Pay TV History

That orange retro V logo used from 1998 onwards was an absolute shocker! Looks very seventies! It is up there with WIN’s poo-brown mappy from 2002-2006.

I know a lot of my family members over the years have had everyone of those boxes.
Even my parents had a MyStarHD, now a iQHD a little over 10 years later.

Good for a laugh: Foxtel’s completely unmoderated website forum from 1998

https://web.archive.org/web/19980117143251fw_/http://www.foxtel.com.au/Forums/topic_response.asp?topic=2

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I didnt think so and you needed at a minimum the Pace 420 series box

They also moved to using both Horizontal and Vertical polarisation which needed LNB upgrades too

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I believe that during Foxtel Digital’s initial rollout, it was mandatory that a phone line extension was installed alongside the satellite/cable wall plate connection to allow the box to dial in for interactive stuff and Box Office ordering. It wasn’t long before that became just too much for Foxtel’s techs to do as each dwelling was different and quite often getting a phone line to the TV was more difficult and expensive than installing the satellite/cable connections, not to mention the permit issues with many techs lacking Austel certification to carry out the works properly.

So they gave up on installing phone lines, opting instead for a data-over-power device (at an expense) or the option to just call a 1800 number to order a movie.

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A lot of NBN techs are now having to remove this internal phone wiring and the associated line taps installed in the brief window that this was happening.

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We were given the DS250 when we originally got Foxtel which didn’t even include a phone line jack.

I also remember seeing a lot of things about the 9V Battery trick.

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Yeah, I think the DS250 replaced the original DS420 standard boxes and by then they’d scrapped the phone line. IIRC the DS250 and the iQ1 were the only boxes with a phone line return path connection.

Edit: Just had a look at the manuals. The first three standard boxes in their fleet had a phone line. The DS250 looks to be their latest standard box without phone line.

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Sounds about right as I remember our Foxtel kit coming with a bulky over the power adapter. Phone line in one and a cat 5 cable in the other.

@WAtvVideos, can u show me any of the caps from MTV?

From 2006, when MTV was experimenting with a vertically centered watermark:

Also TMF from 2008. It was an occasional ‘press red active’ channel on MTV:

tmf_2008-Banner1

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It looks like Foxtel’s legacy satellite service was referred to as “Analogue Satellite” after the introduction of Foxtel Digital. The funny part being that the “Analogue Satellite” service was transmitted in the same DVB-S standard as Foxtel Digital. The only real difference in technology was that they’d gone from Irdeto’s open smartcard standard (which could be used in other boxes) to a locked down proprietary one (NDS Videoguard) whose cards could be locked specifically to the single box itself.

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Some more 2006 nostalgia:

foxfooty_2006-Closed-03
foxfooty_2006-Closed-04
foxfooty_2006-Closed-01
foxfooty_2006-Closed-02
foxfooty_2006-SundayFootball-Opener07
sample1.wmv -_00003

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Now there’s a blast from the past.

Almost 15 years ago, I’m sure very few would’ve imagined that we’d now have eight Fox Sports channels including News, a reborn Footy + the more recent additions of League & Cricket! :open_mouth:

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What was sports selector on channel 500?

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An interactive thing where you could have all nine sports channels on-screen at once, but quickly change the audio.

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sportsel_2006-New-01
sportsel_2006-New-02
sportsel_2006-New-04

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Wish they’d bring the sport selector back

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I remember back when NRL games were on at the same time, you could press the red button and choose which game to watch live.

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any other interactive stuff where you press the red button?

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