Cable TV unboxing video 1996 style! Recorded October 1996 United Artists Cable

[@MadameSomnambule]

It's really neat seeing footage of UK tv like this. It's not just interesting from a US perspective because the channels and programs are different, but also in the sense that it's basically a time capsule from the period. The flashy graphic design that was prevalent in the mid 90s, the music, what reruns aired...

[@TheStevenWhiting]

0:01 GREAT. I wanted to see something like this. We went round to my uncles in the early 90s who had cable, we didn't and he showed me the Picture in Picture feature. I was amazed.

[@paulinelloyd502]

The Good Old Memories.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

I noticed that The Box was carried in NICAM digital stereo, this is unusual when other cable networks carried it in mono sound.

[@guksack]

This is a lovely nostalgic clip! I'm sure it's not nostalgia talking when I say it was better when cable was just a handful of varied channels.

[@GoodkingMemorex]

You are right. Less channels meant more choice. These days we have over 800 channels all showing the same repeats!

[@MadameSomnambule]

Even as someone from the US I can kinda confirm. When my family first got satellite in the mid to late 90s, there seemed to be a handful of channels and many were pretty good, at least from my memory since I was around 3-5 years old then. Even the few channels out of the hundreds we had on Dish in the early 2000s were better.

[@guksack]

​@@MadameSomnambule Yeah I think the first satellite/cable system was 6 channels (to our analogue 4) and was about 20 channels by the early 2000s. All higher quality channels with high viewing figures. Now cable is seen as a bit of a "masses of cheap rubbish and repeats" thing.

[@Tpkuk]

MTV & VH1 both playing music, must have been about a year or two after this that they started to change to reality programming

[@anthonyperkins7556]

I noticed on Granada's channels, even on Granada Plus, they broadcast idents and adverts in stereo on analogue satellite using Wegener PANDA 🐼 1 noise reduction, and they did do stereo from the early 90's shows onwards when Granada TV in spring 1990 adopted NICAM Digital Stereo broadcasting and stereo TV sound productions with the quiet brief introduction of Dolby Surround later on unannounced, still used analogue videotape at first, with the linear stereo tracks and Dolby B NR playout, until they migrated to Betacam SP with FM HiFi tracks and linear stereo tracks with Dolby B NR, and eventually DigiBeta, and DigiBeta HD later on, before tape formats were scrapped in favour of MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 HD digital video files playback.

[@markgenner1747]

Good Old Days.

[@tomfletcher8242]

i was 5 years old when that happened

[@1969gawa]

0:27 Shoko Asahara ,mastermind behind the Tokyo sarin attack in the subway.

[@markgenner937]

Sky Travel RIP ❤📺☺

[@markgenner1747]

2:47

[@dpf2122]

Amazing how similar this channel lineup was to the one I had growing up in suburban new York in the 1990s: nickelodeon was even channel 23 for me too lol

[@markgenner937]

Friday 18th October 1996

[@markgenner937]

It Was A Good Month.

[@paulinelloyd502]

Hello My Son.

[@MrDannyDetail]

I agree, at least for the channel filckthrough in the first part of the video. The Neighbours clip we see is from epsiode 1035 which was repeated on UK Gold that day, although such a short clip could also have been a start-of-episode recap clip from a later episode. The slightly longer clip of Coronation Street is from episode 1602, repeated by Granada Plus on that date, which clinches it. The later clips of Crown Court, Crossroads and The Grumbleweeds are likely from a different date or dates as those shows don't seem to have been scheduled for repeating on 18th October 1996.

[@MarkGenner1991]

Very Good 👍

[@Meanmanmartin2007]

01:19- Impressive

[@markgenner937]

Granada Channels 📺👏❤😊

[@markgenner1747]

0:55

[@markgenner1747]

3:51

[@markgenner1747]

3:59

[@markgenner1747]

4:36

[@markgenner1747]

6:12

[@simonmason7824]

anthony worral thompson at 0.37, graham kerr, at 01.29, wink martindales trivial pursuit i sure remember this clips, anymore channel hopping, ?

[@GoodkingMemorex]

I don't think I have any more channel hopping but I will be adding more clips soon, you never know

[@chairmannom9507]

OSCAR!

[@misterjibril6528]

01:19 ...It's not neighbours....it's not H&A.....what was it???

[@GoodkingMemorex]

It was Neighbours.

[@misterjibril6528]

@@GoodkingMemorex Thank you!

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Some of the channels were in crystal clear NICAM Stereo while the rest were in mono. If I was in charge of United Artists, anything that transmitted in stereo from satellite using analogue Wegener Panda 1 stereo subcarriers 7.02 / 7.20 MHz (music sports movies entertainment children's programmes arts culture foreign ethnic specialist religion news travel etc) as well as MPEG-2 DVB Digital Stereo from digital satellite and satellite carried cable exclusive channels and terrestrial BBC ITV Channel 4 Channel 5 broadcasting NICAM Stereo would all be carried in NICAM Stereo.

[@EarthdogGFX]

What was channel 01 called ? We had something similar in america ... A grid of channels w a live narrator

[@GoodkingMemorex]

If I remember rightly the channel was called "BARK" (short for Barker). No live narrator though - the sound feed was supplied by Sky Radio

[@GoodkingMemorex]

Correction: at 4:31 you will see the channel is called MULT - short for Multichannel I guess

[@watcherofclassics]

My family was with Videotron and they called it the Mosaic channel.

[@simonmason7824]

ok.

[@BangedUpwithOldTV]

Any clips from The Box music channel?

[@GoodkingMemorex]

Nope sorry

[@robertcomer2767]

The Grumble weeds - what a load of crap that was

[@GoodkingMemorex]

The past, as they say, is another country. We all used to watch crap on telly and enjoy it. Sometimes you're better off leaving your memories in the past. Great bunch of musicians and songwriters though.

[@paulburns-dt9eq]

I used to prefer the grumbleweeds on radio 2 rather than on TV. Maybe because the voices I imagined on radio ie you get right up my nose you doo! Maurice. Totally different from what I had in mind.

[@funkybuddhaInit]

Hopping too fast!

[@GoodkingMemorex]

Definitely, I should have recorded much more of this kind of thing back in the day. It's top priority for when I get my time machine running again lol

[@jamesshilton2639]

Cable wireless cable london s09 telewest uk ntl : virgin media

[@stephthestar90]

Have you any clips from CNBC in the 2000s?

[@GoodkingMemorex]

Thanks for the subscribe! Sorry, everything I have is already on this channel. I just upload the ads and continuity, or anything of interest from old VHS tapes, then I bin them and move on.