Cork Multichannel TV.

FREEBBC

What channels do that defunct cable company has?

Also, what were the prices they used to have? :eek:

Freddie59

FREEBBC wrote: »

What channels do that defunct cable company has?

Has, have??

FREEBBC wrote: »

, what were the prices they used to have? :eek:

When?

Solair

I'm not sure what the exact lineup was but it was about 27 channels which was a LOT more than other analogue cable systems in the early 90s

Cork Multichannel also had it's own tv studios and a local channel called "the show channel"
I think this may have been the first local cable channel in Ireland.

It wasn't too different from City Channel / Channel South type content.

It actually had some very good programming at one stage. It was quite watchable and the production values were pretty ok!

gbee

Adding to Solair's post;

They also thought everyone was criminally stealing their service and had abysmal customer support, my dealing with them had to go to the steps of the court house.

Service was erratic, sales people sold packages that the company would not honour ~ and it was not a scam as direct debits were set up and the company had a record of your payments, but still insisted on either demanding payment again or not providing the channels you signed up for.

Their cable was subjected to repeated attacks and vandalism and they tried to blame the subscribers and refused to repair broken lines.

They also took a long, long, long, long time to reach everywhere and technically were incompetent ~ as we were to find out yeas later .... they were however, the best sales people SKY ever had!

All I ever wanted was my TV every night ~ eleven years with Sky and I can count on one finger the down time in service.

Minstrel27

They introduced Trevor Welch into my life. For this reason alone I hate them.

Mike 1972

Think I heard somewhere that Cork Multichannel started out as a "community" venture (like some of the deflector groups) before turning to the commercial sector for capital investment.

Is this correct ?

12 element

gbee wrote: »

Adding to Solair's post;

They also thought everyone was criminally stealing their service and had abysmal customer support, my dealing with them had to go to the steps of the court house.

Service was erratic, sales people sold packages that the company would not honour ~ and it was not a scam as direct debits were set up and the company had a record of your payments, but still insisted on either demanding payment again or not providing the channels you signed up for.

Their cable was subjected to repeated attacks and vandalism and they tried to blame the subscribers and refused to repair broken lines.

They also took a long, long, long, long time to reach everywhere and technically were incompetent ~ as we were to find out yeas later .... they were however, the best sales people SKY ever had!

All I ever wanted was my TV every night ~ eleven years with Sky and I can count on one finger the down time in service.

Wow! They sound like an awful bunch of cowboys!

zilog_jones

gbee wrote: »

Their cable was subjected to repeated attacks and vandalism...

This doesn't surprise me at all - I was walking around Cork a bit last weekend and noticed several areas where the cable was within arm's reach, e.g. running along the walls of old single-storey terraced houses. It's mad! If they made the initial investment of running the cable securely in the first place (like underground) maybe they would have saved money in lower maintenance in the long run?

Solair

Yeah it's quite hit and miss.

Some areas have properly laid underground networks and neat little distribution amps along the street.

Then you go to other areas, and as described above, the cable's just strung along wherever they could find a path for it i.e. tacked along walls etc.

In a lot of older areas, i.e. inner side of Douglas, city centre, Montenotte, Sunday's Well etc you often see the cables coming straight up out of the pavement and up the wall of a house i.e. underground network but really poorly connected up to the house i.e. no trunking or anything just run straight up the wall or over the garden wall.

I noticed on one street in Montenotte a cable feed was just run IN THE GUTTER. They had literally just run the wire along the 19th century gutter on the street and just kinda done a half-assed job of cementing it in.

That being said, some of the ESB and eircom wiring is nearly as bad!

The only thing the ESB wiring has going for it is that if someone does pull the cable off the wall they won't do it twice

Again, I would stress that these aren't new installations they predate UPC. The standard of installation of cable in Cork was pretty shocking for quite a long time.

I know the system was so leaky that you could pick up BBC Radio 4 and Radio 1 on FM in the car while driving down Summer Hill north for years! Some BBC channel was bleeding from the cable system all over Today FM !!

Things have definitely improved since UPC has taken over although it'll take years to undo the decades of neglect!

D2D

FREEBBC wrote: »

What channels do that defunct cable company has?

Also, what were the prices they used to have? :eek:

I think there were 16 channels that'd be basic while you'd have to pay for the rest. Off the top of my head...

Basic - RTE 1, Multichannel's station (That used to show ads with BBC Radio 2 in the background. On Fridays, it'd show Cork City highlights), TV3, MTV, RTE 2, BBC 1 , BBC 2, CNN/Discovery, UTV, Channel 4 , Sky 1, Nickelodeon/Paramount (now Comedy Central), Sky News, Eurosport, TG4, SAT1

Pay - Granada Plus/Men & Motors, Gold, TCC/Trouble, Cartoon Network/TNT, The Box, Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3, Sky Movies 1, 2 and Classic and some more

gbee

Dare_2_defy wrote: »

I think there were 16 channels that'd be basic while you'd have to pay for the rest. Off the top of my head...e

You had to pay, but you had to be able to receive RTE1 as it was a requirement. That could not be blocked or cut off.

Solair

I suspect that they continue to supply RTE 1, 2, TV3 and TG4 in analogue because it may be in the agreement for some of the way-leaves they signed up to years ago that they had to provide terrestrial TV.

dwasol

Does anyone know where old tapes from the local channels programming could be found?
Thank you

Stasi 2.0

IIRC the first local channel (not counting pirates) in Ireland was in Ballyfermot ?

zilog_jones wrote: »

This doesn't surprise me at all - I was walking around Cork a bit last weekend and noticed several areas where the cable was within arm's reach, e.g. running along the walls of old single-storey terraced houses. It's mad! If they made the initial investment of running the cable securely in the first place (like underground) maybe they would have saved money in lower maintenance in the long run?

What happened if one of the buildings the cable was attacbed to was being refurbished/demolished did everyone down from it loose service ? Or what happened if a householder objected to the cable on their property and had it removed ?