General : Analogue Cable Memories

[vincerooney]

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!

[johnasimmons]

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

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.

[Inactive Digital]

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

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

[Rillington]

Originally Posted by johnasimmons

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

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

Originally Posted by Rillington

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

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 ----------

Originally Posted by Rillington

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

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…

[Rillington]

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.

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.

[Jaymoss]

Comtels chipped boxes hehe

[Hom3r]

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.

[gaz82]

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.

[Rillington]

what were the "extra basic cable channels"?"

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Rillington

what were the "extra basic cable channels"?"

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)

[gaz82]

Originally Posted by Rillington

what were the "extra basic cable channels"?"

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).