I miss the old days!

[JFOK]

Got my first C-Band dish in 1991.
The one thing I remember most about my early days with my BUD were the wild feeds.
* Watching WSVN cover Hurricane Andrew from my home in Connecticut. I felt as if I were a Florida resident as I watched Andrew's coverage until WSVN went off the air. After that, all that they were broadcasting was the station's slide which occasionally became snowy as the storm's winds shook their dish.
* Seeing the wild feed from David Koresh's compound in Waco, Texas as a tank first rammed the building, then watching the building catch fire and hearing the camera man yell to someone "call New York, call New York."
* Watching news anchors and reporters prepare for their remote broadcasts...some interesting things were said and done prior to airtime.
* Seeing the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson commercial free in the late afternoon as the feed was sent to New York.
* Watching wild feeds of popular TV shows commercial free, days before they aired on the network.

Although I still enjoy C and Ku band, the I miss the early days where so much was free.

 

[richyrich]

Yes, my first was a family in 1976-9 whom said it was all free and clearest ever seen. There were new channels and old European feeds from A to Z and young companies hbo and showtime. Either my eyeballs are wearing out; or tv was better (satellite direct) than it is today. No compression; translation even; or corruption film original; high value; with commercial; can you believe it? Like hard wire to infinity; film quality tv theatre that is; and used dials and dials at 70 MHz!!!!!!!!!

en i took on a job working in the satellite tv industry in sales and marketing of consumer market (phone soliciting for site survey then to installer for company); and on and on and on; so on was open key using videocipher to 2 later and GI songs and dancers and movie stars and then scifi channel vs. pbs and changed to digital in 1992; Now, with the ease of install (static single non-moving dish); i liken digital to Starz the new encore time zone when installers became dime a dozen as to why they work for the 18 dollars an is hour; and any 5 year old could be taught to make one work! Directv then dish sprouted! Now we have conglomerates gobbling the small ones (aol time warner to now) has already left; and nhk wanted so many; and the fcc during this time agreed with so much bandwidth still stood the big dish sales went to 10-20 k or better mo. To 100k Net was 19.9 modem (fast) And pie in the sky beta started sold for 1500 cash sales 1000 minus install net! !!!!!!!!!!!! with guide beta test!!!!!!!!!; and big dish already had digital audio (clear) n superguide auto record!!!!!!!!!!!$$$! Then dsr 920 guide pay fer channel hits etc and digital tv changed them from a to z; they had followed both dbs carriers (their last model dsr922 and mmap hd basically ended consumer big dish sales from themselves in the US and sold such to only Cable commercial only and then the dbs carriers paid their dealers only an extra 100 to destroy Moto and big dish accounts as they gave it all away for 2 year leasing contracts; my desire ended about 98 (when i realized the fix was in on directv for 0 mo. only 6 mo after it was from beta and i had not even noticed it which lasted till 99 2 k and then fixed dish for 0 month for the next 10 and even today they get em!!!!!!!'nnnnnot from me no no no)))))))))) to stay with dbs only; pay scale was 1/10 go figure; as cable dualed by going bandwidth too!!!!!!
digital complete digital tv. Replay tv then tivo then both dbs dvr/pvr and the first Christian tv only had never been packages and then to hd (61.5W points from west coast for dish and nfl on directv hit) And Alphastar gone as is primestar. And now only 3 remain to sell pay tv; not many!!!! Yes it looks like time has stood still since then. Now they have had to reinvent the hdtv how many times? Today is what happens when too few real crime lords are caught (99 percent of all stolen cars/items/ non-booked unreturned and 85 percent violent crime unsolved rate) while the jail ids overcrowded and making so much money!!!!!!!!!!!
Then :: even a Basic company sold really great pics; high value system (10k then below 4k) was alot of money and worth every penny War went live on free tv; when was that around and in 1994; says OMG no war free tv by first oncer Bush control button end bout end first Sadam War/walk/stroll
now :: only easy button sized double? pay companies; part time effort; bi laden in 10 years; easy or sneaky; no cost no value in "hd" with

I would not even tell let alone teach these values that are being taught to your children as good or true to any human species; let alone when ww2 was; nor tell anybody that you really get what you pay for now, don't u??


yes, those were the days!

 

[TVHabit]

I was around in the early 80's when everything wasn't scrambled with an 8 1/2' Pico dish and echostar receiver. It was great but when General Instruments and videocipher came along, I remember a feed from some guy that filmed a receiver in a urinal and tagged it, "Piss on GI"! Anyone remember that?

 

[anik]

When I was a child we had a 10 foot mesh dish, back in the late 80's when everyone did. I looked at the guy named gary burgoris website and he had a wild feed list and ballgame list! Man, I wish all these were still ITC today! I liked analog better because you dont have to wait! I know there are more channels nowdays, however, I bet the feeds arent as good! Do any of you guys feel that way?

Yes. With the exception that at least there are some high definition feeds today, and everything is digital so no more "sparklies". And many receivers have a PVR function, which is nice. On the other hand, back then everything seemed to just work as long as you aimed the dish correctly, while nowadays it seems like it is like pulling teeth to get anything to work the way you want to to. Say what you want about analog, it was a lot simpler to install and to distribute throughout your home.

I really miss Gary. I never had the opportunity to meet him but I started listening to him on a shortwave radio program called "Signals" and then later on "Friday Night Live", which was on an audio subcarrier of one of the satellites, and toward the end he started doing a live stream on the Internet. The thing I liked about him was he was very direct and said exactly what he thought. If he didn't like what some company was doing he would tell his entire audience, and they couldn't shut him up because he had the microphone. I doubt anyone has that freedom today. Another thing I recall was Captain Herm and "Captain's Question Time", where you could learn some interesting oddball stuff you never knew, back in the days just before you could type something into a search engine. At some point Captain Herm just stopped appearing on the program and I always wondered why, but as I remember his absence was pretty much unacknowledged as far as the FNL audience was concerned.

Mike Kohl from Global Communications used to appear on FNL a lot too, and he was much more interesting on that program than he is today on that awful podcast he's appearing on now. I say "awful" not so much because of the content, but because the guy who runs that show just doesn't know how to banter with guests, and his volume level is far too high and overmodulated, or at least it was the last time I tried to listen a few months ago. Gary was an old radio guy and he knew how to run a board and keep proper levels, and he seemed to have a lot more rapport with his guests.

I honestly don't think Gary would have liked what the satellite hobby has become today. He was just too much of a free spirit and, especially if he no longer had his weekly program, would have felt frustrated at every turn. He was an analog guy through and through and although the early digital receivers came out just a bit prior to the time of his passing, I think it might have been a struggle for him to fully understand all the new digital stuff, and he would have been frustrated by its limitations. Sadly for the rest of us, he probably checked out at exactly the right time. I hope he finds much happiness in his next life.

Where we have come since then feels like a double edged sword - the picture and audio quality is so much better today, once you get it tuned in, but sometimes it's so frustrating to try to get anything to work the way you want it to that it sucks all the fun right out of it. But that is just my opinion.

 

[jsb1980]

We got our first satellite setup, a Birdview dish with separate receiver/positioner in 85, the summer before HBO began VCII encryption. It was purchased because we had moved to the country from the city, and my dad got irritated with spending a lot of money on weekly VHS rentals. (The pre-Blockbuster days when it cost you a few dollars for a VHS or Beta rental for one night or a 48 hour rental if you rented on Saturday evenings.)

Our main fun times came when my mother would position the dish to Telstar 301, Transponder 9 on Friday nights to let us the old WOLD Communications transponder to watch the feed for the original Thundercats to stations when Lorimar-Telepictures used WOLD to feed their shows before they got their own transponder in the late 80s. She'd let us stay up after that to watch Silverhawks when that was on, followed by Wheel of Fortune feeds and anything else that would come down the line. On Saturdays, she'd reposition it back on T301 and let us watch WOLD's block feeds for Heathcliff and Inspector Gadget for LBS all Saturday afternoons after the morning cartoons would end. WOLD seemed to pretty much feed everything out for all the syndicators back in the day over two little T301 transponders (9 and 23), and if I recall correctly they had a Westar 4 transponder too.

The Birdview was joined in the summer of 86 by a VCII descrambler because my dad wanted HBO. In 87, the original Birdview units were replaced by a single Birdview receiver, and that conked out after a year and the whole system was replaced by a Houston Tracker V. The Tracker lasted for the remainder of the C-Band days until it was hit by lightning and replaced by a Dish Network system that survives to this day. As I got older, I used to spend Friday nights and an occasional Saturday night in their bedroom while my dad was working just channel surfing...watching everything like an RTP newsfeed from the Azores on Friday nights on Westar 4/Galaxy 6/Galaxy 4, the PBS feeds on W4 and later Spacenet 1 and Spacenet 4. My mother would freak out if we left it on Spacenet 1 (the former home of American Exxatsy before GTE shut it off in 90) or Satcom F4, 24 (where Playboy was for years.) And he kept the old VCII module in there for years....until he was finally forced to upgrade it to a VC-RS module. The Birdview dish remained unused in the backyard until it was finally taken down and hauled off about six years ago. I tried to get my dad to have it entirely rebuilt and reset and to get a 4DTV system but he was convinced that C-Band was worthless. And I also tried to talk him into selling the dish itself, but he was convinced that it was worthless junk and he had it hauled off for scrap :-(

 

[jsb1980]

Great stories from some C-Band old-timers...keep them coming please!!!

Since I was too young too dabble in this technology in the 1980s, could some of you old-timers enlighten us some more? I have a few questions:

1. Specifically, what premium channels were available in the early 1980s? How many?
2. Were adult channels actually broadcast in the clear? Wasn't that illegal?
3. What was the video quality like? Were the analog broadcasts "noisy" or crystal clear? I know there was no HD back then, but how did the image quality compare with say MPEG-2 SD today?
4. How many C-band dishes do you think were sold in the 1980s? Who were the big players in this business? I have heard Dish CEO Charlie Ergen was the biggest - is this true or urban myth?
5. When was encryption introduced? Was is hacked and how successful was the hack? Did C-band completely die after encryption?

Finally, just a hypothetical question, what if ALL C-band premium channels were opened up today, either by government legislation opposing cable/small dish monopolies or by a hack, do you think C-band would take off again? Would people be sufficiently motivated to install BUDs again?

I was only a boy in the early 1980s when I started to see these black mesh dishes going up all over the place...I had no clue what they were for, in fact, I always thought budding scientists were putting them up to study the Universe or something. Now that I think about it, more than likely all my neighbours were not in fact amateur astronomers but probably perverts pulling in porn!

1. HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and the Movie Channel were up there. Spotlight was there, and Showtime bought them out and shut it down in early 84. Disney was there too. Other premiums included Home Theater Network which just a couple of hours per night, except on Sundays, and eventually evolved into a 12 hour a day service that shared time with TLC on F3R before Group W shut it down in early 87, and sold the transponder and the "Travel Channel" name that was used for filler on HTN to TWA. And there was Escapade, which was the predecessor channel to Playboy. (The story is that Playboy launched as a programming block and then bought the channel out entirely) Others included VUE (which was mainly a STV service for over-the-air stations), SelecTV (which catered to cable, home dish subscribers, and Subscription TV stations), and ON TV transmitted two Oak orion encoded feeds on one of the Comstar satellites for a couple of years before they died off. AMC launched as a premium service as well.
2. Most adult services were most certainly unscrambled. And depending where you were, it was illegal. Take Alabama, for example, where a simple charge of obscenity brought down the American Exxatsy channel and a couple of other co-owned services in the spring of 1990. If I recall correctly, they only scrambled part time. There were a couple of adult services during the mid 80s that were encoded in the pre-Videocipher days, and they did cater to dish owners. But they didn't last.
3. It was superb quality...if you had your dish pointed just right and if the satellite was in good condition.
4. Good question. I think about 500,000 or so were sold and in use by the mid-80s. And Echostar was a big player in the industry. Along with Birdview, Houston Tracker, Drake, Chapparal and a few others.
5. Encryption was always there. Oak Orion was the first system to really gain use, namely on Cancom's feeds on the Anik satellites in Canada. And the scrambling momentum started to pick up as more and more c-band systems, especially when HBO announced their plans to encrypt in 82-83, with an original timeframe of two years, ultimately starting with the activation of Videocipher II scrambling in January of 86. It would have been sooner, had there not been technical issues, namely with the original Videocipher that HBO wanted to use, but said no after they realized that they might need a system that home satellite viewers would need decoders (A VCI Decoder was said to cost up in the $10,000 range), and legal issues that the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 resolved (it made it legal to access an unencrypted satellite signal, and required encrypted satellite signals to be made available for a fee). The VCII was tested from late 84-late 85, and turned on on January 15, 1986 on HBO. Many major US programmers followed suit. And the networks began encrypting....with CBS using the VCI that HBO rejected, while NBC and ABC used the Leitch Viewguard in the early 90s. Other encryption schemes included BMAC, which was used on AFRTS beginning in the late 80s.

 

[bobvick]

the picture and audio quality is so much better today, once you get it tuned in, but sometimes it's so frustrating to try to get anything to work the way you want it to that it sucks all the fun right out of it. But that is just my opinion.

To me, of course back then I didn't have a 65" TV set like today, HBO on Galaxy 1 and then on Galaxy 5 on a 35" CRT looked as good if not better than what passes for HD today on Dish/DirecTV. Of course I know HD from C-Band can look spectacular like Blu-Ray. But if you want HBO, etc... Like back in the TVRO days, on terms of picture quality I think the old analog HBO looked as good or better. Of course I have never seen the master feed of HBO HD like we had those master analog feeds back then.


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[bobvick]

Great stories from some C-Band old-timers...keep them coming please!!!

Since I was too young too dabble in this technology in the 1980s, could some of you old-timers enlighten us some more? I have a few questions:

1. Specifically, what premium channels were available in the early 1980s? How many?
2. Were adult channels actually broadcast in the clear? Wasn't that illegal?
3. What was the video quality like? Were the analog broadcasts "noisy" or crystal clear? I know there was no HD back then, but how did the image quality compare with say MPEG-2 SD today?
4. How many C-band dishes do you think were sold in the 1980s? Who were the big players in this business? I have heard Dish CEO Charlie Ergen was the biggest - is this true or urban myth?
5. When was encryption introduced? Was is hacked and how successful was the hack? Did C-band completely die after encryption?

Finally, just a hypothetical question, what if ALL C-band premium channels were opened up today, either by government legislation opposing cable/small dish monopolies or by a hack, do you think C-band would take off again? Would people be sufficiently motivated to install BUDs again?

I was only a boy in the early 1980s when I started to see these black mesh dishes going up all over the place...I had no clue what they were for, in fact, I always thought budding scientists were putting them up to study the Universe or something. Now that I think about it, more than likely all my neighbours were not in fact amateur astronomers but probably perverts pulling in porn!

I know this is old, but if you really want to know about TVRO in the 1979-1987 period go to Mike Kohl's homepage (global-cm.net) and click on "Bob Cooper Archives." There you will find among other interesting information "Coop's Satellite Digest" from 1979 to August 1987 when publication ended. Also, I would recommend Bob Cooper's book "Television's Pirates: Hiding Behind Your Picture Tube" excellent book and interesting reading for sure.


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[danderson500]

We got our first satellite setup, a Birdview dish with separate receiver/positioner in 85, the summer before HBO began VCII encryption. It was purchased because we had moved to the country from the city, and my dad got irritated with spending a lot of money on weekly VHS rentals. (The pre-Blockbuster days when it cost you a few dollars for a VHS or Beta rental for one night or a 48 hour rental if you rented on Saturday evenings.)

Our main fun times came when my mother would position the dish to Telstar 301, Transponder 9 on Friday nights to let us the old WOLD Communications transponder to watch the feed for the original Thundercats to stations when Lorimar-Telepictures used WOLD to feed their shows before they got their own transponder in the late 80s. She'd let us stay up after that to watch Silverhawks when that was on, followed by Wheel of Fortune feeds and anything else that would come down the line. On Saturdays, she'd reposition it back on T301 and let us watch WOLD's block feeds for Heathcliff and Inspector Gadget for LBS all Saturday afternoons after the morning cartoons would end. WOLD seemed to pretty much feed everything out for all the syndicators back in the day over two little T301 transponders (9 and 23), and if I recall correctly they had a Westar 4 transponder too.

The Birdview was joined in the summer of 86 by a VCII descrambler because my dad wanted HBO. In 87, the original Birdview units were replaced by a single Birdview receiver, and that conked out after a year and the whole system was replaced by a Houston Tracker V. The Tracker lasted for the remainder of the C-Band days until it was hit by lightning and replaced by a Dish Network system that survives to this day. As I got older, I used to spend Friday nights and an occasional Saturday night in their bedroom while my dad was working just channel surfing...watching everything like an RTP newsfeed from the Azores on Friday nights on Westar 4/Galaxy 6/Galaxy 4, the PBS feeds on W4 and later Spacenet 1 and Spacenet 4. My mother would freak out if we left it on Spacenet 1 (the former home of American Exxatsy before GTE shut it off in 90) or Satcom F4, 24 (where Playboy was for years.) And he kept the old VCII module in there for years....until he was finally forced to upgrade it to a VC-RS module. The Birdview dish remained unused in the backyard until it was finally taken down and hauled off about six years ago. I tried to get my dad to have it entirely rebuilt and reset and to get a 4DTV system but he was convinced that C-Band was worthless. And I also tried to talk him into selling the dish itself, but he was convinced that it was worthless junk and he had it hauled off for scrap :-(

Newbie here...

I remember watching Redskins games on T301 or T302. They were CBS, so that's where most of my games were. One week i kept moving the dish between the Redskins game and the Arizona/Denver game. The Broncos pulled out a close game at Mile High. Sometimes, if the game i wanted to see was NBC, i'd use K2/K1 or SBS6 instead.

 

[danderson500]

Ok, you folks are making me "home sick" for C-Band again. My wife used to watch her soap opera (Days of our Lives) the day before it came on with no commericals. Wild news feeds, NASA Channel before it went to small dish, Sci Fi same reason (comcast in FL wouldn't carry it). Picture quality during rain and just plain picture quality. For more I will have to go out and unbury some old OnSat mags.

Jeff

I used to do that too with "Days of Our Lives" too. Since my mom's soaps were ABC, but i was really into "Days" in those days, i'd watch that feed early in the morning.

 

[danderson500]

Most of my NFL games were NBC, but sometimes they'd use SBS6 for backhauls. K1 or K2 though were most likely.

 

[wvman]

I got mine (that I didn't find on my own)from SatelliteTVWeek, Orbit was a once a month deal and was always dated...

Just think of how many manufacturers, distributors and dealers it put out of business when the small dishes killed the market. I used to get in a truck load of dishes a week from Perfect 10, Paraclipse and UFI. Not to mention the cable, ends and other things I ordered. I sold over 95 miles of ribbon cable to one dealer in Mississippi in one year, and god knows how many miles of RG6 and RG6 quad shield to the same customer. I sold so many Perfect 10 dishes I was on a first name basis with the CEO of the company.

We used to drive to R.L. Drake's warehouse in Ohio to lick up a van load of satellite receivers. Those were the days to be sure.