ON-TV used the Oak Orion scrambling system for their over-the-air TV stations as well as their satellite feeds. Back in the early 80s, most channels on satellite were still in the clear (including HBO). ON-TV was one of only a handful of channels that scrambled their signal on C-Band in the early 80s. Starting in 1986, many popular cable stations like HBO, ESPN and CNN began using the VideoCipher II system to scramble their feeds. Oak Orion was mainly used by CANCOM in Canada up until about the mid 1990s.
That's the way it was in L.A. If you didn't have a descrambler box and enjoyed watching a torn screen with no, or very little, sound, you were set. Eventually ONTV Channel 52 in L.A. had no regular programming, and was 24 hours of ONTV. Of course, as cable systems built out, the service eventually bit the dust.
My family had ON-TV in Detroit in the early 80s. The box cost $150 and the rate was $22.50/month; in today's money, that would be about $550 for the box and $82/month!
This is really cool. brings back lots of memories. I wish that someone would put on you tube the ONTV transition from WSNS Chicago, with the cheesy music and such that they had. Eric
yeah, here in LA, ON broadcast over UHF channel 52 and would encrypt their audio as well. by using your basic fine tuning button, we'd get Angels games clear enough to watch, while putting the radio announcers on for the call. however, Selectv didn't encrypt their audio, and by utilizing the same approach, we could watch movies, albeit very hazy and nearly colorless.
Like, most later "scrambling" systems, if you could call them that, used square waves with a low duty cycle, kept synchronized to the H sync signal. This would *only* affect the H-blank area, not anywhere else. (descramblers would also typically not completely remove it - leading to the vertical white bars on the edges which you sometimes see on VHS recordings on here) But instead of any of that, they're obviously using a simple sine-wave here. We see a smooth gradient, dark on the sides and bright in the middle. The "normal" NTSC H-sync signal is rendered visible in the very center, as a dark vertical line. Sync-removal systems like this were pretty bad for lots of reasons How this stuff works is, basically, it makes the TV see the visible image *as* sync information, and video changes all the time so the TV gets super confused and distorts the image as it tries to get a grip on the picture. The actual as-broadcast raster information isn't distorted at all, its *your TV* that does the "scrambling". But this one in particular is extra terrible With a more precise excision of the H-sync signal, the entire visible part of a scanline has an equal chance to be seen as sync. But with a signwave as seen here, its not flat. The middle of the visible image corresponds to the lowest part of the sine wave, and thus the middle is more likely to be seen as sync than the sides. This heavy bias towards the center of the image *reduces* the intensity of the distortions. I think a decent way to think of this is, it was for video, what ROT13 is for text, and nobody should be surprised that people cracked this so fast. With modern tools you could decode this effortlessly.
The only sign off I recorded was an announcement prior to the start of their Adults ONly service. (The ON was capitalized because it was on ON-TV!) The Adults Only service was available only to subscribers willing to pay an additional $4.95 per month for an R rated film each night. As the service gained more customers ON TV went back to their regular movie programming after the R rated adult film. The additional programming was called "ON and ON." (more in another email)
That might be why I didn';t notice it. I was more concerned about (and excited about) the graphics and ON TV jingles than the scrambled video. ;-) The brightness problem might have been the reason the transition seemed to take so long during the initial startup. The changeover from regular movie offerings to the Adults Only tier (and back again) was very quick. The only real delay was from commercial operation to the subscription programming. Thaks. Mike
I remember when WQTV and WSMW did their subscription broadcasts in the "scrambled" mode. I'd love to see OTA subscription TV make a comeback someday. Maybe, after a TV station signs off at night, they can schedule some subscription TV movies.
There used to be Airbox, an over the air pay tv service using digital tv. ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 do support encrypted pay modes. Digital encryption is so much more thorough tha analog encryption. You don't see a distorted picture with a wavy line, you don't see anything.
I only know that it was a very simple scrambing system. A video expert told me he was amazed at how simple (elementary) it was. Evidently, the designers of the system didn't believe anyone was capable of building a device to bring the picture back to normal. ;-)
Do you have any more clips from KNXV while they were ONTV? This was when before Scripps Howard bought the station, & then transformed into an ABC affiliate many years later. Also their sister station WFTS (Tampa) & KSHB (Kansas City) were also were independents before they switched to network affiliations, too.
You mean a movie about a lesbian couple living on a farm and then a ship person shows up and pretty much breaks up their marriage? Yeah that movie would be rated R by today’s standard. (Although it is more of between PG-13 and R. I would say it’s PG-13)
@@beavermuffin I don't know. Anne Heywood does full frontal nudity and the sex scene between her and Dennis is pretty erotic. But it would definitely be fine for cable, lol.
SueSnellLives! Never mind. It’s been a while since I saw that movie...... it would be rated R, if not NC-17 today. Wasn’t The Fox slapped with the Restricted cougar rating in British Columbia?
@@beavermuffin Probably! "The film was released soon after the dissolution of the Motion Picture Association of America Production Code and includes scenes of nudity, masturbation, sexual activity involving Paul and Ellen, and physical relations between two females. Rated R at the time of its original release, it was re-edited and rated PG in 1973."
Hi, sorry I didn't respond to this. I tried a couple of times to remove the black bars around the picture, but was unable to with the software I have. Is there a better software choice for editing these videos? Thanks.
(okay, I'm back...) The announcement said, "This concludes tonight's programming on ON TV. We'll be back tomorrow night at 7 o'clock." Then, the picture scrambled for the non-adult viewer and the R rated programming started. If I get time I'll post the other video file. Mike
What little I had on tape I have on my computer. Since I have used the video editing program only for this project I do not know if I can do what you suggested. Can I get a bigger image out of that? I'll have to go look. Thanks. Mike
I believe you are correct about the scrambling system. It seems I remember reading that back in those days. I recall somebody saying it was a pretty simple system. Mike
Are you in Phoenix, and did you see what happened in the Big Switch? Channel 3 lost ABC and became a successful independent station. Channel 10 lost CBS, but gained Fox. Channel 5 went from being independent to the CBS affiliate. Channel 12 kept NBC, but I won't say anything about their newscasts! ;-)
Hi. Would you believe I'm catching up on comments? I agree with your comment about Channel 12, the local NBC affiliate. Snoozeville. Yes, I am in Phoenix AZ. I added the state in case other readers know of another Phoenix somewhere in America. Thanks.
IT TV stood for "In Home Theater Television". My family had a subscription in the early 80's from their affiliate WIHT Channel 31 in Ann Arbor. We thought it was terrific and stayed subscribers until IT TV ended operations in 1983.
I'm sorry I did not fix it because I have been busy with other things...work, for example. ;-) I've been trying to get three other things done, but I'm not having any luck with those, either. Sorry to see you're leaving youtube. Mike
Our VCR would descramble it without a box. It was great.
ON-TV used the Oak Orion scrambling system for their over-the-air TV stations as well as their satellite feeds. Back in the early 80s, most channels on satellite were still in the clear (including HBO). ON-TV was one of only a handful of channels that scrambled their signal on C-Band in the early 80s. Starting in 1986, many popular cable stations like HBO, ESPN and CNN began using the VideoCipher II system to scramble their feeds. Oak Orion was mainly used by CANCOM in Canada up until about the mid 1990s.
Doesn't sound very sophisticated given how easily it was bypassed.
Who was responsible for it?
Just a simple circuit board using basic parts and a PLL ic! We built a couple in highschool 😅
That's the way it was in L.A. If you didn't have a descrambler box and enjoyed watching a torn screen with no, or very little, sound, you were set. Eventually ONTV Channel 52 in L.A. had no regular programming, and was 24 hours of ONTV. Of course, as cable systems built out, the service eventually bit the dust.
My family had ON-TV in Detroit in the early 80s. The box cost $150 and the rate was $22.50/month; in today's money, that would be about $550 for the box and $82/month!
Hi. Thanks for writing. You bought the box or did you pay a monthly fee?
@@mikef1435 We bought the box on the black market circa 1981 and watched it for free until the service ended on 31 March 1983.
This is really cool. brings back lots of memories. I wish that someone would put on you tube the ONTV transition from WSNS Chicago, with the cheesy music and such that they had.
Eric
13 years late but they did th-cam.com/video/j-9sqBC9jPw/w-d-xo.html
yeah, here in LA, ON broadcast over UHF channel 52 and would encrypt their audio as well. by using your basic fine tuning button, we'd get Angels games clear enough to watch, while putting the radio announcers on for the call. however, Selectv didn't encrypt their audio, and by utilizing the same approach, we could watch movies, albeit very hazy and nearly colorless.
Showtime Family-time Presentation - Pole Position - The Bear Affair "Take me to Susie Curry" Showtime, a Paramount Pay Cable Network, July 20th, 1986
Like, most later "scrambling" systems, if you could call them that, used square waves with a low duty cycle, kept synchronized to the H sync signal. This would *only* affect the H-blank area, not anywhere else. (descramblers would also typically not completely remove it - leading to the vertical white bars on the edges which you sometimes see on VHS recordings on here)
But instead of any of that, they're obviously using a simple sine-wave here. We see a smooth gradient, dark on the sides and bright in the middle. The "normal" NTSC H-sync signal is rendered visible in the very center, as a dark vertical line.
Sync-removal systems like this were pretty bad for lots of reasons
How this stuff works is, basically, it makes the TV see the visible image *as* sync information, and video changes all the time so the TV gets super confused and distorts the image as it tries to get a grip on the picture. The actual as-broadcast raster information isn't distorted at all, its *your TV* that does the "scrambling".
But this one in particular is extra terrible
With a more precise excision of the H-sync signal, the entire visible part of a scanline has an equal chance to be seen as sync.
But with a signwave as seen here, its not flat. The middle of the visible image corresponds to the lowest part of the sine wave, and thus the middle is more likely to be seen as sync than the sides. This heavy bias towards the center of the image *reduces* the intensity of the distortions.
I think a decent way to think of this is, it was for video, what ROT13 is for text, and nobody should be surprised that people cracked this so fast.
With modern tools you could decode this effortlessly.
The only sign off I recorded was an announcement prior to the start of their Adults ONly service. (The ON was capitalized because it was on ON-TV!)
The Adults Only service was available only to subscribers willing to pay an additional $4.95 per month for an R rated film each night.
As the service gained more customers ON TV went back to their regular movie programming after the R rated adult film. The additional programming was called "ON and ON."
(more in another email)
That might be why I didn';t notice it. I was more concerned about (and excited about) the graphics and ON TV jingles than the scrambled video. ;-)
The brightness problem might have been the reason the transition seemed to take so long during the initial startup. The changeover from regular movie offerings to the Adults Only tier (and back again) was very quick. The only real delay was from commercial operation to the subscription programming.
Thaks.
Mike
I remember when WQTV and WSMW did their subscription broadcasts in the "scrambled" mode. I'd love to see OTA subscription TV make a comeback someday. Maybe, after a TV station signs off at night, they can schedule some subscription TV movies.
I doubt that would happen given the rise of streaming video services.
There used to be Airbox, an over the air pay tv service using digital tv. ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 do support encrypted pay modes. Digital encryption is so much more thorough tha analog encryption. You don't see a distorted picture with a wavy line, you don't see anything.
There were many people who, after seeing what was happening, built themselves "descramblers" to watch the signal.
I only know that it was a very simple scrambing system. A video expert told me he was amazed at how simple (elementary) it was. Evidently, the designers of the system didn't believe anyone was capable of building a device to bring the picture back to normal. ;-)
ohhhhhhhh
Do you have any more clips from KNXV while they were ONTV? This was when before Scripps Howard bought the station, & then transformed into an ABC affiliate many years later. Also their sister station WFTS (Tampa) & KSHB (Kansas City) were also were independents before they switched to network affiliations, too.
Wonder if this was from the last year of ONTV's operation?
LOL! The Fox was PG??? Man, the 80's were great. That would be R even today!
You mean a movie about a lesbian couple living on a farm and then a ship person shows up and pretty much breaks up their marriage?
Yeah that movie would be rated R by today’s standard. (Although it is more of between PG-13 and R. I would say it’s PG-13)
@@beavermuffin I don't know. Anne Heywood does full frontal nudity and the sex scene between her and Dennis is pretty erotic. But it would definitely be fine for cable, lol.
SueSnellLives! Never mind. It’s been a while since I saw that movie...... it would be rated R, if not NC-17 today.
Wasn’t The Fox slapped with the Restricted cougar rating in British Columbia?
@@beavermuffin Probably! "The film was released soon after the dissolution of the Motion Picture Association of America Production Code and includes scenes of nudity, masturbation, sexual activity involving Paul and Ellen, and physical relations between two females. Rated R at the time of its original release, it was re-edited and rated PG in 1973."
Hi, sorry I didn't respond to this. I tried a couple of times to remove the black bars around the picture, but was unable to with the software I have. Is there a better software choice for editing these videos?
Thanks.
(okay, I'm back...)
The announcement said, "This concludes tonight's programming on ON TV. We'll be back tomorrow night at 7 o'clock." Then, the picture scrambled for the non-adult viewer and the R rated programming started. If I get time I'll post the other video file.
Mike
What little I had on tape I have on my computer. Since I have used the video editing program only for this project I do not know if I can do what you suggested. Can I get a bigger image out of that? I'll have to go look.
Thanks.
Mike
I believe you are correct about the scrambling system. It seems I remember reading that back in those days. I recall somebody saying it was a pretty simple system.
Mike
Are you in Phoenix, and did you see what happened in the Big Switch? Channel 3 lost ABC and became a successful independent station. Channel 10 lost CBS, but gained Fox. Channel 5 went from being independent to the CBS affiliate.
Channel 12 kept NBC, but I won't say anything about their newscasts! ;-)
Hi. Would you believe I'm catching up on comments? I agree with your comment about Channel 12, the local NBC affiliate. Snoozeville. Yes, I am in Phoenix AZ. I added the state in case other readers know of another Phoenix somewhere in America. Thanks.
When viewing the scrambled signal there was no audio.
Mike
does anyone remember IT television, it came out just after ON.
I remember it. Never had either one.
IT TV stood for "In Home Theater Television". My family had a subscription in the early 80's from their affiliate WIHT Channel 31 in Ann Arbor. We thought it was terrific and stayed subscribers until IT TV ended operations in 1983.
Also, it seems you fixed it
I'm sorry I did not fix it because I have been busy with other things...work, for example. ;-)
I've been trying to get three other things done, but I'm not having any luck with those, either.
Sorry to see you're leaving youtube.
Mike
Hm...that's something I've never noticed. I suppose it's possible. (Keep in mind this is a guess. I am not a TV engineer.)
That happened several years ago. They also carry a lot of Scripps programming.
Showtime Family-time Presentation - Pole Position - The Bear Affair "Take me to Susie Curry" Showtime, a Paramount Pay Cable Network, July 20th, 1986
Showtime Family-time Presentation - Pole Position - The Bear Affair "Take me to Susie Curry" Showtime, a Paramount Pay Cable Network, July 20th, 1986
Showtime Family-time Presentation - Pole Position - The Bear Affair "Take me to Susie Curry" Showtime, a Paramount Pay Cable Network, July 20th, 1986
Showtime Family-time Presentation - Pole Position - The Bear Affair "Take me to Susie Curry" Showtime, a Paramount Pay Cable Network, July 20th, 1986