British Satellite Broadcasting [BSB] D MAC Presentation - August 1988 

"Also, don't have Nick Ross directly looking into camera. Trust me. It's edgy".

@@JackDunford Nick Ross isn’t presenting to camera, he’s presenting to the people in the room.

😂

The market destroyed BSB, not just Murdoch. There are two thing sthat could have saved BSB that would also have destroyed the point of BSB. [1] Have a government mandate stating that all satellite receivers have the ability to view both PAL and MAC transmissions. They's mandated BSB to use D-MAC so they should have put a similar mandate on satellite receivers. [2] Allow BSB to rent space on the Astra satellite alongside Sky, broadcasting in whatever standard they felt necessary. Sky used PAL. PAL over Astra was good enough and also delivered everything promised by D-MAC here. Stereo, multichannel and subscription TV. MAC wasn't adopted widely primarily because it was both too ahead of its time and behind the times. By the time there was a need for MAC, digital broadcasting had come about and did what MAC did better. When MAC was released, PAL was good enough and most customers were watching MAC downconverted to PAL anyway, the majority of viewers in the early 1990s were still connecting their set top boxes to their TVs via the aerial socket, which meant PAL video and mono sound.

There was a huge backlash from the parts of the public when the prospect of ugly large dishes appearing everywhere was looming, so it was a major issue and concern in the earliest days of satellite TV. One of the big questions was over whether you would be required to get planning permission to install a dish. Many hobbyists using even 80cm and 60cm dishes were having problems with planning controllers prior to the launch of Sky and BSB, and some people had problems even into the 90's. I have to say, I think a lot of the opposition was justified. Now dishes seem to have been unofficially regarded as exempt from permission you see some incredible sights, with a lot of 80cm and up to 120cm dishes plastered all over houses in some areas, often right in front of windows, particularly where there are high proportions of Eastern European people receiving signals from Polsat. I am pretty sure they do not require dishes of that size.

Hello WAMoore, Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately, the equipment we are using (Panasonic AG-7750) does not have any Stereo capabilities. We have experimented with adding 'Fake Stereo' tracks to our videos, but it lost the quality in the edited product. Sorry for the inconvenience but I do hope you continue to enjoy the blast from the past! Liam Mustapha ~The IBA Archive Founder

@@theibaarchive778 can you not just duplicate the track to the other side before saving out? Doesn't seem too tricky. You may have already solved this :)

@@theibaarchive778 Why are you using such a machine when a domestic Panasonic SVHS VCR will do a better job AND spread mono sound over two channels?

Was that IBA's decision or BSB's? They probably wanted to keep costs down.

@@davidmackenzie8441 The IBA imposed this strict technical specification. The IBA promised that you could connect a HiFi system using stereo phono outputs on the receiver and make the most of the excellent picture quality by connecting the receivers S-Video socket to a Super VHS or Hi8 deck to make high quality recordings on S-VHS and Hi8 tape via a Hi8 or Super VHS VCR. Having those outputs mean you can take advantage of the high quality stereo sound and excellent picture quality available from D-Mac.

Well, it's between five channels on a system that was only ever going to offer five channels and four channels out of sixteen from Sky with other English language channels on top on a system that could be expanded by launching another satellite. That was the mistake, not the footprint.

Better management, better sales pitch, better programming, better marketing. That is how.

Sky was cheaper and worked with plain old PAL. When the majority decides something is 'good enough' they tend to go with the cheaper alternative and that is what Sky offered. When DVD and DVB-S came along, people did get to see the benefits of digital transmission even on an analog tv thanks to the SCART connector which could give RGB colors instead of bog standard PALs component. And digital sound of course.

Simply cost, Sky did not have the costs associated with launching their own satellites, plus as they did not use D-MAC or special antenna the setup could be cheaper, at the end of the day Amstrad dishes were essentially bin lids! (the story is that Alan Sugar looked at satellite dishes and thought they looked like bin lids so brought a machine that made bin lids and modified accordingly). In the end it was decided that neither company was going to last on their own (they were both losing a lot of money) and they were made to merge their operations, naturally when that happened they went for the cheaper option then the satellites and the headquarters were sold off.

@@johnking5174 No. They just manage to broadcast in the UK and then takeover BSB.

@@glassowlie It wasn't as simple as that. Sky paid a fortune for movie rights and sports rights to attract viewers. BSB didn't match the money Murdoch poured into Sky and BSB became second rate. Also BSB satellite dishes were of poor quality and the signal wasn't as good as Sky's

In the same way as Betamax "failed". It was clearly better but marginally more expensive.

@@GryphLane |The problem with D-MAC was PAL was good enough for a market where most of the public had TVs that only had an RF input (meaning they'd have been watching in PAL and in mono anyway) By the time MAC had an actual point, digital had come around and was better than MAC.