Why did analog c band die?
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same with satellite radio....Sounds like total garbage with so much digital compression artifacts. I am a sirius subscriber with two radios activated and the audio sounds like 64kbps
internet radio on most of the stations.
I guess it's digital quantity instead of digital quality.
internet radio on most of the stations.
I guess it's digital quantity instead of digital quality.
They were too busy kissing Rupert's butt turning out pizza pan DVB units for DTV, following the money trail........
Truthfully, between him and Echostar wonderboy Charlie Ergen, they slit the juggler of C band, and TVRO in general, by coining the term Big Ugly Dish in their marketing schemes. Add to that technology that provides for transmission beyond the imaginable parameters back then and you have the digital world we know today. I remember when digital tv 'theory' was a hot ham topic, way before PCs were a household 'necessity', much less uPs under every gizmo cover.
It was deemed then that a computer powerful enough to process the data would never be available to the average Joe. There's a pretty cool snippet on dig video, keyframe theory, compression, etc in the ARRL Handbook, circa 1977-78 or so.
After all, our buddy Bill Gates said 640k is enough memory for anybody.
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A little off-topic, but....
When rupert got it ,that's when I jumped ship for Dish. Ol' rupert ain't gettin' any of my money! Now I hear someone else owns it...?rupert didnt own Directv back then....Hughes did
I honestly have never seen analog c-band without the sparkles. I see that "Mosquito noise" though. The master feeds are the best looking digital feeds. Even with digital, most master feeds look almost flawless. Discovery Networks feeds look DVD quality. TBN on Galaxy 14 did look kind of crappy on SD, but QVC digital looked pretty good, especially QVC HD AMC 11. HSN digital looks decent, and C-SPAN 3 digital (it seems to be unencrypted now) on AMC 10 looks pretty good. The Weather Channel HD master feed looks really nice at 16mbits, but by far the best looking HD I've seen is PBS on AMC21. Weather Channel Analog looked good, but still that "mosquito noise". C-SPAN was the same. C-SPAN2 also the same, but my Maxpeak SAM Meter has no option for AMC 10, so I peaked it as best I could with the quality and eb/no readings of a commercial DCII IRD.
Besides money......
You know that to run a c-band or KU you kinda of have to be slightly tech savvy and have an interest in what you are doing. You can't just sit down and space out, unless you have everything all set up and ready to go and never need to mess with anything.
Not so with the pizza pans
With the pizza pans any person can watch tv. Nothing ever has to move or be tweaked. Just turn on, tune in and space out. Perfect for the average consumer. One remote does all and if something goes wrong you call some guy that may or may not be able to fix it, but in theory, knows more than you
It's TV without thought.
Add that to the fact that most people could care less about quality. Those are the same folks that see how many movies they can record on a VHS tape at ubber slow speed. As long as they make out shapes moving on the screen they are happy. People tend to get what they ask for.
I'm also a collector of 35mm movies and have a real theater in the basement. I worked in the trade for many years. In the last couple of years there has been a movement in the theater industry to glorious "digital projection". The current crop of digital theater projectors have displays of 1280 x 1024, that's less than Blu-Ray, but people still think it's really neat. Hey it's Digital so it has to be good, right?
People get what they ask for.
I'm pretty sure I've seen a Panasonic C-Band receiver. Don't think any of the others.
There was also Janiel, SatTrol (although that might just have been a positioner), Echostar, Luxor has already been mentioned, it's pretty old school.
I know there are other less known brands, in the early 80s everybody was making C-band receivers, before encryption they were very simple (comparatively).
Well said.....I've held those views ever since the first "pizza pan" dishes came out. I used to get many dropped jaws and compliments at the PQ of my analog C-Band on my old (1992) Panasonic Super Flat 27" TV........those were the days! I still have the TV and it still looks amazing with a good signal, not many hours on it.
Today with pizza pan dishes, MP3 players, digital this and digital that..........Digital is both the best and the worst thing that's happened to entertainment. The general, uninformed public assumes that if it says "digital" then it's the best you can get. It's all about quantity not quality.All about the ease of use, no brains required, slacker way to do things. My Mom tells me that when she was a kid her Dad was the only one allowed to touch their wireless (radio) and it took, in his opinion some special skills to tune in the program he wanted. Of course back then (in the 40s & 50s) entertainment such as radio and TV were very much secondary. Life did not revolve around it like it does now. Technology has given back some of the control to us through devices like PVRs and even VCRs but we're still slaves to the screens even though we like to think it's all on our terms.
Our society is no longer about quality in so many ways. We're in a "good enough" society that's hungry for the next greatest thing that we all can't live without. K, I'm getting off on a rant here.........back to the thread.
I wish I could remember the names and titles correctly.....
Remember back before C-Band receivers were manufactured units?
I read an article in TV guide (I think) about this guy that could get TV signals from satellites. At that time they offered booklets you could buy for $25. One that I bought was how to get surplus microwave components from the phone company and plug them together to actually get pictures from space!
The other booklet I bought was how to make a "dish" that was more like a screen door material fence on posts stuck in the ground. You moved the feed horn/lnb (mounted on a tripod) around to see various satellites.
Everyone was really jacked when you could actually buy store bought receivers
Wish I could remember the details
Remember back before C-Band receivers were manufactured units?
I read an article in TV guide (I think) about this guy that could get TV signals from satellites. At that time they offered booklets you could buy for $25. One that I bought was how to get surplus microwave components from the phone company and plug them together to actually get pictures from space!
The other booklet I bought was how to make a "dish" that was more like a screen door material fence on posts stuck in the ground. You moved the feed horn/lnb (mounted on a tripod) around to see various satellites.
Everyone was really jacked when you could actually buy store bought receivers
Wish I could remember the details
I don't suppose you still have that guide do you? That would be interesting.
I'm sure many a man, woman and child have been forced outside in the worst of weather to turn the crank on the dish to get to the right satellite for evening viewing........I even know a guy who used to sneak out in his underwear if that's all he happened to be wearing........TV is THAT important!
I'm sure many a man, woman and child have been forced outside in the worst of weather to turn the crank on the dish to get to the right satellite for evening viewing........I even know a guy who used to sneak out in his underwear if that's all he happened to be wearing........TV is THAT important!
Panasonic used to make a pretty decent LNB back in the day. Kenwood also made a "pre VCII" receiver...Sony never got into the market. Can you believe that Amway used to market a satellite system?
Not surprised, they'd sell anything.
I believe the Panasonic system was a 2 piece, receiver and separate positioner. The only one I ever saw came into the shop I worked at after being hit by lightning. It's all coming back to me now.
Some friends of mine had a setup but I cant recall the name of the receiver. It was just a little box with a silver front, all analog controls with a big knob in the middle for selecting the transponder, a toggle switch for polarity I believe and some fine tuning knobs for the audio. That probably described 2 dozen units from around the mid 80s though......
I believe the Panasonic system was a 2 piece, receiver and separate positioner. The only one I ever saw came into the shop I worked at after being hit by lightning. It's all coming back to me now.
Some friends of mine had a setup but I cant recall the name of the receiver. It was just a little box with a silver front, all analog controls with a big knob in the middle for selecting the transponder, a toggle switch for polarity I believe and some fine tuning knobs for the audio. That probably described 2 dozen units from around the mid 80s though......
It might be in the attic, but it's been a long time, if I still have it at all.
The problem I ran into was the our local phone company was GTE (way back before they got to be someone) and the components described in the booklet were Ma Bell terrestrial microwave items (according to the guy at the GTE surplus auction). That and I got there right as most of the terrestrial microwave stuff had already gone down the road. (Day late and a dollar short)
I had dreams of starting my own neighborhood cable company
Some friends of mine had a setup but I cant recall the name of the receiver. It was just a little box with a silver front, all analog controls with a big knob in the middle for selecting the transponder, a toggle switch for polarity I believe and some fine tuning knobs for the audio. That probably described 2 dozen units from around the mid 80s though......
Would either Dexcel or Lowrance ( the fish finder people) come to mind? They were both like you describe. I used to have a Dexcel back then...it had a wired remote and no polarity control at all. I used a Polorotor II and the receiver had a spring loaded toggle switch in the back that was connected to a 9 volt battery. You held the toggle switch until the polarity peaked then released.
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