When did Ireland first receive the British stations?

Karsini wrote: »

Sky One encrypted on 1st September 1993 with the launch of the Multichannels package and the Sky corporate rebrand.

I think you could be right, that I'm a year out. I think there were some channels like UK Gold that launched soft-encrypted first before becoming a sub-channel.

Karsini wrote: »

MTV didn't encrypt until around 1995 though, for some strange reason QVC was encrypted from launch in 1993 and MTV was FTA but this was swapped a couple of years later.

Seems strange but there was reasons. Although MTV was promoted as part of Sky's Multi-Channels package, the signal on 19.2 east they had was one to serve a pan-European audience - I think the only other satellite they used for DTH purposes at the time was at 1 west in D2MAC for Nordic countries. When they encrypted eventually into Videocrypt 1 & 2, they had notices a few months beforehand on their teletext service pointing out how to subscribe in each country. Unlike these days on DVB-S where you could easily encrypt with a multiple amount of conditional access systems, using Videocrypt in a country like Germany where it was not normally used (as opposed to Syster/Nagravision used by Premiere) caused headaches, and perhaps accelerated MTV Europe starting to fragment into regional versions, with the MTV Germany version being FTA until very recently.

It may seem incredible now that a shopping channel was part of a subscription bundle on satellite, but QVC was the first 24 hour dedicated station of its kind then. The only others being the likes of Sell-A-Vision who ran infomercials in the wee hours on Eurosport and VOX. And originally on the channel you could order only from the UK, Ireland was quickly added later especially when it was being shown on TnaG in the late evenings and eventually they dropped down to soft encryption and then went clear when they started taking orders from across Europe with dedicated local numbers that you could call to order from. They started to wind down this pan-European approach when they started localised versions like QVC Germany.

jca wrote: »

When the fancy ' all pins connected" scart cables arrived it did away with switching to channel zero for the video channel. We thought the scart picture quality was the bees knees.

Our VCR at the time used the SCART for teletext decoding and insertion so I think they neglected to include the auto-switching.

It also, pointlessly, had a clock on the remote control... and a hex number input so you could cheat at Bamboozle.

I remember in the late 80's/early 90's in the midlands we had 10 channels (possibly more were provided, but our tv only went up to twelve!) It included euro sport, sky one, screen sport, sky news etc all relayed from satellite, along with bbc, ch4, itv. Must have been some set up, picture quality was top notch!! Was some shock as a young fella when this got shut down and I no longer had dj kat showing the ninja turtles!!!

It came back on the air around 2000 (definatly remember watching euro 2000 on the BBC) without the satellite channels and continued up to a few years ago. Cracking reception all for a contribution of about fifty bucks a year.

SpaceTime wrote: »

I often think that access to television influenced social development here. Compare attitudes in the 1980s in rural areas pre-satellite that didn't have overspill signals and urban areas that had large cable uptake... It has to have had a profound impact.

The Irish equivalent of the 'valley of the clueless' perhaps?

Didn't notice the above post at the time, but went looking and the subsequent issue has a full report from UCD with photos of the setup. Looks like a substantial piece of kit.

Source:https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Wireless-World/70s/Wireless-World-1976-03.pdf