Satellite BSB

In this video i unbox a vintage dmac receiver.
This was sky's rival in the uk around march 1990
The receiver just screams 1990s
I recsued this receiver from a ham who wanted to turn it into a ATV 13cm receiver

[@mrglitch0]

Had this very receiver back in 1990. The quality of D-Mac was fantastic. I can remember when HD first came out much later thinking its not as good as D-Mac! When Sky took over BSB, they sold the Marco Polo Sat to Scandinavia and you could just about get it with a big dish pointing 1 degree west and a D2-Mac encoder though the picture was never as good. Such a shame that the tech never took off and we had years of Astra Sat in Pal tat was nowhere as good as D-Mac. Nothing is left of BSB now as the sat was put in to junk orbit in the early 2000's when it ran out of fuel and even Marco Polo house was demolished in around 2014 to build luxury flats. I loved BSB and feel slightly sad that it's all gone..

[@SteveInScotland]

I had this setup on a pair of step ladders, behind a window in Scotland and still got a perfect signal, even with the curtains closed! True story! It was only a temporary setup during the final weeks, I got a box and dish for next to nothing and wanted to fiddle, the engineer that I am. Lol

[@2j4ez]

Steve Page I got the dish and receiver for £2 from Luton ham radio rally I’ve tried to receive Astra 1 on the dish but only got a weak signal maybe I need a booster to get it to work . It would be good to receive a picture of the dish

[@SteveInScotland]

2j4ez does anyone circularly polarize signals anymore?! It was fairly rare even in the time of BSB. Squarials were made by Matsushita (Panasonic) in Japan because I think they used circularly polarised signals.

[@2j4ez]

@@SteveInScotland Not sure I did try it on astra but my meter kept saying no signal or weak signal think I should be able to get something of it because my satellite receiver does h/v Ill try it on both of them again and see what I can receive if anything

[@csabazsinko3749]

I remember just before BSB went down you could buy the dish and receiver at our Sunday market for £30, seller had hundreds of new sets , he promised you could use them for another 6 months or so.

[@alanmckenzie1373]

Good old days

[@StevenHuntington]

This reminds me a lot of ONdigital in a way as both BSB and ONdigital failed and I like both the design of this Ferguson BSB box and the Philips ONdigital box, it’s a shame that the BSB boxes were rendered useless because of the using Astra Sky merger and the ONdigtal boxes rendered useless because of the digital switchover. Thanks for the upload!

[@2j4ez]

I only got this because the dish was £1 and receiver was also £1 I managed to stop some amateur turning into a ATV receiver. thanks for watching and subscribing

[@CB-RADIO-UK]

Blast from the past the old BSB. "its hip to be square" was the catch phase on the adverts LOL

[@Robertsshed]

The BSB D-MAC system was the pinnacle of analog technology. Pity that BSB were forced to adopt such a poor business plan with custom built studios (now demolished sadly), and a requirement to have a duplicate satellite on hot standby instead of using that capacity for five extra channels.. I remember doing the flip of the circuit board and some soldering to do the D2-MAC conversion to get the Scandinavian satellite channels that showed, err, "specialist" programming.

[@2j4ez]

I herd you could adapt the bsb dish to receive other channels. ill have to try and receive a program on the astra satellite with the bsb dish that would confuse the neighbours . thanks for watching

[@MrTenctonian]

Still got a couple of receivers and two squarials in the loft. Could take them apart and change the insides to pick up French tv

[@2j4ez]

Gary Setterfield I've plugged in the dish and tried to receive a signal and got a week signal but no picture

[@ken1675]

@@2j4ez but could you do a vid of it tho please

[@2j4ez]

@@ken1675 kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGGVpadomNGJgtU I’ve done video switching the receiver on and going through the menus

[@robertcomer2767]

I paid the deposit for one at D. E. R. All they had was that Ferguson box and I hated the design as the other three manufactures boxes were better. They never got them in and the next thing BSB was forced to merge with Sky. Still wanted BSB but it was never to be. Had sky installed with an Astra version of a squarial (made by Technosat). It was bigger than the BSB one but the picture quality was utter crap. Don't think the retailer was too happy when I asked for a refund.

[@GeoNeilUK]

DMAC may have been a great system, but it came out so far ahead of its time, that when its time came, DVB was there to steal their lunch. At the time of BSB, the high end was CRTs with SCART and stereo, but the mass market had CRTs with just RF input and mono sound. These were the days when DMAC was better, but PAL and PANDA were more than good enough. Seriously, the goernment should have madated that all satellite receivers sold in the UK were DMAC compatible as well as PAL. You'd have had satellite receivers that worked with both Sky's PAL transimissions as well as being potentially compatible with BSB's DMAC transmissions (and hopefully those Scaninavian transmissions on Astra which I'm not sure were DMAC or D2MAC) BSB might have had a chance agaiunst Sky, especailly if they were allowed to launch on Astra as well as the Marcopolo satellites. And yes, the Marcopolo satellites were taken over (and renamed) by the Scandinavians and have since fallen out of use. And yes, there were *TWO* Marcopolo satellites, each capable of transmitting 5 channels, meaning that BSB could have been *TEN* channel TV... but I still have happy memories of satellite TV being pan-European,... and I still kind of wish it was...

[@castle6742]

that is so cool thanks for putting this on KZbin i bet it dont work now cold you do a video of it working just see what it s like ??

[@2j4ez]

lee DJ you can receive anything on it anymore . But what a good idea I should fire it up and go thru the menus to show what it looks like

[@castle6742]

cool i wold love see that i konw it dont work but still be interesting

[@kensuddes3262]

not seen a mint one for years. nice find

[@2j4ez]

ken suddes yea it cost me £1 for the dish and £1 for the receiver at a ham radio rally years ago

[@holoshift3524]

Please could you do more astra satellite videos

[@2j4ez]

ItzRebelz ok will do thanks for watching

[@holoshift3524]

@@2j4ez thanks

[@anthonyperkins7556]

BSB had the best picture and sound quality, but receiver spec was a bit mean with 1 x SCART and 1 x RF. I think the receivers should have been better equipped with - 2 x S-Video / stereo phono sockets for high quality S-VHS / Hi-8 recordings of D-MAC transmissions and high quality viewing on a S-Video equipped stereo television set, a pair of stereo phono sockets for a hifi system, a coaxial and optical digital audio out to feed an AV amp and speakers to make the most of the superb digital stereo audio, and two SCART sockets, one with RGB and stereo sound output for a widescreen TV and the other with selectable S-Video / CVBS output for a VCR.

[@SteveInScotland]

Poss on gen 2 boxes. I dare say they had plans for the future, even though they didn’t make it there.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

@@SteveInScotland There was only one set of set top boxes with a strictly enforced IBA poverty spec by a few manufacturers featuring 1xSCART and 1xRF, a satellite F connector, a remote control with batteries, RF lead, mains lead, instruction book and er...that's it.