Must dig out the tape I made when I was at the Cable Authority, with a complete set of logos and idents for all the channels that appeared on cable during the time I was Controller of Programmes - 1987 - 1991. It ran for nearly an hour as there were programme clips as well. Some graphics were terribly long, ponderous and unexciting (Aberdeen Cable fell into that category) and Superchannel perhaps had the best launch package. Interesting video of the Swindon 'launch' party - I spotted a few very familiar faces in paper hats!
The dates weren't wrong, per say. By 16 October 1983, the station finally started broadcasting to the UK, thats not wrong what was wrong is the belelf it took until January 1984 for the rebrand but if you look at that video it must have been Oct 83 because that when the UK started to broadcast the channel.
I don't think the date on that video is correct. This video has a news report about the Swindon launch nicked from ITN Source
If you look it up on the ITN Source website it's dated 16th January 1984
So does that mean the 14 October 1983 anyone with a dish was able to pick up the channel., but it wasn't until Jan 84 until the cable companies took the service and it was rebranded? Who would have been watching the station back in late 83?
The truth is that almost nobody had a dish at home. SKY originally launched on cable systems in Europe before its first UK cable carriage.
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I seem to recall that ECS1 (in common with most satellites of the era) had a very wide footprint and low power, so you'd need something like a 2.5m dish to get a decent signal from it.
The DTH-oriented satellites wouldn't come in until around 1986-7 in Europe, with Astra and the UK-focused MarcoPolo birds coming along a couple of years after that.
I seem to recall that ECS1 (in common with most satellites of the era) had a very wide footprint and low power, so you'd need something like a 2.5m dish to get a decent signal from it.
The DTH-oriented satellites wouldn't come in until around 1986-7 in Europe, with Astra and the UK-focused MarcoPolo birds coming along a couple of years after that.
Indeed. And I've got a feeling that Astra 1 (the bird used for Sky DTH) wasn't actually classed as a DTH satellite, it was licenced as a comms satellite that Astra cheekily marketed as DTH ?
Also of course, there'd been a lot of technical discussion all through the 80s regarding the format of signal to be uesd on the UK's first official DTH service (what became Marco Polo and BSB) and both the BBC and IBA stated that PAL would suffer too much noise degradation, (there was perfectly valid theory behind that).
The IBA's proposal of a component system MAC was adopted. Sky just pressed ahead with PAL, and it was good enough, the rest is history........
Yes, I believe it's real, but wasn't used as an ident as such - I think it was part of a trailer.
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A former member
Cheers for that, It would be interesting to see the trailer/promo, Of course back then LWT used promos and trails as idents to run into the next programmes etc. There is also blue coin LWT ident later in that video
I really should update that list on P47.
32 days later
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A former member
Can anyone remember how many cartoon idents were created for Challenge in June 2003 and lasted until Nov 2004? I have tried to look around there is only one post that has popped up on forum and someone claims it was alot.
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A former member
Granada Plus that is now in the frame:
I beleive this look come in to being in January 2000 , the video below seems to be from Dec 99
Then you have these undated per say, but had 1999 tag:
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A former member
This seems to be from MAY 1999, because of the Dandelion Dead.
