Before Astra Satellite

There was a "Sky Channel" way before Rupert became involved. This was an independent channel that specialised in running British programming, particularly to Scandinavian cable systems vie Eutelsat.

News International bought the Sky Channel, and used its name and branding as the basis for their UK multi-channel offering from BT London Docks via Astra, dumping the original Sky Channel in the process.

Sky (UK) came to air before BSB, which was a coonsortium with involving all the usual establishment names like Granada. In the end they both were effectivly bust, and had to merge taking the hybrid name BSkyB.

Initially the service ran on both Marco Polo (MAC) and Astra (PAL), but porr old Marco Polo and its Sqairiels were dumped, and the sattelites sold off to Norway and Sweeden.

'Satellite TV' (or SATV as the channel was known) launched in 1982 - broadcasting from the UK for European cable.

Murdoch took it over if 1984 and renamed it Sky Channel.

This channel was joined by some new Sky channels in 1989 with the launch on their DTH service on the new Astra satellite.

Sky Channel for Europe was replaced by Eurosport and the Sky Channel for UK became Sky One.

Thanks MrStrawsonsSheep, it will make for interesting reading.

NTL wouldn't have got commission as such - the satellites were IBA owned so like all the land based transmitters passed over to NTL... so they owned the 2 Marcopolo sats.

The IBA had a strange view of DBS using 2 MarcoPolo sats to carry just 5 channels was madness. Especially considering that Astra 1 launched around the same time carried 16 on just one sat

Wasn't the MAC system used on the BS Marcopolo satellites and received via the 'Squarials' considered to be vastly superior to PAL when sent via sat? ISTR that analogue Astra transmissions were especially poor and prone to sparklies in even reasonable weather. As I recall, this didn't affect MAC transmissions in anywhere like the same way. And what was D2MAC? An early digital coding? Or have I made that one up?!

D2 MAC was an early encryption developed in 1985, although I believe just from reading what other people have said that there were some good channels using this encryption, I think it's still in use in Scandanvia.

Some info on D-MAC and BSB here

here

The MP sats were BSB owned, not actually owned by the IBA, but definatly regulated by them! The IBA only had very slim borrowing powers, and there was no way that the Treasuary were going to let them take part in financing two expensive gestationary sattelites, let alone take the risk of owning them. The only sats up there owned by the British taxpayer are the MoD's.

When MP1 was sold there was an agreement restricting the sale of MP2 into the Scandinavian market. The resolution was that MP2 was sold via NTL, so yes you are quite righrt it wasn't a commision as such .... more of a a fat handling fee.

The IBA were responsible for transmissiion, and handled this from their uplink site at Chilworth, near to Southampton Airport. Chilworth was passed to BSkyB opon the privatisation of IBA transmission and the BSB/Sky merger. It continued to act as the control, for the Marco Polo spacecraft, even after they were sold.

BSkyB uplinks moved to Chilworth when Sky went digital, the original Sky analogue feeds being contrcted to BT and handled fom the London Teleport, next to the Woolwich Ferry.

http://www.uplinkstation.com/ab/BSkyB-Satellite-Uplink.html

Very much so. But at Sky's launch party Alan Sugar promised to pay out "a million quid" if anyone could tell the difference between the two.

Don't think he ever paid up?

Not encryption as such, its a mode of transmission..... in the same way that PAL or DVB are.

I remember seeing BSB working in an electrical shop - it had a now and next feature, similar to those on digital boxes these days.

Thanks for the info Harshy (and I didn't realise before that you also lived in Plymouth!)

MAC had much higher bandwidth than PAL, and was a component-video source IIRC. The main problem being that very few TVs at the time had RGB inputs so the extra bandwidth was wasted.

With the TVs being produced now it would have been very easy for anyone to tell the difference, and Alan Sugar would never have made the offer.

I didn't live in Plymouth