I think these opts were triggered (fairly crudely) via a spare line at the top of the screen (Line21?!). ISTR being told we sent these triggers from playout at pre-arranged times and it was up to the cable operators to decide whether to use them or not to trigger any local opting. I
think
this opting trigger was transferred to the Broadcast Centre when UKTV playout moved from TVC but I've no idea if it still is supported.
BSB were bound by the terms of their franchise to offer Galaxy, Now and The Power Station to Cable Operators for a nominal fee*. The launch was delayed several times, but I think ultimately they chose to launch ahead of D2MAC STB availability to get in some much needed advertising revenue.
They then went on to repeat their entire first 4 weeks when D2MAC STBs finally became available. The Movie Channel and The Sports Channel were both launched at this stage.
* I believe this relationship remained in place beyond the death of Marcopolo; BSkyB were obliged to provide Sky One and Sky News/Arts until some point in the late 90s.
4 Front Car Sales in Sidcup must have got a ton of business around late 2000...if you lived in London and had Cable & Wireless/NTL their opt-in advert would appear all the bloody time.
Does anyone know the music they used for 'TV Today' (the C&W programme guide channel in the days before on-screen EPGs) circa 1998/99? I seem to remember them saying it was from an album called 'Cities' or something similar, but I've never been able to find further detail. It was rather relaxing chillout music.
BSB were bound by the terms of their franchise to offer Galaxy, Now and The Power Station to Cable Operators for a nominal fee*. The launch was delayed several times, but I think ultimately they chose to launch ahead of D2MAC STB availability to get in some much needed advertising revenue.
They then went on to repeat their entire first 4 weeks when D2MAC STBs finally became available. The Movie Channel and The Sports Channel were both launched at this stage.
* I believe this relationship remained in place beyond the death of Marcopolo; BSkyB were obliged to provide Sky One and Sky News/Arts until some point in the late 90s.
Very anorak point - but BSB used D-MAC not D2-MAC. D-MAC ran with twice the data-rate in the blanking intervals of D2-MAC (and thus allowed more digital audio channels or more data space to be sold off to third parties) However D-MAC required too wide an RF bandwith for mainland European cable distribution (and the aim was for a common satellite and cable standard) - so they reduced the RF requirements by reducing the data rate (and accepting a reduction in analogue picture quality) to fit within the space available - creating D2-MAC.
I remember burning new EPROMS for Philips, Ferguson and Tatung BSB set top boxes to make them D2-MAC compatible so that I could watch the German TV-SAT and French TDF satellites when BSB stopped broadcasting in MAC and the boxes and squarials/mini-dishes could be bought for next-to-nothing. I watched the HD-MAC HDTV broadcasts from the Albertville and Barcelona Olympics in 1992 - albeit in 16:9 component SD (on a scan-crushed letterbox 4:3 display) using a BSB box and Squarial.
(Switching from LHC to RHC polarisation involved a bit of surgery to the LNB or Squarial ISTR - and TV Sat and TDF were different)
Last edited by noggin on 16 August 2013 11:43am - 2 times in total
I've got memories of both an band in-audible tone-based system and a VBI-based system being used to trigger breaks - but I can't remember which channels used which.
BBC World still uses a tone-based system for regional opts and ad breaks - I think it's something like 50Hz on the second programme level.
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!
And of course it had its own programming for a while - an evening news strand presented from Dublin. Wikipedia says it ran from 2004 to 2006.
I've got memories of both an band in-audible tone-based system and a VBI-based system being used to trigger breaks - but I can't remember which channels used which.
BBC World still uses a tone-based system for regional opts and ad breaks - I think it's something like 50Hz on the second programme level.
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!
And of course it had its own programming for a while - an evening news strand presented from Dublin. Wikipedia says it ran from 2004 to 2006.
The Irish news was also simulcast on Sky One Ireland towards the end in an attempt to get more viewers. It aired at 6:30 and was never going to win viewers given that RTE One's news programme runs from 6:01 to 7.
Oddly enough it did originally air at 7pm. To my very vague recollection it was moved to 6:30pm so as not to pre-empt the short lived new schedule launched in 2005, but that was pretty much its death knell - as I said in the UTV thread to compete with Six One is next to near impossible. For a programme that was on air for such a short time it had two different looks as it straddled the major relaunch in 2005. Grainne Seoige moved to RTÉ a few months before it was dropped, killing one of its main draws. (Of course internal RTÉ politics means she cannot present news for the station or do any work for News and Current Affairs whatsoever.)
Infamously, the launch trailer got the geography of Ireland very wrong...
Incidently the 10:00pm programme if it continue could have carved a good name for itself, RTÉ airs its main evening news at 9pm but TV3's is not till after 11 (and is now just a summary tagged to the front of a current affairs show). I have not seen RTÉ One+1's rating but I'd make bets its timeshift of the Nine O'Clock News is its top rated show.
107 days later
:-(
A former member
One of the more interesting things I come across was this, i never STV were that interested in DBS as far back as 1984. I wonder if some of the other station had any interests, I wonder what STV found out, if that help provide information for Super station in 1987.
