Frontiers 1985 - Early BT TV

[@stevewillson9114]

This is great! The first person pictured at the optical bench is Dr David Cotter, who I worked with back in my optics days at what was then called BT Labs. I think I’ve worked in that lab which was in the Main Lab Block, I certainly worked with the ‘Colour Centre’ lasers that could be tuned across different wavelengths. The laser was a Sodium Chloride (salt) crystal and needed to be kept cool using Liquid Nitrogen! Then the fibre pulling rig was in B55 (where I also worked with Jim Ainsley who was interviewed). I worked on and build some of the early Fibre Amplifiers and spent several years in the clean rooms and used to package the laser chips shown during my time in a research group that was developing manufacturing techniques for BT&D. Good times and great vision from the people at the time. p.s. the glasses people were wearing were amazing!

[@jameysummers1577]

I enjoyed reading your post Mr.Wilson. It sounds like you had a fun job.

[@rowanlidbury]

Awesome!

[@NOWThatsRichy]

Fibre optics, very ahead of its time back then, the start of all the systems & facilities we use today, without even thinking about it. Ironically though 35 years later, many people are still receiving there broadband via BTs copper wires!

[@rowanlidbury]

Now my copper wired derived broadband is routed over fibre optics to three switches! Oh the irony.

[@MePeterNicholls]

Thatcher stalled universal national roll out by making BT sell off its fiberoptics Setting us back 40 years

[@ASCIITerminal]

My father worked for BT on the Westminster Cable project. I remember trying out the system in his office - it was streets ahead of anything else at the time. Nice to see the DEC hardware too!

[@thcoura]

Just took 30 years to have fiber in my home 😮

[@peterconnell8083]

I worked for Westminster Cable TV from 89- 2000.....what a great time....fantastic company with wonderful people!

[@Nick_80599]

BT made the mistake of buying shares in BskyB which prompted the bureaucrats in the EU government to sell the BT cable franchises. They sold it to NTL and they also had to lease the network, the two companies couldn't agree on things and it was never upgraded apart from some of the Westminster area which had Cable Broadband rolled out, Virgin Media discontinued the service in Westminster,Milton Keynes between 2012 and 2013 and the Barbican estate in city of London shut even earlier in 2004. BT engineers fixed the cables as part of the lease including in people's homes and they were caught patching up cables with duct tape. Both companies let residents down badly because in these areas, they have little choice due to poor signal.

[@markarca6360]

Optical fibers have two main types: single-mode and multi-mode. Single-mode fiber optics use lasers and are used for communications over long distances (like the undersea cables that power the Internet), while multi-mode fiber optics use infrared light and are used for communications over short distances (such as within a data center or buildings within a compound or campus).

[@jamienewman1488]

Wow so concept we can see here is the internet. I love this!

[@Nick_80599]

Videotron rolled out it's Cable phone service across Westminster, they couldn't get a Cable TV licence because of Westminster Cable but the plan was early IPTV and the same interactive features you see offered by Westminster Cable. Videotron did roll out its phone service across Westminster and it continued through C&W but in 1999 NTL bought both Westminster Cable and the old Videotron network and BT prohibited NTL offering the phone service in Westminster as part of the deal

[@Matty112uk]

A great clip. Also, check out those guys glasses at 16:20!

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Did this cable service offer satellite TV services in stereo transmitted using the Wegener PANDA 1 noise reduction system, usually transmitted from satellite over the stereo subcarriers 7.02 / 7.20 MHz? To relay stereo sound from satellite, the CATV systems satellite reception units would pick up satellite channels with the stereo mode 7.02 / 7.20 MHz selected, and Wegener PANDA 1 noise reduction mode on the CATV satellite receiver activated to reduce the hiss inherent on the broadcast, and broadcast that two channel sound via the fibre optic cables to the customers set top box unit, to be heard in stereo on the customer's stereo TV or in some cases, broadcast as a stereo television soundtrack on the FM band received on a HiFi system connected to the cable system. Later on, CATV systems in 1989 could encode those satellite TV services transmitting analogue stereo sound to NICAM Digital Stereo using a NICAM CATV encoder and these would be offered in NICAM Digital Stereo to be picked up on a customer's NICAM video recorder and NICAM Stereo television set.

[@sonyp180]

38 years later, live just 10 miles away from BT Martlesham. Still waiting for this fibre. In the meantime, SpaceX designed and built a 4000 satellite strong fully functioning LEO satellite network and growing.

[@lukejennings3128]

only got thatcher to blame

[@rowanlidbury]

Equipment has now been dusted off and is currently used for BT Sport & VAR.

[@SuperActionForceGo]

5:00 and Netflix is born.

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

All these people say they will use it for educational use. Bullshit, they're going to watch porn.

[@markarca6360]

If the United States has Bell Labs (a sister company of AT&T and the R&D division of the former Bell System), the United Kingdom has BT Labs (the R&D division of British Telecom).

[@SuperActionForceGo]

And it all happened in the future........ for those that were living in 1984

[@THEWIGMONSTER]

it happened in my future. I worked on installing fibre (POLS) transmission systems from 1984. They were a bit unreliable particularly the regenerators. (regens). A rumble of thunder & flash of lightning & there were errors galore. It took so long to commission them & bring them into service.

[@TheSynthnut]

Some of Mark Shreeve's Flagg used from Legion at 0:19 Love these, great bit of history at the cusp of the data revolution. Have to laugh at the guy talking about "ornithology" and the ability to study "birds" in slowmo, could they have found a seedier looking chap?!

[@pureboxofscartcables]

That is pretty amazing stuff, but I spent the last twenty minutes laughing like a drain. Obviously I'm looking at this in hindsight, on a telephone...

[@turboslag]

This was just around the time cell phones landed and about 10 years before the Internet, and that changed everything. Pitifully though, the UK has lagged seriously behind the rest of the world for internet speed and coverage, and ironically this is due to BT!! Only now is copper being phased out for a full fibre network, but even then, some remote parts of the country will be excluded for some time yet, and may possibly never be reached. The funniest part of this feature was the laser disc library server! It's the first time I've ever heard about this and I find it incredible, back then though they couldn't possibly have any idea what was just around the corner!

[@NuGanjaTron]

17:45 Xanadu!

[@jaworskij]

30 Laserdisc players for 10,000 subs.? Demand would have quickly outgrown supply. One weakness of KZbin is that it doesn't really do Chapter stops like on a DVD or Laserdisc. That would be nice... You could have Chapter 1 as the main programme here and Chapter 2 as the Demo of video-on-demand service.

[@ElliottVeares]

300 Disc Players, not 30!