The early days of Sky Television

I remember with Sky analogue that if there was a speck of rain or wind the picture would get white noise all over it. Used to love the early days of UK Gold, great programmes and the real feeling it was a learning curve for those who worked on the channel, when BBC programmes which were 30 minutes had ad breaks added so were 34 minutes so the channel would always over run from the stated times!

Found some clips from the old days. Go to http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post670522#post670522 and http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post670450#post670450

Found this fascinating Tomorrow's World piece on YT uploaded by a forum member sometime ago. Just think, one day we could have widescreen and high definition television: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2biNQbzu4cQ

Sky Multichannels marked the real start of Sky being a platform of its own, wheras before that it had always been thought of purely as a broadcaster, even though as early as 1990 it had been charging for Sky Movies (then a single channel) and since 1992 for Sky Sports. It managed to convince everyone it was a content play when in reality it always really was heading for being essentially a wireless cable company.

Wasn't it the case that Marcopolo 1/2 actually were identical birds, with the same transponder frequencies? I'm pretty sure that when they were redeployed as Thor 1/Sirius, they were certainly on the same five transponders.

As I understand it, the frequencies were limited to 5 because that was the allocation given to the UK and Ireland (3 for the UK and 2 for Ireland). I'm sure that doesn't mean that they could only physically transmit on a limit of 5 frequencies between them

One minor thing: There wasn't really a "launch lineup", the channels launched one after another on different times during 1989. FilmNet, TV3, MTV and the Sky channels all launched in February. The WH Smith channels (Screensport and Lifestyle/Childrens Channel) launched in March. TV1000 was launched in August 27 and some German channels came in the autumn.

Here is a part of a German leaflet that was posted by Broadband TV News some time ago. It shows what channels were on Astra in May 1989, including some planned channels that never came to the airwaves.

http://i31.tinypic.com/289eb7r.jpg

It was more the fact that Thor 1 and Sirius did broadcast on the same physical frequencies that led me to the observation really. If it was the case then BSB was never going to have more than five channels in a hurry.

ISTR that the two satellites were designed to be co-located and to share duties - so some channels were carried by MarcoPolo 1 and others by MarcoPolo 2. There were only 5 transponder frequencies because those were what were allocated in the DBS band that BSB used. If a transponder failed on one of the satellites, the other would be used. I'm not familiar with the uplink/downlink systems used at the time - so don't know if transponders could be re-tuned. AIUI transponders used transposer technology rather than demodulate/remodulate systems, and I don't know if the transposers could be altered remotely, though I may be wrong.

(Sky used the FSS band which was licensed differently - and wasn't originally envisaged for direct-to-home use)

From memory most TVSat (Germany) and TDF1 (France) were co-located and one used right-hand circular polarisation and the other left-hand polarisation, and each used the same 5 frequencies (I think), for D2MAC rather than the DMAC used by BSB.

The BSB Squarial had to be dismantled to alter the polarisation, as did the LNBs on the mini-dish they used, as each country was allocated a single polarisation and didn't need to switch LNB polarisation between channels. I had Philips and Ferguson boxes with hacked firmware that let me watch D2MAC transmissions from the two satellites when I was at uni - including the Barcelona and Albertville Olympics HD broadcasts - which we watched in 16:9 SD RGB on a Philips monitor which we scan crushed to letterbox.

(I must have been one of the first people to have had satellite TV at college c.1991/2 - the Squarial just sat poking through my window

I persuaded my dad to leave the squarial up on the wall (and forego the cash back scheme offered for it), convincing him it was a superior system to Sky's, and that surely someone would come along and use it eventually.

Whoops.

Talking of the Marcopolo satellites, here's an IBA report on the building of their uplink in Chilworth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODo0qBFpVhg

Chilworth is now a Sky facility, not only their uplink but also plays out the Box Office channels amongst other things

I noticed that the jingle used by the IBA at the start of that video is the same one adopted by Granada for their ident in 1990.