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Stories About BUDs (Big Ugly Dishes)

Had a 12-foot (3.66 meter) solid dish installed in the summer of 1982. I was an early adopter; the whole thing cost about $7,000. Wild feeds (ABC co-anchor Max Robinson waiting to do his 15-second hit from Chicago each night was a hoot; golf in Japanese; blacked-out fights) plus the Canadian channels, regional sports networks and so much more. All great fun. CBC was about the last to scramble and it was time to switch to a small dish.
 
So you had your dish installed when EVERYTHING was in the clear! All the premium networks were in the clear until January 1986, when HBO began Videocipher II. CANCOM channels were an exception - they were encrypted Oak Orion. CANCOM = Detroit TV stations, CITV Edmonton, BCTV/CHAN-8 Vancouver, which were all beamed to cable operators up there.
 
The "spot beams" also limited the reception nationwide. The Anik and Alaska birds virtually disappeared from my part of the country.
 
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