I remember the first thing I saw about cable was on Tomorrow's World (or similar) in either the late 80s or, more likely, the very early 90s, where there was an item about a very early form of interactive TV being trialed on one cable system, where LWT were providing additional camera angles for The Match which viewers could select. It was all very basic, but still seemed very exciting. Didn't get anything like that when we eventually got cable a few years later, of course!
Rediffusion was a major operator. In order to subscribe, naturally, you rented your set from Rediffusion. Smaller towns (eg Grimsby) seemed to disappear with the migration to colour/UHF, but larger towns (eg Hull) were using the system for relay untill the mid-80's. In Hull the post 625 chane lineup was BBC1, BBC2, Anglia and Yorkshire. Post '74 Tyne-Tees substituted Anglia and Yorkshire became the Belmont version. The radio was certainly, Light, Home, Third and BBC Radio Humberside (Redifussion Channel "B"), not sure about Radio 1.
The technical distribution was to a (small) rotary switch selector, usually mounted in the window-frame.
I remember the house I grew up in had one of those dials on the wall. It was redundant by then though (I'm talking late 80s early 90s), so I don't remember the service itself. I also remember Rediffusion's Hull building being derelict, no doubt because the service had closed down.
There's a good reason Tyne Tees was the second ITV channel after 1974 - you could actually pick it up on an aerial.
I grew up with Diamond Cable in Nottingham, had at the start 14 channels and later boomed to around 30 some on shared stations like Cartoon Network and TNT. It was taken over by then ntl:Home in early 2000s. I still remember the box, this black thing with number 1-14 on the front and a calculator like display! The remote was nothing fancy either. TV guide was a channel, not an actual epg. Those were the days!
Our block of terraces in Stoke, and in fact most around here, still have the Rediffusion cables dangling up next to the guttering. Big black things with junction boxes.... Hasn’t worked for decades to my knowledge, and we had the rotary switch removed years ago.
My nans house was wired with Rediffusion and had a ‘monitor’ connected to a Rediffusion set top box, without around 12 push buttons on the front to switch between services- which I think was the later version of the Rediffusion system.
Our block of terraces in Stoke, and in fact most around here, still have the Rediffusion cables dangling up next to the guttering. Big black things with junction boxes.... Hasn’t worked for decades to my knowledge, and we had the rotary switch removed years ago.
My nans house was wired with Rediffusion and had a ‘monitor’ connected to a Rediffusion set top box, without around 12 push buttons on the front to switch between services- which I think was the later version of the Rediffusion system.
We got the guttering redone at my house last year and while the workmen were up there, discovered the Rediffusion cable. I'm guessing it was placed up there when the row of terraces was being built (Late 1960's). The manhole covers for the underground cables (what Virgin uses) says CATV 1971 on them. I'm also going to assume that's the year they were done, not the identifier for the cable itself (considering all the covers in the estate say 1971 on them)