The downfall of British Satellite Broadcasting.

[merlodlliw]

Originally Posted by lincsat

Sky definitely launched with at least 3 channels active from Day one. Sky News had been testing for a Week or so. Sky one had been running for years as Sky Channel on cable (mostly in Holland), Sky Movies launched at around 6pm. Of the other English Channels, Screensport/Lifestyle used to timeshare a cable channel, CNN & MTV had been running a few years, so they were all on Astra from the official service date.

I remember on BBC's "Tomorrows World" program, a presenter on the roof manually adjusting a dish to get a picture - Yea right! He then interviewed one of the SES/Astra bosses from Luxembourg with the feed coming over the Astra satellite.

The big draw was a Boxing match about a week after launch, Frank Bruno v Mike Tyson IIRC. I know we were rushing around trying to get as many dishes fitted as possible that first week and really struggling to get equipment. There were a few Amstrad receivers around for £200, we did fit some other non Sky/Astra specific receivers that week, with pubs paying upto £750 to get the Boxing.

BSB was even worse stock wise, it was nearly 6 Months after launch before we had any stock to sell and with them using D-MAC, there wasn't anything else we could use.

Such a long time ago now - those were the days

Ah the Sky News thing got me,it must have been the beeb that ran the programme a week prior to Sky launch day, guess you are right.
I bought an Alba set includes dish at TE Roberts in Wrexham, as I bought
the set from them for self put up, they sold me some shielded coax,otherwise unavailable, forget the cost of the alba, was it £200?
I know there were two on offer one with a remote,one without I recall the price diff was about £30 to £50 not sure now.

Bob

Bob

[lincsat]

Can't remember the price of the Alba, they wern't very good. The Amstrad's were £199 or £20-£30 extra with the remote I believe.

[merlodlliw]

Originally Posted by lincsat

Can't remember the price of the Alba, they wern't very good. The Amstrad's were £199 or £20-£30 extra with the remote I believe.

I am a prat it was a Amstrad I bought with remote,dont know where I got the alba from, but were not the two Companys owned by Sugar.


Bob

[Kay B]

@ merlodlliw

> And the Sky box less than £100. Aim it at Astra 19 degrees, mind you the pics were
> like NTSC.

Like NTSC? Maybe because of NTSC to PAL conversion of some TV shows. The quality of CNN was not so good because they re-scaled the 480 lines pictures to 576 lines. The result was that CNN's PAL picture was less sharp than its NTSC picture.



@ lincsat

> Can't remember the price of the Alba, they wern't very good. The Amstrad's were £199
> or £20-£30 extra with the remote I believe.

We used an Alba in the early days of satellite reception. The quality of the pictures was okay, but it took some seconds to change channels. Probably, the AFC was too lame. Additionally, the buttons of the remote were quite small.



@ Likvid

> I had to use a 3.1 meter dish to receive BSB as the footprint weakened a lot here in
> Sweden.

LOL! 3.1 meters for DBS reception.


> The picture quality was great and comparable to B-MAC which i received TV3 with on
> Intelsat 27.5W.

Was this channel encrypted or in clear B-MAC?


> So sad they gave up, i had to cancel it 6 months or so later because my friend wasn't
> pleased to pay every month despite me giving him the money.

How high was the monthly fee for BSB?

[merlodlliw]

.

How high was the monthly fee for BSB?[/quote]


If I recall what my work colleagues said, three channels were FTA,you paid for the film channel and one other channel dam it, can not recall what it was called, I have no idea now of the cost, but 20 years ago a fiver would have been about the months cost for the film channel,
I do recall that the box was switched on via the sat.

Perhaps all were pay channels? can not remember,and you paid for the films(the films in the end) were the BSB downfall when they outbid the world and its mother for showing rights,I do recall what they paid or tried to pay killed BSB off.

Bob

[Likvid]

Originally Posted by Kay B

@ merlodlliw

@ Likvid

> I had to use a 3.1 meter dish to receive BSB as the footprint weakened a lot here in
> Sweden.

LOL! 3.1 meters for DBS reception.


> The picture quality was great and comparable to B-MAC which i received TV3 with on
> Intelsat 27.5W.

Was this channel encrypted or in clear B-MAC?


> So sad they gave up, i had to cancel it 6 months or so later because my friend wasn't
> pleased to pay every month despite me giving him the money.

How high was the monthly fee for BSB?

TV3 started their transmission on Intelsat 27.5W in encrypted B-MAC.

Private individuals could not get any subscription as it was for cable networks only.

I worked in the biz back then and could arrange a decoder with some contacts at TV3 a authorized Scientific Atlanta decoder.

Later they changed to D2-MAC and also moved satellite.

I really don't remember how much it costed but i remember i thought it was expensive for a few channels but the quality on BSB was great.

To be honest the best time in sat history was back when Prem1ere and The Movie channel, ScreenSport, CNN Headline News USA, Lifestyle, Childrens Channel were located on the same satellite Intelsat 27.5W, the first MTV transmission started on this satellite to Europe, i remember the first week MTV showed the same show around the clock and i remember hearing Madonnas, Whos that girl video, this was the USA version of MTV same goes for CNN which also was the USA version.

Now since many years back everything is a Euro version which is boring but back then you actually had U.S TV sent from the USA to the Intelsat and down over Europe.

Back then i had a manual receiver from Drake with two turning knobs in the front, one for frequency and audio, there was switch to change between 27MHz and 14MHz bandwidth which helped alot as the signals were weak back then.

Boy it was fun back then!!

It's no sport these days and when you see large dishes like 3 meter today you think it's so old and ancient in year 2008.

Digital age has made everything so easy.

I miss the analog years and a few people could afford a TVRO system back then, it was exotic.

Thankfully my parents had a big house with a large garden back then so i have to thank them for the wonderfull time of approx 10 years i could explore the hobby with large dishes.

[lincsat]

I remember the Launch of MTV on Intelsat, the first video being (not surprisingly), Dire Straights - Money for Nothing. I also remember the launch of CNN on there a couple of years earlier.

I found a video recently that I had recorded of MirrorVision - The Movie Channel.

The main sat's back then were the 27.5W & 13E, with some German channels on 60E and the Eurovision feeds on 7E, although they used Sound in Sync and were difficult to get a lock.

@ Kay B

There was an Alba and an Amstrad receiver, the Amstrad was way better than the Alba.

[Likvid]

I had to cut down a 10 meter high oak to get Intelsat back then.

I was completely desperate to get it as we only had two TV channels in Sweden and it was like christmas to get movie channels and not needing to walk down to the local video rental store.

Now you can get everything with your computer....

[Likvid]

Originally Posted by lincsat

I remember the Launch of MTV on Intelsat, the first video being (not surprisingly), Dire Straights - Money for Nothing. I also remember the launch of CNN on there a couple of years earlier.

I found a video recently that I had recorded of MirrorVision - The Movie Channel.

The main sat's back then were the 27.5W & 13E, with some German channels on 60E and the Eurovision feeds on 7E, although they used Sound in Sync and were difficult to get a lock.

@ Kay B

There was an Alba and an Amstrad receiver, the Amstrad was way better than the Alba.

Did you receive Intelsat with your own dish?

How large dish and what equipment did you have?

I know the Intelsat beam was centered on the UK, West beam i recall it was called, the ECS-1 at 13 East was also centered towards UK.

[lincsat]

My first dish was a 1.5m patio mount. I could get sparkle free pictures from 27.5W and the West Spot Beam on 13E. There were a few Sparklies on the West Beam 60E channels and even the 13E East beam was watchable, though far from what I would call entertainment quality