20 Years Ago Today!!!

[Carroll A]

Hey guys I thought I would go back in the time machine and bring up what was at the time a very hot button issue with BUD owners at that time... It was on this date in 1986 that HBO and Cinemax went full time with VCII scrambling... I remember Keith lamonica and Chuck Dawson having the phone lines pretty much wiped out on that day... Once HBO was gone at that time you had Showtime/TMC and SelecTV who were the three movie channels that were left for free then there was The Movie Network out of Canada that became free for awhile on the Anik satellites... Back then there was just an E/W feed of HBO and Cinemax and I remember the price being $19.95 a month for those two channels... Hard to believe but it really has been that long... CC

 

[truckracer]

20 years

twenty years ago i was just 13 years old, i do remember a few friends that had those "big awesome dishes" that you could pick up everything on. I used to wish that our family would get one, instead we had cable tv that consisted of 30 channels including one hbo feed, and the reception was lousy. I remeber one of my good friends had one of those big floor model zenith 25 inch or so tv's that was connected to the big dish. The picture was soooo great!

I guess even though scrambling came along, you still can't beat the price and pic quality of the big dish. I love mine, couldn't imagine not having one. Still lots of cool stuff out there free.

19.99 was a little expensive for just 2 feeds each of cinemax and hbo. WoW!

Back then 20.00 dollars was a bit more money that today. I think the minimum wage rate back then was less that 3.00 per hour.

 

[dfergie]

Don't forget the movie channel Spotlight...

 

[Stargazer]

They dont even charge that much today for HBO and Showtime together and you get more channels. It's only $18 for the two packages and you get what about 13 channels? Or did they raise the price of that too?

 

[Kb Cool]

They dont even charge that much today for HBO and Showtime together and you get more channels. It's only $18 for the two packages and you get what about 13 channels? Or did they raise the price of that too?

<<It's only $18 for the two packages and you get what about 13 channels?>>

See this link for number of movie channels:http://broadband.motorola.com/4DTV/4DTVChannelUpdates_111405.htm I have not counted all the HBO's and Showtime's but I can guarantee you there is way more than 13 channels when you sub to both Hbo and Showtime on c-band

 

[Diamond Jim]

Remember it like it was yesterday. Had the BUD for 3 years by then and man that was a hard pill to swallow because you knew that the domino effect was coming. It didn't take long.

 

[Jacksr53]

I remember the NFL, all I could watch for free. And those crazy guys that were selling IRD's and other sat stuff. They were always selling a cooler LNB. Then one day they were gone, about the time Directv came on the seen.
Jack

 

[dfergie]

I had the Sunday ticket before you had to buy no commercials... then bought it before it migrated to D*...

 

[tdti1]

Yup the good old days, they will be missed but I still get enough to watch free off my big dish

 

[dfergie]

I liked the NFL when you had the raw feed with no commercials and could listen to the broadcast team during commercials... (before they started blacking them out) I still have on VHS the Challenger disaster from Nasa Select... ( the day it happened)

 

[jayelem]

1986 I remember one Monday night Football game that had an interview with Walter Payton at half time, changing channels I found the raw feed for the interview.

You could tell right away when the lights on payton were turned off , they were just waiting , real casual, Payton's son was running around the sofa.

I got a kick out of it, put a tape in the VCR and started recording, next day told some friends at school about it and they wanted to borrow the tape, one boy who saw the feed didn't understand the concept of C-band Dish and said that it should be illegal, pointing a dish at a house to see what they are doing inside, he must have thought it was some kind of X-RAY device, that was so funny.......
I think he was a little paranoid until I explained the setup.

 

[bnaivar]

So when is the 20th anniversary of Captain Midnight?

 

[Lynskyn]

So when is the 20th anniversary of Captain Midnight?

April 26.

 

[PATONENOW]

I especially liked the raw news feeds that wern't censored like now. And the cnn team hiding under the bed when BAGDAD was invaded and trying to contact cnn for half an hour to let them know the war had started. AND do you remember the guy who blanked out the hbo satellite when hbo first scrambled?