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.