British Relay Television By Wire - Early Pay TV and Cable Television in the UK 1960s

[@Dan_KM8DAD]

"And in 65 years a person halfway around the world will have the ability to watch this very film on-demand via wireless relay on a device that fits in the palm of their hand."

[@trev8932]

Hi. Thank you for sharing this video. I was an apprentice TV engineer with British Relay in Prestwick from 1970 then joined the stations engineers, Hugh Walsh, David Clark & the late Stuart Lanes. The area engineer Henry Chmiel was a true professional and made a big impression on my life. Through the years British Relay has always left a mark and I remained an engineer up to 2006 when due to so many changes I left the trade. May I say thank you to British Relay for its professional way of working and to all those I worked with at the time. Sadly yet another great British company long gone!

[@HillsWorkbench]

Wondering about the technical details of this system. Twisted pairs? 300 Ohm? Frequency?

[@leemacabre9940]

@@HillsWorkbench Video was vestigial sideband on 3.75MHz carrier for 405, balanced line output. Same for 625 but @ 20Mhz used and converted down to 3.75Mhz. BR never predicted 625 so used the low video carrier. TV sound was DSB on 2.1MHz carrier. Can't remember balanced line Z0. Audio was 100V line.

[@stevebez2767]

That's a repeat an all

[@edwardbyard6540]

The wiring and black circular junction box is still up on my and our neighbours houses in Sheffield in 2019! It was only when I asked them what it was, was I led to this video. Thanks for sharing it!

[@ZnenTitan]

You know due to cost, more and more people are getting programming online and ironically using antennas again for local news and shows (only digital this time)

[@MrStabby19812]

Thx the houses in my street all have the junction boxes still. Although the cover on mine was missing my whole life lol. Never knew what it was.

[@jonathanpalmer155]

In the area there was also Rediffusion. Sadly, this Spring some local low-lifes realised that the cable would be copper and kept trying to prise the cables from a neighbour's house, but didn't manage it. So this summer we removed it instead and he cashed it in himself!

[@EddieG1888]

I remember having the multi-pin socket box for this attached to the skirting board in my parent's flat in the Charleston area of Dundee when I was a kid. Always wondered what they were for, and back then my mum referred to it as "piped TV".

[@BruceDanton-xw6eg]

Very interesting watch thank you too for all the old films. All so different now then of course with the change from analogue to digital i guess so too.

[@callumBee]

So So much to take in with this! From the built to last planning, to the redundancy of redundancy, to the MD Somewhat knowing what he is looking after, the local nature of it, national brand locally driven, proper training, care for the work they would do. We have lost all of this with growing corporate greed and desire to make as much money as fast as possible. Such a shame.

[@brunster64]

Callum Burns - In some ways we have “gone backwards” - we had British Relay in Redditch in the 1970’s - was a very good service. Even had 4 TV channels when there were only 3 at the time as we had HTV as well as ITV midlands - the main programmes were the same but there were often differences giving further choice.

[@stevebez2767]

That is be coz witless irks write wot they eer straight into synchro blow WAIR ring tone ruled too term loony moons catch and act max act back too a billion milling S over and out until dregs of state en do too word yells black key nill non manacled blow arts into any gap screwing hatch dynge looking postcard as town too live read and learn out wiv Fuken teacher invasions of beer rig frigging tar jolly jack off flap rack fee here nag o sack mean liv inn pub likes wiv read red leader statement t bill life's wiz key bar tell non allowed no moss rock end rolling stone obelisk church God work ship po go?

[@Roger.Coleman1949]

Remember it going in on an estate in Cambridge in 1962.A green box up against some council garage walls marked ' British Relay ' has only been recently removed ( 2020 ! ).Commentary spoken by Franklin Englemann I'd bet !.

[@paulbaker8734]

10:38 "To see more of this lovely lady please insert 6 shillings"

[@aalexjohna]

'And if you want to fuck it,please put in one of those big old white fivers'.

[@SuperActionForceGo]

A clickbait of sorts 😂😂😂

[@pit_stop77]

@@aalexjohna fuck it? Oh jesus......

[@Stu-SB]

@@aalexjohna lol... so funny 😀😀😀

[@knightowl3577]

My Grandparents house had this system installed which fascinated me as a child. The relay mast was about three miles from their home and was enormous as I remember.

[@chilledoutpaul]

I love the old documentaries I am a electronics engineer amd also use to tinker about with the old 405/625 sets but I was only around 8yo then. I can not believe how much electronics have shrunken down over the years.

[@Gribbo9999]

Yes I can imagine that whole relay station would fit on a fraction of a chip in my phone.

[@chazM6116]

With the arrival of the first experimental television broadcasts in the 1930s, Rediffusion began manufacturing TV sets and supplying "Piped TV", an early form of cable TV, service to its customers, until the cessation of television broadcasts during the Second World War. The first British colony to have the Rediffusion service was Barbados in 1934, when Radio Distribution (Barbados) Limited was formed. A year later, Rediffusion started operating in Malta. Transmissions in Malta started from Hamrun on 11 November 1935 under the name of "Broadcast Relay Service Malta Ltd." Charles Whotcroft and George Powler were the first manager and chief engineer respectively.[1]

[@fenixfp40]

My Father was a TV engineer for British relay for many years.Thanks for posting this.

[@andybateman3924]

I can remember as a kid in Bristol we had rediffusion tv. It gave 3 tv channels and (I think) 4 radio channels, the tv picture was very good. I think that rediffusion was bought by Robert Maxwell, so no more needs to be said.

[@Aengus42]

I remember Rediffusion boxes in homes in the seventies & early eighties. Even if you didn't take the TV service you could poke the wires from a speaker down a couple of holes in the big socket to get radio. (Yes, I was that sort of kid!)

[@ttothep2443]

We had a similar system as a kid in the late 60's and into the 70's. Rediffusion. We had a circular switch on the wall with the alphabet around it. Each click changed the channel on the tv. We only had 3 tv channels but you could also pick up radio stations and play them through the tv speaker. It was a great system for it's time.

[@dodgydruid]

My cousin had a Rediffusion "cable" thing like that in Basildon as the local council piped telly and radio into the houses and you had this big dial box on the wall to change channels. Thing was, there always was only three channels, then Channel 4 came along, then 5 then Sky exploded all over the place forcing TV finally into 24 hours just to compete and not lose its place against Sky. Daytime TV was for schools and BBC2 was kinda fits and starts to get going and the go to place for Star Trek amongst things making it finally as popular as BBC1, then they started showing the Simpsons before Star Trek Next Gen in the 90's and ratings soared.

[@train4905]

God i remember that little box,in my grandmas house,allways wandederd what it was for

[@sarjim4381]

Nice. At 4:15 you can see the three RCA AR-88 radios that were part of the DR-89 triple diversity rack. It was used for high quality shortwave reception. This won't mean much to people who aren't radio amateurs or shortwave listeners, but the DR -89 to this day will do a better job of picking up poor quality shortwave signals and converting them to something listenable than most modern radios. I suppose British Relay was using them to pick up Radio Luxembourg and probably offshore pirate stations that featured the latest hits. The Beeb's "popular" music programs were often weeks or even months behind on rock n roll hits of the era, and the programs were hosted by stodgy "old" male DJs over 30, so I imagine feeding these station out over cable with a high quality signal was a big selling point to getting cable back then. .

[@NOWThatsRichy]

I still have my dad's RCA AR-88 receiver, made in the 1940s & still works perfectly! It picks up medium wave broadcast transmissions much better than any modern equipment!

[@arthurvasey]

Was British Relay able to broadcast Luxembourg clearly or did it suffer from the same issues as standard wirelesses?

[@Dan_druft]

I remember my dad holding the Ariel at loads of different angles to get a picture in the 1960s for our rented TV lol.

[@theted16]

I worked for British Relay in the Canning Town branch. We had three engineers and four linesmen. The senior linesman had a Morris Minor van but the other three had a push cart. Looking back that would be unthinkable now. We had to share Thursday evening IE every three weeks to sit in the control room until 10 PM to give the manager an evening off. This was to monitor the sub station in case it failed and we could switch over to the spare. Lovely and warm with all those large Klystron valves behind the chair. Similarly we had to work Sunday afternoons on rotation. As the docks in Canning Town were situated over a bridge BR could never get wayleave to wire the houses in Victoria Dock Rd. So people who rented sets were not piped and the signal was atrocious. Every time a boat came in or went out the signal used to fade in and out. Must have cost BR a fortune in providing large aerial arrays for them Billy Bines the foremen was often at his wits end in trying to solve aerial problems. Looking back they were very happy days and if Jimmy Heard ever reads this I would like to say hello from Ted. I ended up as qualified engineer and eventually a service director working for private TV Radio & TV shops.

[@Thelaughingfrauditor]

Thank you! This has now confirmed that visiting the dundee depot with my gran as a kid was not a dream!!

[@pointthefingerman]

Excellent video...I worked as a Relay 'Linesmen' in the late 60's - happy days! :-)

[@colinluckens9591]

Wow so you were like one of those employees on the video then were you?!!!😃😃.....

[@JFrizey]

Imagine being able to get a job so easly 😀 , even part of your licence fee was included in TV rental, changed days indeed

[@JohninRosc]

Wow I never thought I'd see another classroom TV set on wheels like the one at 11.53 to 11.58.

[@turboslag]

The junior school I attended in the west mids, had what I now know to have been a Clarke & Smith classroom TV was on a stand very similar to the one shown here. I remember it was a real treat and so exciting when we had a lesson that included something shown on the TV. Later in life I worked for a specialist video company as a field service technician. We supplied large amounts of classroom TV monitor sets on double column, adjustable height mobile stands, to schools, universities, training facilities etc. They were very high quality, very heavy and very expensive as I recall. Wish I could find one now, it would make working on my old TV's much easier!

[@havanadaurcy1321]

My original Australian primary school (highly influenced by London because our principal had the last name English) used to have them in the old storage rooms until the year I left to a more modern no TV allowed except DART testing school.

[@seeker7679]

My uncle was a " British Relay Man " he was a service technician and I still remember the dark lab coats they had to wear! lol

[@gooldscross8702]

Had that system in our new house in Clapton back in 76 ,small green cabinet’s dotted round the estate it came in under the stairs to a large black j.b looped in then out back down the same tube, then a multi core cable with a surface multi pin socket ,the picture was terrible from what I remember, soon after we had a aerial installed.

[@jrgboy]

We had a colour set from Radio Rentals around late 1970, I remember watching ' Sunday night at the Palladium' , the stars had extra make up and the lighting made them look a dark shade of pink or sometimes orange, it took a while the get the tones right for colour broadcasts..

[@FreewayTheBand]

ken freeland I was a wireman for british relay in the 60s .wiring hemel hemstead, crawley, then vauxhall area london, mainly fault finding. cheers for the video.

[@stepheng8779]

Oh look a proper high street with nice shops, bet that town had a fully functional high class hospital too. Just like every other town, just like my town, it used to be a nice place to live here.

[@iseeolly9959]

Yep before you and I started using Amazon because they deliver to my door in rural Suffolk the next day.

[@trubass23]

My town was a slum back then, and life expectancy is longer now. Don’t be fooled

[@Eleventhearlofmars]

Yes, all charity shops and bookmakers on high streets now.

[@turbomustang84]

Cable was available in the US in some areas as early as 1948

[@syxepop]

Robbie's Incoherent thoughts - that's what I was trying to say (finally found an American in the audience!). The plaque shown (2:28 or 10.02.59 on the bug) is MISLEADING. It is shown by the US Cable TV lobby (NCTA) that what we in US called CATV (Community Antenna TV) and in UK is called Relay TV (main difference is that UK included radio as well) was started in 3 separate States: Oregon in the West, Arkansas in the South and Pennsylvania in the East (all 3 have geographical difficulties that make off-the-air TV reception a "hit or miss proposition") 3 YEARS BEFORE IT WAS STARTED IN UK, in 1948. I wouldn't blame the British announcer for not knowing this (National Pride may be part of that, but I will "let that slide"), but that in this age of Google that it took 4 MONTHS after uploading this documentary to someone to correct, not as much....

[@setichas]

We had the pay box in our flat in Stockwell in 1965 thought it was great had special events on it like boxing 2 bob for a couple of hours, we couldn’t afford to use it much, though my old man always afforded the boxing when Cassius Clay was on ! Had a TV guide that came once a month which told you what films were coming on, all black and white 🙄👍

[@Nog311]

We had British Relay.....so we had BBC1, BBC2, ITV Thames and ITV Southern.......so we were special as we had 4 channels when everyone else had 3. I forgot the Radio Stations.

[@BruceDanton-xw6eg]

If you had itv Thames I guess you had itv lwt as well if it was from London crystal Palace I guess so too there.

[@srfurley]

I remember seeing the British Relay installation in Peckham, probably in about the early '80s. It was in a converted shop, and could clearly be seen from the street

[@Gannett2011]

Fascinating. Well remember 'the link' as a kid growing up in Gloucester. My brother worked for British Relay and Visonhire and their subsequent iterations for nearly 30 years as a field engineer. It was great having a TV repairman in the family! I remember the day the man came to remove the link and install an aerial in about 1984; a starling got into the house and he spent more time trying to chase it out of the window than working on the TV! We also had a British Relay-branded colour TV for many years after they vanished. Also fascinating seeing those shots of Gloucester city centre before the destructive redevelopment of the late 60s and early 70s. Clapham Court is the block of flats featured towards the end of the film, a pretty run-down area of the town now, unfortunately. Edit: I thought I recognised the narrator - Franklin Engelman!

[@crickcrot]

My aunt had British relay when she lived in house just with gaslight right up to the 1970s.

[@sicks6six]

REDIFUSION, where we lived, everyone had it except us ! Just remembered we had schools television at junior school, this was about 1966 I reckon, it followed the curriculum we were being taught, very new and radical, some programs were teachers reading and some were cartoon explanations of things we were learning in science classes.

[@king77703]

So it wasnt redi for you then?

[@sicks6six]

@@king77703 nope. Everyone had a big knob on the windowsill and a redifusion box.

[@vylbird8014]

"Observe the contrast between these old properties, veiled in shadow and muck, and these new television relay properties painted bright with frolicking children before them."

[@richiehoyt8487]

Oh, you cynic! ;^)

[@dodgydruid]

To some this seems almost like another world but I remember the time before 24 hour many channel TV, we were in the early seventies considered quite posh as we had a large black and white telly and we also had a phone which was in some parts still a rarity with phone calls being seen as a necessary evil to contact state agencies rather than natter to your loved ones and done down the local phonebox. Even in the eighties our old house was still round pin, 2 ,mainboard fuses electric with three different sizes of round pin plug with little ones for sidelights, medium ones for the iron and the telly and a great big beastie ones for things like electric fires. Funny thing is they were happier times then, seems all this modernity has made us a bunch of miserable sods imho lol

[@andyblackpool]

2a, 5a and 15 amp. ;-)

[@pauldg837]

I remember the 2 pin round plugs. My grandmother had them in her house up until 1976. It was a house built in 1925, in which she and my grandfather took possesion of that same year as a newly married young couple.

[@user-lx6bl2wd8g]

@@pauldg837 I'm based in Thailand where they still use 2 pin plugs.

[@poetlorryit]

Halcyon days, my gran had the piped tv in the 70's in Broughty Ferry and even the chip shop down the road had a BRTV for customers to watch while they waited on their Arbroath fish suppers being made. That was a different age, now the needs of the public have been ridden over roughshod, the keyword being umm..... globalised

[@jasonscott5938]

My gran had it in fintry and my mum worked for British relay in the old overgate

[@MrStabby19812]

My grans house in Whitfield had the socket in the living room for it.

[@brunster64]

We had British Relay in Redditch, Worcestershire In fact we still have the socket for it in the wall - keep meaning to dismantle it and put a multimeter on it out of curiosity.

[@garth1288]

i live in matchborough and my socket is still there lol

[@chrishulse5305]

There won't be any power there any longer.

[@luaking84]

That coin-operated set-top-box is just perfect!

[@samuelfellows6923]

philxyz - imagine the poor technician/engineer/meter man having to come and empty it and the pain of the subscriber seeing it being emptied and the coins taken away (or worse - it becomes so full (without the man coming to empty it) that you can’t make any payments and watch TV)

[@winclouduk]

My house here in Rochester, still the really connection attached to the house. Also a lot of houses here still have THe junction boxes

[@digitalmediafan]

But they definitely won't be connected. They should have been taken away and the cable ripped out yonks ago

[@paulgray1318]

Had a property in Ipswich with what appeared like a telephone wire cable fixture point on the side of the building - turned out it was for TV via cable before they had transmission towers in play. That was this.

[@jaworskij]

UK = Sound and Vision N. America = Audio and Video

[@HyoomanBean]

Wonderful documentary. Thank you for sharing it 👍

[@jasonjesson9742]

Thanks for this, Sheffield still have the old connection boxes on older houses.

[@IrregularShed]

I grew up in Gloucester in the 70s and 80s. Our maisonette (1977-83) had 'the link' and we had a 20" monochrome TV with four radio stations and four TV channels available. (Before Channel 4 launched we had HTV as well as ATV/Central). Being valve TVs, they had a fab orange glow visible from the back :) Wish I'd know about the repeater kiosks then though, that looks fantastic!

[@digitalmediafan]

Absolutely fascinating but what about Rediffusion ? I had a small cream coloured plastic 3 inch sized box on the window sill at home as we had no transmitter available at the time...excellent video quality for the time

[@findingnemowebhaumea]

What happened to the houses in Britain? Everything looked beautifully clean!

[@hewhohasnoidentity4377]

This was filmed in the midst of rebuilding. Everything was new.

[@neilhurn2685]

Now people leave some of there old kitchen appliances out in the front garden rather than take it to the dump or get the council to pick it up. I Don think these people know it takes any least 1000 years for appliances to corrode

[@MakayevR29]

This was a real glimpse into the future and very advanced for its time.

[@crickcrot]

I rember the British relay shop in my home town East ham i used to look at the grey tall cabinets with the lights, my Aunt and her mother had gaslight no electricity in the house they had British relay radio when the company packed up i bought my Aunt a portable radio she had gaslight until the mid 1970s.

[@daveinthailand]

Its a pity they did not screen the cables separately so you could watch 1 program at a time 😂😂😂 You always seen one channel over the other

[@dangruner5926]

What a lovely and interesting documentary. God, I often think I was born in the wrong era...

[@viewsofthemenatallyill1354]

I too feel very much that way. How wonderful this time in British history really was!

[@iseeolly9959]

@@viewsofthemenatallyill1354 Yeah, free to be sexually abused by people in power and have it all covered up .....good old Jimmy Savile etc...just doff yer cap to the toffs because they are inherently better than you....cor blimey mate , your a proper toff and no mistake! Nostalgia ain't as good as it used to be ( this will go straight over your head).

[@MoonlitVibe]

@@iseeolly9959 Yeah too many people aren't grasping that you don't get a true picture of life from an idyllic documentary. Most Americans understand that their 1950s picket fence utopia videos aren't actual what daily life was like but here we have the British equivalent and grown adults are thinking this must be what living was like! To put it in their context, this is Mr. Roger's beautiful neighborhood-that doesn't mean life in the 1980s was heaven.

[@raysharp5677]

i remember the 625 line h and x aerials and to this day some are still complete i live in aylesbury

[@stickytapenrust6869]

The H and X aerials were for the 405-line service. 625-line aerials are what people have on their roofs now.

[@trevordance5181]

British tv and film makers take great care in getting things historically correct when their films are set in the 1950's or 60's. No double yellow lines on the roads, proper old cars, vans, and buses passing by, an old button A and B public phone box in shot, etc, etc. The one thing they tend to miss though is the tv aerials. There should be loads of H, X, and band 3 itv aerials littering the rooftops, not just the small UHF aerials of later years.

[@Witheredgoogie]

Notice how neat the cable lashings are ...today's ones are usually like a dog's breakfast with junction boxes hanging at all angles and cables a tangled mess.

[@banjopink4409]

Yes, and we all know who's to blame for that, don't we?

[@Pete4000uk]

There is still a old British Relay cabinet on the Painswick Road in Gloucester.

[@tonyhancock3912]

Hope they catch them. Flytippers are the lowest of the low

[@RicArmstrong]

What part of Painswick road?

[@Eleventhearlofmars]

Ricochet the pain part. 😁

[@HistoryandFacts]

Thanks for sharing wonderful documentary

[@uglycustard4488]

7.40 the security of that repeater kiosk!! Can you imagine that today? Brilliant footage though really enjoyed this,thanks!

[@richiehoyt8487]

I thought the same. Different times. Of course, the security is a bit more robust nowadays since those types of 'Holes in the wall' serve as local depots for 'barring up' drugs for when you have to 're~up' the street level guys. Either that, or they've been put into service as 'starter homes'!

[@cricketbat09]

That dart was placed in the bull's eye @ 6:42, the clumsy film edit is a giveaway.

[@barrybennett9563]

Funny that they chose to play darts rather than watch TV or listen to the radio!

[@colinluckens9591]

haha😅

[@97channel]

6:34 Haha, he never got that bullseye. His technique was to just throw arrows roughly in the direction of the board. He blatantly went up and put it in there. Wouldn't surprise me if he still missed, even doing it like that.

[@LifeinAnalog]

Fascinating! Thank you for sharing!

[@Earcandy73]

I liked our British Relay TV. We were in Dundee bad it was nice the have Radio 2 on the TV

[@McSynth]

Can't see this subscriber model catching on. Who on earth would watch telly from space ?

[@colinluckens9591]

MY HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED!!!😞😞😞......

[@mikewatte4478]

2019 watching the relay via mobile devices almost anywhere on earth

[@FLEsuperiorblackscreenpaints]

Watching wiith my brain using our broadcasting network link in the year 2050 Local time travel express ID33221

[@banjopink4409]

@@FLEsuperiorblackscreenpaints Some day, it will all be watching.

[@paulwilliams493]

I grew up on an estate built from mid Sixties and Rediffusion Cable was included as part of the build. We had 4 channels (2 BBC1 regions) and BBC Radio selected through a box on the windowsill. I think Sky took over circa 1984 and the service went over to purely subscription TV. The system was never upgraded to fibre optic cable and so eventually became obsolete. Such a waste.

[@andyblackpool]

Redifusion in Nottingham. We still have miles and miles of cabling, junction boxes, roadside kiosks and cable spans all over the city.. Redifusion, latterly took over by the infamous Maxwell corporation, finally went bust and ceased operations the late 80's - it'd cost more to retrieve the copper cables now than they would fetch for scrap I suppose. The first original installation was in the Broxtowe estate in 1952

[@brianbrunger]

I can remember Redifusion on the Clifton estate, one thing I remember is that when BBC 2 started we recived the programs on launch night as they were fed from London by cable to Nottingham. People without cable did not get BBC2 until about 2 years later in the city. Remember in the early 60s there were only 2 channels in the UK, BBC and ITV so BBC2 was a big increase in choice.

[@JoginderSingh-uf5od]

brian brunger o

[@tony2682]

Not Forgetting, Rediffusion Worked for them Both.

[@MegaJackpot180]

@Emily Bishop yes we had it in the 70s in Bristol you had the ABC 123 Dial in the window and could get bbc1/2 HTV and ATV midlands so we could watch Tizwas before it became national

[@pixoariz]

Good heavens, doing subscriber relay switching of video signals at baseband frequencies is soooo 1899.

[@trev8932]

The line wasn't at baseband video. On TV the sound was at 2.01Mhz and Video at 3.5Mhz (405 lines) or 4.43Mhz (625 lines PAL Colour) radio was at audio frequency.

[@TheEtruscanhorse]

Delivering pictures and sined dirrect to viewing units in hiceholds in tines and cities accrawse Britten withite an arryal.

[@bobsureunkle8000]

We had Relay in the new overspill houses in Dickson drive and Frew Terrace Irvine from the early 60's, I also remember it was very bad for getting interference from the early AM CB radios from the mid 70's.

[@Gribbo9999]

That's a big ten four good buddy.

[@one2nd1]

I didn't exist as a single cell when British Relay were around, however I do recall Rediffusion - and imagining the need not to lay new cables, Rediffusion took over BRW network..?

[@mk2dubster]

Thank you for the upload, found this very interesting and informative.

[@crumplezone1]

No problem Mr Chumlywarner

[@geoffadams389]

I remember the Relay man. He was always messing according to mum.i think dad worked for the Relay before he met mum

[@enviousfred]

1951 first signals sent, so this pre-dated ARPA-Net (1969) by about 18 years!

[@anoraksoutheast]

Fascinating - nice little film!

[@luaking84]

12:21 "This is Billy. Billy is nine years old. Billy doesn't go to a normal school. Billy goes to a school where every pupil is expected to synchronise the putting down of their pencils when they finish to listen to the educative dispensary individual's oration."

[@ivok9846]

12:17 it doesn't work when you're too late....

[@justinabbottabbott7892]

Brilliant been a cable tech for 25 years

[@McSynth]

Interesting to see a young Brian Butterworth masquerading as 'Barry King' at 17:54. Business cleary runs through his veins.

[@MacStoker]

lmao, its definitely him in his prime...

[@realscientistflanders1688]

Brian Butterfield?

[@EurEvansIsh]

As does Crispy Owl. As do Fluffy Ruffs.

[@SIONARAFLORIDA]

That dude at the end was pretty serious about bringing you his relay tele, i mean serious.

[@laurencecope7083]

Pity it didn't last long.

[@HillsWorkbench]

Noticed that too, intense mind.

[@cameraworks-uk5709]

We used to call this 'piped TV' when I was a kid!

[@jasonscott5938]

cameraworks-uk that’s what my gran in Dundee called it aswell

[@NicholasCoulter]

At least they’ve got slimmer and more discreet antennas nowadays, still an eye sore on houses though😕

[@Wenlocktvdx]

After a lot of thought, I can recall seeing a British Relay van at Tally Ho Corner and I believe the police station there was on the site of the former British Relay site. My school had a trip to the opening of the police station. I am right confused, never heard of it despite living in Hendon and Finchley in London and visiting relations in Hemel Hempstead. Never saw a BRW shop while riding around London in Mums car. A friend of mine worked with someone who used to work for Rediffusion, when he left them he came to work in Australia. I recall references to Rediffusion and BRW in Televison, a magazine which folded around 2000.

[@GeoNeilUK]

And in these days, television relay has returned and is nationwide! Television is now piped into the home and increasingly radiated over the air to receivers that also function as transmitters. Programmes from across the world are delivered either through the wire or from local transceiver stations located across the country. And on these new interconnected networks, or internet, every home can serve as its own broadcasting station! Sending their signals not only to their local city, but to every land and territory in the world! Even you could produce and broadcast your own programmes, over the wire or the air, to the massive worldwide interconnected network of relays stations, or servers as they are known in the language of this new excting world, hosted quite simply everywhere! In every city, in every town, in every village, in every country! In fact, over he air, one can broadcast out and about using small, handheld computer terminals.

[@russellmartinkenny5796]

Britain was beautiful once, sad to see this

[@dangruner5926]

Russell Martin Kenny Britain was indeed beautiful once. Look at it now... :(

[@iseeolly9959]

What changed then...too many brown skinned people seeping back from all the countries we raped for minerals and oil?

[@callumBee]

@@iseeolly9959 Corporate greed and the idea of every man for himself rather than looking after each other and building services for the community that at build on trust, care and service at the forefront.

[@jrbs]

The UK has been trashed. It's over populated with people who don't give a damn, can't be bothered working and throw litter everywhere.

[@jrbs]

@@iseeolly9959 No. Too many wasters of all nationalities (including English) who don't give a damn about the Country and have trashed it.

[@whoshotdk]

@10:38 Demonstrates the wonder of colour TV with a skimpily-dressed young woman. @10:40 Proceeds to put a per-minute price on said viewing. Pretty accurate prediction of 90's midnight TV :D

[@richiehoyt8487]

Gotta demonstrate the way their sets beautifully reproduce the subtleties of those flesh tones!

[@voornaam3191]

I lived in Chickchickshire in the 60s, and we coloured the black&white tele signal, using colour pencils. We even made brass rubbings of our favourite television stars. Yes, we loved every inch of them. They happily kept laying down, for that, you know? In the 70s we needed strong ropes to keep them on the spot, far more chill, actually. They call it bandage. Life was so good! Nowadays Chickchickshire is demolished, they grow military nuclear plants there. Mushrooms, that is. Black & white thinking is all that's left, but who really wants such a simplified world? Worrying? Who is thinking, anyway? I tell you, most people don't, they just repeat what others shout. No, those were the days.

[@markfarmer5244]

Pass me some of what your smoking please 🦹‍♂️

[@samuelfellows6923]

The gentleman at the end looks like he’s suffering from double vision? - eyes pointing to the sides of head 🧐

[@ecutechltd]

One in Leicester one in Chester

[@BKL63PRODUCTIONS]

Amazing

[@michaelstevens630]

Can I sign up for this still? I want one of those old Black & White televisions preferably with valves.

[@jonathanpalmer155]

With them you were on first name terms with the TV repairman...

[@colinluckens9591]

@@jonathanpalmer155 Even the concept of a "TV REPAIRMAN" nowadays.....my goodness😏😔😔.....

[@jonathanpalmer155]

@@colinluckens9591 Binman more like!. In the later days it was just a case of swapping over various circuit boards, and not replacing individual components. While not dealing with TVs, I was trained to repair electronic equipment, and think it sacrilege that lately it is uneconomic to repair or parts are not available after 5 years .If it lasts more than 5 years that is!

[@stevegreen443]

Back in the days when you had to get up out of your seat to change channel or adjust the volume .

[@unlokia]

Yep, back when a bit of exercise 100 times a day wasn't seen as the end of the world, and when people weren't scared to death of moving out of their chair :)

[@candiiii19]

Yep. We also had to put shillings in the meter to keep the tv working. It would shut off when we had used up our monies worth. LOL. We also tried to pretend we weren’t home when the tv license van would come around. The license had to be purchased even if we had no tv, if u had a radio you still needed a license!!!!!!!!!

[@voornaam3191]

Yep, nowadays everybody has a remote control. It is called a smart phone. It tells those modern people what to do. Synchronised calendars send you from meeting to meeting. In between you MUST respond all your email. And low and behold, in spite of voip services, there are still oldfashioned (so expensive) phone calls. In between you ought to catch Pokemons, or bitcoins. It's never enough. Just watch them, staring at the screen. All people used to believe in God, now they have a smart phone, instead.

[@leelinden8107]

Yep, right up until she passed on in 2010 aged 86, my Mum always spoke of changing channels as "turning the TV over" to "the other side," a relic of the days when one BBC and one ITV channel were the only shows in town, and turning the British Relay TV's channel selector knob felt about as heavy as turning over the whole darned set! Does anyone remember the female announcer who came on when you put your two bob in the Pay TV box, (another hard-to-twist knob!) -- and is my memory playing tricks or did she really open announcements with, "This is *Pee* Television"??

[@leelinden8107]

@@candiiii19 And those TV Detector Vans were "coming to YOUR area" and lurking behind every bush!

[@9023710a]

Still got 1 of the sockets in my place, how much cables are still on houses in Gloucester

[@marksinthehouse1968]

We had British relay we had our first colour set in 1970 I was three still lots of shows made in black and white then ,in London we had four channels BBC1/2 itv London Thames/LWT and also southern the. ITV regions showed some programmes at different times and southern showed crossroads after magpie in London it was shown at 7 hehehehe

[@jonathanpalmer155]

Magpie - Blue Peter with sex appeal...oooo Susan Stranks!!!!

[@marksinthehouse1968]

Susan stranks oh yeh she was hot no bra ,Leslie judd on blue peter nice,magpie was blue peter after taking LSD cool and hip

[@andrewbashford9786]

If you lived in London in the middle 70s onwards British Relay would pipe through an extra channel Southern TV 📺⭐️

[@garycumningham169]

were i live they had this system but removed it many many years ago but not totaly and one day while putting a metal lader away in my garage big flash lous bang as some of the cable ends sticking out the floor were still live if i had not been wearing rubber gloves i think i would have been dead

[@trev8932]

Hi. The relay system only had low frequency RF and Audio at 100v line, reduced by the inserts in the box. If you got a flash from a ladder it certainly wasn't a BRW cable. When the system went off starting in the later 70's there would have been no signals or connections to the station, Kiosks or repeaters.

[@marcushull12]

A bit like the war , Lets not mention Hull , the second most bombed city in the Uk , Rediffusion was cable radio and TV in Hull 1930 Rediffusion was the trading name of Broadcast Relay Service Ltd, formed in 1928. In 1929 the company introduced its first cable radio service in Hull to customers frustrated with the difficulties of tuning in weak radio broadcasts. In the customer premises, nothing more than a selector switch and loudspeaker were needed. Initially, the service consisted primarily of rebroadcasts of the BBC Radio service, which was reflected in the trading name: Rediffusion simply means "broadcasting again". Rediffusion quickly branched out into making, renting, and selling radios, both receivers for its cable services and conventional models. With the arrival of the first experimental television broadcasts in the 1930s, Rediffusion began manufacturing TV sets and supplying "Piped TV", an early form of cable TV, service to its customers, until the cessation of television broadcasts during the Second World War.,

[@waynetarry8539]

i remember the first cable tv think it was called ( redefusion ) back in the mid 60s

[@bennetfox]

Can I get one of those coin slots for my TV?

[@pureboxofscartcables]

An interesting and enjoyable film, albeit an advertisement for a commercial concern that managed to somehow lock people into renting their equipment/service by having it installed in new builds and "possibly" causing the erection of aerials to be an offence under local bylaws. Just an unnecessary link in the chain, and an extra bill. Having said that I've always lived in a fairly flat part of England within a 30 mile radius of a transmitter. (Still can't get 3 though!)

[@train4905]

Fasinating

[@davids8449]

I remember the system........today 2023 my television has been turned off for 39 year due to PR ... instead I have hundreds of selective DVDs.....many years ago would tune in to TWW midlands etc

[@skfalpink123]

How did we manage to turn this country from something so lovely, to something so utterly wretched in the space of a single human lifetime?

[@Bungle2010]

What does that even mean?

[@godfreypoon5148]

@@Bungle2010 Not sure how it's at all unclear. Are you pretending not to understand, perhaps?

[@gman83090]

We have a communal antenna system it's called an master antenna system because I live in an apartment building we have a satellite dish and over the area aerial and the signal is received on the satellite dish and the main antenna and it gets distributed throughout our building it's called an MATV system MSATV that's how I receive television in my apartment building with only needing one aerial