Who remembers satellite TV stations Mirror Vision and Premier

Big Tone

Before Rupert Murdoch there was arch-rival Rober Maxwell and his sateellite TV channels in the early-mid 1980, who remembers the movie channel Premier and lifestyle channel Mirror Vision (he owned the Daily Mirror).

I think he later closed down those channels as only a tiny fraction of the population had satellite dishes in the early 80s and he made no money from them, plus those dishes would have be around 2 metres in diameter to receive the signal.

telecinesk

yes to both. I have some Premiere on tape somewhere and at least the title sequences (verge of anorack).. wow blast from past. Seems to be back from 86/87 ish

These channels, although distributed by satellite, were intended for distribution by cable networks. Not sure about Mirrorvision but Premiere was distributed from Intelsat 511 at 27.5° west which was a very weak satellite and would have required a very large dish to pick up. At the time, the satellite feeds weren't encrypted and prominent warnings were often displayed at startup or closedown warning people that direct reception without a licence or subscription was unauthorised and illegal.

Cablelink began tests in 1989 with the intention of carrying Premiere, even letting it out in the clear on a few occasions, but the plug was pulled at the last minute and it never officially launched. It was to use the Discret scrambling system. Premiere folded a few months later anyway, Sky Movies was FTA for the first year and ended up eroding Premiere's market share.

Mirrorvision merged with Premiere in 1986.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUA-c7HGDCo

Just to add to this, here's the warning that was displayed upon Premiere's daily startup. This was from 1989.

jmcc

Karsini wrote: »

These channels, although distributed by satellite, were intended for distribution by cable networks. Not sure about Mirrorvision but Premiere was distributed from Intelsat 511 at 27.5° west which was a very weak satellite and would have required a very large dish to pick up.

The dish size was typically between 1.5 and 1.8M - huge compared to modern dish sizes. But it was not a high power DTH satellite like the Astra satellites.

At the time, the satellite feeds weren't encrypted and prominent warnings were often displayed at startup or closedown warning people that direct reception without a licence or subscription was unauthorised and illegal.

Premier used the SAVE scrambling system which added a 94KHz (or so) sine wave to the video. The BBC World service used a different variant of the same system with a different frequency and sound scrambling.

Cablelink began tests in 1989 with the intention of carrying Premiere, even letting it out in the clear on a few occasions, but the plug was pulled at the last minute and it never officially launched. It was to use the Discret scrambling system.

Well pirate Discret descramblers were readily available as the system had been hacked in France but the problem for Cablelink was that its network quality was variable.

Premiere folded a few months later anyway, Sky Movies was FTA for the first year and ended up eroding Premiere's market share.

The real intent of Sky Movies being broadcast in the clear was to destroy the BSB operation. British Satellite Broadcasting was the UK's government approved Direct To Home satellite TV service. Unfortunately it was a bit too technologically sophisticated (which meant a lot of delays before it finally launched) and run by people who could not deal with the free market. Sky Movies also broadcast from the Astra satellite which meant that it only required cheap and nasty technology that was largely compatible with existing televisions. (A lot of TVs at that time did not have SCART sockets and there was a famous scene on BBC's Newsnight where John Gau (one of BSB's people presented a SCART lead saying that that was all people needed to connect the BSB system to their TV. Andrew Neil (one of Murdoch's minions) pointed out that most TVs did not have the socket.) Sky and BSB merged after the competition between them nearly broke both of them. However with the competition taken care of, Sky was able to become the gatekeeper for UK satellite TV. Any Pay TV channel that wished to access the UK market had to use the Videocrypt system. Any channel not on Astra was effectively dead as soon as the satellite launched successfully.

They were interesting times. The one great thing about Premier, apart from the movies, was that it used to screen the "Sledgehammer" series.

Regards...jmcc