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I'm having a hard time finding anything on it, but when I was a wean back in the early/mid 80s, we had one of those small dishes, I could swear I remember it being microwave, that pointed parallel to the ground presumably toward some tower off somewhere. I don't remember what channels were on it as it was only hooked up in my parents bedroom where I didn't watch much TV and I was pretty young, but they must've gotten rid of it after my brother and I located some porn one day because that's really all I remember of it aside from the dish being up on the roof. I guess it was a free OTA sort of thing if you had the equipment though.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:34
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I installed some point to point satellite stuff in the early 2000s. We used microwave for (lovely) communication between points where we couldn't run cabling. Climbing the towers was always a blast, especially if it was windy out. The towers look like they aren't moving but there's enough back and forth to give you wicked bad vertigo once you're up there.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:41
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I loved our big C-Band dish. It came with the house and my dad and I spent a summer getting that thing running in the late-70s. Watching interstitial stuff during commercial breaks could be hilarious on national news feeds. Oh man, I forgot about that part. During a lot of sports events when there would be normally be a commercial, instead you got to listen to the announcers BS with each other.
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Jun 6, 2017 22:24
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Armacham posted:Oh man, I forgot about that part. During a lot of sports events when there would be normally be a commercial, instead you got to listen to the announcers BS with each other. This was especially awesome for sporting events. You could manually switch between different cameras at the same game.
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Jun 7, 2017 00:28
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We only had four channels for nearly four years because my parents didn't want to buy a big dish when they heard smaller ones were coming out. We had just moved from town, where the cable box had only 20 channels or so total. We got a Primestar after that. My folks did have pirated HBO for a bit. In the mid 1980s, some teen genius had figured out how to hack the cable box and went around town doing it as a kindness. The cable company found out and let people off as long as they admitted they had pirated HBO.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:03
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Bonzo posted:This was also on the Windows 95 disk. If Microsoft was clever they should have put the video for "Hash Pipe" on the Windows ME discs. "Come on and kick me" indeed.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:32
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So I'm old, and we got a BUD (big ugly dish) somewhere around 1987. I want to say it was an early Christmas gift to the family. The dish itself was around $3500 installed with a single receiver. The decoder unit was another $500 or so, and a motorized control arm and control box was about that much as well. If you didn't have the motorized control arm, you had the joy of either 1) watching the content on whatever satellite you were pointed at or 2)going out and cranking the dish via rotary handle and watching a sextant like gadget mounted to the control arm. The sextant gave you a coordinate in degrees that you could use to align the dish to the satellite's location in space. We fortunately went full tilt and bought the full package along with a secondary receiver that allowed another TV to watch different channels on the same satellite. The control box we bought was basic, meaning the initial setup took hours. You basically (  ) positioned the dish by setting the control arm to its maximum extended position. Then you set the receiver to 'scan' - it would run through all 24 channels at a speed of 1 channel per 1/2 second. Then you held a button down to slowly move the dish towards its fully retracted position. It moved really slowly because you needed it to in order to find a semblance of a signal on one or more of the 24 channels. When you started to get a hit, you'd stop the channel scan and try to lock in on the signal for that one channel. Lots of back and forth adjusting and fine tuning for optimum quality. You then had to determine what the signal you tuned into was. From there you had to determine signal polarity - if the polarity is wrong, the receiver would only get 1/2 of the channels on that satellite and the channel numbers would be off on your receiver. Then you could store all those settings as a preset. Then based on the content you were receiving, you could figure out which satellite you had found. You would need a Satellite magazine subscription that gave you a listing of where in the atmosphere the other satellites were in relationship to the one you found (and all the channels contained within). Or would continue the hide-and-seek adventure. Each time a satellite was launched, moved, or decommissioned you'd figure out between which two satellites the satellite change fell - then played hide-and-seek between the two signals. The scrambling technology was pretty rudimentary initially. Enough so that I found instructions on how to 'hack' the decoder logic board (which was removable as a cartridge from the decoder unit) as a Jr high student. It gradually grew more robust - around 1990 or so the decoder would send a periodic (usually once a quarter) handshake back to the signal transmitter to validate a subscription to a scrambled channel. Again, with some crazy simple modifications to the decoder board, you could manually input a handshake code via receiver remote control. There were several 'illegal' sources for obtaining these handshake codes - my source was BBSes. By about 1994 the codes lasted for only hours. We went "legal" around that time. Going "legal" meant you purchased access to channels either a la carte annually or bundled packages annually. Around that time, the annual bundles were comparable to extended cable packages and cost around $300/yr (again comparable to cable). XXX porn channels and movie channels could be ordered on an annual, monthly, or daily basis. Wild network feeds were usually unscrambled up through the late 90s. I made several hundred dollars recording wild feeds of Jeopardy and wagering against my classmates when the episodes aired later the next week locally. As mentioned, sporting events were great to watch as wild feeds as you could see and hear all of the uncensored and unbroadcasted commentary. Likewise the network news as a wild feed was fun to watch - usually 15 minutes prior to air, you'd catch the last minute rehearsals, makeup touch ups, and banter between the anchors and crew. Afterwards you'd see multiple takes of any promotions for the following nights content. The late 80s/early 90s were a great time to be around from a technology perspective.
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Jun 7, 2017 04:42
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A guy I work with had one of those hacked FTA receivers for getting pirated satellite tv. Despite having a very well paying job he's incredibly cheap We brought it out on a military exercise in 2009. Suffice to say we were really roughing it. Then our Comm truck got upgraded with legal satellite tv so we didn't have to do that anymore.
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Jun 7, 2017 04:53
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Goober Peas posted:
This owns. A friend of mine had a giant satellite back in the early/mid 90s, we used to watch all sorts of random, awesome foreign TV on it. And oh did we hunt for porn. His parents would drive down to the end of their property [a shed maybe a quarter mile away from the house], we would flip through the channel guide magazine, and start programming the satellite... and wait for it to sloooowly turn... more than once, we got it going, they got back in the car to come back to the house early, and cue us going into gently caress gently caress gently caress CHANGE THE CHANNEL mode. Good times. I wish I had one of those satellites now, it would be fun to just see all the random stuff there is to see. DirecTV is just... boring in comparison.
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Jun 7, 2017 08:23
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My grandparents also had a C-band dish in the early to mid ninties, but it was only pointed at one satellite, Galaxy 5. They got 24 channels which included most of the major cable networks at the time. All the channels where scrambled. They had a Uniden brand STB with a Video Chipher II+ access card in it. The provider they bought it from marketed it as "wireless cable" at the time. Fake edit: Found the channel list! http://www.vincor.com/satchart/chart_g5c.html
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Jun 7, 2017 12:29
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I had a BUD as a kid. I loved watching Star Trek The Next Generation a week early from the syndication wildfeeds. There is still stuff up there accessible with digital receivers and those big dishes or with medium sized ku/ka band dishes. With the medium size dishes almost everything is encrypted now but there's some foreign and religious programs available. On C-band (big dish) there are still many feeds. If you have an analog receiver there's still tons of really weird stuff. On Ku band about 10 years ago I was scanning some satellite with an analog receiver and found some FBI leadership seminar being broadcast in analog in the clear. It wasn't anything juicy, just something they could easily broadcast to all of the field offices. Today they would probably just put a video into an LMS and email everyone a link. If I had access to a free BUD with working motor today I'd take it. There's still a lot of interesting stuff to explore.
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Jun 7, 2017 14:12
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stevewm posted:My grandparents also had a C-band dish in the early to mid ninties, but it was only pointed at one satellite, Galaxy 5. They got 24 channels which included most of the major cable networks at the time. All the channels where scrambled. They had a Uniden brand STB with a Video Chipher II+ access card in it. The provider they bought it from marketed it as "wireless cable" at the time. Good old Galaxy 5 with the Playboy Channel and the Disney Channel right next to each other.
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Jun 7, 2017 15:49
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It gets better - in the early days Playboy only aired from 7pm EST. During the daytime TBN (Christian programming) aired on the same channel. No kidding.
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Jun 7, 2017 16:44
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SubG posted:There were a bunch, but almost all of them went under. There were moderate successes like Acorn, but also flash-in-the-pan companies like TeleVideo, and so on. Same's true with hardware that was aimed at the business/industry market instead of the home market---DEC was founded as a computer company and they were a big name until the market for big iron collapsed, but there were also a bunch of rapid burnouts like Data General. The first time I saw an Atari 2600 in person was at an appliance store that also sold carpet. And outdoor BBQs.
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Jun 7, 2017 17:03
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Squashy Nipples posted:The first time I saw an Atari 2600 in person was at an appliance store that also sold carpet. And outdoor BBQs. I'm not sure if that's really out of place. Department stores today still sell video games. When I was growing up in rural Newfoudland I got all of my video games via Sears catalog phone order well into the SNES days 
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Jun 8, 2017 04:00
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Armacham posted:Good old Galaxy 5 with the Playboy Channel and the Disney Channel right next to each other. Interestingly enough... You could tune to the Playboy channel, but alas the video was scrambled. Though the audio was not. But if you messed around with the fine tuning control, you could get a nearly recognizable image, though the color was inverted. I only know this because someone else told me........
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Jun 8, 2017 04:45
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As a youngster we didn't have cable or satellite, and didn't get it until I was 18. Just i time for Discovery and History to start their decline into the garbage channels they are now. I was convinced that network tv showed porn late at night, if only you stayed up late enough. I stayed up a few times to watch episodes of Pamela Anderson's shittastic syndicated series, V.I.P, waiting in vain for someone, anyone, to take their clothes off. Of course it never happened.
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Jun 8, 2017 05:07
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Loving the dish talk. I knew one person with one and was totally mystified by the thing. The thought of catching random foreign tv seemed like the coolest thing ever.
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Jun 8, 2017 10:39
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Back in 2009/2010 my bro and I had a freesat box and through it we discovered the magic of English language NHK programming and Nigerian z-movies. No clue if that kinda thing is still possible.
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Jun 8, 2017 10:50
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I miss NHK. There's something soothing about watching some guy get super excited about abalone fishing or pottery made using traditional region specfici techniques.
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Jun 8, 2017 10:56
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Carth Dookie posted:I miss NHK. There's something soothing about watching some guy get super excited about abalone fishing or pottery made using traditional region specfici techniques. 
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Jun 8, 2017 10:59
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HAT FETISH posted:Good news, most (all?) of Begin Japanology is on youtube. Also Peter Barakan is my absolute dude Well gently caress, that's me set for the weekend. Time to buy some Asahi and veg out over the long weekend. 
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Jun 8, 2017 11:01
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Casimir Radon posted:As a youngster we didn't have cable or satellite, and didn't get it until I was 18. Just i time for Discovery and History to start their decline into the garbage channels they are now. I was convinced that network tv showed porn late at night, if only you stayed up late enough. I stayed up a few times to watch episodes of Pamela Anderson's shittastic syndicated series, V.I.P, waiting in vain for someone, anyone, to take their clothes off. Of course it never happened. You're me, aren't you. Well, I knew better than to expect anything interesting to show up on network TV, but I held out hope that one of the local independent channels might try something. Still, gently caress VIP.
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Jun 8, 2017 20:27
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Carth Dookie posted:Well gently caress, that's me set for the weekend. Time to buy some Asahi and veg out over the long weekend. Weekend? Ha! Ran into the Begin Japanology videos a year ago. Que looking them up on tvdb.net to make sure I didn't miss any. I was dead to the world for a few days. I hate the Internet sometimes.
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Jun 8, 2017 21:11
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Casimir Radon posted:As a youngster we didn't have cable or satellite, and didn't get it until I was 18. Just i time for Discovery and History to start their decline into the garbage channels they are now. I was convinced that network tv showed porn late at night, if only you stayed up late enough. I stayed up a few times to watch episodes of Pamela Anderson's shittastic syndicated series, V.I.P, waiting in vain for someone, anyone, to take their clothes off. Of course it never happened. You're thinking Europe. Hell, in some parts (  ) they didn't wait much past 9pm back in the horrible, horrible 90s.I went to Romania for work couple years ago and the hotel TV had a channel that would show you a glimpse of the, ahem, action but would then lock up and ask for a pin -- parental controls-style, not PPV. And as you might imagine, the hotel didn't bother changing the default. Samsung's is 0000
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Jun 8, 2017 21:56
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There's a generation of people that are voting age that are too young to have had to watch softcore porn on Cinemax at night because their dial-up was too lovely to download it from Kazaa.
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Jun 8, 2017 23:16
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Star Man posted:There's a generation of people that are voting age that are too young to have had to watch softcore porn on Cinemax at night because their dial-up was too lovely to download it from Kazaa. When I was a kid, the only free porn was woods porn.
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Jun 8, 2017 23:50
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Jerry Cotton posted:When I was a kid, the only free porn was woods porn. Jeez. I'm glad all I had to do was wait for the scramble on the spice channel move over.
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Jun 9, 2017 01:02
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I remember when I was in Thailand as a child I managed to find the sexy channel on the cable when my parents were out, and I do not know if it had been like locally amateurly censored or what but every time the characters were having sex there would be the exact same weird vase in front of them so you could only see maybe the top half of the woman and little else. Even though I was only like 9 I quickly figured out it was clearly not supposed to be like that and it became hilarious. I guess it still beat not seeing anything. Uh...this is obviously a tech relic because TV Vase Fabrication Technology was a Thai export
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Jun 9, 2017 01:24
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One time I was loving around on this program that let you stream asian TV channels and there was one called BIG SEXY PORNO or whatever and it was people in underwear dry humping. It was both sad and funny.
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Jun 9, 2017 01:35
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Star Man posted:Here's a recording of the pirate broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbruOe6Yii0 I'm not really a fan of Eninem but I really appreciate his reference to Max Headroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGs_qK2PQA In the early 2000s I worked at an electronics store and we heard about 'card sharing' as from this time gold cards for pirating Austar (Galaxy?) were dead. We trawled the asles of the store for parts - built a a few smart card programmer kits right there on the counter. My boss was a tight rear end and we etched and installed a bypass reader in his neighbours STB and hooked it up to a computer to broadcast the keys to our connections. I remember me and the boss comparing ISDN connection pricing to enable us low enough latency to get the keys without time differential issues (ADSL was unheard of here at the time). Lasted a few years. I still have some of the gear in boxes. I've been interested in getting back into scanning satellites for feeds, but I get confused by a lot of the terminology on forums I lurk - I want to learn passively and then ask questions with some intelligence, no luck even knowing where to start.
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Jun 9, 2017 12:08
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Trabant posted:You're thinking Europe. Hell, in some parts ( The local Copenhagen free-to-air TV station sent hardcore porn (no Playboy softcore sillyness here) every night from midnight, right up until the channel closed down in 2009. It was a sad day for many teenagers.
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Jun 9, 2017 13:41
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Casimir Radon posted:As a youngster we didn't have cable or satellite, and didn't get it until I was 18. Just i time for Discovery and History to start their decline into the garbage channels they are now. I was convinced that network tv showed porn late at night, if only you stayed up late enough. I stayed up a few times to watch episodes of Pamela Anderson's shittastic syndicated series, V.I.P, waiting in vain for someone, anyone, to take their clothes off. Of course it never happened. I lived in the Seattle market back in 1996. I was 15 at the time, and it was well known that we had a PPV hardcore channel called the Spice Channel. Of course watching scramble-vision for that half second of clarity wasn't unusual. I suspect that was how one of my friends discovered that at 1am on Monday morning there was free, unscrambled programming. Granted this programming was incredibly lame by most standards, one of the few time I stayed up for it, it was just nude jetskiing. The fervor of it died out fairly quickly because, well the internet, where it may take 20 minutes to download a big (likely fake) picture of Julia Louis Dreyfus nude, or two girls kissing, but it was a hell of a lot more interesting.
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Jun 9, 2017 14:01
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Plus the girls didn't have indigo skin and orange hair, with that weird white outline. Nothing like watching scrambleporn and sitting through 20 minutes of moaning and bad Casio music to try and puzzle out a tit.
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Jun 9, 2017 14:17
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FilthyImp posted:Plus the girls didn't have indigo skin and orange hair, with that weird white outline. It was probably an elbow or a vase anyway.
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Jun 9, 2017 15:34
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FilthyImp posted:Plus the girls didn't have indigo skin and orange hair, with that weird white outline. I never witnessed the actual scrambleporn itself, but it created a wonderful catchphrase among my friends of "where'd my pee-pee go!"
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Jun 9, 2017 15:47
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CaptainSarcastic posted:You made me remember this company: In the 80s Wang's founder, An Wang, gave an enormous amount of money to renovate an old theater in Boston. The theater complex was then named the Wang Center in his honor, which would have been amusing enough except that sometime around 2000 the box office got one of those shortened vanity cellphone numbers, like #CARS or *LAWYER. For a very short time, their radio ads ended with "For tickets call 800-555-9264, or pound wang on your Verizon cellphone."
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Jun 10, 2017 06:33
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 Formerly "The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software". At least I think this is a relic, I haven't heard anyone say to get something from there - or had Google return a result from there - for a pretty long time, although it still exists, and it looks like it's had software updated on it this year. From the home page of that site, it looks like they probably make their money from domain registration and providing a cellphone service these days. Wikipedia says they're the second-largest domain registrar in the world!
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Jun 11, 2017 10:12
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Buttcoin purse posted:
I remember downloading shareware from there in my early Internet days (around 97, I think). I miss the ignorance and naiveté that I felt on my first Internet days. I'm getting old, basically.
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Jun 11, 2017 19:22
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Buttcoin purse posted:
So this is basically the same kind of situation as some movie theater chain owning all of CBS?
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Jun 11, 2017 19:35
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