80's Subscription Movie Channel Info

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Leykis101

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Apr 27, 2009
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Utah, America
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask about this, Im new, In the 80's I was in elementary school, and we had a single movie channel, no cable or satellite, in the early 80's when we first got it, it was called Spotlight, then it switched to Channel One, and I believe when we got rid of it, it was called Select TV, I don't know if it was broadcast by way of some kind of dish, or if it came in through the cable lines, I was a bit to young to have really paid attention to anything like that, but ive been very curious lately, and can't find anything about it anywhere, I believe it was a national thing, It would be very hard for me to believe it was just a Utah broadcast, does anybody on here know anything about it? if you do would you please!!! post what you know, hopefully broadcast origins, and method. thanks.
 
You are on the right track Leykis101,

I think You are talking about Channel One!

I don't know about it being a 80's Subscription Movie Channel though but here is the skinny on Channel One Today!


Channel One is only visible to public schools and I believe it is encrypted. There was talk about it going to IPTV some time ago and moving completely off the one satellite they used for years to another and going digital which I think they are now.

Used to be on Galaxy 10R KU analog, now it is on Galaxy 18 KU in digital.

More information about Channel One is here: ChannelOne.com - Breaking news, homework help, college prep, personality quizzes, new music, sports highlights, school, careers, video

From The Channel One Website:
Channel One Connection programming is now made available to your school on a monthly basis. All programs will be available on your digital unit for the entire calendar month, starting on the first day and ending on the last. There's no need to wait for an airdate.

Channel One Connection provides commercial-free educational programming to its member schools-- at no cost.



What is Channel One Connection?
Channel One Connection (C1C) is a service of the Channel One Network, which programs, schedules and distributes to Channel One schools commercial-free educational programming per day during the school year from September to May. The goal of C1C is to bring to the Channel One Network schools the best and most applicable educational materials in video format.


ChannelOne.com - Channel One Connection

See also: http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-ai...re-world-channel-one-network.html#post1395967


Hope that helps!!

Lastly Leykis101, Welcome to The Satellite Guys!!


:welcome
B~Man
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Yeah but there was a SelecTv too, because I remember watching it on my parents 10' dish back in the day. I think It was on Westar 5 (W5), but there wasn't much else on that satellite so when they wanted to watch a movie, out 'I' went to move the dish VIA hand crank....no actuator for us! :D
 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GnhuQLIm2w]YouTube - 1986 SelecTV commercial[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwHmkXon_8Y]YouTube - SelecTV commercial 1985[/ame]
 
TV6 in Western New York

I can remember back in the 80's; there was no cable service available to us, but there was a microwave service that went on your roof, called TV6. It was like a HBO, but didn't come on until around 4pm and went off at 2-3am. We had it until we finally got a hometown cable service of 20 channels. Good thing I lived on the border, because we could always pick up another 3-4 Canadian channels OTA.
 
I remember Spotlight, and I searched YouTube a while back for some commercials but couldn't find much. I remember Viewers Choice, ONTV, and SelecTV as well, but I don't remember a Channel One other than the one B-man described. There was another one called Request TV which I haven't searched on YouTube...
 
Does anyone here recall Starion which was on C-Band in the late 1980's and very early 90's?
 
SelecTV was a movie channel like Showtime, they were a couple of slots east of G5 back then. Little better price than HBO but of course the movies weren't quite as good. Got my first Videocipher descrambler from a deal they had. Request 1 & 2 was PPV but at the moment I forget where they were located, seems like 131W. Guest Cinema was PPV on the old F4 slot, which was around 87W I think, they were for some hotel chain and got new movies before the
video-rental stores got them, somehow. Never avail to home dish owners though.
 
Thanks guys, I found an old vhs of Eye The Jury and Airplane, it was recorded off of Spotlight sometime in the early 80s, inbetween the movies it plays an I.D. for spotlight, and a couple of commercials, one is for the movie Quest For Fire, and the other is for Foul Play, I'm trying to transfer them to my pc, then I will put them on Youtube!
 
Yeah but there was a SelecTv too, because I remember watching it on my parents 10' dish back in the day. I think It was on Westar 5 (W5), but there wasn't much else on that satellite so when they wanted to watch a movie, out 'I' went to move the dish VIA hand crank....no actuator for us! :D

Yeah, I remember SelecTV . I subscribed to it, because at first I think it was trying not to encrypt like HBO did, and I think I subscribed to it even though they were free because I was angry that HBO went to VCII. But they finally encrypted too, and I think I bought my first VCII cage through them if I remember right. But yes, SelecTV was a movie channel back in the 80s, but it eventually went away.
 
I also had SelecTV back in the 80's.

BTW, I grew up about 5 miles from Gibsonia, in Ingomar. Wish I lived in the house I grew up in, because that house was on a south facing hill that had a horizon to horizon view. I now live in a forest that has a very limited view due to trees.
 
Viewer's choice had a couple of PPV channels....they were owned by SHO/TMC. I remember buying a few PPV movies from them. It was handy because the VC descrambler would stay authorized for 2 days sometimes.
 
I had HBO via Microwave antenna in the early 80's. Also available here was a service called "Preview" and another one I think was called "Stars" or something like that. Those were broadcasted via an antenna that was designed only for that frequency.
 
In the early 80's there was OTA STV (ON-TV) and MMDS STV (Showtime) by me. ON TV was on satellite on the old Comstar D4 (I think they used OAK orion encryption on satellite). Selec TV was also on D4 I believe. Selec was also broadcast OTA in some markets.

I subscribed to Selec, via C band in the 80's when they were VC 2, I also had Starion, Stardust Theater, and of course HBO/Max Show/TMC. I bought PPV from Viewers Choice, First Run, Cable Video Store and TVN.

Guest Cinema was on F4 for hotels. I remember one weekend it was in FA mode with the VC-2. I broke out the video tapes that weekend and did some recording. :)

Those were the great days of ANALOG when it ruled.
 
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I had HBO via Microwave antenna in the early 80's. Also available here was a service called "Preview" and another one I think was called "Stars" or something like that. Those were broadcasted via an antenna that was designed only for that frequency.

It became semi popular where I lived, because living on a island, the entire island had to be wired for cable, and we were 10-20 years behind the times of the mainland.
 
Spotlight was a movie service, it had an east feed and a west feed. They only had about 400,000+ subscribers when it went under. If I remember right, Showtime bought there subscriber base, in an effort to try and catch HBO (my guess). At any rate, I felt like it was the best movie service going at the time, too bad it went under.
 
I always liked Viewers Choice. Now, Viewers Choice is now iN Demand, and owned by cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner. It's a shame how it went down the crapper, like most everything did.
 
Spotlight was a movie service, it had an east feed and a west feed. They only had about 400,000+ subscribers when it went under. If I remember right, Showtime bought there subscriber base, in an effort to try and catch HBO (my guess). At any rate, I felt like it was the best movie service going at the time, too bad it went under.

Yeah, I remember now, your right, it was spotlight, it was on UHF channel 68 in my area. My mind is starting to age....
 
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