On the rear panel where there is a marking for "premium on/off"... you are correct, it's for a key switch. OAK typically used an SPST keyed switch here, with the most common key switch made by Briggs and Stratton (yes the lawnmower engine people). The key switch was not to activate a separate decoder for early forms of pay per view. The key switch was for parental control. If I remember correctly, the white wires that you can see flopping around from the blue epoxy decoder module were to be connected to that switch if one was installed.
Thank you so much for putting up this video! My grandparents lived in a "closed community" neighborhood in Dayton in the 70's & 80's, and the owner was this weird old guy who absolutely banned cable in his communities because he didn't want anyone drilling holes in the walls. My grandmother was a die-hard Reds fan, and couldn't always get to see the games. So Grandpa bought this. We were actually heartbroken when it went out of business. My mother worked for yet another now-defunct Dayton cable service in the 90's called Omnivision, which didn't only give you just cable, but built-in games, too!
Cool. We had a legit decoder in about 1977 or 78 for ch 52 in the L.A. market. Then in about 1979 or 80. I purchased a "Simple Simon" kit from a place in Las Vegas. (I cant believe I still remember all of that) I was 12 or 13, and needed a neighbors help to put it together, as it was the first of many electronic kits I would eventually assemble. A year or 2 later, I built a microwave receiver kit to get Z the movie channel. I was the only kid in the neighborhood to have 2 different decoders in my room, and all my friends wanted to sleep over. Thanks for showing me this, I always wondered what was inside a "real" ON TV decoder.
Todd Stewart , from what I can remember. I was about 10 years old probably. It was about 8” wide and a foot tall or so. Pretty small. And had a bunch of horizontal bars running down it. Like a grid type thing. I remember it was weird looking compared to the regular giant tv antenna.
I remember ON TV on KBSC TV 52...in Los Angeles California in the 1970s...to 1980s...I remember of getting it on an up converter I got the signal clear with no audio on Channel 12...I do remember getting it😮
These boxes received a signal from the TV transmitter that allowed paid subscription boxes to work. That way stolen boxes could be disabled. There was a secret workaround to make a disabled box to work by gouging out the epoxy at a select spot to access the circuit board and to cut the trace of one of the connections protected by the epoxyed board.
KECH 22 in Salem, OR carried ON-TV in the evenings and at at night from 1982-85. It was never very popular in that market and only attracted about 12,000 subscribers around the Willamette Valley. KECH would itself go off the air in 1987.
our electronics teacher on Jr. high. used to sell decoders for ON TV . in Los Angeles area, it used to broadcast on channel 22 but only on the afternoons
ON TV needs to make a comeback if WarnerMedia (owns HBO, Cinemax, etc.) or VIacom (owns Showtime, The Movie Channel, etc.) or StarzEncore networks would purchase ON TV with SportsVision?
1:52 "The television would shift the picture back and forth" And *specifically* the television too. The raw signal wasn't "scrambled" at all, just defaced a little. (the scrambling signal would be there, but the picture would be otherwise normal. The "scrambling" was actually done by *your TV's* sync circuits. Which I found interesting when you consider how much effort they put into this stuff back in the day.
I remember seeing JAWS on On TV ....the commuical... just when you thought it was safe to go into your living room.... JAWS.. surcrive to ON... You won't miss a single Bite!!!
Exactly my dad use to build those in the garage I remember at night my father would tune it vhf off uhf an take the uhf knob off the tv cause late night would start to play pornographic material I was very young but I do remember it an we live in the suburbs of Detroit
Lisle didn't get cable until 1985. My dad got us cable not long after in 1985, and they had 3 movie channels HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. All together maybe like 40 channels or so. Gold colored Scientific Atlanta box with a weird bubble button remote and I had to hit the "auth" button and 0-0-0-0 to descramble the movie channels. HBO was ch 25, Cinemax was 26, Showtime was 27. I remember the guy who installed the cable was very nervous about me touching the equipment, like it costed a fortune and he was afraid I would break something lol. Before 85, it was outdoor antenna channels 2-5-7-9-11-32-38-44-60-66. As a kid then, 32 and 9 (bozo show) were my favorite channels during weekdays, and 2-5-7 were my fav on Sat mornings. Good old days.
I think the cbl company was called Lisle Cablevision. I remember the cbl comp was off of hwy 53 near what used to be tollway 5 (now i-88). My dad was transferred out of Chicago in 1986 and I havent been there since 1990. Id like to see it again, but it is just too far away.
Anyone build on of those pirate boxes? They were easy to make... just buy ordinary replacement television parts from the local repair shop, and assemble it in whatever cabinet you provide.
@@toddstewart9070 That sounds a lot like one I found on trash pick-up amnesty day in my town. I figured it's worth keeping, just as a conversation piece at least.
those things were everywhere in chicago area in the early 80s. ive seen a variety of different looking versions. If I recall right, one even had a speaker inside of it that you had to use to hear ch44 correctly, I could be mistaken though. It has been a long time and I was just a little kid back then. He also had a legit box for awhile too.
Back then I was more obsessed with c-band satellites. There was a satellite shop at the end of our neighborhood in the early-mid 80s and I used to go in there all of the time and play with their sat receivers and watched the c-band channels. It drove the owner and ppl who worked there crazy.
@@toddstewart9070 Good-luck trying to find old C-band satellite equipment now... I'm trying to find a 8' dish to repurpose for digital. And are there even still any signals on C-band anymore?
You forgot to shut off the intro music. Seems like one long lead up to something. 9 minutes to open the box. 2 minutes inside. You didn't really say how it works you just said this signal goes to this; and I assume this the decoder. OK but how does it do that? I see tuneable inductors why are there six? Start from there. Also no close ups of the parts to see what it does. I think with some improvement you can make a really good tear down channel.
Simply, Pay TV reduced the level of the horizontal sync. to a level so low a TV could not lock on it. The video was stronger than the sync so the sync circuit tried locking on to the video itself, which caused the tearing and wiggling. A sub carrier with the correct horizontal sync frequency was broadcast. The decoder would use that reference to control a circuit that would regenerate the sync and combine it with the video. That horizontal sub carrier was also used to encode the audio.
They applied basically the same technology used for stereo sound on FM radio stations. However, the pilot frequency was the horizontal line frequency instead of 19 kHz. At the time, TV sets had a coax cable from the tuner to the IF amplifier. The TV sound carrier had been down converted to some 42 MHz or so. So, I bought cheap GE AM-FM table radios and modified the front end to tune the TV audio carrier in the IF signal. An FM stereo chip was used to recover the pilot frequency and sound. The chip has an external tuned circuit for the pilot, which was adjusted for the different frequency. For FM stereo, the baseband signal is left + right and subcarrier left - right. The chip had a matrix to output left and right. For pay TV, the baseband was a barker telling you what you were missing and the subcarrier the program sound. So, I used an external matrix to cancel out the barker and recover program sound. The remaining function was to use the recovered horizontal line frequency to insert gain in the signal path during the horizontal sync interval. Two one-shots triggered by a positive zero crossing to deliver the properly timed pulse. So, I ran coax from the TV tuner to my radio with decoder circuitry, then the signal went through the gain insertion circuitry, and back to the TV's IF amplifier. I remember working on my circuit the night before "The Muppet Movie" was to air, but went to bed without a working circuit. I worked some more that day, but didn't have a signal for testing. My children and I gathered in front of the family TV. They ran some 5-10 minutes of previews before switching to scrambled mode. With some tweaking as the movie started and a few times during, my circuit worked and I didn't disappoint my children!
On the rear panel where there is a marking for "premium on/off"... you are correct, it's for a key switch. OAK typically used an SPST keyed switch here, with the most common key switch made by Briggs and Stratton (yes the lawnmower engine people). The key switch was not to activate a separate decoder for early forms of pay per view. The key switch was for parental control. If I remember correctly, the white wires that you can see flopping around from the blue epoxy decoder module were to be connected to that switch if one was installed.
Thank you so much for putting up this video! My grandparents lived in a "closed community" neighborhood in Dayton in the 70's & 80's, and the owner was this weird old guy who absolutely banned cable in his communities because he didn't want anyone drilling holes in the walls. My grandmother was a die-hard Reds fan, and couldn't always get to see the games. So Grandpa bought this. We were actually heartbroken when it went out of business.
My mother worked for yet another now-defunct Dayton cable service in the 90's called Omnivision, which didn't only give you just cable, but built-in games, too!
Cool. We had a legit decoder in about 1977 or 78 for ch 52 in the L.A. market. Then in about 1979 or 80. I purchased a "Simple Simon" kit from a place in Las Vegas. (I cant believe I still remember all of that) I was 12 or 13, and needed a neighbors help to put it together, as it was the first of many electronic kits I would eventually assemble. A year or 2 later, I built a microwave receiver kit to get Z the movie channel. I was the only kid in the neighborhood to have 2 different decoders in my room, and all my friends wanted to sleep over. Thanks for showing me this, I always wondered what was inside a "real" ON TV decoder.
There was also SelecTV in my hood. I was same age. I remember climbing the telephone pole to steal cable after cable killed ON TV.
I don't think I have ever seen an OTA TV microwave antenna and receiver made for that purpose. What did the antennas look like? Just curious.
Todd Stewart , from what I can remember. I was about 10 years old probably. It was about 8” wide and a foot tall or so. Pretty small. And had a bunch of horizontal bars running down it. Like a grid type thing. I remember it was weird looking compared to the regular giant tv antenna.
I figured it would look different from std ota antennas. There has to be a pic of one somewhere.
i wonder what these station's frequencies were also.
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I remember ON TV on KBSC TV 52...in Los Angeles California in the 1970s...to 1980s...I remember of getting it on an up converter I got the signal clear with no audio on Channel 12...I do remember getting it😮
These boxes received a signal from the TV transmitter that allowed paid subscription boxes to work. That way stolen boxes could be disabled. There was a secret workaround to make a disabled box to work by gouging out the epoxy at a select spot to access the circuit board and to cut the trace of one of the connections protected by the epoxyed board.
KECH 22 in Salem, OR carried ON-TV in the evenings and at at night from 1982-85. It was never very popular in that market and only attracted about 12,000 subscribers around the Willamette Valley. KECH would itself go off the air in 1987.
our electronics teacher on Jr. high. used to sell decoders for ON TV . in Los Angeles area, it used to broadcast on channel 22 but only on the afternoons
"ON TV" was on channel 52 and "SELECT" tv was on channel 22 in the Los Angeles area. Arrrrrrr!
ON TV needs to make a comeback if WarnerMedia (owns HBO, Cinemax, etc.) or VIacom (owns Showtime, The Movie Channel, etc.) or StarzEncore networks would purchase ON TV with SportsVision?
"A bayg of parts" -- a perfect example of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift!
1:52 "The television would shift the picture back and forth" And *specifically* the television too. The raw signal wasn't "scrambled" at all, just defaced a little. (the scrambling signal would be there, but the picture would be otherwise normal. The "scrambling" was actually done by *your TV's* sync circuits.
Which I found interesting when you consider how much effort they put into this stuff back in the day.
WSNS-TV in Chicago is a Telemundo station.
I remember seeing JAWS on On TV ....the commuical... just when you thought it was safe to go into your living room.... JAWS.. surcrive to ON... You won't miss a single Bite!!!
Exactly my dad use to build those in the garage I remember at night my father would tune it vhf off uhf an take the uhf knob off the tv cause late night would start to play pornographic material I was very young but I do remember it an we live in the suburbs of Detroit
And to think Chicago had 2 Pay TV services, ON TV & Spectrum before Cable TV became available in 1985.
Downers Grove--a Chicagoland suburb--had cable in the early-80s.
Lisle didn't get cable until 1985. My dad got us cable not long after in 1985, and they had 3 movie channels HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. All together maybe like 40 channels or so. Gold colored Scientific Atlanta box with a weird bubble button remote and I had to hit the "auth" button and 0-0-0-0 to descramble the movie channels. HBO was ch 25, Cinemax was 26, Showtime was 27. I remember the guy who installed the cable was very nervous about me touching the equipment, like it costed a fortune and he was afraid I would break something lol. Before 85, it was outdoor antenna channels 2-5-7-9-11-32-38-44-60-66. As a kid then, 32 and 9 (bozo show) were my favorite channels during weekdays, and 2-5-7 were my fav on Sat mornings. Good old days.
@@toddstewart9070 That's ironic... considering Bell Labs and AT&T had divisions setup out there.
I think the cbl company was called Lisle Cablevision. I remember the cbl comp was off of hwy 53 near what used to be tollway 5 (now i-88). My dad was transferred out of Chicago in 1986 and I havent been there since 1990. Id like to see it again, but it is just too far away.
correction, it was Lisle CableView
We had on in Detroit! 1980s
Anyone build on of those pirate boxes? They were easy to make... just buy ordinary replacement television parts from the local repair shop, and assemble it in whatever cabinet you provide.
my dad had one. it looked like a small speaker box with a flip dipole switch on it. Think he paid about 200 bux for it in 1983
@@toddstewart9070 That sounds a lot like one I found on trash pick-up amnesty day in my town. I figured it's worth keeping, just as a conversation piece at least.
those things were everywhere in chicago area in the early 80s. ive seen a variety of different looking versions. If I recall right, one even had a speaker inside of it that you had to use to hear ch44 correctly, I could be mistaken though. It has been a long time and I was just a little kid back then. He also had a legit box for awhile too.
Back then I was more obsessed with c-band satellites. There was a satellite shop at the end of our neighborhood in the early-mid 80s and I used to go in there all of the time and play with their sat receivers and watched the c-band channels. It drove the owner and ppl who worked there crazy.
@@toddstewart9070 Good-luck trying to find old C-band satellite equipment now... I'm trying to find a 8' dish to repurpose for digital. And are there even still any signals on C-band anymore?
You forgot to shut off the intro music. Seems like one long lead up to something. 9 minutes to open the box. 2 minutes inside. You didn't really say how it works you just said this signal goes to this; and I assume this the decoder. OK but how does it do that? I see tuneable inductors why are there six? Start from there. Also no close ups of the parts to see what it does. I think with some improvement you can make a really good tear down channel.
Simply, Pay TV reduced the level of the horizontal sync. to a level so low a TV could not lock on it. The video was stronger than the sync so the sync circuit tried locking on to the video itself, which caused the tearing and wiggling. A sub carrier with the correct horizontal sync frequency was broadcast. The decoder would use that reference to control a circuit that would regenerate the sync and combine it with the video. That horizontal sub carrier was also used to encode the audio.
They applied basically the same technology used for stereo sound on FM radio stations. However, the pilot frequency was the horizontal line frequency instead of 19 kHz. At the time, TV sets had a coax cable from the tuner to the IF amplifier. The TV sound carrier had been down converted to some 42 MHz or so. So, I bought cheap GE AM-FM table radios and modified the front end to tune the TV audio carrier in the IF signal. An FM stereo chip was used to recover the pilot frequency and sound. The chip has an external tuned circuit for the pilot, which was adjusted for the different frequency. For FM stereo, the baseband signal is left + right and subcarrier left - right. The chip had a matrix to output left and right. For pay TV, the baseband was a barker telling you what you were missing and the subcarrier the program sound. So, I used an external matrix to cancel out the barker and recover program sound. The remaining function was to use the recovered horizontal line frequency to insert gain in the signal path during the horizontal sync interval. Two one-shots triggered by a positive zero crossing to deliver the properly timed pulse. So, I ran coax from the TV tuner to my radio with decoder circuitry, then the signal went through the gain insertion circuitry, and back to the TV's IF amplifier.
I remember working on my circuit the night before "The Muppet Movie" was to air, but went to bed without a working circuit. I worked some more that day, but didn't have a signal for testing. My children and I gathered in front of the family TV. They ran some 5-10 minutes of previews before switching to scrambled mode. With some tweaking as the movie started and a few times during, my circuit worked and I didn't disappoint my children!