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Significantly Viewed Stations Not on System Carried by Antenna Descramblers

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EricSam

How many of you had an out of market station not on your system but had an antenna descrambler to carry the station? An example is WBRE Ch 28 Wilkes-Barre on cable Ch 23 which wasn't on the system. This was from 1991-94.
 
EricSam said:
How many of you had an out of market station not on your system but had an antenna descrambler to carry the station? An example is WBRE Ch 28 Wilkes-Barre on cable Ch 23 which wasn't on the system. This was from 1991-94.
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What is an “antenna descrambler”? And how does it “carry the station” that is “not on the system”?🤔

And how was WBRE on cable channel 23 while not being on the system at the same time…?😵‍💫
 
Mediafrog+ said:
What is an “antenna descrambler”? And how does it “carry the station” that is “not on the system”?🤔

And how was WBRE on cable channel 23 while not being on the system at the same time…?😵‍💫
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I can't make heads or tails of that narrative either ... 🤯
 
It sounds like he’s talking about an out of market station that you could get on cable, maybe? A local example would be that KTWU is on some cable systems in the KC area even though it’s a Topeka station.
 
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Neither of those possible explanations tells me what an "antenna descrambler" is, or what it does.
 
radiofan2023 said:
Maybe he means a cable box?
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Maybe, but that contradicts the statement of the station not being "on the system". I never heard of one for OTA antenna reception, outside of the digital-to-analog converters during the transition period two decades ago (and I don't think the OP meant that ... come to think of it, I don't know what the OP meant anyway).
 
Perhaps an antenna descrambler is something like the old ON-TV service which broadcast its signal over the air but it was scrambled and you had to have a box to descramble it. We had three such services in Chicago on WSNS (ON-TV), WFBN (Spectrum) and WBBS/WPWR (Sportsvision)
 
Markxxx said:
Perhaps an antenna descrambler is something like the old ON-TV service which broadcast its signal over the air but it was scrambled and you had to have a box to descramble it. We had three such services in Chicago on WSNS (ON-TV), WFBN (Spectrum) and WBBS/WPWR (Sportsvision)
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Believe it or not there are still a couple of houses in my immediate area that still have that odd looking ON-TV antenna on their roofs. Dunno if that service still exists or not.
 
Markxxx said:
Perhaps an antenna descrambler is something like the old ON-TV service which broadcast its signal over the air but it was scrambled and you had to have a box to descramble it. We had three such services in Chicago on WSNS (ON-TV), WFBN (Spectrum) and WBBS/WPWR (Sportsvision)
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That would have been the early 1980s. DFW had three OTA subscription services including ON-TV. But that type of service only was available in large markets, and quickly died from the onslaught of cable TV at the time.
landtuna said:
Believe it or not there are still a couple of houses in my immediate area that still have that odd looking ON-TV antenna on their roofs. Dunno if that service still exists or not.
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Long gone 40+ years ago, and those would have been regular UHF antennas already in use during that era.

There were some subscription MMDS services in larger markets about 30 years ago that used transmitters in the 2 GHz range that had special receive antennas. Also long gone.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
That would have been the early 1980s. DFW had three OTA subscription services including ON-TV. But that type of service only was available in large markets, and quickly died from the onslaught of cable TV at the time.

Long gone 40+ years ago, and those would have been regular UHF antennas already in use during that era.

There were some subscription MMDS services in larger markets about 30 years ago that used transmitters in the 2 GHz range that had special receive antennas. Also long gone.
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The antennas I saw are directional cone-type obviously UHF or higher. They looked a bit like an FM directional antenna but had wire elements instead of flat. They all seemed to point towards South Mountain (where most of our Valley transmitting antennas are located).
 
landtuna said:
The antennas I saw are directional cone-type obviously UHF or higher. They looked a bit like an FM directional antenna but had wire elements instead of flat. They all seemed to point towards South Mountain (where most of our Valley transmitting antennas are located).
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Here in Houston we had a MMDS service called People's Choice TV that used 2 GHz transmitters to provide ~25 subscription channels, IIRC. The antenna was a combination of a VHF/UHF yagi with a smaller wire-mesh cone antenna mounted just above the yagi. It would receive standard broadcast channels directly and used 2 GHz for the "cable-type" services. I only saw a few such antennas mounted on rooftops, though it seemed quite a few businesses also subscribed...I was able to play around with a receiver at an auto service place.

People's Choice TV later rebranded to Sprint TV, then disappeared. Marketing for the service was almost nonexistent. I never saw any sort of shutdown announcement.

Austin also had a similar service, and there were quite a few antennas I spotted for that. Can't remember the name, though.
 
Oh.

And that answers the question about an "antenna descrambler" how, exactly?
 

There's Star TV in San Francisco via KTSF-TV back in the early 1980's. It's one of these stations that was scrambled at night.



Here is KBSC Los Angeles now known as KVEA Telemundo Los Angeles when it had an affiliation with ONTV.
 
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