C band Back in the day

[tvropro]

How well are the tapes holding up???

Well I started recording in 1981 and can say they are holding up well. I always stored them properly. I remember there was all this talk that tapes wouldn't last 10 years. Horse-hockey, well maybe if you stored them on the cars dashboard. . I payed $16 when tapes went on sale back then, that was a bargain.

I have 8 tracks from the early to middle 70's that even though I had to fix the foam that fell apart still play well. Same for cassettes I have from the late 70's and beyond. Tape was a good media for longevity. I have read lately that tapes can easily out live DVD or CD burns. I guess only time will tell.

I have to admit one thing 6 hour recordings I made from my dish and very good sources will blow away most of the digital over compressed garbage we get today in picture quality. One thing I do love about analog is the lack of digital artifacts, none what a concept .

 

[digiblur]

I was first introduced to CBand when I was a kid... I remember my great uncle had a fiber glass dish in his backyard and you had to go out side and manually crank it over to the different satellites. Pretty cool stuff they had on there.

I finally got my own back in 95 or so...kinda late in the game but we loved it.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

Here are a few pictures I took from video tapes I have back in the day from C band approx 1988-1990. Some will remember this stuff. This will be a treat to the nu bees just getting into it.

The pictures are of Much music Canada on Anik 1 (the original). The Sky Store on Westar 5. and Viewers Choice 1 on G3.

Enjoy

Yeah, I remember watching MuchMusic and CBC. I do have some VHS recordings of those days. Remember TVN? I use to order movies from them but you could never get a description of what the movie was about so I never ordered movies that I didn't know anything about - no internet back then. I miss all of the wild feeds!

 

[dfergie]

The Anik Sat was hard for me to get living in NM with my 10' fiberglass and 120 degree LNA, but I put up with sparklys for Much Music and used to watch curling... I got the Morales Sats better (Bullfights )

 

[tvropro]

Yeah, I remember watching MuchMusic and CBC. I do have some VHS recordings of those days. Remember TVN? I use to order movies from them but you could never get a description of what the movie was about so I never ordered movies that I didn't know anything about - no internet back then. I miss all of the wild feeds!

Sure I remember TVN they had 10 channels. used to order movies with my Videopal

 

[tvropro]

The Anik Sat was hard for me to get living in NM with my 10' fiberglass and 120 degree LNA, but I put up with sparklys for Much Music and used to watch curling... I got the Morales Sats better (Bullfights )

Anik burned up the skys in Illinois back in the 80's. It worked better than G1 did. Anik A1 & A2 were 11 watts, massive powerhouses back then.

 

[Inno]

At least your home movies aren't on Beta!

Whadda ya mean........I still have a Beta player and it does still work.
Actually it's part of my collection of "dead media".

 

[dfergie]

W3, W4, F1 and F3 were the main ones before G1 for me...

 

[tvropro]

When I got into it there was F3, F4, F1, W5, W4, W3, S1, S2 etc. I even saw Comstar D4 light lite up a few times. They were all 5 watters or less and G1 at 9 watts couldn't compete with Anik in power. I got my first 10 foot dish in 1987.

 

[starman345]

Someone mentioned "ice lnb" in this thread. I bought one of those things, turned out to be a Cal Amp 30 degree, nice lnb but of course I paid way more than what they were going for. I still have it and it still works fine, must be close to 20 years old now. Gary Cubeta, the guy who hosted and probably owned Satellite City is still selling. If anyone is interested, he is running "57gold ", internet only, if anyone wants to hear the voice of Satellite City, click on the mp3 daily update.....its Gary.

 

[pro96]

Old encryptions too from them days.. Leitch, B-mac, Oak Orion .. to name a few.
Sometimes they would pop ITC every now and then .. I remember having a PIP 32" Sony Tv and watching the small PIP image you would be able to see the B-mac channel good.. but in black and white.. kinda cool.

 

[Corrado]

Most of my old VHS recordings have stood up pretty well. Some as old as 1984 and lasted longer than some of my past VCRs. That old analog looked great.

I was watching some Bionic Woman episodes recorded in the 1990s from Sci-Fi. What a difference in commercials too and no stupid pop up graphics running around on the screen. Even the end credits can be read.

 

[GreatFTA]

Ol' Dr. Gene Scott...
Remember him?
Did his preachings go back to the late 80's?

 

[dfergie]

Ol' Dr. Gene Scott...
Remember him?
Did his preachings go back to the late 80's?

Yeah he was a staple back then...

 

[skysurfer]

Sure I remember TVN they had 10 channels.

yep, and thsoe theaters would go to football on sundays when the NFL encrypted and sold their programming on DIRECTV or through TVN for the c-band market.

I remember well those days when the NFL was totally unencrypted and it was fun to flip through about 4 different satellites (CBS on C, NBC on Ku) to get any game you wanted.

 

[jbmiller]

remember z music television (z what you are missing ) had some great christian music videos sure do miss it
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Music_Television"]Z Music Television - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Z_Music_Television_Logo.jpg" class="image"><img alt="Z Music Television Logo.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/Z_Music_Television_Logo.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/7/7c/Z_Music_Television_Logo.jpg[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkd5ac_0AM"]YouTube- Z Music History - Z Buzz Flashback on 1993 - part 1[/ame]
john

 

[tvropro]

$10.00 find

I was talking about earlier getting a extra good working VCR for dirt and ran across this SVHS gem yesterday at the thrift store for $10.00. It's a JVC HR S3500U. It looked very clean so I hooked it up at the store and it played a tape so I got it. I tested everything when I got it home, it works very nice and it's SVHS to boot I gave it a good head /tape path cleaning and lube and fine adjusted the RF envelope for maximum.

For you guys needing a working or spare VCR for your big tape collection there out there and can be got for dirt. Just have to be in the right place at the right time.

BTW it didn't have a remote but I had a JVC remote from my brother from years back (he had a very high end JVC at one time) and it works perfect with this unit. So Im a happy camper

 

[PopcornNMore]

Copied some Doug Dennert Sky Store episodes from VHS to DVD over the weekend. Does anyone know what happened to Doug Dennert? Is he still into satellite?

 

[FaT Air]

I saw him, oh gosh it's quite a while ago now(time flies), a few yrs after closing down USS. I'll ask around, but don't think he's 'into' satellite any longer. {411 still lists Doug Denhert @ a Viking address.(a few miles from TRF)}
Run those DVD's thru Format factory* or something to make a mp4 and upload to a file share site.
*OR create an ISO of the DVD.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I wonder if anyone has any tapes of the Skyvision show... or The Satellite Wizard Show.