Tomorrow's World - Satellite Television - First Broadcast from Astra - 1989

[@cooneycre8ive]

Satellite tv way back in the 80s was awesome. They ruined it with pricing and packages, the same way they’ll do the internet now.

[@atworkstation]

Not to mention spending $400 on a descrambler

[@spritemon98]

Nowadays we have thousands of channels and still nothing to watch

[@RyanX1899]

Damn SCART was like the HDMI for that time.

[@gli7utubeo]

Neat. Never heard of SCART connectors before. Was it audio+video?

[@RyanX1899]

@@gli7utubeo Yep, Video, audio and data. Though not as capable as HDMI of course. But it was the standard for a while and pretty decent.

[@gli7utubeo]

@@RyanX1899 Thanks. Surprised I learned something new. Best to you.

[@LFOVCF]

@@gli7utubeo 21 pin scart, started in the early 80s. back then TV equipment had alsorts of different connections, but they all agreed to using the scart. Bi-directional, so it didn't matter which end you used, but cheap ones had no individual screening, so on TVs like panasonic, they had ghost pictures in the background. It is albeit extinct now, but some TVs still have a scart socket, but these new flat TVs were too thin for the socket.

[@gli7utubeo]

@@LFOVCF Thx again.

[@MartinFarrell1972]

We had a 2 week free trial from SKY which lasted 8 months. It was the first time I heard stereo tv when I connected the satelitte box to an old stereo system from the early 80's. MTV and Sky Movies sounded incredible on it

[@ChatGPT1111]

I heard that MTV used to have music on it. That would've been ingenious. Is that true? If so, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

[@kreuner11]

@@ChatGPT1111 analog satellite no longer operates, except like in Brazil

[@ppate8]

Those trails were given out in big numbers and then they never took the equipment back when you cancelled

[@ewaf88]

And now 26 years later all we have is advert filled rubbish

[@chrisallan6069]

I wouldn’t mind if they weren’t all tik tok ads and shit

[@ewaf88]

@@chrisallan6069 And what's more they often interrupt programs at a vital moment of the plot so they can synch with all the advert breaks on the other channels.

[@spritemon98]

And still nothing good to watch

[@ewaf88]

@@spritemon98 They're forcing us to start talking to each other again

[@spritemon98]

@@ewaf88 such absolute dreaded horror

[@Gannett2011]

My brother got BSB and a squarial back in 1989 soon after it launched. Probably sounds a bit naff now, but it was genuinely exciting to see satellite TV back then. Didn't take long to realise that most of the programming was old 70s shows like Target, before 70s TV became cult retro viewing. Like a lot of this stuff, we just take it all for granted now.

[@ldn2miami]

I miss the old days of satellite, used to be so much fun moving the dish to a different satellite and discovering what was on there. Even the early sky indents had such an air of excitement when compared to the 4 stuffy terrestrial channels. Its just not the same now.

[@Markjuk]

Features such as this prove why the show is still relevant today - technological advancements. Had the show of still been running today we would have seen things such as Blu-Ray,HD TV, multi core CPUs, Tablet PCs, Camera Phones, Wireless Internet, USB Drives, etc, etc all demonstrated to the public ahead of release. Come on BBC stop giving us endless tripe on TV and BRING BACK Tomorrow's World!

[@MrHairyNeck]

I got my first satellite dish in 1995, pointed at Sirius. It was there I saw my first hardcore porn film. Hardcore porn was banned in the UK back then and there was no Internet. I was 38 at the time!!

[@sbg2005]

100% You knocked one out ! lol

[@AncientPurpleDragon]

So you didn't have a VHS?!

[@Hyperfoxeye]

Hairy Neck is that picture the face you made in 1995?

[@TheSlugJones]

Wow, never knew it was banned in the UK. Also, "hardcore" porn back then is pretty much regular porn now. lol

[@raziqrahman1976]

Hyperfoxeye Yeah, when he first time watching hardcore porn

[@helloworld0911]

Just love how ‘high def’ is now Standard def

[@gedhession]

Thanks for that. I did satellites and television at university, so seeing stuff like this brings it all back.

[@Larry]

Whatever happened to those WHSmith channels?

[@sdaonline]

Larry Bundy Jr I don't think they lasted long before BSB folded. one they were heavily invested in was "screensport". also "lifestyle" which lasted till 1993.

[@UXXV]

Fuck sake its Larry Bundy - hello you!

[@Hyperfoxeye]

Larry Bundy Jr i see you everywhere ffs

[@TheBigclay03]

Larry Bundy Jr destroyed by Peter Molyneux's promises...bastard

[@jamescollins6085]

You again?

[@mundotaku_org]

I remember seeing the first satellite antennas on homes as something futuristic in the late 80s and early 90s. There were soo tiny in comparison !!!

[@Althekeys]

Love the fact that at 2:00 Maggie asks a question to 'Robin' at Astra headquarters and there is absolutely ZERO delay. Who were they trying to kid. We can't even get that response time NOW in 2017 Bet he was in the next Studio at TVC

[@MarkPentler]

To be honest, zero delay was quite normal for terrestrial analogue links, microwave and the like. In this instance? Yeah, absolute bollocks! :)

[@khemikora]

The program wasn't broadcast Live you know. They obviously edited out the delay to move the segment along quicker.

[@alexmarshall4331]

did you catch when he covered the satellite dish antenna?

[@alexmarshall4331]

@daro2096 know your stuff or wot!!

[@alexmarshall4331]

@daro2096 well worth the read though...thanks for getting back to me 👉💎

[@TDKiller415]

The two channels that were owned by WHSmith were Screensports and Lifestyle. Screensports merged with Eurosport in 1993 and Lifestyle shut down for good

[@anonUK]

You know that shop that sells glitter pens, computer magazines and ring binders? Well now they're doing TV! I wonder how many subscribers they got? Not many...

[@rachel.mcgowan]

​@@anonUKNo subscribers actually as their channels were free-to-air. And not bad at all for being free, especially Screensport.

[@LFOVCF]

Back when I used to charge for a satellite survey, because the dishes were big and line of sight had to be confirmed before committing to order the equipment. Back then it was expensive kit! Squarials were a funny old thing, and you could send messages to anyone's screen, like "going to be late for dinner". lol. Still fitting them today. I have seen many changes in 31 years!

[@LFOVCF]

Yup, still fitting them.

[@Kevo00]

Awesome little bit of Tomorrow's World...I think I actually remember watching that.

[@Phil-Sands]

The good old Amstrad 60cm dish and LNB on the roof, the blue cap on the LNB would crumble over time due to exposure to sunlight, a lot of people replaced the cap with a lid from a coffee jar after removing the paper insert from the lid. I worked for TAS starting in 1989 (Tele Aerials Satellite Ltd, later to be fully owned by Sky and called Sky In-Home Service) fitting these dishes amongst others. In Scotland the dish size was 80cm and the Amstrad ones had crappy brackets to secure them to the pole and they bent easily if over tightened and moved in the slightest of winds losing signal.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Problem with Astra is that you got sparklies when it rained snowed or hailstoned and I found that annoying. If you had an Amstrad receiver and dish, they were crap : it had horribly hissy Wegener 🐼 sound in mono and stereo audio modes (it didn't use official Wegener 🐼 circuitry to eliminate hiss and background noise on the Wegener 🐼 audio subcarriers), and would give sparklies, even in fine weather and this is down to a temperamental automatic frequency control circuit built in which would regularly drift off tune. If you had Pace Nokia NEC or any of the better brands, you wouldn't get sparklie pics in fine weather on a 60cm dish, however north of Birmingham, signal strengths did reduce a bit especially on the European focussed Astra transponders and the only way around that, no matter what brand of Astra satellite box that you had, was an 80cm dish antenna. My parents went for an 80cm Nokia Astra satellite dish and receiver in Rishton Lancashire and we got near 100% good sparklie free reception from Astra 1A and Astra 1B most of the time, apart from the heaviest rain hail sleet and snow when things would temporarily bomb out and become unwatchable with tons of sparklies. From Astra 1C and Astra 1D onwards the reception was largely excellent and relatively sparklie free because these satellites had much higher power and bigger European footprints with a much wider coverage of the United Kingdom, enabling reliable UK wide reception on a 60cm dish. UK Gold VH1 Bravo CMT Europe Sky One MTV Europe Lifestyle The Children's Channel Sky News and many other services plus the additional satellite radio services sounded great in Wegener 🐼 1 stereo sound too piped thru a HiFi system on stereo phono leads or fed to a good stereo television on SCART connection along with slightly better RGB picture quality. Wegener 🐼 1 noise reduction was rather like Dolby for tapes, the way it worked was quite clever, let me explain : The transmitted analogue FM sound was heavily compressed by the Wegener 🐼 1 noise reduction system before satellite transmission, and at the receiver end, the receiver circuitry would expand the compressed audio restoring the dynamic range minus the hiss and background noise giving a pleasing result, but cheaper Astra receivers without official Wegener 🐼 1 circuitry didn't sound quite as good either with a fair amount of hiss and noise present or still poor noisy audio quality.

[@RussWWFC]

Interesting clip. I remember my Dad won a competition in Today Newspaper so we had it early on, remember all the german channels and other random stuff

[@ParamDxer]

Great vintage clip of the first Astra transmision

[@WHNorthcote]

I always liked the idea of the squarial dish. Better than the Astra dishes you see on the side of the house. Always looked tidy and not like a tumour on the side of the house. Oh how we messed up that part of the satellite TV world.

[@MegaWayneD]

We had BSB! It was far better than early Sky. It only had 5 channels but the programming was much better thought out. In 1989 it had an electronic program guide on a scale we never saw again until Sky Digital appeared in 2001!

[@markkorobkin85]

sky digital was '98

[@RussWWFC]

I remember that, we had one of the first Amstrad ones, won out of the Today Newspaper. Seemed so call at the time. Remember the channel line up as 1 Screensport, 2 RTL 2 (German -watched Der Preiss is Heiss and Tutti Frutti), 3 TV 3 (scrambled), 4 Lifestyle, 5 Childrens Channel, 6 Sat 1 (German), 7 TV 1000, 8 Sky Channel with DJ Kat and Punky Brewster), 9 Eurosport, 10 ???, 11 Filmnet (part scrambled) 12 Sky News, 13/14 ??, 15 MTV, 16 Sky Movies

[@beachlife2968]

Haha remember Tutti Frutti, couldn't understand a word but i guess it was visually entertaining.

[@digitalmediafan]

Ah lovely Magiie Philbin :)

[@ceciliagrantham4689]

Pre op Brian Cox??

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Astra was a medium powered 52dBW fixed satellite service (FSS) spacecraft with it's principal beam made to serve Western Central Northern and Eastern Europe at 19.2E. In 1991 Astra 1B joined Astra 1A in service but had a serious fault with it, it wouldn't stay fixed due to a thruster problem and drifted in and out of orbital position 19.2E causing sparklies on various transponders. In 1993 Astra 1C was launched into position at 19.2E and this had a significantly bigger European footprint with much bigger European coverage than Astra 1A and Astra 1B and this was followed by Astra 1D, the last of the analogue Astra satellites which couldn't be picked up easily by early Astra equipment unless you had a Frequency Expander box connected to your existing receiver and dish which piggy backed the Astra 1D channels over the Astra 1A band by selection, or could be picked up provided you had a more modern Astra receiver and dish with a 2Ghz capable tuner and 2Ghz capable LNB.

[@ThecreeperKiller1234]

£200 was alot back then at least £600 equivalent in today's money,

[@petermainwaringsx]

I had satellite TV from the mid 80's. The dish was about 1.8 meters in diameter and was steerable. It was mounted on two kerb stones on top of my garage. How the hell I got them up there I don't remember but they kept it pointing in the right direction for many years. I set up the same system for a pal in his place in Majorca. I flew there and the kit was shipped there by a couple of his employees. Forty years later and it's all done on broadband.

[@CragScrambler]

My dad used to install these back in the day, the SKY Astra 1a dish, god U miss MTV 😂

[@marguskiis7711]

In Estonia (still a part of Soviet Union) the Sat TV became normal and ordinary 1989 too and 1990 almost everybody had it. It was a real revolution.

[@anonUK]

The dishes must have been massive- if north of Manchester was a problem, Estonia was really out of the way. Unless Lithuania or Poland had satellite TV back then. Sweden, maybe?

[@jrmcferren]

@@anonUK The "north of Manchester" problem was simply due to the amount of power the satellite was outputting, later in the segment the man from Astra said that limitation was moved to the Scottish border due to the satellite being more powerful than expected. Here in the US there are two ways to receive satellite television. First you can watch the free-to-air channels with no subscription which are transmitted using the Fixed satellite service. This requires larger dishes, especially for C-Band reception. These channels are usually transmitted with wide angle and rather low power beams. You also have the Direct Broadcast Satellite Service which is designed for home reception and is subscription based. These satellites have tighter beams and more powerful transmitters allowing for smaller receiving dishes. Even ones that can receive multiple signals simultaneously are smaller than a meter in the largest direction unless you are in Alaska.

[@olliedann]

Ah yes. I can see that now. They must have fed the signal through a framesync that freezes the picture when it degrades. Back in the day, if you did that at home you'd just see sparklies.

[@olliedann]

Great clip. Hmm. When Howard put his hand over LNB receiver, the picture didn't break up. Oops.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Astra put in a pretty strong signal in London

[@sdaonline]

@playgirlc it's the first broadcast from the astra 1a satellite

[@magna59]

In your travels through the Tomorrow ' s World " stuff " did you come across a piece on a propeller for outboard / boat drive ? It both revolved & oscillated , for & aft from what i remember ?

[@alyx6427]

did they just say signals from wh smith

[@JohnnyX50]

On the Astra system - Amazing how in 1989 we were able to talk to another country and get an instant reply from the other person yet today, it takes a presenter or news journalist a few seconds delay before getting a reply when asked a question, even if they are in the same country O.o why ??

[@JustMe-ll1er]

Srsly ;-; You didn't noticed that it was cut they propobly had second reel recorded with tv footage and she was propobly not even on the phone look at her face 2:35 before cut also the way she ended conversation like she was talking to herself.

[@afhjkdgf]

Don’t think that conversation was really carried on the Astra satellite. Note that the picture didn’t break up when he covered the LNB.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Afhjkdgf there were no sparklies because the signals from Astra were exceptionally strong in the south of the UK. They did however, weaken, the further north that you went increasing the chance of sparklies.

[@THX-2208]

Does anyone else remember being a Sky Pioneer? I actually used that a couple of years back and the girl taking the call had absolutely no idea what in the hell I was talking about. To be fair she probably wasn't even born back then :-)

[@GeoNeilUK]

Astra was the system that Sky use to carry their channels. BSB was "merged with" (more like bought out by) Sky to become B Sky B with the original BSB satellites being sold off to the Scandinavians and the BSB channels being replaced or moved over to Astra along with Sky. The WH Smith channels were Lifestyle (most memorable for naughty videos on the satellite jukebox) and Screensport (competitor to Eurosport) Astra launched a boatload over satellites serving the world, Sky use Astra 2 nowadays

[@HBC101TVStudios]

And now Astra's parent company, SES is the largest satellite operator in the world.

[@ZoruaZorroark]

we got satellite tv roughly in '96 and winters was when the signal degraded in my area due to weather, we were customers to direct tv to about 2010 when my dad got sick and tired of the providers bs regarding payments, bills, fees, and other stuff they thought they can get away with

[@xoio]

WH Smith tv channels? LOL

[@Lady_Tee15]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@KiyokaMakibi]

*confused Pikachu face* Surely not the same WH Smith today?

[@MorrowindES17]

Lmao

[@tvhist]

It was the same company =p WHSmith is actually massive when you look into their company.

[@steeviebops]

They had at least two. Lifestyle and Screensport. Both closed around 1993 or so.

[@freddielaker2]

I had a receiver in 1984 watching Eutelsat, Intelsat, Thor, so shome mishtake shomewhere! Betzdorf wasnt even built then I dont think.....

[@CountryHouseGent]

Turns out we had nothing to fear about which system to buy. The messiah, Murdoch came along to sort it all out. Lovely man :()

[@johnkollor]

And now we've come full circle and TV's don't have SCART anymore lol at least mine doesn't

[@moramento22]

True, newest TVs and newest set top boxes don't have scart anymore they all have only HDMI

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Some cheap brands still have SCART sockets

[@m.z.2466]

European new TVs still have a single scart socket

[@Pasi123]

Many new TV's in Europe still have a RGB SCART and some HD DVB-T2 set top boxes have a RGB SCART too.

[@johnkollor]

Well I live in Europe and it’s been a hell of a long time since I seen a TV here that had SCART, we haven’t had one on a tv now since 2012

[@TDKiller415]

I can tell you that the channels owned by WHSmith were screensport and lifestyle. Both channels seized in 1993, screensport merged with eurosport and lifestyle shut down for good and was replaced by a German channel called VOX.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

The Dragon Killer Screensport merged with Eurosport actually and left Astra 1A transponder 1 for RTL-2 while Lifestyle closed completely and gave up Astra 1A transponder 5 to VOX. WHSmith gave up on television altogether too, they weren't seized at all by nobody. The two channels didn't last long following the move to Astra.

[@Dwornboy]

30 years on and I have never had a dish nor do I want one.

[@madeinuk68]

Dwornboy You need a calculator though.You wrote your comment in 2013 this program aired in 1989 = 24 years.

[@yecuzz]

@@madeinuk68 lol that was a good one

[@Cintelo]

Aaah. Two competing satellite companies. Those were the days. Ironic now that BSkyB is such a monopoly it now needs to be split in two.

[@astonishingpatch]

There's Freesat, a free-to-air satellite provider owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 with no involvement from Sky whatsoever. Sky do, however, operate a rival service known as Freesat from Sky.

[@sdaonline]

Ah, well it's hard to see on this compressed clip, but it sort of pauses and scrambles slightly.

[@Megadriver]

And here we are a bit later, wondering why new TVs still have Scart and why adverts are almost as long as whatever we were watching...

[@Thorpe]

Megadriver Compatibility.

[@JacanaProductions]

This was DBS right, the small dishes. You could get one of those huge ones before I assume.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Jacana Productions no this wasn't DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite), DBS was used in the UK for BSB which beamed down mainly to the UK at very high power. Astra was an FSS Satellite (fixed satellite service) which means a satellite in a determined position fixed in geostationary orbit above the earth.

[@yoshtg]

there are people who claim "back in the days everything was better" but honestly, 33 years ago the world didn't even have internet, and smartphones were a thing of sci-fi movies. then again.. people back then didn't know better and got excited by little things. these days kids grow up on their smartphones and computers consuming tons of information via shortened 1 min videos about the world each day. You can't impress them anymore because they have seen pretty much everything in these videos already

[@trevorbrown6654]

Gosh, back in the days when Scart leads were considered sophisticated. You have to have some sympathy for anyone who went fkr BSB. On paper it seemed the better option but BSB were run on a shoestring whilst Sky used Astra and they were owned by Rupert Murdoch so we're on a financially better position. It's been said that BSB were killed off by sky having exclusive rights to The Simpsons and Star Trek - The next Generation back in 1989 and as I recall BSB went out of business within a couple of years leaving a lot if people with a £250 lump of metal on the side of their house.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

BSB lasted 9 months actually before merging with Sky Television PLC to form British Sky Broadcasting.

[@derekthesec]

Maggie Philbin is a lovely lady

[@TDKiller415]

This is from January 24th 1989

[@spritemon98]

Buying a decoder???

[@CrazyTobster]

No mention of cable TV which was established across the UK in 1984.

[@CeeStyleDj]

Toby Whaymand Because this is from 89` and Cable had already been around.

[@krashd]

I still remember my neighbour pointing at his new BSB dish in 1990 and saying "you should get one of those, we've got about 10 channels now" and my dad said "nah, we're fine with the 30 we get on cable." My dad was savage af.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Problems with analogue catv is ; Lack of stereo sound on satellite channels, and those that did transmit stereo sound from satellite like MTV Europe Sky One Sky Movies Sky News The Children's Channel and Lifestyle all using 7.02 / 7.20 Mhz were often relegated to FM radio frequencies on the catv network which required your hifi system to be hooked up to cable tv to receive them in stereophonic sound from FM, No satellite radio stations like Opus Radio, Sky Radio, Radio Luxembourg, Quality Europe FM and others, Appalling picture quality being degraded by the processing and conversion of the services to a form suitable for catv redistribution, And weird chopping and changing where services shared catv channel slots ie so many hours of Screensport then a cable exclusive movie service mid evening.

[@johnmillis]

That's because the clip is about satellite TV!

[@donkmeister]

They were already working on it back then, so they'd probably be wondering why it took so long to take off! Amazing how these things always take so much longer than they need to in being deployed and adopted (financial reasons I guess) - 1989 and BSB are talking about HD... when did HD finally come to the UK, 2005 wasn't it?

[@yourrightimsooosorry884]

I always wondered what those dish things where on buildings, thought they were solar panels!

[@fedos]

I guess size _does_ matter.

[@Matt_Aquila]

I accidentally your comment

[@fedos]

The Aquila Fixed. Thanks!

[@Matt_Aquila]

lol but it's not as funny now :P

[@spritemon98]

That's not what my mother told me 🤣

[@Super_Mario128]

satellite TV began in Australia in 1995 with Galaxy, then Mr Murdoch came in with his Foxtel and Galaxy ended up going out of business as did other PayTV/satellite stations

[@jonnyboy8000]

BSB the Betamax of satellite world

[@Michael_st.a]

My first satellite dish a amstrad for 16 programs cost 1000 DM or 500 euros yesterday I ordered a satellite receiver with 1000 channels for 20 euros from Amazon

[@agfagaevart]

I think the Americans had sat TV back in the early '70s, and it's been in the UK since early '80s, but only nerdy sat enthusiasts were into it. In the late '80s, Murdoch cashed in on an unknown market, and gave us the Sky channels.

[@beachlife2968]

Sky very nearly went bankrupt but Maggie Thatcher was a big supporter of it and sky news.

[@BBC600]

Was this on cable or analog?

[@macrobioticman]

What happened to BSb and Astra then after all that?

[@TheGramophoneGirl]

The BBC did so seem to love BSB for some reason. I also recall some snobbery regarding the two systems. Of course the cheaper one won out. I remember the various dishes of both systems popping up on houses all over in the following couple years. I think the dish got much smaller when digital was introduced.

[@johnking5174]

BBC liked BSB because they were part of the consortium which owned it. Sky was owned by Rupert Murdoch, a man who would have loved to see the BBC closed down to give him complete control of television broadcasting

[@tonybowen63]

Strange that when Maggie spoke to the guy in Astra HQ in Luxembourg there was no delay before he replied.

[@rkent06]

hd service? fucking hell it took them long enough to sort that out

[@McDADDyK]

Funny how this is how it was when ariel tv and radio were being switched in the last 2000s

[@jasonl5967]

when the man with the Astra dish put his hand over the LNB the picture stayed clear, instead of breaking up with Sparklies, , which happened even with moderate rain. goes to show that the interview was recorded

[@anthonyperkins7556]

jason long the signal strength was exceptionally strong from Astra in the south of the UK hence no sparklies when he covered the LNB with his hand. If the 60cm dish was installed further north where the signal was slightly weaker, despite what the person from SES Astra said about the signal strength being the same up to the Scottish borders, sparklies would indeed afflict the picture when the LNB was covered by the TW's presenters hand on the roof.

[@Megadriver]

And a few years later, here we are with over 200 channels and nothing to watch. Sometimes I ask myself why do I even bother with paying for tv, when most times I just watch stuff online.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Free to air generic satellite boxes are better because you can pick up all free-to-air Sky / Freesat services that don't require a subscription or free-to-view card at all. There is a slight disadvantage with these tho', when channels change frequency as they occasionally do on Astra 2 @ 28.2 degrees East, you have to retune to keep up with the changes.

[@anonUK]

Get a Chromecast and a Netflix subscription. Or just watch KZbin. Most TV beyond BBC and maybe Channel 4 is either unutterable sh!te or is old stuff from the BBC or Channel 4. I've known that since Channel 5 launched with its original diet of football, films and fornication.

[@THX-2208]

I remember when satellite television started there was a massive stigma attached to it. It was considered that people with a satellite dish were unemployed.

[@arilebon]

Does the UK also have cable TV?

[@johnking5174]

Yes, Virgin Media are the main cable provider in the UK. You not from the UK I assume?

[@gedhession]

I don't recall WH Smith doing a satellite service!

[@peterpeterxxo]

...and in 22years time, satellite tv will be in over 10million households in the uk.

[@sdaonline]

better than RF and s-video/composite?

[@betebet306]

is it still possible to use Analog c /ku band satellite ? I want to buy this receiver www.amazon.com/dp/B07J4SNV87 its so cool its from 1989 and digital audio how does that work?

[@Bigbaldybear]

SCART was the shittiest connection ever invented; weak and unreliable Thank god for HDMI

[@ThecreeperKiller1234]

Bigbaldybear it's all about DisplayPort now

[@MrAzztech]

at the time it was the best

[@jamescollins6085]

SCART has nothing on S-video.

[@krashd]

SCART was exceptional. You must be in the minority as SCART is widely lauded among professionals and was better than any system that existed outside western Europe.

[@kvarnerinfoTV]

Hey I loved SCART!

[@macrobioticman]

OMG him I remember him! What's he look like now I wander!

[@DEATHFLY187]

Watching scrambled television x and trying to work out what's going on!!!😂

[@castle6742]

bsb did get HD TV in end it was called SKY +HD

[@anthonyperkins7556]

lee DJ BSB's HD-MAC was better

[@castle6742]

yeah but not good enough to save then and become part of British Sky Broadcasting and close down .tv have come a long way

[@DustyCustard]

Jesus Christ, Maggie Philbin was wearing that same blue nightmare in 1985. Search for 'tomorrow's world first digital camera 1985'.

[@crumplezone1]

She got it from Showaddywaddy

[@PHDarren]

Ah, the days when Sky used to broadcast topless darts.

[@anthonyperkins7556]

PHDarren topless darts was only available on cable through L!VE TV owned by United Artists

[@MissEspabila]

Who won the war between terrestrial and satellite TV? Streaming services!

[@UQRXD]

Not to many people watched this.

[@thundaga4005]

I guess the "squareial" didn't take off.

[@mrraoulandtheking11]

high definition in 1989 about 18 years to late

[@anthonyperkins7556]

With D-MAC high definition was certainly possible, it was upgradeable to HD-MAC with 1250 lines of picture in a 16:9 widescreen format with high quality digital stereo sound of 44.1kbps CD quality.

[@mrraoulandtheking11]

@@anthonyperkins7556 the 1990 World Cup finals were produced in high definition for the Japanese market

[@anthonyperkins7556]

@@mrraoulandtheking11 Using the slightly inferior MUSE HD system developed by Matsushita Electric and Mitsubishi at 1125 lines in NTSC format (Japan and USA used NTSC 525 line / 60 Hz format).

[@mrraoulandtheking11]

@@anthonyperkins7556 cool

[@Hertfordshire247]

Good idea in it? Using KM when in Britain we use miles so no one has a fucking clue how far 18,000km is.

[@nikzentertainmentnetwork5640]

I feel cinema is gonna go soon!! VR Headsets are breaking through next year immersed in games and movies go shopping in VR worlds and make friends quicker lol

[@AroundIndiana]

Nikz World skip ahead to 2017, and you are right. I have a Gear VR set and it's incredible

[@ME-ke7qc]

and now we can watch what ever we want without the bull crap the tv corporations fed us..good bye east enders,corra,emmerdale...hello to the world

[@MissEspabila]

You have to use one of the new SCART connectors... 🤣

[@johnking5174]

Cable television by 1989 was a big thing in the Republic of Ireland. Around 60% of the country had cable television. Cable started in the early 1970s. The reason? To bring the UK channels to Irish viewers. BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and later Channel 4 were all available to Irish subscribers on cable television. Decades before they became available on UK cable systems.

[@sashapanich]

26,000 kilometers up yet trees and buildings could obstruct the signal??????? How did it go through the 2000 degree Celsius zone??? :-)

[@krashd]

So you believe that everything in orbit is directly above your own house? Must be an awfully crowded bit of space.

[@castle6742]

Oh yes bsb did offer HD it' call Sky Plus HD

[@newuk26]

Did WH Smith ever get on the air? Bit weird for a glorified newsagent to get involved with Satellite broadcasting

[@johnking5174]

Yes, they launched the Lifestyle Channel, which had been airing on cable since 1985, it was launched on satellite in 1989.

[@watmun]

SCART!? NEW!?

[@paul-t-geist4245]

I can't see it ever taking off,satellite tv what ever next?

[@anthonyperkins7556]

Ahh but it did take off!

[@brianmcg321]

Wait until these people find out about Pornhub.

[@johnnyboy3949]

A scart plug? Pft that will never take off.

[@leberkassemmel]

Scart. The best thing we had in Europe the people in America did not have.

[@MrEeeaddict]

@@leberkassemmel pretty sad then

[@planck10-43]

this is fake. can you tell where they messed up?

[@krashd]

No satellite delay on the Luxembourg linkup.

[@stephendines1936]

The BSB Squarial