the 90's?

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I vaguely remember there was a channel called Premiere on satellite, but it was scrambled in a system called syster (or was it nagravision?) - it was not receivable on a videocrypt decoder. Instead of the lines being cut and rotated, they seemed to jump up and down vertically, and the audio had a weird form of hissy sounding encryption also.

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Awww. Don't really see the point apart from business use. According to a customer service rep 1 or 2 years ago, no one uses their landlines.

What happens to emergency calls in power cuts? What happens to faxing?

Faxing still receives a lot of business use (e.g. for contracts that have to be signed) because it's pretty much fully trustworthy. You know who the sender is and setting up a MiTM attack to modify a document in transit is fairly difficult over fax. We can talk encryption all day, but every form of digital encryption will be cracked fairly easily at some point. The security of faxing comes from the design of the (already huge) telephone network, being fairly closed off, rigid and noninteractive unlike computer networks.

More info if you're interested: https://www.infoworld.com/article/30...d-the-fax.html

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Home Video Channel was not the same as the MVC retail chain - an the UK Prem1ere was nothing to do with Premier.


---------- Post added at 19:02 ---------- Previous post was at 19:00 ----------

I think you are refering to the German version. The UK Prem1ere channel required a big satellite dish point at 27.5West.

My cousin discovered with his box in the 80s all he had to do with slip an index card in the front of the box and ALL THE PAY CHANNELS CAME IN! (I guess the index card touched something inside and caused it to unscramble all the pay channels)

Back then there were only 36 channels and the upper 30s were all scrambled pay channels......

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A guy in a company where I worked once built his own sky box (this was in the 80s), and at that time our council wouldn't let you put satellite dishes on chimneys.

He got around this by modifying a metal dusbin lid into a dish.

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Impressive! Experienced with electronics I'm guessing? I wanna build an FM radio sometime while FM is still around

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Reminds me of this https://www.slashgear.com/crazy-sate...lord-07200645/

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Got some new questions.

1. In the analogue days, did cable networks consist of fibre optic connections or was it all/mostly copper?

2. Since 2010 and besides Milton Keynes/Ireland, have there been any other special cases of VM still providing analogue TV?

3. Also! Let's assume VM were now broadcasting "720i" (or thereabouts) high definition analogue channels... How many of them could they reliably deliver to a customer's house on 1 cable from cabinet to premises (with landline phone as the only other service. No Internet.)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

To answer your first question, early cable networks tended to be MATV systems that eventually joined up (as far as I can tell) - and they had their own little headends and there was no fibre.

Once those networks began to join up, I would imagine that the technical sites / local head-ends were linked to each other fibre (carrying an analogue signal at 1550nm) since that has been available for many years. I know it was fibre-to-the-grid-square in Western MK because I've seen it physically - but I think after that point, it was a set of daisy-chained copper running under the lawn between houses using cheaper co-ax, just like the MATV systems of the 80s.

Maybe someone from BT or Openreach knows more about the physical architecture of the MK system for historical purposes - obviously it's dead, now.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

2. Here's one I made earlier: https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...php?t=33640854

3. Assuming such a channel fits into the usual 8MHz slots, around 80. But it does vary depending on how the network was built.

---------- Post added at 13:29 ---------- Previous post was at 13:27 ----------

I don't think they were. Each headend had it's own satellite farm to receive the channels.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

You could be right, to be honest. I'm not sure how recently the ones were linked in the area I'm thinking off but only one site actually had dishes located there, for quite some time, while the other didn't, for as far as I can remember. Just a single 60 - 80cm dish on the aerial tower.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I remember there being several big dishes on top of the buildings at Comtel Oxford. You could see them when driving along the A40.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

My old house in Wales in 1992 had a box with a switch on it. Was located on the window shelf. Could get sky 1 on it. Was quite happy as I could watch wwf.

I believe about 20 houses on estate had it and was fed from a single dish.

No idea where it was though.

I love this thread!!!!!

I didnt realise anyone else loves analogue cable as Much as I do :)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I remember (as a child about 8 years old) accidentally blocking out BBC2 on the second box. When a second box was a uniquely cable idea, and about £3.50 a month!

That much??

Hmmmmm.. Sometimes steep prices!!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Hi all it's been a while, I hope you are all doing well.

I've been feeling nostalgic on this subject lately... I learned some new things and thought I'd share some updates on the topic. :)

Between 1994-1998, SEGA worked with cable companies to create a subscription games service called SEGA Channel for their Mega Drive (aka Genesis) console. The games would be delivered via coax into a special cartridge inserted into the console. It's very interesting. If you want to learn more see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

Anyway keeping in line with the discussion around analogue cable TV, it turns out General Instrument had some role in supporting SEGA Channel. When I did some searches to learn more about SEGA Channel, I found that a System Operators manual for the General Instrument ACC-4000 had been uploaded on a SEGA wiki site. You can find that here: https://segaretro.org/index.php?titl...nstrument).pdf

As previously mentioned in this thread, the ACC is a sort of master computer which General Instrument supplied to cable operators to control the headend equipment, which would then communicate with the set-top boxes on the network.

The manual makes very interesting reading if you're technically inclined (maybe if you're reading this you used one?). It shows what a system operator would see on their end, which we as customers never saw. Obviously the system is obsolete so I doubt there's any harm sharing this.

The ACC has some interesting capabilities for the time. For instance, I was amazed to find it could conduct opinion and viewership polls with the GI boxes!! If you ever used an ACC, was the viewership polling feature ever used? As for opinion polls I know for a fact I never saw an opinion poll on NTL...

I also read a manual I downloaded a while ago for one of the most common set-top boxes used in Britain, the CFT-2100 which I remember fondly. In the example screens in the manual, the Messages feature is shown providing useful info like "today's weather," "PPV Guide", "Customer Service No.". Unfortunately I don't have a link to the manual but surely it's probably available somewhere. It's a shame NTL/local operators didn't use this type of functionality more. It's very cool for its time and would have made the service even better.

The ACC manual also explains the naming and model number convention for the various types and subtypes of boxes (CFT-20XX, CFT-21XX, CFT-22XX) etc. There's actually quite a lot of subtypes based on whether it's one-way, two-way, or "FONE-way."

So I learned a few things from the manual, including that CFT stands for "Consumer Friendly Terminal."

In my research I also saw a CFT-2200 box in America and it seems that particular model can run a custom firmware? It looks physically the same as the CFT-2100/2000 boxes but the menus look completely different. Interesting pictures here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENERAL-I...kAAOSwx79erv5r

But I have some more questions too.

• What's SURFview and did we ever have it here?
• What's FONE-way? Probably something to do with the box having a connection to the phone line for two-way communication box and headend?
• Could the CFT-2100, CFT-2000 run custom firmware like the 2200?
• Did the boxes have an internal battery or storage to remember time, settings, channel numbers etc?

I remember hooking my VCR up to the cable network.. After this local channel went off the air (channel 4) I went ON THE AIR!!!!!!!

I showed movies and stuff,it was neat!! (That was before they used video filters so nothing could be seen when the channel went off air)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Wow so you broadcast from your VCR???

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I'm intrigued, how was this achieved?

Well as you know a VCR outputs on channel 3 or 4 So I just hook the cable line up to the OUT TO TV jack on the VCR :)

I dunno how far it went but it was neat.......

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Just noticed the above link from 2018 is inaccessible for me. Not sure if it's been deleted. Has the thread been deleted here?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

It does seem to have gone. Other places that had analogue-only cable late were Londonderry, Westminster, Brackla, Washington and parts of north London (Camden-ish)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

That was the 'route', so to speak, and there was one before then - Jones Cable, which then 'became' Bell Cablemedia in 1995 before C&W appeared in 1997 when they bought Bell, Nynex and Videotron.

And if you want some nostalgia from the very first days of cable, the promo video for Jones Cable from around 1994 has been uploaded to YouTube.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

I was employee number 50 at Jones Cable (Leeds), implemented the Bytel Billing system at Watford & Leeds (then moved Peterborough & Norwich over), then sorted out Encom in Docklands - long, long time ago…

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Were you there when the talkies came in Hugh? ;)

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Son, I was in uniform before you were in liquid form... :D

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

And in what year did you become employee number 50?

---------- Post added at 19:23 ---------- Previous post was at 19:14 ----------

Those old Jerrold boxes were the mainstay of analogue cable.

And it is worth underling that the 1996 Cricket World Cup almost ended up being shown exclusively on cable after Wire TV bought the rights to the event. however Wire stopped broadcasting nine months before the tournament was due to start and Sky picked up the live rights with the BBC showing highlights.

Jerrold and Regency were basically the same boxs werent they??

I thought they were owned by the same people at first....

I liked the boxs that were a TUNER,in other words if HBO was on 44 and Cinemax was on 45,you could turn your TV dial to 3 (Instead of 2) and see Cinemax unscrambled on 44!! (IF IT WAS SCRAMBLED THE SAME WAY HBO WAS)

I did this at my relatives house...... PAY PER VIEW was on channel 17 and the channel below it was IN THE CLEAR (Not scrambled) so I brought my Regency box down and put the channel on 3 and my grandpas box on 16 and I got PPV in UNSCRAMBLED....... (The boxs output was channel 2 so putting it on 3 moved everyone down one channel (Usually channel 4 was too weak to really see anything but it did work))


I love analogue!!!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

January 1994 - based at Seacroft, Leeds, but they sent us down to Watford for about 6 months to implement Bytel there (got a lot of Hilton points that year…).

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

So when did cable first become available in Leeds, and I guess it was people who were nearest to the Seacroft centre who were the first households to be able to get cable?

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

From about mid-94 I believe - my house was connected early/mid 95, and I live about 6 miles from where Jones Cables was sited.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

i was late to the show unfortunately and only got cable in 2000. i was a naive young child and thought the only options were sky at this point and had limited knowledge of "cable". I was 13/14 at the time. I thought sky would be superior as i knew more about it so kept nagging my dad for sky tv but he kept saying no as he didnt want a dish on the house. Eventually i mentioned cable and after he asked if it had the dish or not immediately said yes once hearing it didnt. it was the easiest win i'd ever had and i wish id done it a year or two earlier.

Had glorious telewest analogue from summer 2000 to summer 2004 when we switched to telewest digital. weirdly from summer 2000 to summer 2004 i still have freeserve internet and only from 2002 did i have freeserve unlimited.

Looking back i should have been way more clued up with unlimited internet and cable tv and i could have got the stuff from 1999 etc....but then again maybe for my school grades it was the best how it worked out!

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

When I first got cable in 1992 it was Cable Camden, then Cable London, then Telewest, then VirginMedia...

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

We never subscribed to analogue but the wall box in our house was still live from the previous owner, so we used to have our TV plugged directly into it. That way we also got access to the BBC’s ‘digital only’ channels (we watched a lot of BBC3) plus whichever other channels came unscrambled within the range of our TV’s tuner from time to time. We had L!VE TV for a while, not that we wasted much time on it.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

We're all the analogue channels broadcast unencrypted? I appreciate the franchise nature of cable TV companies means there probably isn't a single answer to that. I remember visiting a family member in the late 90s who hooked up a PC tuner to the network and was able to watch sport and movie channels that they weren't subscribed to. Like you Chris, I tried the same with my TV tuner direct to the wall box, but only ever received a very small number of channels that I already had access to anyway. Presumably channel frequencies were allocated so that the premium channels were less likely to be visible on domestic TV tuners

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

There were a couple channels we could receive that were scrambled, so you could hear them but not see them, but all in all there were not many channels within range of a standard UHF tuner. The PSB channels were always there, plus the BBC’s digital only stuff, but rarely much else. After a couple of years we subscribed to NTL digital and 512k broadband. And not long after that I became a member of NTHellworld :rofl:

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

In Leeds the list is Jones Cable, Bell Cablemedia, Cable & Wireless, ntl and Virgin Media.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

And I worked for two of those - the joke in the Cable industry in the 90s was you could have had 4 employers in 5 years and still be at the same desk.

---------- Post added at 10:19 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ----------

And I worked for two of those - the joke in the Cable industry in the 90s was you could have had 4 employers in 5 years and still be at the same desk.

tbf, when Jone Cable became BCM, we got to change our company cars from Mondeos to Audi A4s, so not all bad… :D

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Did Jones have franchises in any other area or were they just Lees?

And i seem to recall at one point there being a channel on cable called Jones Computer Network (JCN) which I think was in the C&W era. I also seem to recall it was either replaced by, or it replaced, a channel called Knowledge TV.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

They were Leeds, Harrogate, & York, Jones Cable Watford, and also took over Peterborough & Norwich (previously PacTel, I believe).

After I left BCM, I worked for a cable billing company for a year, and did billing consultancy at Yorkshire Cable, Diamond Cable, Cable London, Videotron, Telewest, & Nynex.

Re: Analogue Cable Memories
 

Comtels chipped boxes hehe