HBO Scrambled

Did someone ever call that number? I wonder if it's still in use, considering that this announcement was probably made in late 1985.

Captain Midnight would say: IT"S.....NOT.....FAAAAAAAAAAAA IIIIR!!!!!!!!

TV in England and Europe in general is complete crap. There are so many more channels in the United States and the best channels in the UK play mostly American programming.

The way the technology worked at the time, dish owners were on the same level as cable providers, both getting their HBO signal from Galaxay One, both unscrambled. Cable subscribers paid monthly, dish owners paid for their systems. THOUSANDS of dollars. They SHOULD get the programming for free. Dishes were a must as they are in some parts today. Scrambling caused dish owners to have to pay for a descrambler sometimes costing hundreds of dollars. This led to the Captain Midnight hack of 1986.

I remember it well. We were one of the families who had a giant dish at the back of the yard. I'm not saying that scrambling the signal didn't suck for us at the time like it did for everyone else, but what else was HBO to do?

capitalism = elitism

The biggest changeover I remember is The Disney Channel going from Pay to Basic. My mother had canceled the service for a few weeks because it had become too expensive and they were running their old 80s shows into the ground. A week later they had reinvented themselves and lost the subscription service, so it suddenly returned.

Make it pay again as it is full of carp and diverging the bills up.

full of carp,eh?
in other words disney has has become a fishing channel lol!

Ah yes, I remember the dial type box. I have one here somewhere.  We had the early RCA digital ones from the late 70s.