IBA Engineering Announcement - 3 February 1987 'Advantages of MAC for DBS'

[@frostycola42]

The IBA did not predict KZbin

[@PatGleeson123]

MAC - a brilliant system by the IBA, then effectively rendered obsolete by Murdoch's avoidance of UK legislation by using Astra - based in Luxembourg - and the existing PAL format. The beginning of the demise of the IBA - and Independent TV as we knew it - through no fault of their own.

[@PatGleeson123]

@Morse Absolutely, but the UK government allowing him to circumvent their own rules was disgraceful.

[@j.williamkay2771]

If memory serves, the analogue satellite broadcasts in Scandinavia were a mix of D-MAC and D2-MAC, before the transition to DVB began.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

MAC, and especially D-MAC, was technically excellent for sound and vision quality but for all its excellent prowess, offered far fewer channels and reduced satellite capacity as it is bandwidth heavy. If the IBA went with D2-MAC which doesn't need as much transmission power and uses far less bandwidth, it would probably be possible to have more channels on a satellite like Astra, it would be great in fact, just imagine 16 D2-MAC channels of excellent quality and a standardised encryption system (with all the advantages of MAC) but far more affordably at a reasonable price, and all broadcasters unifying by using Eurocrypt S or Eurocrypt M encryption saving the need to have dozens of individual decoder boxes clutter up the space between the satellite receiver VCR and TV.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

​​@@j.williamkay2771 Astra across its four satellites had 5 D2-MAC channels, three from the Scandinavian TV3 stable playing out from Scansat's base in London England covering Norway Sweden and Denmark, TV1000, and Filmnet, which started initially in PAL with Matsushita Sat-Pak encryption and migrated to D2-MAC with Eurocrypt S encryption, from Brussels covering Belgium, The Netherlands plus Denmark Sweden Norway and Finland with 6 Filmnet offices in those countries, where you could ring up and subscribe to the channel.

[@G7LWT]

Stereo audio track - very posh!! :-)