Re: SUPER TV & Video To Go (RE: If the internet was around in 1981)

On 1 Dec 2003 13:00:41 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kyle S.) wrote:

>The Washington DC area had a similar tv station that broadcast on
>Channel 50. From 6am (I think) through 7:59pm, it was a standard UHF
>channel. Then at 8pm, it switched to SUPER TV, a subscription movie
>channel.
>
>I recall watching repeats of "Private Benjamin" (the sitcom) at 7:30,
>and then right after the ending credits, the SUPER TV logo (kind of a
>metallic silver font) appeared and a voice said something like...
>"SUPER TV begins it's broadcast day now."
>
>Then the screen would get scrambled. 
>
>I recall one time when the scrambling was rather weak and it looked
>just like a weak UHF signal with no sound... I saw the "WE HAVE BUSH"
>scene from Revenge of the Nerds that way! ;^)
>
>I believe SUPER TV was from 1982 - 1985. 

We had two of those stations in the Chicago land area.

The first one was ON TV which broadcast on channel 44.  My 12" B/W
Quasar TV brought it in razor sharp with absolutely no waves or lines.
Volume had to be turned up all the way to hear sounds.  It sucked
watching movies on a black and white set but then again the price was
right.

The second one was on channel 66.  I think the name was Spectravision.
No amount of fine tuning would get anything recognizable out of that
one.

Of course the ON TV descrambler boxes were a hot item back then.  My
sister and brother-in-law had one but in the long run it was a waste
of money since the service was a flop and wasn't on the air very long.

>Similarly, does anybody recall "Video To Go"? It was a subscription
>video rental service, where you had a large spiral binder with movies
>listed on each page (full color movie posters, several paragraph
>descriptions - it was fun to read), and each movie had a code number.
>You would call the Video To Go number, and input your account number,
>then the numbers of the movie(s) you wanted to rent. Then you would go
>to a local business that agreed to house the Video To Go library (in
>our case, it was Peoples Drug Store, a precursor of CVS), and you
>would pick up your movies there.
>
>The binder was white with a red logo, and I believe the "TO GO" part
>of the name was spelled out in a phone cord design.
>
>Nobody else remembers this but me...

Never heard of it.  Sounds like more of a hassle.  Since you're
leaving the house anyways why not just go to a video store and rent
the movie?  There were a number of video rental stores in my area
during the early 80's...not on every street corner like today but they
were around.