History of Cable TV in the UK - Launch of Sky Channel, How it all Works and Promotional Films

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A selection of films about cable TV in the UK from the 80s and 90s.
This video starts with a news report about the launch of Sky Channel on the Swindon Cable system in 1983 followed by a short film from a local cable channel in Swindon about how cable TV works filmed sometime in the mid 90s. Promotional videos from the early 90s for Birmingham Cable and United Artist Cable (Tyneside) are at the end.
Swindon Cable, Birmingham Cable and United Artist Cable as now known as Virgin Media as are most other cable companies in the UK.

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9 сен 2018

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Комментарии : 114

@Thorpe 4 года назад

RIP Peter Sissons. One of the best newsreaders.

@edgeeffect 6 месяцев назад

I rent an office in Swindon in a building that was, back in the 1970s, called Relay House which was the home of Radio Rentals cable TV service, known colloquially as "The Pipe"..... Long before there was such a thing as Channel 4 News. Swindon Cable was it's "second incarnation" - originally there were no STBs and pay-for-view channels.

@KLUTCHdot58 5 лет назад

Top work buddy! Probably one of the most random subjects for me to be suddenly interested in. I find only one video about it and you just made it! Saw an old square satellite dish hanging off a house and thought: shit, I remember them!

@andy-clewes 5 лет назад

Lol! Nice one! Glad you enjoyed it mate. I know what you mean, Its sad to admit but I find it all really interesting too! :) have a look through my channel. I've uploaded a number of documentary about Satellite, Cable and TV as whole. Thanks mate, glad you enjoyed it!

@AshesHereos 4 года назад

@@andy-clewes Hello, do you know when Cable & Wireless became Telewest? In the West Midlands cable telly was known as these two, whereas in the North i believe it was known as NTL.

@MeMe-pb9vh 4 года назад

A time when there was zero or practically no adverts, Now it's programme's in between adverts.

@ItsRickysChannelSHORTS 4 года назад

And people complain about paying a licence fee for the BBC. At least you are paying a(n admittingly mandatory) subscription fee in order to not watch adverts. Say what you like about the BBC in other instances but they do make good content most of the time.

@davidkgame 4 года назад

What irks me is that the likes of Sky Sports charge a bloody fortune in order to cover the cost of the rights they buy in (due to greed on the part of the FA and other sports associations to pay exorbitant salaries) and then they not only have ad breaks all over the shop but 1/3 of the output (primarily overnight) is infomercials. If you are a sports nut who works shifts or odd hours, it's not worth subscribing to them as the time you get to watch you'll know the results and it's not worth sitting through it. I'd prefer if the license fee wasn't mandatory and the BBC was a proper subscription (with no commercials) rather than paid for by a tax in all but name. However with the amount of people who'd not pay up to subscribe, I suspect they'd make up the shortfall by running product placement and/or ads!

@ItsRickysChannelSHORTS 4 года назад

@@davidkgame I don't completely agree with scrapping the TV licence as I like the BBC has no ads. I have argued many a time that they should lower it and advertise on some of Thier products. When it comes the BBC News website is it a blessing to not have your whole computer bottleneck because ads pop up left and right. Even in Ireland where their national replacement for the Beeb is RTE, THIER TV LICENCE IS €160 euros, which in pounds equals up to £135 and Ireland is a small country keep in mind. RTE advertises on some of Thier content where the TV licence doesn't pay for. They put the licence money into Thier news coverage which, despite the arguments for biasedness at the BBC, i feel is not a bad business model and Thier news coverage feel so much more high quality for it.

@dominicmackrill5953 4 года назад

ItsRickysChannel RTE is flat broke and it’s widely spoken from every where including RTE themselves the product they produce is very poor now by comparison vs previous years. They are in crisis and are looking for state bailout but what after then? Already sold most of Donnybrook to keep the lights on and closed RTE Cork

@trevordance5181 4 года назад

@@dominicmackrill5953 Ireland has alot smaller population than the UK so therefore RTE would collect alot less money in license fees than the BBC. However the cost of making a programme, whatever it may be, would be much the same whether it is viewed by 15 million people or just by 1 million people. The same rule obviously applies to showing ads. The more people that see them, the more they can charge for them. Presumably there are many other broadcasting networks in countries with smaller populations that are strapped for cash for the same reason.

@jamesveitch2798 4 года назад

I work in cable TV and found a lot of this really interesting. A lot of it was long before I was born Haha

@Danechip 4 года назад

Thanks ever so much for making/sharing this.

@JohnnyX50 4 года назад

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you :D

@plymlad30 4 года назад

2020 and my town still don’t have cable... it’s a dish or nothing 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

@benjaminmurphy 4 года назад

Which town is that?

@walt-sh7ju 4 года назад

Plenty in north yorkshire dont have it

@Connie_TinuityError 9 месяцев назад

There is cable available in my town but unfortunately it's only available in certain neighbourhoods and is not available in mine.

@johnking5174 4 года назад

By the early 1980s in Ireland large parts were cabled. By mid 1980s all the major cities and towns in Ireland had a cable provider. Cork City, Ireland's second largest city was probably the best, offering over 10 extra channels along with the home grown Irish channels by 1982.

@johnking5174 4 года назад

Cable television was very popular in Ireland, and Ireland became one of the most cabled countries in Europe. The national broadcaster RTE started it all in 1970 with a commercial subsidiary company called RTE Relays who cabled parts of Dublin first. On offer - the British channels BBC1, BBC2 and ITV in clear perfect picture.

@scottwebb1978 2 года назад

Receiving bbc without a licence and the poor sods in UK were paying a licence... But we don't get RTE Channels

@johnking5174 2 года назад

@@scottwebb1978 Cable viewers in Ireland did pay a monthly subscription to receive BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and later Channel 4 on cable, with the cable companies paying broadcast money to BBC/ITV etc, so in a way they were paying for these channels. However for viewers who were lucky enough to get a decent signal via spill over from Northern Ireland or Wales simply paid ZERO for the channels. People living in counties Louth, Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim, a good chunk of Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, all managed to get a decent signal from spill over.

@scottwebb1978 2 года назад

@@johnking5174 ok 👌thanks 😊

@TheStevenWhiting 3 года назад

Was hoping they'd show the channel choice screen. Uncle had cable back then and you could sit on the channel select pages with mini previews playing of each channel. Was fascinated.

@8ball230 4 года назад

I remember when they were digging up every road to lay the cables lol

@jamiecurtis1991 4 года назад

They still are lol

@8ball230 4 года назад

@@jamiecurtis1991 no way lol

@jamiecurtis1991 4 года назад

8 Ball yes way. We only got cable on our street a couple of years ago. They are still installing in my local areas

@cathalmcwilliams3033 5 лет назад

I love this shit. Takes me back! Brilliant

@JFrizey 4 года назад

Brings back memories seeing the old square top box with its 2 digit display, had mines "chipped " back in the day, only recently chucked them in the skip after coming across them in the loft, virgin media has just about killed off cable with the horrendous pricing and marketing tactics (in the west of Scotland at least)

@edwarddowds1014 4 года назад

Virgin is terrible..you get more on freeview

@noahswann 4 года назад

a friends dad bought a chipped box from his mate at the snooker club, my mate used to set a tape recording on a mucky channel over night, then bring it to school the following morning, which would then be rented out for a quid. when you were 13, it certainly was exciting viewing!

@JFrizey 4 года назад

@@noahswann I remember the up stairs TV was linked to the living room, me and my mates used to sit up in his room, hoping his old man would change channel for the 10 min freeview 😂

@freddielaker2 4 года назад

Anyone remember hacking sky with a laptop and homemade card? or programming a D2mac receiver to watch the Scandinavian naughty channels? lol I do....

@robertpreece7259 2 года назад

i used to have a rf receiver card in my pc to which i connected my satellite receiver to and then used a decrypter program and then watching blade off sky box office. i also remember the local computer markets selling the clone cards and equipment.

@Retropassionuk Год назад

yep :-)

@BeatboxNorwich 8 месяцев назад

I used to 'break in' to the local distribution cabinet, plug whoever's' lead in then go back and tune them into free channels on their VHF-capable TV or VHS player. Good times! I was only around 10 years old at the time.

@joshuagalka3526 Год назад

Nice!

@keepingitrealandtruthful.5081 3 года назад

In London it was videotron then cable and wireless then NTL and now virgin media.

@GeoNeilUK 4 года назад

I remember United Artists canvassing around Prudhoe for their service. We already had Sky by that time and the vast majority of the channels listed here are also available on Sky, along with all the German channels that would show soft core adult entertainment (3sat would get artsy, catering to the more niche crowd) and radio stations across Europe under the alternative sound carriers. Needless to say, cable never made it to Northumberland. Also, I kind of wonder what would have happened if we had MMDS oot in the sticks in the UK, especially if the councils owned 51% of the MMDS operators. I can imagine the council requiring local TV production in their council areas (or near enough) those programms being shared to other oot in the sticks MMDS areas (or even channel 4)

@hopeysballs 4 года назад

Prudhoe Northumberland?

@GeoNeilUK 4 года назад

@@hopeysballs The very place!

@padraigholohan4778 9 месяцев назад

oh god the Jerrold box!! I must of fitted tens of thousands of them!!

@shoestompergingerjon9300 4 года назад

Today the cables that united artists and others laid down back in the late 80's and early nineties are now all used to carry high speed internet. it's a development that nobody ever thought of back then... that all those fibre optic cables would carry vast amounts of computer data, lots of online programmes for you to watch 24/7. as for the satellite system, your set top box communicates through mobile signals and the dish at the same time so as to regulate the channels you can watch just like the cable boxes are programmed via a landline with a dedicated phone number so you only get the programmes you paid for, and not all the other stuff. It also dictates what internet speed you can get in accordinance with the package you have paid for. clever tech these set top boxes and mobile/sattelitte or cables are...

@bobdole4694 4 года назад

I've been looking for a NTL cable promo video promoting one of those Internet on your TV systems that were briefly a thing circa 2000. It had the most deliciously campy acting I have ever seen. Unfortunately; the VHS tape got chucked years ago during a house move. You don't have copies of anything like that by any chance do you? The funny thing was we got it posted to us by NTL despite being an exclusively Telewest area. Not sure if that was a mistake or some esoteric marketing strategy...

@cnafyi 4 года назад

Perhaps Virgin Media have a corporate Archive for this sort of stuff - I know BT do (although BT are much bigger)

@TheStevenWhiting 2 года назад

11:50 The Simpsons. I always wanted cable but we couldn't afford it. I was kinda glad because I saw an episode of The Simpsons at my cousin's house back in the early 90s as they had cable. The Simpsons on cable went "Advert, credits, advert, first part, advert, second part, advert, closing credits, advert". The adverts would of driven me nuts. I was so glad we had Star Trek The Next Generation on BBC 2 with NO ADVERTS. I grew up with it and enjoyed it with no adverts and due to that have never been able to watch it on any cable network where it contains adverts.

@eddiejones.redvees 3 года назад

The The piece of equipment he was holding is a joint Closure for covering the wires after joining them and keeping them from getting wet

@kFY514 3 года назад

How did those early cable set-top boxes work? Were they just regular PAL tuners for non-broadcast frequencies? Were they descramblers? Or was the signal encoded in some non-standard way (cable D2-MAC or something)?

@oslobarker992 4 года назад

22 thousands miles? wow that's a long way up!

@4X4-RADIO 4 года назад

You missed the "First In The World in 1951" == "British Relay Television" == ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ltI09lTuGjk.html They where already "Colour Ready" 4 years before first transmission. They had set-top-box coin operated PPV... This was forward thinking.

@BungleBare 7 месяцев назад

The spokesman for Birmingham Cable is suspiciously like Brian Butterfield.

@starbuck5228 4 года назад

Those where the days.

@eddiejones.redvees 3 года назад

Yes and we are getting the same programs from back then repeats and the only think I use my phone now is to answer Nuisance calls

@JJLozzer Год назад

Channel 4 News being presented by Peter Sissons with Alastair Stewart reporting on the opening of the channel that would become one of the biggest satellite broadcasters in the world. What kind of weird world was 40 years ago 😂

@TheStevenWhiting 3 года назад

Birmingham Cable unlimited choice. Well that was a lie from the start.

@speakertreatz 2 года назад

thanks very much for uploading. Kate Bush

@connorgm 4 года назад

2:41 bee movie 😍

@lucylocket4740 3 года назад

Not to be confused with the one released in 2007! 😊 (there's a joke in there somewhere!) 😂🤣

@johnmichaelrichards 4 года назад

Britain's first cable TV service launched in Gloucester in 1951 by British Relay Services, which was founded in 1928 and originally provided cable radio channels. See: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ltI09lTuGjk.html

@Jimmy-B- 4 года назад

I wonder how many ex cable /cable tv installers watched this 🤚

@TheStevenWhiting 3 года назад

19:43 still used the 3 decimal place though so they could round up and make an extra 1p out of you. Do that enough times to enough people and you make a mint.

@CableWrestler 4 года назад

I was hoping that rediffusion was mentioned

@trevordance5181 4 года назад

Yes, Rediffusion cabled many areas. British Relay was another large cable tv company. I think there were alot of smaller cable tv networks too just serving their own particular local area. Cable television first started as a way to extend tv to areas beyond the range of the limited original tv transmitters and also to improve reception where local topography caused problems such as ghosting or fading. As the transmitter network was extended, together with in fill relay stations and improvements in set designs and aerials the initial need for the cable systems was lost and the original systems fell into decline.

@phillipwilloughby5013 3 года назад

Did cable in the UK always have a set top box? I'm from London and moved to Ireland in 2000 and only the Irish channels were on the aerial so I subscribed to cable to get the UK channels. It was analogue cable at the time and both the TV & VHS picked up 15 channels without a set top box which were: 1: RTÉ One 2: RTÉ 2 3: TV3 4: TG4 5: BBC One 6: BBC Two 7: ITV 8: Channel 4 9: E4 10: Nickelodeon 11: Sky One 12: Sky News 13: Sky Living 14: MTV 15: CNBC If I wanted to watch BBC One I simply select channel 5 on the TV, or if I wanted to record ITV I simply set the VHS to channel 7 and press record. That was 21 years ago now and it changed a lot since. I started with an Irish company called Cablelink, then over the years it became NTL, then UPC, then Virgin Media. Digital cable became available, then broadband and phone became available through the same existing cable. Now I've had TV, broadband, and phone all from one single tidy box called UPC Horizon since 2013.

@RatzaChewy 8 месяцев назад

We had NTL in Northampton sometime around Y2K. We had the coax cable split off at the wall, so we had a direct feed into our VCR and TV and another going into a STB. BBC, ITV (Anglia and Central), Channel 4, Channel 5 (which most of the town couldn't receive), and local channel Northants TV were unencrypted. Anything else required the box. We kept using the cable feed as a backup even after we switched over to Sky. Picture quality was MUCH better than our aerial.

@aonary5382 14 дней назад

I lived in the UK but had family in Ireland. Even in the 90s I remember visiting them and being amazed at how many more TV channels Ireland had than the UK!

@dminalba 2 года назад

My family got a free ntl: subscription for 2 years when they were digging up cable on my street a digger ran over my cat.

@markc8956 3 года назад

Is that a young Paul McKenna in there as well?

@EdgyNumber1 4 года назад

Basildon had a weird switchable cable system.

@timguthrie909 4 года назад

Yes it’s was Rediffusion cable Tv and Radio

@shoestompergingerjon9300 4 года назад

@@timguthrie909 believe it was the oldest in the country too, being installed around 1979.

@sukaipenn8810 3 года назад

Masha Allah😄😄😄😄😄😄

@SkeletonSyskey 3 года назад

No mention of rediffusion...

@Kofi_Mensahs_BurnerAccount Год назад

Didn’t think I’d find you here 👌

@sukaipenn8810 3 года назад

As Salamu Alaykum🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

@jasinere35 4 года назад

thumbnail shows NTL yet it started out as Comcast for the Cleveland area got taken over by NTL & has since been bought out by Virgin, however SKY started out as BSB(british sky broadcasting) & got bought out by a tabloid company thus becoming SKY now we have all the smaller companies who are fighting for that slice of the pie

@grahamd4764 4 года назад

Cambridge Cable were the first providers in my area. Before NTLWORLD sucked up all the various independent regional companies.

@gmcmaster1985 4 года назад

It differed depending on where you were, here (Poole, Dorset) it started as Cable and Wireless/Nynex, then NTL, then VM

@joannegray5138 4 года назад

Mrs Hughes there in Birmingham (17th minute in) doesn't look as happy as her husband does about the wealth of domestic and foreign football on offer. In fact, she looks downright cheesed off about it 😁

@wotdoesthisbuttondo 4 года назад

2:20, VHS not Betamax :-/

@gmcmaster1985 4 года назад

wotdoesthisbuttondo they knew 🙃

@terry987654 4 года назад

back when it was worth paying now i just have freeview i got rid of sky when i was made redundant at work and never took it back again when i started new job and have no intention getting it again

@jjnet123 4 года назад

Now TV is cheaper and you get all the sky channels plus you aren't locked into a contract

@Lichtviech 4 года назад

Haha "Home video channel"

@paulhunt4754 3 года назад

The signal beams from Luxembourg, satilites don't exist!

@TIMBOWERMAN 4 года назад

The less said the better.

@abzhuofficial 4 года назад

Peter Sissons. Yes, I know, his politics may suck, but F for respects Oh, and Alastair Stewart. LOL I wonder where he is now. Oh wait - ITV LOL.

@GeoNeilUK 4 года назад

Well, ITN does produce both Channel 4 and ITV News

@abzhuofficial 4 года назад

@@GeoNeilUK Yep, I know.

@Hertfordshire247 4 года назад

Sheila and Tom Hughes clearly paid actors. What person in Britain goes "I like soccer footage"?

@MrDannyDetail 4 года назад

They seemed awkward enough, and Tom throws a weird look when he finishes speaking, so I think they were real people who were told word for word what to say, rather than actual actors.

@Kofi_Mensahs_BurnerAccount Год назад

I think he said coverage not footage.