Interesting BBC Select Ident

If I am not mistaken, you don't see this ident, but you hear it when Alan turns on the TV and the announcer is going on about what's on all night. But Alan then phones up for porn to be put on his TV.

There was an interesting BBC Select clip on MHP PP a couple of weeks ago, which showed a programme made by Thames Television. I always wondered why it closed down so early, you would have thought they give it a couple of more years.

Hard to say on a still such as that but it's not the one from TV Room as it was an actual 2 ident rather than something based around The Learning Zone.

So how did BBC Select work? I can't see how it would have been possible to encrypt and decode an analogue terrestrial service! Did people have to buy a special decoder box to watch the programmes?

You've just answered your own question, the BBC scrambled the signal, apparently in the same way that Sky used to for Analogue, then viewers would have to buy a special BBC Select decoder which unscrambled it. Though I don't think it was probably worth it all, as the whole operation only lasted about a year and it only broadcasted for one hour or so on BBC1 or BBC2 in the dead of the night.

I don't know what would happen if you still had one of these boxes in operation, I presume they would just be doing nothing and providing the analogue signal normally.

I have seen one for sale at a car boot sale, probably got sold to someone as being a Freeview box

Ok - have trawled the web for images and video!

BBC Select apparently ran from 1992-1993. It's ident looked like this:
http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/bbc1national/idents/bbcselect1992.jpg
Video from TV-Ark

Want to know what programmes BBC Select transmitted? Watch this trail from 1993: Video from TV Ark

In 1994, BBC Select was replaced by "The Learning Zone". Split into two hour blocks of programming (Zones), each Zone began with this full sequence:
http://thetvroom.com/images-bbc-two/bbc-two-91/01-lz-f.jpghttp://thetvroom.com/images-bbc-two/bbc-two-91/01-lz-h.jpghttp://thetvroom.com/images-bbc-two/bbc-two-91/01-lz-menu-1.jpg
It was quite lengthy: 20 or 25seconds or so ISTR, ran at the top of each "Zone". After the ident, the Zone's menu was shown.

The Learning Zone only ran on Weeknights - so at the weekends, BBC TWO still closed down and opened with OU programming on Saturday and SUnday mornings. During these sequences, the OU ident was used:
http://thetvroom.com/images-bbc-two/bbc-two-91/ou-1d.jpg

In 1997, The Learning Zone was rebranded, and used a special "2" as it's ident:
http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/identzone/bbc2/images/bbc2_old_lzone02.jpg

Finally in 1998, the Acorn/Oak Leaf sequence became the logo for The Learning Zone.

No, that ident was used with the above 'Learning Zone' titles. They stopped using iit in 1997 when the BBC logo changed and the acorn was introduced

Ahh - yes - I stand corrected. "The Learning Zone titles" as they were called, ran at the top of the zone, followed by a menu and the occasional trail - and then that special "2" with the DNA strands. ISTR it was called Einstein - but I may have completely made that up.