Oddity Archive: Episode 11 - Pay TV (but not Cable or Satellite)
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- Опубліковано 23 січ 2013
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For those forced to use alternate services because your town's local politicians wouldn't allow cable...
My grandparents had ON TV in the 80's, because the owner of their "closed community" didn't want cable installers drilling holes in his precious walls...and my grandmother hated missing even a single Reds game (we lived in Dayton at the time). It also sometimes captioned programs (my grandmother was deaf and I am deaf in one ear). That was a big selling point for my grandparents.
Later, my mother would go on to work for yet another now-defunct Dayton cable service in the early 90's: Omnivision. They not only provided cable to the far-flung farming communities in Ohio, but also had a pretty wide range of second-rate video games built in. One involved an alien in a pyramid that I came close to beating when they shut down the games in '96 or so.
I'm from Dayton, actually...though I only lived *in* the city for the first couple years of my life...I've spent most of my time in the suburbs or in the country.
I would love to know what this game was. Thats been crawling around in my mind for like 20 years and I'd love to identify it
No one complains about those history lessons, so don't worry.
And to think that this video has more views than Tele1st's subscriber base.
That was one epic burn.
Not hard to believe. I remember it well.
Over 25x more, at over 100,000 views!
Ben himself has more subscribers.
5:46 - "Presently, your ONTV signal is being electronically scrambled. Because the decoder box in your home is unauthorized. This is a polite way of saying that you're now comitting an illegal act."
I really like the idea on how ONTV were able to fight the TV 'pirates' by not only scrambling the picture, but also play audio warnings too. I wonder if there's a full version of this...
TopperQ105 Used to be. Along with the rest of the newscasts that showed the ONTV executives and etc.
My dad had ON-TV for about a year in 1980-81. It ran in our area (Detroit) on WXON TV-20, and our recordings off of it look horrid. It was probably a combination of his distance from the transmitter, and the scrambling technology, which caused a ridiculous amount of multipath interference. All the other stations came in clear as a bell, with the exception of 62, which broadcast with a weak signal.
WXON in Flint only started broadcasting in 1999. WMYD in Detroit was WXON until 1997, and broadcast from the Detroit suburb of Walled Lake, and then later Southfield.
James McDonnell You have footage of ON-TV from Detroit? Cause I've been looking for footage of it since 2008 or so. I don't really care about the quality, just that it exists at all.
kargaroc386 I haven't actually found any intros or anything. It seems every recording he has, he started recording just as the movie was beginning, and hit stop just as the movie ended. The only way I knew it was ON-TV was that the movies were commercial-free, and there was a WXON ID every hour.
I heard watching sports on ON was a joke. Either it was tape delayed (Tigers) or joined in progress (Red Wings), and for the latter, there was the one game where Detroit scored 5 goals on the Calgary Flames before ON started their broadcast. That was apparently the breaking point with ON's relationship with WXON.
Lately a partial sign-off with music and a still-slide showed up, with the same music as the audio-only version that's been up forever. But that's all there is, and it still monumental lol.
Where can I get a copy of that ON-TV anti-piracy message? It has a really creepy, authoritarian quality to the voice that makes you feel like a real thought criminal.
Right? Makes me think it was something out of Orwell's 1984
This is why corporations are evil.
gives me sega cd vibes lol
I wonder who did the voiceover for it
@@progressman95 WARNING, THIS DISC IS FOR USE ONLY ON THE SEGA CD SYSTEM ONLY. THIS DISC CONTAINS CD ROM DATA THAT MY DAMAGE YOUR AUDIO SYSTEM, PLEASE PRESS STOP ON YOUR DISC PLAYER NOW. THIS DISC CONTAINS CD ROM DATA THAT MAY DAMAGE YOUR AUDIO SYSTEM. PLEASE STOP PLAYING THIS DISC IMMEDIATELY!
Basic Cable Television Access actually went Nationwide officially on January 1,1985. ONLY Sparsely populated US towns didn't have Basic Cable.
By 1989. EVERY city in the US had Basic Cable access.
I'll never forget the first time I watched a cable-ready TV. Prior to that, the cable company in my hometown (Aberdeen, South Dakota) provided Public Television, the big three networks, and a series of satellite-distributed superstations (including KMSP and KWGN). It was in the Fall of 1986 that I first saw Nickelodeon, MTV, The Weather Channel, Lifetime, CNN, and others. It was quite the experience for a young man such as myself (I was 8 years old at the time) and the beginning of a transition to technical marvel the likes of which I hadn't yet seen.
Nickelodeon went nationwide in 79 in us
@@stewie17 Actually, it was Premium until 1984.
I think the glitchy sound from that cooking show is what will greet us in the afterlife.
Well, all they have is tele1st in hell...and they don't bother to show the movies as promised...and you still gotta pay for the tapes for all eternity.
*gulp* 😵
When I was a kid, and before they began offering cable in the town where we lived, we subscribed (briefly) to a pay-TV service that played major studio releases after a certain point in the day (and were off the air for the rest of the time), an odd channel that played bizarre foreign language animated shorts (not certain of the cartoons' countries of origin - it sounded eastern european, however), and another channel that played soft-core porn 24/7. The company declared bankruptcy roughly six months after we had the service installed, and never came back to retrieve/remove the satellite dish from the roof of our house...that thing stayed-up there more than TWENTY years after we'd moved away, and as far as I know, is STILL up there.
I love the unscrambled clip of the Chinese program from TeleWorst.
@Brian Hebert Haha! I talked bad on a person who's not related to me at all and is talking bad on something else! Hahahaha, NO.
@@BorislavVeselinov and let's by a NO TV descrambler box.
In 1982, approximately 95% of NYC still did not have Cable. "Man. Cable" which only served lower Manhattan up to about 38 St. Enter the alternatives. To wit : WWHT aka Wometco Home Television. From NJ they transmitted to NYC on channel 69 (just a few kHz from the Cellular band.) For Long Island customers they had another UHF channel. For technical details of the operation, just watch the above video, it's very similar.
I'd watch Titus Chan and any other clickety-scrambled cooking shows if they were offered free on another channel at any time. That theme sounds so awesome with the squeedly-wheedly-deedly distortion, and seeing video in negative never gets dull.
So you want to see them as they looked without the unscrambler on a free network?
My father had "SelecTV" back in the 80s and it was broadcast on KWHY-TV Channel 22 in Los Angeles, his relatives had ON TV in the early 80's, that was on KBSC (KVEA) Channel 52, before was shut down and merged with "SelecTV". It was the network that introduced me to a lot of great movies, some of which I still have the VHS recordings. It was shut down in 1989 and we switched to Cable where I got to watch alot of great channels such as HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel, even Nickelodeon.
I know that, KWHY replace "SelecTV" with Spanish Programming while they were still a Business News Channel. When Business News was moved to KJLA until late 2000, it became full-time Spanish, now stands as "MundoFOX".
I've literally been lucky to have Cable since I was a Baby. Mom was a young early adopter to Time Life Cable/Time Warner during '84-85.
We're kinda' going through this again with Netflix, Amazon, Disney etc. A bunch of paid sub sites all fighting for ultimate control over TV programs once again. It'll be interesting seeing them look back at that in 40 years and how stupid and greedy it was.
To be honest, I'd rather this than the old way of doing things, where you had to pay a cable provider a bunch of money for a bunch of channels, and then they would give each of the media companies a small bit of that. At least now you get some modicum control over who you subscribe to, and you can add/drop services at will if you find yourself not wanting it/wanting something different, while cable forces you to get large packages, with no ability to fine tune the channel selection to only what you want.
Hi, I'm from 2022!
......
It ain't goin' so well....
This is why piracy never dies
don’t forget, you have services like slingtv which is owned or was owned by dish network 😂. You also have fubotv and several other streaming services.
As kids we had SelecTV on WCGV in Milwaukee. The box was a little more advanced than ON TV having a push button on/off switch and a key selector for Regular programs or Special events. There was also a four digit spin dial on the front for a subscriber code that would change at regular intervals or when they had special events (i.e. boxing matches, concerts, etc.). We gave it up due to cost, but it survived here until around 1984 when cable became more mainstream.
I think that pretty much anything was more advanced than what ONTV was doing lmao
The Tele1st preshow (timer with music) has some decent music. That's the only plus to the entire service. Ouch.
There's actually a clip of the full Tele1st countdown elsewhere on YT, if you'd like to hear a nice long chunk of the music.
The music is Cyclotron, by Keith Mansfield
Thanks! It's really good.
@@blackcitroenlove - Absolutely...in fact, I just downloaded Cyclotron using one of those "YT to MP3" conversion sites!
My dad was and still is to this day an early adopter of tech, much to the annoyance of my mother. I was going though some old stuff in The basement while I was looking for some old photos (#10 year Challenge am I right.) and found an ancient ON TV descrambler. This thing was literally a decade older than me. We had cable TV for as long as I was alive so I'm not sure why he kept it. He literally never threw it out.
I stumbled across a home-built "pirate" ON-TV decoder a few years ago, and took it home. Of course, by then the service was long-gone... and the one thing worth keeping from any setup--the gold-plated antenna--was impossible to find.
Why the antenna, so-much? It got signals for anything over the airwaves in much better than any other design I've seen... even modern "HD" antennas.
pancudowny m
Holy cow. This channel is my jam. After scrolling for an hour, I'm finally home. In "modern times" messages of hate are more effective if not subliminal. Or so they want me to believe. Lol. I loved "they're coming to take me away" as your outro on 1 vid. All notifications please.
Are you conspiranoid or something?
@JSSMVCJR2.1 Honestly, don't know.😀
ON tv Chicago also had Sportsvision there was some dual On / sports vision boxes.
Sportsvision moved to cable later became FSN Chicago that kind of folded into CSN Chicago.
And Now Under The Name NBC Sports Chicago.
The Tele1st concept is interesting. That may well have been the very first "connected" DRM scheme, seeing that the descrambling code in the device could be updated over the air, and that you needed the device to play the video back. Most of the scrambling systems from back in the day were far less sophisticated.
nah, DRM existed in the 70s as well
Even if that decoder box did have some method to detect whether it was seeing a VHS vs live broadcast (say, a signal inserted into VBLANK that the decoder turns itself off if it sees, which is too high a frequency to be recorded to VHS), I bet it would be defeated by a simple low-pass filter circuit between the TV tuner and the decoder.
I doubt it had macrovision on the output either, so then there would be nothing stopping you from recording programs permanently.
There was one later OTA pay service called Preferred it came in the late 90s in Chicago (yeah our favorite "test market") it was supposed to be a "cableless" cable using a super tall antenna to receive the signal/ It was before its time, especially with its video TV "guide" to actually see what on the channel and select it to watch full screen.
My dad got that microwave TV around 1986 for a couple of month after he removed the cable. It had two channels. One was a movie channel. The other aired old movies during the day and hard core porn at night. I still have the tapes he recorded of the porn. After that we put an antenna up and used that till we got cable again in 1993.
*****
It was mostly 70s porn, but it was the real thing with cum and all, not that simulated crap. So I guess so, if you like 70s porn.
"Simulated cum"
*WHAT?*
I bet you remember 1986 nights better than most ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I've had Cable my whole life pretty much. In 1984 and 1985, my Mom then 21 and in the USCG stationed in Cape May,NJ, had Very Early Warner Cable service then called "Time Life Cable", she used a VERY old 1982 Switch CRT display(Built in Channel 5-12) UHF in the back only Knob LG/Goldstar 19 Inch which was so old, it had NO Channel Surf Menu!
It was designed to function exclusively with a Cable Box Receiver, in which my Mom legally used with Time Life Cable. At the time, Time Life had only specific packages of at least 50-100 channels. ALL including FREE HBO.(Which of course was owned by Time Life).
Beginning in the Summer of '85, I was old enough to start watching TV, so My Mom moved the old '19 onto an easy reachable shelf. She would ask me to point to the TV guide numbers of which ones I wanted to watch, so if I wanted to watch say "Kidd Video" Saturday mid Mornings on NBC, I'd say as a toddler with a developing vocab "Kidd Video!".
Pennsylvania was one of the earliest places with cable TV (it goes back to the 1950s!) One of our past governors actually was president of a company that made cable TV equipment 😜. Our family didn't get cable until 1976 (and mainly just to have acess to HBO.) early on cable offered 12 channels and some ot those were just independent New York and Ohio broadcast channels. Still it was more than the 3 channels we got OTA and the picture was good. A lot of places didn't have cable before the 80s, But both HBO and ESPN go back to the 70s. Ironically, Thanks to the innerwebs, I haven't had cable TV in years!😀
I remember staying up late as a kid back in 1983-1984 and seeing those scrambled videos on ABC (WLS Channel 7 here in Chicago). We were way too poor to afford a descrambler or cable until well into the early 1990's.
I just like to say I really love all of these videos because they've answered a lot of questions for me . I'm from Calgary . There wasn't any kind of pay per view available in my city until 1994 , this is back when they had the old descrambler boxes . I always wondered how they worked . Now I know as a kid in the 80s and I would see test patterns and wonder how they worked . I had a TV in my room and sometimes I would watch it night and see station sign offs its fun to watch these videos and listen to Ben talk about technology that may not be in use anymore , but I grew up with and I remember so Ben I think that's how you spell it . I just like to say keep the videos coming and good job
I have fond memories, but somewhat fuzzy memories of OnTV. My uncle had it in Miami back in the early 80's. I remember seeing my first full-length movie, "The Final Countdown" on it and quite possibly "Bambi meets Godzilla," though I may be conflating memories. In any case, I loved this video a lot. It's great to have those fuzzy memories sharpened by just a bit (especially after buying The Final Countdown on DVD!). Thank you!
This is my favourite YT channel ay the moment. Entertaining and informative....
Is it wrong that I actually enjoy Ben's history lessons?
nope, i do too
As an aspie who finds this stuff intriguing, no. actually, HELL NO!
+Phil Mante me too
love it!!
BNSF1995 LOVE them! So interesting!
Good sir you have filled a niche I've been looking for. Love tv and love creepy. Thank you.
Hey man, your history lessons AND funny comments are the reason why I watch/listen to your videos!
My family used to subscribe to Spectrum Pay-TV back in 1983, but only managed to keep it for a year. But in mid-1985, Chicago finally got Cable TV & we gladly signed up for it.
I still remember Group W cable even back in the ON TV days. Some places in Chicago near the suburbs were supposedly able to get it, but there was some skirting of the law I don't know about.
For ON TV porn, you didn't even have to buy a descrambler or even build your own-- you just needed to mess with the RF tuner knob to get a semi-clear picture (mostly in B&W, and with sound off-- but did that matter so much in the porn they had back then?).
My fondest memory of those days was when they simulcast Star Wars (Episode 4) on ON TV and a classical music radio station. Sadly I messed up in the attempt to tape record it off the radio because I thought I could hear my own voice on the test recording (which was of a song by Vangelis!) and couldn't turn off the mic. Turned out there was no mic and I was just really paranoid.
Baccar Wozat They used to do that with Rock Concerts on TV a lot, they simulcast in stereo on FM radio station, before the advent of stereo sound on video.
Baccar Wozat They used to do that with Rock Concerts on TV a lot, they simulcast in stereo on FM radio station, before the advent of stereo sound on video.
Does anyone really watch porn with sound?
One of the Spectrum clips is from my local station WSMW. I first became aware of the existence of these services when uploaded old recordings of a local bowling program would sign off and mention they were turning over to Spectrum. Thanks for the further detail
Loved the video! I had ON-TV in the Chicago suburbs, circa 1981-3. It was on WSNS, Channel 44-- not 66, as you show. I remember 66 had some other service we didn't subscribe to... Spectrum, I think.
i find when im bored i end up here every time (not that you are boring ben) i swear ive seen this video alone 8 times, and some of the others more than that. gotta love yer channel bro. (thats why i offered you that dvr on twitter)
More people need to know about your videos, Keep up the good work my man!
The technical faults effects would actually look really cool for a music video.
I recall when I was young, Insight Communications (late 90s-early 00s'), HBO would be on a station in the 20s numbers in Cincinnati (I lived in Erlanger at the time), but was scrambled. We never had it, and I was always curious about why the hell it came in like that when I'd switch over to Cartoon Network to watch Scooby Doo or some shit like that.
+Nodoka Hanamura (Mahora-27) I got memories of that as well. HBO was on Channel 28 on the old Century Communications (which is now Time Warner Cable). I actually remember the pay-tv free previews that not only aired on that specific channel, but also on the community service channel 10 for those who had just the bare basic cable.
KTMA! Let's watch some Mystery Science Theater!
I remember in South Jersey there was WHT--Wometco Home Theater--Pay TV service like this with the descrambling box. I only ever knew one family who had it, and this was in 1983. Now that I think of it they kinda lived on the outskirts of town. Guess cable TV couldn't reach them back then.
6:33 KTMA was the station where Mystery Science Theater 3000 began.
weird that I'm a fan of Mystery Science Theater and one of my local stations (WUCW) was once in fact THE KTMA that started MST3K. heh
Mrtrainfreak12 Where a legend was born ;)
yup.
I dunno why but I'm proud of that
I would be. The place should be enshrined.
I'm sure one of these days it will. Lol
I really enjoy your stuff. Always very interesting.
Kind of a trip to me... we had full cable in 1975 or so; what became "HBO" was originally "The Gill Channel". The concept of pay broadcast TV never even happened here...
Lmao that Anti-Piracy message sounds like something off V for Vendetta.
I turned on my decoder box and still couldn't watch the episode, I'd like to get a replacement
These Never Get old!
When I was a kid, our city had a pay TV system before cable companies showed up in the early 80's. I remember it being some special box we had to attach to our regular rooftop antenna. Of course, at the time, we only got 13 channels since it was OTA. But we did have HBO, ESPN, and WTBS. And if I remember correctly, the fee was only like $12.99 a month. But you also have to remember, this was around 1978-1981. We got our first cable box and actual coaxial hookup in 1982. I still remember the box - it was a flat, woodgrain box with a giant disc with a knob on top and small gold numbers on it. It only went up to channel 39. But we only got 22 channels. It had a small fine tuning knob off to the side of the channel disc and a giant wire that ran to the little box on the back of the TV.
This guy has the exact perfect attitude to present this cra--- interesting history.
I'm entertained and amused by my hometown's sister city being mentioned in the history de-brief. Nice!
I enjoy your history lessons, quite frankly.
I'm amazed this doesn't have more views. Your videos are really interesting.
I grew up in Queens, NY and we didn't get cable until well into the mid-to-late 80's. I remember that brief period when they were advertising Wometco Home Theater (WHT) which aired on UHF channel 68 - which was a station in the same vein as SelecTV (even going so far as airing the SelecTV schedule towards the end.)
It had a fairly decent run (1977-1986) and when they finally closed up shop, channel 68 became "U68": a dedicated music video station (albeit with less common 80's pseudo-hits.) Too bad U68 was short-lived, as it turned into a Home Shopping Network just eight months later.
+T.V. Games Also home of Uncle Floyd.
+rockvilleraven Pink's dead father's brother?
twcoursolle During Channel 68's TV free portion it was supposed to be a kid's show but had a lot New York area punk bands on. Later it was syndicated and we got in Washington, DC on Channel 4 after Saturday Night Live for about 6 months.
That was absolutely wonderful.
In the NY Tri-State are we had WHT (Wometco Home Theater) For $11/month when they first came out to about $23 by the time it finally faded out, ( clearly remember the TV ads that had nearly the same film clips but the monthly price would climb up every few months.) We had it for a little while and it was cool as an 8 or 9 year old. It was a hassle for the folks as the box was in their room so we had to watch anything there instead of the family room, and since the audio came out of the descrambler box and not the TV, it did not sound that great so within a year, it was gone.
My aunt & uncle had SelecTV years ago, I remember watching it whenever I was there. And you're right, Sacramento did finally get Sacramento Cable (later AT&T Broadband, then Comcast) around '87..
How the fuck do interesting shows like Oddity Archive and Vsauce get less views and subscribes than Pewdiepie and Stampylonghead? They are 2 of the most child-appealing channels on this site. and I can think of much better underrated gamers, for example NintendoCaprisun, chuggaconroy, angryponcho, jontron...
ikr?
+Bill Cipher I may be oversimplifying, but videos produced by loud, obnoxious, extroverted and hyper stimulating hosts turn and energize many viewers. Whereas quiet, intellectual, and introverted created programming will be perceived by a majority of viewers as "boring", and they'll see if Pewdiepie has uploaded any new videos. I guess it come down to whether you enjoy programming with educational content, or are just looking to be "entertained". Perhaps that's why I see later OA videos attempting to "riff" on clips in later episodes. Sadly, these attempts at humor runs in contrast to to tone of the channel, and it can end up being cringe-worthly, much of the time. However, if that commentary was quiet, respectful and didn't feel forced, it would be tremendously more enjoyable.
Well the context you give... How should I put it? Is Obtuse. Of course everyone is not going to like the same thing. .I visited VSauce's channel when you mentioned it and browsed his videos and the topics of the majority videos to me are mind numbingly pointless and boring with the solutions being fairly obvious. I think I have watched him before and hated the video I watched. He is popular however.
I also hate Pewdiepie, but the reason he's successful is he caters the lowest common denominator of comedy and that's idiocy (or stupidity). Everyone likes laughing at stupidity because it makes us feel superior. Then there's the way does it which is kind of like (and I can't quite nail down the description) of cute court jester who's also your mom. Yeah it's a weird description I know, but it works because of how it just gets in touch with a basic level of human psychology. However, I hate that the most about him though. Plus, he flatout disrespected a game developer of game he covered by flipping him off (That's another story...).
As for Stampy.... Well he covers Minecraft (One of the most popular games of all time) and as you said he appeals to children. It's a no brainer and I hardly doubt anyone above preteen years will watch him unless they are a huge Minecraft fan. I can see the appeal, but will not watch his videos because I have vowed to stay away from Minecraft. It's one of those games that I am afraid will consume me because of my OCD (actual diagnoses).
Then finally we have OA. Honestly I think the reason that he doesn't have a big following is that no one expects a channel like his to exist. I didn't know about him until someone mentioned him on LGR (another great channel with a subscriber count below 250k), but when I found him, "I'm like this guy and his topics are so cool!" I always wondered if a channel like OA existed and was very happy when I found out about him. Plus he's rather a niche channel, but I believe a lot people when they find him stick with him.
I remember WSNS channel 44 in Chicago carried ON TV. WPWR, channel 60 out of Aurora, carried the sports Network for ON TV, called sportsvision.
I had no clue the Sacramento area took so long to get caught up. Thanks for the history lesson., seriously.
I think in the late 80s / early 90s the BBC tried something similar to this. It was their way of having training and educational videos spread across the land while they charged a fee to watch/record it during the night.
I appreciate the history lesson. I was not aware of this
That mount prospect office was right near the cablenet headend that had an dual 60 channel A / B system (now comcast)
+Oddity Archive; though I'm a long and faithful viewer (I sometimes even watch episodes twice), I must point out one gaffe.
Right here (2:59) you pronounce the name off the town where HBO could be watched as 'WilksvBare', where in fact, it's actually pronounced, 'Wilks Berry' (NO, I'm NOT from there, nor doi even recall ever being there, but I did go to camp nearby, and I DO remember my counselors as saying they were going to 'Wilks Berry' on their day off.
I'm sure you've heard it many times before, so I won't waste space and tell you how much I enjoy OA (other than that brief snippet 😉). Thanks for sharing. It's always a pleasure to watch. A fan.
Yeah, in 1982 when my dad got a new job in the southwestern part of the U.S., the city we moved to didn't have cable TV - don't know what the hold up was, but somehow through where he worked, he was able to get his hands on a descrambled box for a Pay TV company called VEU. Not too long after that, we got OnTV as well and that was unscrambled. And yes, the programming after 11pm was quite the eye opener.
In the1980's I had one of those little portable Black and white 3 inch TV,s with the radio style tuner I could partially descramble those cable pay TV movie , music, and sport channels located between channel 6 and 7 the picture quality was kinda poor but it did work.
Any chance of covering the BBC Select service or the scrambled Canal+ service in Spain in the future?
RaVen11 z
You just earned yourself a subscription.
Is it bad that I cheered at the mention of the history lesson?
My grandparents had ON TV in Los Angeles when I was a kid. Whenever we visited them we would watch The Little Rascals and The Addams Family on channel 52 (KBSC, now Telemundo station KVEA) before the signal scrambled to ON TV at 7pm in the evening. We watched L.A. Dodgers games, Star Wars (A New Hope), Disney films and of course recent theatrical releases.
This UHF over the air style of pay TV was used in other places, like Latin America. It lasted well into the 1990s untill satellite direct to home TV killed it.
For a few years before cable tv rolled into my neighborhood, we subscribed to Star TV. A kid down the road had Preview, which had all the "boobie" movies :V
I remember living in Salt Lake City Utah, they came out with a goofy thing called Channel 1. It was a single channel, that you needed a special antenna to receive. You had to live line of sight of the broadcast antenna, or you were SOL...
This was back in the mid 80s. I don't think it lasted all that long...
Preview was my boot camp intro to movies. It came on nights, and weekends. I was 10, or 11. I would see Harold and Maude, Being There, Meatballs, The Elephant Man, Arthur, and so many more. Oh Yeah, Dressed to Kill was my Sex Ed!
More like TeleWorst, AMIRIGHT??
YA
Riff Chick gg
TeleSuck!!!!
Don't you mean Telesucc.
Yup. Telesucc.
I remember WCQR Channel 50 in DC and WNUV 54 in Baltimore were part of Super TV. 54 simulcast FNN and had a classic TV show before switching over as well as a Pet of the Day, during the free hours in DC there was a camera on the roof with the weather conditions. In 1986 cable killed that venture, WCQR became WFTY briefly had FNN and movies before becoming an independent station, WNUV followed into independence a couple of months later.
SelecTV lasted in Milwaukee until 1987 on WCGV 24. Most of Milwaukee could get cable by then, but not all of it.
Ben, you're not half as boring as you pretend to be, mate. Maybe just a tenth!? I for one love exposition backstories and history lessons. It's why I'm watching in the first place, damn it! Tough love, homie. Keep it gangsta in Beautiful Downtown Aurora!
I'm rewatching this, It's 2020, and looks like with ATSC 3.0 we might be going back to OTA pay TV options. 🤦
Hearing about that makes me glad I don't watch television anymore.
"Willkommen bei Arte"? Wow, never thought I would see this TV station referenced.
When I was a kid in New Jersey my parents had “Wometco Home Theatre.” It was broadcast in the evenings over channel 68, which was also the home of the Uncle Floyd Show. But at night it would show the scrambled signal and subscribers could see - ooh la la! - the finest in R-rated entertainment. Sometimes even without the scramble box, you could still see some stuff, perhaps even a boob if you were lucky!
Great work!! I can't believe Chicago didn't have cable until 1985.
Yup. Something about trying to avoid a monopoly. Eventually they carved the city out into 5 different cable providers.
Then years later, they would have Commie-cast all over Chicagoland.
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Wometco Home Theater (WHT). I remember trying to watch the scrambled signal to no avail, but at least I had The Uncle Floyd Show and U68.
This was interesting! I have no idea what most of that stuff was. Being born in 1986, but found this most informative! :-P
Christina Phillips TeleFirst only lasted a month or two, and it only was in one city: Chicago.
I recall ON being offered in our area, but only one kid in my class had it. I was wondering why we didn't have it, but we had full balls cable, so why the fuck did we need it? lol
I didn't realize that some markets took so long to get cable. I lived outside of St. Louis, and our family got cable around '81.
I can still say that XFINITY is so much better than Pay TV
At least until you get the bill. 💸
It was mentioned that these scrambled channels were on high numbered stations. were there issues with reception? since: as I get the vhf uhf system; higher numbers were less powerful. would they be careful to only sell service to addresses well close enough to the transmitter? , or, did they sell people snowy porn?; further adding to their unpopularity.
Cable & Satellite TV are no longer the sole options for additional TV programming now that AT&T U-Verse (as well as similar services) are available in Chicago.
Redifusion in U.K. had pay tv in 60’s and before!
I was a bit lit and made it through just fine.
Wasn't one of the draws to early cable & pay for TV, less commercials?
WKID has been a Telemundo affiliated WSCV 51 since 1985
Dang it, forgot that cipher II decoder box!
6:30 yay! KTMA! The home of my favorite show MST3K!...my proud heritage of being a Minnesotan. Cool review BTW :)
I remember when I was 13 yrs old and ONTV and VUE were in our area in Ft. Worth. They would play Grover Washington Jr's Winelight album over the scrambled imagines. Didn't know it Grover Washington at the time I just knew I really enjoyed the music. Random. It was also my first foray into what I later found out was pornography. You knew what they were doing even through the scramble. I swear my addition to porn began with that scramble. Lol Memories
I'm so glad to see that I wasn't the only one... LOL!!!
I remember when they were talking about actual cable TV it would offer being commercial free and only pay for the channels you wanted.
Could Preview, Spectrum, or On TV have survived if they were able to make deal with cable TV systems to offer their channels to those systems?
10:57 Music is Keith Mansfield's "Cyclotron"
Could you maybe do a video on the VideoCipher system someday Ben?
Hey, Sacramento! I live there!
Channel 100 premiered on several cable systems on California in 72 but has limited programing.
Ben earns his views