Old school cable box from the 1980's

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by PaulKTF, Oct 14, 2018.

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  1. misterdecibel

    misterdecibel Bulbous Also Tapered

    That's the unit we had in 1981.
     
  2. Dude111

    Dude111 An Awesome Dude

    Location:
    US
    I remember having that one also :)
     
  3. SRC

    SRC That sums up Squatter for me

    Location:
    New York, NY
    I had that same one around '81 too.

    I recall the very first cable box we had was big. but only had two buttons on it, one was marked "Premium". You turned the TV dial to channel 3 (I think), hit the button, and boom, you could watch Showtime.
     
  4. misterdecibel

    misterdecibel Bulbous Also Tapered

    Thing about that Jerrold cable box was that there was a PROM chip on the bottom that the cable company could program so that it would scramble the premium channels you weren't paying for. But you could erase the PROM by shorting its pins to ground. With some care, and a long hat pin, you could stick the pin through a hole in the bottom plate and fish around until something sparked. And just keep doing it until you got all the channels.
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2018
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  5. BobT

    BobT Resident Monkeeman

    My older brother shorted out 2 TVs trying to do that. For awhile, the only working TV in the house was mine :evil:
     
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  6. Grunge Master

    Grunge Master 8 Bit Enthusiast

    Location:
    Michigan
    Oh yeah, this is the one we had. And the provider was Continental Cablevision.
     
  7. Rhett

    Rhett Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cool City
    This is the cable box we had in Iowa in the 80's:

    [​IMG]
     
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  8. spacer

    spacer Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    I remember this style box in Upstate NY. If I recall correctly, for a long time there were only 31 channels on our cable system. #31 was Cinemax, #14 was HBO. I wanna say #4 was MTV and #2 was Nickelodeon/B.E.T. (from 6AM to 8 PM it was Nickelodeon then they'd switch over to B.E.T. from 8PM to 6AM). Am I the only one that remembers that? I have been searching for old TV Guides or Times Union newspaper tv listings for Albany NY from the 1980s or early 1990s. No luck yet.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  9. spacer

    spacer Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    This is the box they had in NYC in the '80s.
     
  10. Duke Fame

    Duke Fame Sold out the Enormodome

    Location:
    Tampa, FL
    That's the one we had.
     
  11. apesfan

    apesfan "Going Ape"

    Had this box in late 1970's or early 80's. In 1973-74 with HBO the box was a brownish thing with a black button and red button on top.
    Put input cable in box then output cable to TV set to channel 3 push red button and HBO is engaged. Around 1977 or so the box had only Showtime, HBO was not available for a few years. Couple of years later (1979-83) the above black tuner box was the one for parts of LI NY.
     
  12. MikeInFla

    MikeInFla Glad to be out of Florida

    Location:
    Kalamazoo, MI
    That's the one we had. I remember sitting in from of the TV watching Cinemax scrambled looking for a random boob (hey I think I saw one!) keeping my finger on another button in case a parent walked into the room.
     
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  13. To make the Trabant reference...a car with a body made from a weird mixture of cotton/wool and resins (Duroplast) you really need to show the car...A car that looked pretty much the same from 1957 through 1990...literally the same from 1963-1990. A car with a two stroke engine over its entire run. A car with options on the upscale model S that included fog lights, rear white back up light, and an odometer!!! with no other options. A car that was VERY difficult to obtain as well.
    [​IMG]
     
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  14. AintGotHalfOf

    AintGotHalfOf Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    We had a similar box in the 70s, Cablevision was the provider. I remember you could hold down multiple channels/buttons and get premium channels we didn't subscribe to like the Playboy Channel.
     
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  15. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
  16. spacer

    spacer Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    [​IMG]
     
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  17. adm62

    adm62 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    I (briefly) went back to Cable after a 10 year absence a year or so ago, I couldn't believe that I was still supplied with pretty much the same box (PVR) that I had had previously and the software seemed to be more or less the same (very clunky interface).
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
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  18. vamborules

    vamborules Forum Resident

    Location:
    CT
    [​IMG]

    With this one the trick was to stick a paper clip in the back and just sort of jiggle it around until the channel came in. Crazy but it totally worked..

    ..until one day when smoke started pouring out the back. :laugh:
     
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  19. Jerry Horne

    Jerry Horne WYWH (1975-2025)

    Location:
    NW
    My parents had one just like that. Circa 1980.
     
  20. Jerry Horne

    Jerry Horne WYWH (1975-2025)

    Location:
    NW
    Hopefully that left you one hand free.
     
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  21. Apesbrain

    Apesbrain Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast, USA
    My first cable TV box in 1979 had a wired remote. The featureless box sat near the TV and the remote had a 30' cable to run around the perimeter of the room over to your viewing location. Numeric input buttons and channel display were on the remote.
     
  22. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    Yup, I remember that too! Except not Playboy with us but the next best thing, Cinemax...AKA Skinemax. :laugh: Yeah I recall the days of having my trigger finger on a safe channel ready to strike as soon as I heard a parent's footstep walking down the hall. We had it so rough back then.

    dan c
     
  23. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    For years, there was a guy in Brooklyn (you could see his shop from the R Train going to Bay Ridge) that "modified" cable boxes to get all programming.
     
  24. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    oh yea! I had one.
     
  25. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    had this one as well...blasts from the past!
     
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