Anyone remember this?

[iafirebuff]

I was a teenager in the mid 80's and I bought OnSat, Orbit, etc and I didn't even have a satellite dish. I was just intriqued by all the channels out there. I guess that makes me a nerd

 

[Davage]

If you guys want to re-live your C-Band memories, I'd like to suggest that you get a copy of the book "Television's Pirates" by Bob Cooper. Yes that is "THE" Bob Cooper who was the first individual to build his own home satellite system, and the guy who was on Boresight years ago. Bob explains how the first video pirates were the cable companies (called Community Antenna Television Association back then), and how they brought in distant signals for their subscribers. Don't be fooled by the name of the book, it isn't a how-to-steal tv book by any means, it just explains how the whole cable and satellite industry came into being. The book goes to an extreme detail and Bob very accurately describes the different events and how they took place. Truly fascinating reading. Iafirebuff, if you read Satellite Magazines and didn't have a dish, I think you would really enjoy this book. It is over 900 pages thick, small font and no pictures. I have already spent roughly 8 to 10 hours reading this book, and am only on page 630something.

For those of you who are going to be fortunate enough to go to the Satellite and Broadband Expo in Atlanta, you will have the opportunity to meet Bob there. I unfortunately won't be attending Atlanta, but I will be meeting "Coop" when he goes to Dayton Ohio for the Ham Radio Festival there..

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Bob will actually have a new book at the Expo called C Band Remembered.

I can't wait to get my hands on it.

 

[avediswolf]

I was exactly the same!

Then the folks finally decided 1 channel was not enough, and called to have a dish installed.

I was so heartbroken when they were told most of the satellites were blocked by the mountain behind the house.

I was a teenager in the mid 80's and I bought OnSat, Orbit, etc and I didn't even have a satellite dish. I was just intriqued by all the channels out there. I guess that makes me a nerd

 

[Davage]

Bob will actually have a new book at the Expo called C Band Remembered.

I can't wait to get my hands on it.

That's another book I'd like to read. This upcoming Saturday I'm flying to the West Coast, and I'll be on a plane for probably 7 hours. I'm going to be reading Coop's "Television's Pirates" book the whole time, and if I happen to finish the book this trip, I'll probably just start over at Page 1 again and read it for a 2nd time. I'll have to look into C Band Remembered.

I would love to get my hands on some Coops Satellite Digest from the 80's to read.

The C-Band days always seem to be referred to the 'Good Old Days'. I remember being able to visually tell what type of encryption was being used, B-MAC, Oak-Orion, Leitch, VC2 and trying to guess what was actually being broadcast through the squiggly lines. I remember when ABC/NBC/CBS scrambled their network feeds. (Those weren't "Good" old days), I remember baseball scrambling their backhauls. I remember when the Disney channel was in-the-clear.

I must admit, satellite is still a fun hobby. Watching the stuff on Galaxy25 Ku (Formerly T5) is a lot of fun, ONN on SBS6 is neat to see, backhaul feeds are fun to find. Someday we'll be going "Do you Remember?" about the stuff we do today..