Warner/Amex "QUBE" Set-top box?

From: Ethan Dicks <erd_6502_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri Jun 21 03:37:49 2002

--- Curt Vendel <curt_at_atari-history.com> wrote:
> Anyone have one of these or have some photo's of it. It was one of the
> first attempts at Interactive TV. I need it for an article I'm
> writing,
> thanks. If anyone has one to sell, I'm also interested as well.

Wish I did. We _had_ QUBE when it was new. Big Fun.

For those that don't know, it was an unassuming cable box, black,
maybe 30cm x 30cm x 5cm, but the interesting part was this pod on
the end of a 10m cable - it had 10 buttons down the left side, three
across the bottom, and 5 on the right. The three at the bottom were
momentary - they selected a filter bank in the box to give you a
range of 10 channels (of which only one at a time could be depressed;
it would pop up the previous selection). The columns were marked P, C
and T for "Premium", "Community" and "Television". Among other things,
I recall that P7 or P8 was for R-rated entertainment, and P10 was for
Adult.

The five buttons on the right, and the "Response" light at the top
were the interactive part - with interactive programming of local
origin (they had a full-blown TV studio as well as a cable franchise),
the host could initiate a poll - the Response light meant that the
voting period was open - or simply tell you to press "1" to have
information about the current show/guest mailed to you with your bill.
There was even a kids game show with Flippo the Clown that you could
play along with at home.

It was plagued with technical problems galore - the first month, they
gave away the movies (there were only two pay movies, "A Star is Born",
and "Raggedy Ann and Andy") because their billing system was messed up.
Another game was to figure out how to defeat the box and watch free
movies - they went through 5 generations or so before it got too hard
for ordinary consumers to bother. The first one was the easiest - press
down three or more black response buttons and change the column from
C or T to P. The light would indicate the old column, but the filter
bank would change internally, displaying the P channels. You could
swap from 1 to 10 at will. The system never noticed you were in the
premium rank. It got harder after that.

I kinda miss it. We used to have great fun with the kids show, and it
was good for cooking shows, too. It expanded to several cities in Ohio
and Texas before Warner folded it.

This was all well over 10 years ago, so the technology is quite on topic.

-ethan



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Received on Fri Jun 21 2002 - 03:37:49 BST

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