Preview Subscription Television Commercial #1 from 1984

Here is a commercial broadcast on regular TV advertising Preview Subscription Television in the Massachusetts/New Hampshire area. One did not need to have cable television to get Preview. Preview was broadcast in a scrambled mode known as Sync Suppression and Active Video Inversion, or SSAVI, and was broadcast from WSMW TV Channel 27 in Worcester, Mass (now a spanish channel). Their decoder boxes were manufactured by Zenith and consist of a Zenith System 3 television receiver and IF stage, with an added decoder board and single channel varactor tuner. This channel was plagued with TV pirates who either modified Zenith decoders or constructed their own to steal their signal. I was one of those signal pirates and had a lot of fun beating their game. Eventually, theu went belly-up at the end of 1985. I watched it to the bitter end.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Preview
• stv
• ssavi
• subscription
• tv
• television
• wsmw
• channel
• 27
• worcester
• massachusetts
• on
• wqtv
• 68
• boston
• 1983
• 1984
• wuni

[PreviewSubscription]

Its interesting,that we lost preview in Cleveland in 83,and Boston had it til'86.

[skiggley]

Yes, Preview existed until the very end of 1985...however, beginning in 1984, they broadcasted programming from ON TV and then by 1985 they broadcasted SelecTV. If you look at my other youtube uploads, you'll see ON TV with the audio caption: "Preview Presents ON TV". STV station were disappearing one by one due to rampant piracy, but WSMW channel 27 with their Zenith SSAVI system survived until the very end. I pirated it with a "modified" Zenith box (I had a copy of the service manual haha)...

[PreviewSubscription]

You said That Preview let ONTV and SelecTV use their feed.Did Preview still show their own Feature Presentation Intros,or was it totally ONTV and Selecttv by that point.

[skiggley]

They used their 10 second Preview jingle that splashed the Preview logo then underneath it the words "WSMW TV27 Worcester, MA" underneath it...and they used their NiteView preamble before the dirty movies came on at night. I'll be putting those on once they get converted over (sorry none of the dirty movies with Seka, Veronica Hart, Ginger Lynn, Lisa Deleeuw et. al. will be uploaded)

[skiggley]

If you see their advertising at 1/2 off installation, they were desperate for survival. They even ran specials like getting friends to sign up with the draw of free service etc. I have their last day on the air video-taped, unfortunately, the program content (except the NiteView bumpers broadcast) is much too x-rated to put on Youtube (and it got nasty near the end...showing more and more and more...)

[spongeworthyvideo]

I see someone has posted some Star TV ads from SFO...same ads that ran in Boston.

[spongeworthyvideo]

Thanks for the Preview ads buddy. They bring back great memories. Sure wish there was more Starcase and Best TV clips on Youtube.

[BigPO2]

This was before Viewer's Choice, Request and many other Pay Per View programming launched

in 1985.

[PreviewSubscription]

Okay Skiggley I'll be looking for them.Thanx again for all the info.

[PreviewSubscription]

Wow,Thanks for the info,Skiggley.I always figured many of The STV channels,died because of cable and HBOs growing availibilty by the mid 80s.I never took into consideration the piracy problem.