Oddity Archive: Episode 250.5 - Ben’s Junk - Telemeter Pay TV Box (Circa 1960)
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- Опубліковано 16 лис 2022
- It’s (apparently) a fine line between your TV and a taxi meter…
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I can't unthink the meaning of "Ben's Junk" now. 😆
Aww man come on
I was thinking that by now it wouldn't be much more than a glorified piggy bank, then you started talking about the coin slot. One reason you were having trouble putting the coin in might be that it's calibrated for Canadian quarters, which have a slightly different size and weight than American quarters. But it's probably more likely that the spring is just shot. In any case, it's good to have a video of this piece of obsolete gear out there.
The quarter was just what I had handy at the moment of shooting the video. No coins go down easily.
Love this piece, Ben! This kind of early broadcasting gizmo always fascinates me - it's pretty amazing how the telecommunicatons industry has grown and evolved from just 70 years ago - I remember the huge console color sets that had just dials on it, and only three or four channels available to watch...now, it seems the sky's the limit on things.Always fascinating, keep up the great work! - TC
That's true!
The "black" part is the "getter" it pulls impurities out of the tube. Those tubes are just fine. The "Black Beauty" is not a cap but a resistor that there is nothing wrong with.
nope, that is indeed a capacitor-not every component with color bands is a resistor.
@@m.k.8158 I will have to go back and look at that again. I am a broadcast engineer and have never seen a cap with bands on it. I have seen Mica's witrh the dots but nothing like that before.
@@Boleo806 I don't think that those caps were used in professional equipment much-but consumer electronics used them, as did things like guitar amps
The input jack is one of the less-common pin plugs for VHF-UHF applications. Radio Shack used them on some of their scanner radios. Otherwise, a ham radio operator from the era or a smart TV repairman could reverse-engineer the circuit, it looks moderately complicated.
I looks like a jack for "Motorola" plug. They were common in car radios (and yes early scanners).
@@jamesslick4790 Realistic/Radio Shack was using them on certain scanners as late as 1986, as on the PRO-2021 200 channel VHF-UHF rig.
@@MrJohndoakes Perhaps even LATER than '86 Also "Bearcat" (later Uniden) also used it...A LOT! Fun Fact: I worked at RS in the 1980s. Sold a LOT of Motorola to BNC adapters!
It looks exactly like the AM/FM antenna plug in older car radios
@@rwdplz1 That seems to be the consensus. This was (is?) known as a "Motorola" jack. Motorola basically invented the car radio, and they also invented this jack/plug and it was used in about every car radio for decades.
I wish I knew what my dad’s ON-TV box would have looked like. He lived in the Detroit area, where the service was operated by Chartwell, and my understanding is that they used descrambler boxes produced by Blonder Tongue.
Can't even have ON-TV in detroit 😡
The Canadian telemeter service was cable based (even for the video) too, apparently using telephone circuits leased from Bell Canada according to Toronto Star articles from the time (no idea how this actually worked). Keep in mind there was only one TV station in Toronto in 1959 and it was owned by the Canadian government (and wouldn't carry someone else's pay programming), so the video would have to be delivered by cable somehow too.
And this video makes me think Famous Players ended up shipping all the boxes back to the US after the service closed, and some of them ended up at surplus stores or electronic junk shops.
The "input" jack looks to be for a "Motorola" plug once common on car radios. (it would SOMETIMES be used on OTHER kinds of radios HF/VHF/UHF. It is coaxial, adaptors for other coax plugs were once just a trip to Radio Shack away.
Correct...I used to install radios waay back when
It might be interesting to pull out the chassis and trace out the schematic. This might tell us something about how telemeter PPV worked or how the encrypted signal was encoded . I wondered if it inverted a signal, or put some information on a subcarrier, etc. I would think that is far less sophisticated than the 1980s and 1990s cable systems.
Wow, this is neat. The coin slot is probably locked out because the coin box isn't installed. It's interesting that they were able to dynamically price the programs. It looks like you'd select a program, the price reel would click around to show the price, you'd insert coins to add credits, and click the "buy" button.
That input connector looks like what used to be called a Motorola connector-most commonly used for car radio antenna connectors, but some other devices used them as well.
That "BLACK" on the tubes is probably not black, but mostly silvery, perhaps with a bit of brown on the edges-this is a chemical deposit intentionally placed within the tube-it's called a "getter", and is used to absorb traces of gas within the tube.
Most likely, those tubes are ok.
And, yes that component that you labeled a black beauty capacitor is indeed a capacitor-it uses 2 foil plates with a layer of paper in between them, rolled up, but unlike the more common paper capacitor, instead of it being installed into a cardboard tube and wax dipped, it's encased in plastic.
This would seem to be more reliable, but they still fail over time.
I don't remember the exact episode name/season/number, but the Nickelodeon show "You Can't Do That on Television" that ran from the very late 70's(when it was local to Canada only for the first season in 79) through the early 90's which was filmed in Canada made a joke about these boxes, and pay TV in general with the kid begging his dad for change to watch TV, and I never realized this was actually thing that existed outside some shady motels for the adult channels. 😅
I saw a movie about the ‘60s where they mentioned pay TV, and asked my father what it was. He told me about a coin-operated box, and I thought he was exaggerating.
There were a lot of places that had coin operated TVs that weren't Pay-TV. Common in cheap hotels, bus stations and airport waiting areas.
@@PeterBellefleur True,i did remember operating one little black tv set that was bolted on the waiting passenger seat at the bus station at the port authority in times square in August of 1985.
I bet the Pavek Museum in Minneapolis would be interested in this! They have some really obscure audio and television stuff.
You asked about a museum wanting one... I wonder about the MZTV Museum of Television in Toronto. I suspect they might already have one being only 9 kms from the heart of Etobicoke. Still hoping to get to see it, they have very limited hours. Thanks!
This seems like a good candidate for This Museum Is Not Obsolete's channel. Very cool video, Ben!
..I grew up in Etobicoke, and recall seeing these things in friends home, back in the 60s...
The input jack looks like a Motorola jack, the kind used on car radios for the antenna. And that "25¢" written on the back of the chassis -- was that the price per view?
Average price was about $1.25 per program.
10:20 Oh my God - I thought it was just a converter box. That is hysterical!
I'm sure Shango could take this beast to flavor country
Honestly I did not expect this to be a Bens Junk, since they are so rare. I do wonder if any other models have been identified?
Id bet someone with a good SDR (like a HackRF one), could re-create the signals it expects. now that doesnt mean you could actually use it, but its certainly possible.
7:15 "...directly piped into your box.." Is the kind of line that used to get men in trouble 40 years ago....Yes, I'm talking about "hacking" Cable TV!..Get yer mind out of the gutter. 🤣
Despite the Movie studios initial hesitance towards Television as it was eating into their box office, Paramount seemed to be one of the exceptions, as they tapped into TV fairly early on. Not only with their Telemeter service from 1953-65, but they also owned 2 TV stations as early as 1947 (KTLA and WBKB).
So glad you showed it though it can’t be tested. Keeps these items alive!
This is a great throwback here.
Never thought I would see something lkke tgis. You are right,it needs to be in a museum. The tubes do look shot abd I would be worried to just plug it up. Ben, if anything else, another oddity to add to the background decor.
Actually the tubes look fine. It's IS a 60+ year old device, I'd be more worried about dried out capacitors than the tubes. I have tubes from the 1930s that STILL function!
@@jamesslick4790 thanks for the info.
@@michaelcarpenter2498 No prob! 👍😊👍
The video was great, until the photo gallery came up. It then became a historic masterpiece.
I didn't even know these things existed! Thank you so much!
That's some piece of PPV ephemera you got there, Benny. 👌
It looks like a table radio from that time.
I have to wonder. If the thing was coin operated, basically meaning you had the money you spent in a box right in front of you until the Pay Box Collector, what did the company think was keeping anyone from just opening up the box themselves and taking the money back out? I'm sure there was some sort of tell or some sort of anti-theft device that prevented that, but I just wonder what it was.
Hence the paper printer to check against the amount of money in the box.
I remember bars in Philly having a set up like this. Thay called in New York sports. They always had championship boxing.
The jack behind the box looks like a Motorola female, the type on car antennas.
Happy Oddity Thursday!
That "Input" on the very far side looks like the standard car radio antenna socket. Perhaps Telemeter worked by having information that only the "box" used come over a certain radio frequency?
It wouldn't have to be using over the air radio, as someone else said it's basically just a different type of coaxial input so it could have just simply been a direct feed.
This is amazing thank you oddityarchive,pay tv long before it became a offensive and trashy tv that it became pay television.
There's also the Museum of Radio and Technology in Huntington, WV
Thank you Ben for another good informative video.
Shango and Radiotvphononut made the big leagues with your shoutout.
Shango's far bigger than I am.
Multiplexing in the extreme, would be antenna TV now.
Where can I find a link to the ending credits song?
ua-cam.com/video/xamAdYGGB-0/v-deo.html or benminnotte.bandcamp.com/track/weather-station
The black is probably supposed to be there.
To agree with you I thought white was bad.. isn't the black just the getter compound?
@@jvanb231 Most getters were silver, I thought.
@@5roundsrapid263 Technically I think that is right. If you look at wikipedia article for Non-evaporable_getter there are many shades in that sample, some of which I would be forgiven for calling black :) I also think the material darkens over time as it does its job. I guess my main point was about it not being white -- which indicates a loss of vacuum.
Blackening of the silver getter indicates high hours. Turning brown (rectifiers and power tubes) indicates running hot and high hours. Shrinkage of the getter indicates gas. Whiteness indicates total loss of vacuum.
He discussed one of these in an older episode
I know that this might not qualify, but would you ever consider covering the very British Archivism of Schools TV?
I really would love to se an Oddity Archive for Schools and Colleges, though you might need to get a bunch of mouldy PAL tapes from a British school.
Complete with Bart soundtrack by Ruby.
Personally I think that might be better for a British youtuber to cover, as they would have a better understanding of it.
@@kandigloss6438 "Personally I think that might be better for a British youtuber to cover, as they would have a better understanding of it."
Applemask's ITV In The Face: For Schools and Colleges?
@@kandigloss6438 "Personally I think that might be better for a British youtuber to cover, as they would have a better understanding of it."
That comment reminds me of a conversation in the comment section of Jason Scott's BBS Documentary series.
Someone asked him to do a similar series on the Demoscene and Jason Scott came back saying that the Demoscene _really_ don't like it when Americans talk about their scene as it was always a strictly European thing. Also, there are European produced videos covering the Demoscene. The first one I can think of is Ahoy's video on trackers and mods (mods of the sort you'd find on Pouet - tracker modules which are like MIDI files with an included sound font in the form of samples - not the sort you'd use to mod a game)
The video's called Trackers: The Sound of 16 bit.
I, on the other hand, am British, I've seen his episode on the mo(u)ldy PAL tapes so he gets the Oddity Archive for Schools and Colleges pass from me.
Next holy grail, a Tele1st box.
20:01 Need input!
you need to reach our to Mr. Carlson's Lab on youtube
Artifacts❤❤❤
Where were these units made, Ben? Does it say anywhere?
Both the Palm Springs and Canadian boxes were made in Los Angeles.
Didn’t that box say “Lima, OH?” That’s right around here. Used to be a big manufacturing town. To a lesser degree, still is. About an hour from Dayton and Ft. Wayne. Curious why it came from there originally.
@@elieharriett9078I bought one of these years ago from Fair Radio Sales Co. Lima, Ohio. Unfortunately this year they are going out of business forever. Auction this month or next.
Great piece. The only thing is you should've picked a different color for your captions. White barely showed over the device or your hands.
It was the least worst option-black vanished completely and (as seen) some of the annotations were too long to fit on the bottom of the shot.
@@OddityArchive right, but why not, say, red? I've seen you use that color in the past.
Red wasn't really any better (for obvious reasons, yellow was out of the question). Like I said, white was the least worst option. For what it's worth, I found the white legible with the video running in full HD.
I can imagine one of those sitting atop a mid-century walnut TV cabinet in one of those gorgeous Palm Springs MCM homes way back in the day.
I insist on pronouncing it "tell-LEM-uh-ter", not "TELL-uh-MEE-ter".
On today's episode of Ben's Junk: Ben's knob is stiff.
But seriously, thanks for ensuring this didn't end up in a landfill. Too much stuff like this does, because too few people know or care to make the effort to figure out what it is, much less preserve it.
Also, I'm imagining you as a museum tour guide, doing tours wearing a Bob Dylan-esque harmonica neck bracket (don't know what the correct term is) with a cardboard box perched on it....