Honestly, I want to see interactive television in the likeness of QUBE make a return. It could easily provide a way to keep TV alive in the wake of internet dominance. Plus, it's an _amazing_ concept.
Some of the early Qube pioneers in fact went on to be successful internet company founders. For example about.com, inkjetcartridge.com, boomerangs.com and I'm sure others.
Qube was also a test market for MTV. Warner created MTV and test marketed the concept in Columbus. We had very similar continuous music videos on a dedicated channel before MTV launched. Lots of Qube employees went on to great things in the TV and computer industry.
Actually, the QUBE name did survive into at least early 1986, not 1985 as you stated. BTW, in the Columbus, OH area at that point, Nick was on channel 13 with QUBE. It probably didn't survive much past that. A local promo insert off MTV with a local break featuring a promo of Lassie showing the QUBE name confirms this. The recording was from January 27, 1986, a relatively quiet day between two big events: Super Bowl XX and the ill-fated Challenger disaster that soon put to a halt an iconic feature of MTV's identity.
"Everything is finite. We all turn to dust in the end."" Geez, sudden existential angst in the nickelodeon informational video. ...Lol, just kidding. Nice video, I had no idea about any of this.
ANother weird quirk about broadcast TV was, at least in my experience, you'd get electrical interference from other stuff in the house. Whenever my mom was doing any baking, and she used her electric mixer, you'd get snow on the TV signal.
You know I read about this stuff on wikipedia when I was looking up the history of Nickelodeon, tv channel not the movie machine, but seeing someone actually make a documentary on it finally makes it feel like it actually happened like this. Qube really was revolutionary and I'm surprised more people don't know or talk about it.
You sir have been blessed by the algorithm today. Saw your channel for the Kids Choice Awards Video, stayed for the awesome channel ^^ I was born in '91 so it'll be cool to look at the nickelodeon I missed, and eventually the nickelodeon I knew.
Warner may have lost Nickelodeon after the early 1980s to Viacom International, but gained a new childrens' network in 1992 in the form of the Cartoon Network...
@@stephenholloway6893 Right...Ted Turner created Cartoon Network in 1992, and a few years later, TimeWarner Entertainment would purchase it along with Ted Turner's other media assets.
When we got cable in Houston in 1982, it was called Qube, we got it right after the lines were ran in our neighborhood, but not the Qube service. It changed shortly after to Warner Amex or WACCI cable, then Warner cable, then Time Warner Cable. Our first cable box was just a tuner with a knob that turned to change the channel and another knob to fine tune the channel, they replaced it a couple of years later with the Pioneer one way addressable box and eventually started scrambling the premium channels vs using notch filters. What I don't understand is with the interactive technology of Cube, why didn't they use some type of two way addressable boxes? They didn't use two way addressable boxes till the mid 2000s when digital cable came out. I think they would have made more money on Pay Per View and other services with two way addressable boxes.
I remember seeing a office sign for Qube back around that time in Missouri City off of FM 2234 which eventually became a Warner Cable location when I was a kid.
I was born downtown Columbus, Ohio 1977. I remember every one had a Qube box. And I remember the voting by pressing a button on the box. Wish I still had the old Qube box.
In UK and Canada, we had a system very similar to this called Videoway. There was a channel called TVI and it would have a number of shows that you could press buttons for to pick what characters do. There were even quiz shows, a gaming show and music videos that used footage from Looney Tunes.
Funny thing about HBO, Warner now owns it. Despite not created it. Though another movie channel (Now called The Movie Channel) was launched by Warner but later sold it to Viacom. Though CBS now owns that channel after the split between Viacom and CBS.
found this series the other day so definitely been wanting to sit down and start watching these! I had no idea they were doing this as far back as the late 70s, I'd seen some random youtube clips of modern Japanese television that kinda uses this tech but I didn't know just how far back they started experimenting with the interactive TV thing here in the US!
In order to understand Nickelodeon you need to go all the way back to... before the beginning. Excellent stuff as always, man. Possibly your best video (And I've been following you for years!!). Really informative and well put together. -- AT
Your writing is very good, avoiding many of the fake intellectual language with excessive 'howevers' and "therefores' and strings of prepositional and qualifying phrases. Good job.
Have you heard of oddity archive this is kinda similar to the topics on that show .this is great by the way I've been watching since you were doing the early animorphs book guide keep up the good work
Im so glad I decided to type in "Nick Retrospective" I love Lore. I was thinking about the Crazy stuff they used to play between shows (because some shows were only 20 minutes long) and they had time between the Adspace.
The Warner Cable legacy ended when TimeWarner Cable was spun-off of TimeWarner Entertainment (now AT&T's WarnerMedia) into a separate company. Charter Communications later bought TimeWarner Cable's assets and folded them into their new company, Spectrum.
I've watched all this Nick Nacks multiple times. Can't wait for Today's Special and maybe some discussion of the strange Anime's from the lat 80s like the Noozles, the Koala Show, The Little Prince, Spartacus, etc. Also would love to see something about all the black and white reruns of Dennis the Mennis, Mr. Ed and of course Lassie. These were huge staples of my young Nick experience. The lists go on and on. Oh man, the Elephant Show! Well, these can't come fast enough.
A bit about that hotel that the Pioneer Closed Circuit TV system was done in could be found in this short film produced by Pioneer themselves, which also go into covering Columbus' QUBE system as well! th-cam.com/video/CZXfX1TK9eE/w-d-xo.htmlm36s
@poparena - I can't believe how much you know about all this stuff!! I was really disappointed with the oral history book Slimed so can't wait to get your book(s). It requires much more depth to cover fully.
Even Mo Rocca of The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation would have been impressed with Qube's determination in putting cable on the map and its direction for many generations to come!
Netflix is trying that with a few interactive shows they got on now like that one that features Dreamworks' Puss in Boots character called "Puss in Book", of course that's on a personal level. variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-puss-in-book-interactive-1202471301/
12:51 Then Time Warner Inc. spun Time Warner Cable off in 2009. Later in 2015 Charter Cable bought out Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. By 2016 Charter renamed their cable services as Spectrum. On an odd sidenote, Time Warner Inc. spun off Time Inc. in 2014, but remained named Time Warner Inc. until this year. Now they are WarnerMedia and their once great media empire is gone. All of this is indirectly because of another bad business decision the AOL-Time Warner merger of 2001.
I just started watching this series this weekend, and all of a sudden all the videos are out of order and play in random. It is not on shuffle - the playlist seems like it is now just not in order. Is this on purpose or did TH-cam screw something up? I can't keep track of the next video to watch.
Random question to under 30 year olds... why does something inappropriate upset you so much?.. follow up... why can't you just go "meh" and go on about you lives like you do about anything else that you don't care about?... Lastly, does that say Leroy Jenkins at 7:28... because 🤯
My parents still referred to the "QUBE box" for the cable box well into the 2000's.
*Poor Them.*
*Then Again, My Grandma Called The Router A "Gateway" Up Until Early 2019.*
Honestly, I want to see interactive television in the likeness of QUBE make a return. It could easily provide a way to keep TV alive in the wake of internet dominance. Plus, it's an _amazing_ concept.
Old comment, but ATSC 3.0 could be that
Y E S .
I was thinking of making a stream where you type 1 or 2 in the chat and it edits the video but I have no idea how to do that
Qube is where modern cable TV began...
Bingo. And interactive based home security. And so many other program niche areas.
QUBE sounds like some pretty awesome early technology. It almost sounds like a television-based proto-Internet.
It was by your definition.
Some of the early Qube pioneers in fact went on to be successful internet company founders. For example about.com, inkjetcartridge.com, boomerangs.com and I'm sure others.
To think: Without QUBE, SpongeBob wouldn't exist today
I could easily see some future classroom playing your work here as a way to get kids into history. Very professionally done.
It began with a QUBE and over 30 years later a yellow cube ended up being the face of what was spawned from it. Funny how things work like that.
Qube was also a test market for MTV. Warner created MTV and test marketed the concept in Columbus. We had very similar continuous music videos on a dedicated channel before MTV launched. Lots of Qube employees went on to great things in the TV and computer industry.
MTV now belongs to Viacom CBS. Which is Thanks to the Popeye and pre-1986 MGM deals that Warner Acquired Later!
Actually, the QUBE name did survive into at least early 1986, not 1985 as you stated. BTW, in the Columbus, OH area at that point, Nick was on channel 13 with QUBE. It probably didn't survive much past that. A local promo insert off MTV with a local break featuring a promo of Lassie showing the QUBE name confirms this. The recording was from January 27, 1986, a relatively quiet day between two big events: Super Bowl XX and the ill-fated Challenger disaster that soon put to a halt an iconic feature of MTV's identity.
"Everything is finite. We all turn to dust in the end.""
Geez, sudden existential angst in the nickelodeon informational video.
...Lol, just kidding. Nice video, I had no idea about any of this.
AnEndlessStrategy Welcome to the poparena channel. ;)
Children needed to learn that eventually!
QUBE got snapped.
ANother weird quirk about broadcast TV was, at least in my experience, you'd get electrical interference from other stuff in the house. Whenever my mom was doing any baking, and she used her electric mixer, you'd get snow on the TV signal.
You know I read about this stuff on wikipedia when I was looking up the history of Nickelodeon, tv channel not the movie machine, but seeing someone actually make a documentary on it finally makes it feel like it actually happened like this. Qube really was revolutionary and I'm surprised more people don't know or talk about it.
You sir have been blessed by the algorithm today. Saw your channel for the Kids Choice Awards Video, stayed for the awesome channel ^^ I was born in '91 so it'll be cool to look at the nickelodeon I missed, and eventually the nickelodeon I knew.
I also got introduced via the Kids Choice Awards video, what a coincidence!
Wow, Leroy Jenkins was a thing way back in 1979??
I reckon that was the Televangelist.
Warner may have lost Nickelodeon after the early 1980s to Viacom International, but gained a new childrens' network in 1992 in the form of the Cartoon Network...
Turner created Cartoon Network. Warner bought it a few years later.
@@stephenholloway6893 Right...Ted Turner created Cartoon Network in 1992, and a few years later, TimeWarner Entertainment would purchase it along with Ted Turner's other media assets.
When we got cable in Houston in 1982, it was called Qube, we got it right after the lines were ran in our neighborhood, but not the Qube service. It changed shortly after to Warner Amex or WACCI cable, then Warner cable, then Time Warner Cable. Our first cable box was just a tuner with a knob that turned to change the channel and another knob to fine tune the channel, they replaced it a couple of years later with the Pioneer one way addressable box and eventually started scrambling the premium channels vs using notch filters. What I don't understand is with the interactive technology of Cube, why didn't they use some type of two way addressable boxes? They didn't use two way addressable boxes till the mid 2000s when digital cable came out. I think they would have made more money on Pay Per View and other services with two way addressable boxes.
It was the early days of computers. Before the beginning of the IBM PC for example. We are talking the late 70's and early 80's here.
I remember seeing a office sign for Qube back around that time in Missouri City off of FM 2234 which eventually became a Warner Cable location when I was a kid.
I was born downtown Columbus, Ohio 1977.
I remember every one had a Qube box. And I remember the voting by pressing a button on the box.
Wish I still had the old Qube box.
This deserves hundreds of thousands of views! Such in-depth research.
In UK and Canada, we had a system very similar to this called Videoway. There was a channel called TVI and it would have a number of shows that you could press buttons for to pick what characters do. There were even quiz shows, a gaming show and music videos that used footage from Looney Tunes.
Funny thing about HBO, Warner now owns it. Despite not created it. Though another movie channel (Now called The Movie Channel) was launched by Warner but later sold it to Viacom. Though CBS now owns that channel after the split between Viacom and CBS.
Viacom and CBS just reunited and became ViacomCBS.
@@Justin-Hill-1987 Now it has been renamed by Paramount but at the time of my comment they were separated.
QUBE was the Velvet Underground of Cable
I've always been fascinated with classic Nick and the early days of the channel. Great series!
found this series the other day so definitely been wanting to sit down and start watching these! I had no idea they were doing this as far back as the late 70s, I'd seen some random youtube clips of modern Japanese television that kinda uses this tech but I didn't know just how far back they started experimenting with the interactive TV thing here in the US!
In order to understand Nickelodeon you need to go all the way back to... before the beginning.
Excellent stuff as always, man. Possibly your best video (And I've been following you for years!!). Really informative and well put together. -- AT
Your writing is very good, avoiding many of the fake intellectual language with excessive 'howevers' and "therefores' and strings of prepositional and qualifying phrases. Good job.
9:11
BEGIN TOUCHING
...nah, I'm good.
Have you heard of oddity archive this is kinda similar to the topics on that show .this is great by the way I've been watching since you were doing the early animorphs book guide keep up the good work
Oddity Archive actually did an episode on QUBE a while back. I mean, you probably already know this, but it's something cool to bring up nonetheless.
Ive watched this like 10 times. This whole series is so fascinating to me. Every episode.
really enjoying this new series.
7:30 T-9 Leroy Jenkins
Im so glad I decided to type in "Nick Retrospective" I love Lore. I was thinking about the Crazy stuff they used to play between shows (because some shows were only 20 minutes long) and they had time between the Adspace.
The Warner Cable legacy ended when TimeWarner Cable was spun-off of TimeWarner Entertainment (now AT&T's WarnerMedia) into a separate company.
Charter Communications later bought TimeWarner Cable's assets and folded them into their new company, Spectrum.
Not only that the books division (excluding DC), and TIME went there ways as well.
Haven’t seen a merger go so wrong since AOL
Now Warner and Discovery are possibly merging as well. It still needs approval.
Fantastic video, well researched but without being 3 hours long. Going to watch through the rest of your Nickelodeon videos
Going through my third rewatch of all your episodes. I love this show!!
well this is amazing
This is the most fascinating video I have ever seen on TH-cam-Very well done!
Finally, a series I... never wanted until I had it. But now that it's here, yes. Yes.
ENJOY!
I've watched all this Nick Nacks multiple times. Can't wait for Today's Special and maybe some discussion of the strange Anime's from the lat 80s like the Noozles, the Koala Show, The Little Prince, Spartacus, etc. Also would love to see something about all the black and white reruns of Dennis the Mennis, Mr. Ed and of course Lassie. These were huge staples of my young Nick experience. The lists go on and on. Oh man, the Elephant Show! Well, these can't come fast enough.
The B&W shows and the use of Doo-Wop might be one of the most interesting things about 80's Nick, no doubt thanks to Fred Seibert and his team.
LOVED THIS! i never even knew how much there was to know about the cable! excited for this project!
A bit about that hotel that the Pioneer Closed Circuit TV system was done in could be found in this short film produced by Pioneer themselves, which also go into covering Columbus' QUBE system as well!
th-cam.com/video/CZXfX1TK9eE/w-d-xo.htmlm36s
Great video, I always enjoy when I can learn something new about history.
@poparena - I can't believe how much you know about all this stuff!! I was really disappointed with the oral history book Slimed so can't wait to get your book(s). It requires much more depth to cover fully.
Even Mo Rocca of The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation would have been impressed with Qube's determination in putting cable on the map and its direction for many generations to come!
This is great work, Greg.
I am glad you are really knocking out such quality stuff.
Did anyone else notice that T-9 says Leroy Jenkins?
Choose your own adventure TV. That must of been tricky. I wonder if anyone else has tried it.
Netflix is trying that with a few interactive shows they got on now like that one that features Dreamworks' Puss in Boots character called "Puss in Book", of course that's on a personal level.
variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-puss-in-book-interactive-1202471301/
Also, there were multiple experiment it in the 1990s with the concept due the "high" storage capacity of CD-ROMs.
Ooh, very strong start to the Nick Knack project :)
7:26 LEEEROOOOOOY Jenkins!
This was interesting. You always go above and beyond researching things for your videos.
Your reviews are amazing.
7:52 LEEROOOOOYYYY JENKINSSSS!!!!!
And it's also how MTV Music Television started.
Great beginnings
your providing good details explaining about QUBE, was like very much of a cable provider with channels on it
This is a great series. You deserve more subs.
Man, I can't wait for Pinwheel!
12:51 Then Time Warner Inc. spun Time Warner Cable off in 2009. Later in 2015 Charter Cable bought out Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. By 2016 Charter renamed their cable services as Spectrum.
On an odd sidenote, Time Warner Inc. spun off Time Inc. in 2014, but remained named Time Warner Inc. until this year. Now they are WarnerMedia and their once great media empire is gone. All of this is indirectly because of another bad business decision the AOL-Time Warner merger of 2001.
WarnerMedia is now a division of the telecommunication giant AT&T.
And now it's Discovery.
I love your vids!
Holy shit, 7:29 - LEROY JENKINS!!
Interesting info 📼😎
MTV WAS ON QUBE
nice
Wait, you speak Spanish? Had no idea there were Spanish-language subtitles.
I think they were actually added by someone on Discord.
First it wad qube , then warner communications , then time warner cable , and now , " spectrum!!! "
🎵Big in Japan... Tonight. Big in Japan ... Be Tight.
WHAT music was the band playing as clown landed?!
When it comes to cable TV, the apple didn't fall far from the broadcast TV tree...
I just started watching this series this weekend, and all of a sudden all the videos are out of order and play in random. It is not on shuffle - the playlist seems like it is now just not in order. Is this on purpose or did TH-cam screw something up? I can't keep track of the next video to watch.
For some reason it shuffled from release order to from most views. Weird. Should be fixed now.
Begin touching
Random question to under 30 year olds... why does something inappropriate upset you so much?.. follow up... why can't you just go "meh" and go on about you lives like you do about anything else that you don't care about?... Lastly, does that say Leroy Jenkins at 7:28... because 🤯
I never comment on videos but it’s amazing you don’t have more subscribers
People were desperate for entertainment in the 80's goddamn.
Lol Begin Touching. Feel sorry for those who got an average girl on tv. XD
jesus christ superstar at 6:21
*Pinwheel > Nickelodeon*
Really? Pinwheel is just one show. You can't compare just one show to a whole Network
@@cpkudrongaming6100 no he’s right nickelodeon actually used to be called pinwheel
Oh
hell yeah ASTRO ZOMBIES!!!
Obligatory algorithm-boosting comment.
Doing the same with this reply.
Lulu is a fascinating dumpster fire