Five Fun Forgotten Facts about 1980s Cable TV
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- Remember converter boxes (legal and otherwise)? Memorizing and tuning channels by number only? Cable-Ready TVs and VCRs? Services offered by a cable guy "gone rogue"? In this video, we get those nostalgic juices flowing by recalling 5 things from early-to-mid 1980s CATV that are no longer part of our media entertainment today...
0:00 Introduction
0:10 (1) Channel Number Memory Exercises
1:30 (2) The Ubiquitous Cable Converter Box
2:50 (3) Cheating the System
6:05 (4) Low Tech, Text-Only Channels
6:30 (5) CATV Competition with the VCR Boom
7:10 Request Pay-Per-View Intro Clip and Conclusion
I left cable TV in the 1990s when I acquired a DirecTV system, and then left that in 2010 for a Home Theater PC setup. Now, it seems we've almost come full circle in that we buy cable-like packages from multiple online streaming subscription services.
Thanks for watching! Remember any other quirks or stories from using those early 1980s cable systems? If so, feel free to leave them in the comments!
Clip art from openclipart.org.
Video Clips from mostly TH-cam and C-SPAN
Magazine images from archive.org, radioshackcatalogs.com, americanradiohistory.com, and Google books search.
#Nostalgia #1980s #VintageTech - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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This was really enlightening. I never experienced this, being born in 1994 in Europe, but it seems quite nice. In fact, TV is not what it used to be, even compared to when I was a kid.
Fun and informative video!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Ah the good ole days of cable TV. When we first got cable in 1980ish nothing was scrambled, they used filters (which many people removed) on the line for HBO and Showtime and they used the knob dial cable box. Many people would set those up on their end tables, running long cables to their TVs, so they could turn the channel without having to get up out of their chairs. We did this until we found a cable box in a catalog that had a remote control. Then around 1984/85 the cable company scrambled every channel (except the locals) using a new technology that required a Tocom box at every TV.
The one thing I didn’t like is when they put the local channels on different channel numbers, even with the box it was that way. But like you said, the locals would cause interference if they didn’t do it. Thanks for a ride down memory lane. 😊
The term "community antenna" is a relic of the very first application of the cable TV concept way back in the 40s: sometimes a small area with weak reception of the neighboring TV stations would erect a big antenna that could pick them up better than a normal one (this was often done on a hill), and run cables from its headend to the homes in that community.
It's kind of ironic to think that cable TV was originally invented to serve rural communities and yet, in the end. It serve everybody else but but the rural communities.
Our first cable box was one that had "click" buttons on it. There was also a toggle for top, middle and bottom (I think it had about 15 buttons that had 3 channels each on it and you would toggle top, middle, bottom). We didn't have Cinemax but my brother and I figured out if you went to the Cinemax channel and pressed the channel button half-way and messed with the toggle switch you could somewhat get a picture. "Hey I think I saw a boob! Did you see it?" hahaha. Fun times.
Yes, kids are so inquisitive if you put a box with buttons in front of them they are going to press them! Thanks for watching!
The first cable box I remember had a switch with 2 positions: "2-13" and "Premium". On "2-13" the box just passed through the cable signal to your TV and you changed the channels normally. On "Premium" you tuned your TV to channel 3, and you watched HBO.
we had that box. it was manufactured by Jerrod. it had like channels 2-13on the first row, toggle down and the second row was channels 14-21 then the last row was 22-29.the premium channels were 14 HBO 15 was Cinemax and 16 was Playboy😁😁😁
I remember those text-only channels. My sister and I would just put them on for the music.
Every so often you could see someone programming the thing with new messages... Thanks for watching!
@@ACBMemphis thank you, it was very enjoyable
@@ACBMemphis I remember in the 90s they used to have issues with sometimes every once in a blue moon where a show what come on before the scheduled or sometimes they would come on again by accident
I miss Stingray DirecTV so much! 😢. Only nice music there.
2:25 many cable providers also used traps to either allow or block the reception of premium channels. But they still offered addressable set top boxes for pay-per-view.
One of the more sophisticated ways to get around signal traps was to drill a hole strait through the trap and put a bypass wire through the hole. That way, it would render the trap useless and unless the cable technician did a closer examination of the trap. He would think that nothing was a miss.
@@appliedengineering4001
lol
Most of ours were high on the utility poles, unless you were in a multi dwelling such as an apartment building, etc.
That said, the cable techs did often carelessly leave the access boxes unlocked 😂
I think eventually they stopped caring, as everyone I knew in those buildings as well as where I work, all had HBO for “free” until the plant went fully digital.
We had cancelled cable tv but still got internet from the cable company as we had DirectTV. First time they put a video trap. Then when we went back they took it away. Then we went to Fios they took the entire cable away. Rehooking was more expensive than taking away the trap. I suppose some folks probably climbed up and took it off?
Hey, I'm almost halfway through and I'm getting huge nostalgia, hehe. I do remember that, in order to get free cable, one strategy was to go through several cycles of signing up, then "forgetting" to pay your cable bill. Because they had to send a tech out to physically disconnect your cable from a junction box on the pole every time you were cut off, they would eventually just forget to do so, or at least just not bother. So... Free cable lol
Thanks for watching! That reminds me of a story... One time in middle school, my teacher took me out of class and drove me to her new house, because I knew about technology. Turns out, she wanted me to "fix the tv" for them. The previous owner had cable, they knew the wiring was still active, so I connected a wire and and flipped the CATV/TV switch for them - instant cable! So many things wrong with that story...
@@ACBMemphis Yep, but cool to think about now lol. I also remember there being these times the cable company would send a sweep down the lines to detect whether there were any illicit connections, measuring current or capacitance or voltage or summat. I don't know if you remember that, or if I'm misremembering it myself.
@@denniseldridge2936 Yes that happened. We bought a "Radio Shack Amplified video switcher" which let us switch between VCR/TV/CABLE and at some point after hooking it up, the cable company left a note at our door saying there was "a leak coming from inside" they had to come check out. They, didn't do anything just looked at the connection and left. Thanks for watching and commenting!
One thing I find interesting about cable tv is that some very high channels cross into the fm radio band. If you had a lose cable connection or poorly shielded coax, you could see the channel but hear radio (or static depending on the reception you’re getting from that cord)
Even as a kid in 2001 Nick at my house was channel 43, but at my grandparents 10 minutes away it was 56. I always thought the channel lineup at her house never made sense.
VCR was Awesome!
So in the late 90s I was trying to order pay per view and it wouldn’t work. We called the cable co and they sent out a tech. They tech told me that the reason we weren’t able to get ppv was that there was a scrambler on our pole. He simply removed it and after that we could get PPV and all the premium channels for free
In my parents town the cable company still has around 45 ish Analog Cable TV channels
I guess there's no reason to turn off the old equipment if it still works... (unless you're hitting it with a golf club) Thanks for watching!
The old cable boxes you could stick pennies in between the up down buttons and get free pay per view.
Wow - never heard of that! Maybe that type of box was preventing you from tuning the channel, but it wasn't actually scrambled... Cool story and thanks for watching!
Depends on the box. A Pioneer needed the chip to be modified where as the Zenith Ztac convertors only needed a paper clip to do that.
In Australia you still need a decoder box to watch Pay TV even still in 2023. Foxtel, which is the only cable and satellite TV provider for the entire country, does not allow the use of cable ready TVs. Instead, they charge you $450 to borrow one of their decoder boxes 😂
*Here in Australia we didn't get cable tv or pay tv as we call it here until 1996. so the generation before in the 80s only had 4 free to air channels*
Back in Puerto Rico my maternal grandparents had cable directly to the cable ready tv, but then even if they have the basic pack, they all needed the boxes.
I don't think our cable system got the Super Box until the early 90s. We never bothered to get one.
My dad used to tell me that the cable companies would send out a so-called electronic bullet at random. If you had one of those illegal boxes it would fry it. We never had one but as I got older and into my teenage years they where still being used. Five or six years later we got Verizon FiOS.
The “black box” 😂. We had one, hooked it up and got all the movie channels and ppv channels free. They wouldn’t leave it hooked up though.
Very cool! Have you considered making a video on vintage C-Band satellite TV?
Thanks for watching! That would be fun, will put that on the idea list... Unlike cable, I didn't get involved in satellite until digital systems in the late 90s... I did have an uncle who sold the older systems, and he had some great stories from that era...
C band holds a special place in my heart my dad got one around 94 before that we had very few channels from a very small town cable company I remember watching nickelodeon and thinking it was the greatest channel ever.
FM radio service!
Cable companies would often carry the local FM stations, but they also used this as a means of offering stereo sound from certain channels. MTS (BTSC) STEREO television would not be available until about 1984-1985, so this was a work around - one that MTV pushed quite heavily since its debut in 1981. If you wanted MTV in stereo, you’d subscribe if required (some cable systems offered FM as a premium), and then simply hook cable up to your FM radio!
My Cable did not have an FM radio service, but oddly enough I could hear MTV on 97.7 on my stereo. Nothing was hooked up to the stereo except a regular antenna, but it was pretty close to the cable wires which probably had poor shielding. Whenever a local commercial overrode whatever national commercial MTV was showing, I'd here the national commercial on the stereo! Weird huh?
I could also hear the Disney channel on 87.7 FM but this makes sense since Disney was on analog channel 6, which audio is on 87.75 MHz, close enough to be heard on 87.7.
Our cable installer offered stereo hookup when we first got cable in the summer of 1980. Came with a small card that gave which movie channels were on which FM frequencies.
If my memory is correct, FM between about 87 and 108 MHz is close to channel 6 on the old VHF dial. My cable company carried some FM stations and the stereo audio from MTV. No special box or decoder needed. Just connect the cable to the FM leads behind your stereo like on the old television sets back in the day.
I had a little thing I screwed in back of my t.v. and got Cinemax for years. I don't regret it. Especially now that cable companies have screwed me out of so much money in my adult years.
GREAT RETRO CONTENT! 80s 👍🏻🇺🇲
I always figured if you're paying for the service to come into your house, once you have the signal, what you do with it is your concern, as long as you're not sharing it with the neighborhood.. Not that I ever did such things.. As I recall, the Amiga was a popular choice for running those text only channels, and for video editing as well.
That's an interesting argument and continues in some form to this day.... Last year, a co-worker was trying to show me an online newspaper article, and reached his 3 article limit. So I said "Just delete your cookies or use a different browser" and he was _aghast_ that I would try to get around "the system" - I said, well, they are sending the content (the "signal") to my PC, and I decide the browser...so they need a better system. Anyway, thanks for watching!
Hey, I seem to recall an addon to the Amiga called the Toaster which give you almost pro quality graphics and titling capabilities. Am I remembering that correctly? I seem to recall it being widely popular back then.
@@denniseldridge2936 Yes, I remember seeing "the Amiga video toaster" on a TV special or something.. Of course as a kid in the 80s, this was out of reach price wise for me!
The text-generated screen predated the Amiga (or any home computer for that matter); they were doing that in the late 70s. Also common around that time (for lower-budget cable companies) was a rotating table with a clock, a thermometer (for outside temperature), and various notecards with bulletins and announcements typed on them. This table would slowly turn while a camera was pointed at it.
@@TonyP9279 Cool, what a great low-tech but clever way to get the information across.... I wish I'd thought to videotape some of the locally generated content on our cable system, like the general manager sitting at a desk demonstrating how to do pay-per-view, would be hilarious to see today... Thanks for watching.
Oh I used to know the channel numbers like the back of my hand. Granted we only had about 20 channels. This was the early 2000s.
Actually TBS and WGN were premium channels in San Antonio under the Rogers and Paragon Cable systems. Along with HBO and Showtime you could order them without needing a cable box. They were scrambled by filters just like expanded cable was. If you were lucky, you could have what is called a hot tap and get free expanded cable. I did!!!
I preferred the channel numbers over searching. Type in 1-2 digits and you're watching your channel.
Our cable company did use the same numbers as the over the air station did as long is was on VHF (2-13) And yes the two signals would interfere with each other. You'd see 3 thick lines down the middle of the screen and it was highly annoying, (Mind you we were using splitters that made the problem even worse). UHF over the air stations were converted to VHF, for example channel 43 in my area was on channel 4 and 25 was on 10.
I never used any illegal converted boxes, but one of the TVs had a fine tuning setting
that let me watch pay per view events for free. Watched a lot of wrestling, boxing, and the Olympics Triplecast in '92. (24/7 Summer Olympics coverage. Only lasted one olympics because it was a complete flop). the picture was very snowy, sometimes black and white, sometimes with no sound, but it was watchable. HBO at my dad's house (Different city) was very watchable, even without any illegal boxes. Just a little bit of snow
Yes, the speed at which you could change channels on analog cable ("channel surf") was much faster than today with all the buffering and HDMI syncing etc... Thanks for watching/commenting!
I miss these times so much
⚠SPASTIC POST ALERT⚠
I remember moving to Fairfax County VA in 1986, and as a kid going into second grade, how amazed I was at how many channels were offered by Media General Cable (now COX Communications). They used a pair of coax cables to deliver up to 120 channels, and the addressable set-top boxes which were made by Zenith, had two inputs on them labeled A and B. Ohh the remotes though. Instead of using standard AA or 9v batteries, they used those weird Kodak flat square batteries.
Yes - my grandparents had an 80s Zenith TV remote with one of those batteries, it was infrared, but even more powerful than modern remotes. I could aim it away from the TV or partially cover it and it would still work.... Never seen an IR remote that powerful since, and it took one of those weird square batteries... Thanks for watching/commenting!
@@ACBMemphis
I do remember that STB remote was the same way.
90s remote.
"In 1990, after a hostile takeover bid from Paramount Communications was rejected; Warner Communications officially merged with Time Inc. to create Time-Warner; ATC & Warner Cable would eventually become part of a new division known as Time Warner Cable Group. ATC would eventually be renamed to Time Warner Communications around the same time as well.
Time Warner Cable Group would eventually be merged with Warner Cable & Time Warner Communications into a single division of Time Warner in 1992, utilizing the Time Warner Communications name until 1995, when it was renamed to Time Warner Cable"
Good catch on the sticker, it was probably replaced at some point. I believe the remote was for a late 1980s RCA Colortrak or XL100. Thanks for watching.
i still need a box for my cable tv the remote still has numbers and i still have to reminder the channel number
Canadian cable systems used the same
Technology as most American cable systems however I cannot think of any examples of systems that had a cable ready lineup and a different lineup for the converter boxes. They were always the same. Canadian cable systems typically put junk channels on stations that had interference from local TV. We also didn’t have anywhere near the amount of pay tv options in the 1980s. We essentially had first choice (Canada’s answer to HBO), TSN (Canada’s answer to ESPN), MuchMusic (Canada’s answer to MTV) and a few American cable channels like A&E and CNN. Most systems had less than 36 total channels. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that some systems had between 40-60 channels.
Those example program guides on your channel are very nice, and accurate to what I remember we had here, including the scrolling clock effect at the top... Thanks for watching and commenting!
everyone in my neighborhood back in the 90's had an illegal box, FREE CABLE,PPV'S AND ALL THE FIGHTS, I saw all the wrestling PPV's for free...fun times.
Ooh, y'all had Heritage Cablevision! 😆 You must have lived in Germantown. I grew up in Memphis but we lived in Memphis Cablevision territory. I was always jealous of the Germantown folks because they had twice as many channels as we did when I was a kid. Eventually the systems were both merged into Time Warner and we got the same number of channels as Germantown.
Yep, we had Heritage cablevision... I remember being really upset when they replaced our Scientific Atlanta boxes (w/direct keypad entry) with Regency boxes. Those just had up/down and fast up/down keys. The Memphis folks I visited had those older boxes with the slider bar and no digital display. Thanks for watching!
I forgot CNBC was in red on those stickers. I wonder if NBC paid the cable systems to promote CNBC. Harron Communications did that plus had a CNBC logo on their stickers in Northern New England where I lived (and still do!) Wonder if there was a correlation lol
I remember those days hearing about the black boxes and them getting free wrestling Pay-Per-Views
Wow, you have to type in the channel numbers back then? That’s what we still do on TV’s that don’t link to “streaming services”.
TV providers screwed over the public by putting in former employees to the FCC. Cable was not allowed to restrict basic channels because of rulings leftover from Ma Bell. But when the country went digital the FCC allowed all of the providers to scramble everything but local broadcast. So now it didn't matter if you had a cable ready TV or VCR or digital device you need one of their decoding devices
Cable companies were concerned about losing profits due to cable theft. Removing low pass filters and getting free cable when only paying for internet service was very common. Not to mention any tv set or digital tuner which had QAM capabilities could tune into digital broadcast channels with just the raw cable line hooked up to them. Democrats were worried about analog cable effecting goreball warming. So it was a match made in heaven to encrypt the channels.
Scrambling(encrypting) all the cable channels would've not been such a big deal had the CableCARD standard gone through.
no remote and there was only three channels
0:40 or, watch the Prevue Channel which would be The TV Guide Channel!
I don't where you're from but you showed something from our local paper here in Albany ga
Cool! I'm from Memphis. Thanks for watching and commenting on the video!
@@ACBMemphis it's a small world
I see y’all are in Memphis. I’m not far. I have a very old radio that was my DaD’s. It doesn’t work is that something y’all might be able to fix?
I am definitely not a professional! How old a radio is it and what's wrong with it?
Channel 2 was Prevue Channel!
does anyone remember on 80s cable television, during the bumpers or commercial, theyre would be a little digital scramble noise? what the hell was that? it was literally a split second every so often, but was on all the cable channels.
Yes, I remember that! I think those were tones sent down to tell local equipment to insert commercials. In other words if you're watching USA Network from a satellite feed, but they have sold advertising to somebody local in your city, that noise would start a VCR to play a commercial. Thanks for watching!
@@ACBMemphis aahhh makes sense, man i would ask around over the years and no one would know what i was talking about, lol thanks for confirming im not crazy!
Yes the dtmf tone was a signal to start the commerical break.
@@AnthonyD0311 remember when you were hear those tones in the background when picking up your phone and trying to call someone? This was before the telcos switched to DMS 200, and WESS
@@ACBMemphis A&E had those a lot.
what john candy movie it?
Delirious
6:08 EPG! I
Nowadays people still use cable tv.
1:30 here's an example of the different channels that would be on cable ready and the TV converter box you just mentioned:
Also, in Houston there would be different channel numbers for different cable companies you had Warner, Storer, Jones Spacelink, Phonoscope, TCI, and Prime Cable to name a few.
th-cam.com/video/JGksya0nur4/w-d-xo.html
Today they are using cable boxes...why... your TV should get the Station.....it was and still reductus