Hi there. For those of you who had cable tv in the 1990s, what was it like? Did you need a cable box? Best answer gets 10 points.
I remember cable in the 80s! MTV actually showed videos all day. Martha Quinn was their prime-time VJ. And almost no commercials. As a matter of fact, commercials were virtually unheard of on the cable-only channels. Ah, the good old days! Yes you needed a cable box because a lot of TVs still were not cable ready and you watched everything on channel 3.
Pretty much the same as it is today, albeit fewer channels and cheaper. I don't know where these folks come up with their numbers, but ours had 40 or 50 channels. Today, the standard analog has about 70. Cost about half. Remember Springsteen's 1992 song -- 57 Channels and Nothing's On.
Yes you had a box and it had about 10 channels, basic but I loved it. I was glued to Nickolodeon in the days when KenanKel, Sabrina, SisterSister etc was on it!
No, but just like now, there were certain things you could not get without a cable box. You could not get showtime, HBO, and Cinemax; you could not get pay-per-view movies without a cable box. MTV was only 1/2 as sleazy as it is now. Now, as you know they have at least 2 of the top 5 sleaziest shows on TV (here I am thinking of Tila and RW). Mind you - reality TV really started taking off when MTV started showing the real world. It was surreal to be watching the real lives of people; back then, the people were expected to hold jobs, not just get drunk and sit around the house 'til they lost their jobs. The other big changes that were not there in the 90s, there was no FUSE, and a multitude of other channels. Austin Cablevision was our local cable affiliate; they were independent until ~2000, when they were bought out by Time Warner cable. So, small cable providers have disappeared. The biggest change is the digital revolution - instead of ~100 channels, now there are closer to ~500 channels, (not to mention the advent of the music channels). Two other fundamental changes have happened - TiVo the ability to digitally record shows and program them to record. This multiplies the hours of wasted brain on TV b/c you don't even have to be there and then one day you wake up and you have 40 hrs of watching to do. This did not used to be the case. The max you used to be able to record in the 90s was about 6 hrs on a video cassette, and that was at the lowest quality probably equivalent to a 200kbps file today. The other difference that is worth mentioning is the advent of the multiplication of sports channels. You used to have ESPN, now you have so many more options Fox sports, ESPN 2, classic, and TNT, and TBS and others are picking up games a lot more. OH, and many games that used to be played on network channels are now played on cable channels, making it harder for the working man to see his team play on Sunday.
You did require a decoder box, just like you do today. Most of the stations that were cable only, were completely commercial-free, which was awesome. Channel outages and audio/video issues were much more frequent. It also wasn't quite as packaged for National consumption as it is nowwith Learning Channel, etc. You also had a lot of per-channel choicesyou could order HBO, but not Cinemax. Now, you have your choice of the company's Packages which are much more expensive. Manhattan Cable was the best. They had the freakiest local programming. During one show, some straight-laced guy would litterally sit at a desk and take phone calls, no matter how insane/obscene they were. You would never see that today. Its much more controlled and censored. Cable TV has now become such an ugly big business, thanks to Mis-management in companies like Adelphia, Cox and Comcast. Also, phone and internet services through your cable was still all but science fiction at the time.
