Analogue Cable Memories

Minus The Sci-Fi Channel, yep that's how it was on Astra and most cable operators. Became Sky Sports 2 full time from 1 September 1997.

I'm not sure why they had Ulster at the top or even why they had the channel on the system as the town doesn't have a large NI population. I found it odd that they used keystroke instead of channel numbers for the non relay channels. They did always switch 'keystroke 22' over at 6am for Nickelodeon. It would have been better if they gave CMT it's own channel as it was broadcast 24hrs and used the downtime of Bravo and Nick for other channels. Instead CMT wouldn't be available from 12pm-7pm but was on 2 channels between 12am-6am.



I believe it was a similar setup to Milton Keynes. They had people up from MK in 1996 promoting the service which was when my parents subscribed again after some pestering from me Ageing infrastructure which would be too costly to convert for digital was another reason given for the closure of the service. There seemed to be more limited bandwidth available compared to other analogue cable networks who were offering a lot more channels.

I'm pretty sure the God channel was based in the same building as Challenge at Maidstone.

Maybe, but they didn't channel share on satellite. It shared with TV Travel shop, but that was elsewhere (IIRC with one of the Front Row channels).

Don't anybody let Tumble Tower see this...

When we first got analogue cable, I think it was around 1989/90 - it was supplied by Videotron. On September 1, 1997 they became C&W then later NTL. We got digital cable when it was NTL but then I persuaded my parents to get Sky!

I can remember lots of channel numbers from the analogue days. Channel 1 started as the Mosaic channel, then became Channel One, then FilmFour!

With regards to the terrestrial channels, Channel 4 was on 40, C5 (when it started) was on 42, ITV on 44, BBC2 on 46 and BBC1 on 48, BBC N24 was on 49 when it launched. I think BBC1 was originally on 38 but moved to make way for UK Gold.

Timeshare wise we had TCC/Performance on 10, later this became TV Travel Shop/Challenge. I remember the Parliamentary Channel sharing with Euronews and a service called Multicultural Television, Nick and PCC were on 22 and TNT/CN were on 13.

I can also remember having a Local channel on 60 and before VH-1 came along on 34, we had an information channel there. I also remember Channel Guide and its replacement, TV Today. Bizarrely the radio stations we got in the background on channels during their downtime was either Virgin Radio or the Dutch Sky Radio!

In the way of 'foreign channels', aside from a couple of Asian offerings, we had the French TV5, German SAT-1, Spanish TVE and Italian RaiUno.

As for equipment, in the analogue days we started with a Jerrold/General Instruments box, later replaced by a Videoway box which introduced Interactive Television via the red button and a whole host of computer games too! When we moved to digital we were given a Pace box.

A friend of mine a couple of miles south in Chiswick also had cable, but his was supplied by The Cable Corporation, later Telewest.

Was Channel One a local station or was it broadcast nationally? I remember it coming from Liverpool so I assumed back in the day that it was only available in Liverpool, for some reason.

It was a local station, I can't say how many cities it operated in, however the Liverpool version of Channel One outlasted the rest of the other stations which were pulled quite quickly. It may have even saw Digital Cable/Telewest in the Liverpool area but I could be wrong. You'd be best asking VMPhil if he's about.

Hi! Yes I'm pretty certain Channel One Liverpool survived to see digital cable, at least for a few years. I think it was in the news section of the EPG, in the 600s. I don't remember much about it other than it was low budget, and during its final days every so often they would fade to a slide explaining that the channel would be closing soon. I don't know exactly when it closed, but it was around 2002-2003, it was long gone by 2004. I believe it was operated by the local paper, the Liverpool Echo (and Daily Post, as was).

Here's a clip from Andy Bonner, who these days works for Granada Reports, well-known most recently as their dedicated Hillsborough reporter.

I can vaguely remember reading an article about cable TV in an engineering magazine which mentioned that the deployment of analogue cable TV faces a difficulty in Britain compared with Continental countries because of the design of large numbers of TV tuners. I have recollections of European TVs from the early 1980s that had both VHF and UHF tuners and could be programmed with large numbers of channels, but most British TVs - and many British spec Japanese TVs from the same era - only had UHF tuners and had as few as 8 or even 6 channel positions even on remote control models. Analogue cable TV networks that used a TV tuner rather than a separate receiver have been around for decades in the US and some European countries.

I remember there being a Local channel on Bell Cable Media in Leeds (or maybe it was once it became Cable and Wireless) that was basically ITV Nightscreen with even lower production values, and Radio Aire in the background.

We need to start a crowdfunding for Tony's book because I would buy the **** out of that