Satellite TV 1985

IIRC Sky News has 4 versions: one for Sky viewers, one for Freeview, Ireland and international. At one point there was a cable version which could be stored on 'other channels' on a Sky box. I suspect that cable viewers get the same as Freeview now

Ahhah! My follow on question was going to be why the picture quality was so naff. Videos consistently had a very washed out look in Diamond Cable land. The number for requests was a normal rate (0115) 8 *** *** number too - free to call from a Diamond Cable landline!

The opts for local adverts weren't perfect - kind of like watching a Channel 4 programme simulcast live on S4C, you'd normally see a few frames on either side of the trail the locally ad was covering. They'd almost always be advertising stuff like telephone services in my neck of the woods - which I'm pretty sure you had to have to get the telly service!

Another Diamond Cable relic I remember very fondly is Cable 7, which was a series of local stations - from memory there was one for Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and North Lincolnshire, the latter survives in some form or other based at Grimsby College. It was essentially a 'public access' system of sorts, with regular contributions from local colleges. In vision continuity punctuated programmes, seemingly recorded in a UPVC conservatory, and out-of-hours a looped PowerPoint presentation acted as a kind of classified ads service. Did other cable companies carry a similar service?

Westminster Cable certainly had its own channel but the only time I ever saw it, it was showing static adverts with Capital Radio over the top (I think around 2001)

Courtesy of yours truly via YouTube

UK Gold - Cable & Wireless, December 1997.. (2 mins in)



Bravo - Cable & Wireless, early 1998.... at 6.00 in the morning, by the way if you want to visit Raddon Court, don't bother it got demolished years ago.



Sky Box Office on Cable & Wireless -February 1998, when they felt like it, they had phases when they would constantly opt out but eventually kept the Sky feed in.



Like the Sky Box Office opt outs the rest of the opt outs on CWC were periodical, sometimes they'd would do it constantly for ages and then not bother for a while. It was a no-no to opt out of the Sky channels or any of the terrestrials either, although I can remember seeing adverts for Sky1 on some of the opt outs.

Thanks Steve, it was your videos I was referring to. May I add what a shame it is you've run out of stuff to upload - thanks to you we have some really interesting stuff, I guess the pot had to eventually run dry.

Thanks, I decided to stop simply because I ran out of stuff to upload, although I'm happy to add further information to the videos and discussions like this.

I think CWC were the only cable operator to take Sky Box Office - certainly they were the last. I'd always assumed that it must have been played out locally, hence the all Cable & Wireless branding on the menus, was that not the case?

Indeed that's what I always assumed at the time. But as I said previously they never did it all of the time, by the end of 1998 they had certainly stopped doing this. When CWC was taken over by NTL, Front Row replaced Sky Box Office by March/April 2000, but opting out of channels for adverts were still happening at this time. We switched from analogue to digital cable in December 2000 and that was definitely the last time I saw opt-out adverts.

A world now lost forever...except for YT.

Happy Birthday to BSB ,which started 23 years ago today, and lasted only 7 months, OR has someone got it wrong?

According to wikipedia BSB started in March 1990.

I was in a pub at the weekend where the TV was showing Sky Sports 1HD, which has UK adverts, but the sound being piped was from Sky Sports 1 (SD), which had Irish adverts. Was confusing when it went to an ad break before I realised the sound was being piped from the feed going to the big screen which was SD.

There are (or were) also separate Sky News Ireland and Sky News Ireland Cable variants. IIRC the only difference with the latter was that it carried analogue Skytext (and still did until comparatively recently). The analogue version still carries (live) teletext subtitling!

Re BSB, both may be correct. IIRC it started on cable before Marcopolo went live.