Re: [Fsfe-uk] [(even further) OT] Re: Explanation of Tivosiation [snip]

[Richard Smedley]

On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 12:08 +0000, Graham Seaman wrote:
> > It depends what you mean by hacking television. 25 years ago 
> > I was involved with the British Amateur Television Club, a
> > group of people with home office licences to transmit
> > television pictures to each other.
> > This wasn't about broadcasting and content, just having fun
> > with the technology. Most people were doing 405 (or 625) line
> > PAL, but there were a few people dedicated to 25-line
> > mechanical TV gear - think of it as akin to ascii-vision ;-)
> >
> >   
> I don't know if it was the same group, but there also the people doing 
> slow-scan stuff - sending TV using ham frequencies. 

Yes, you had to have a Home Office amateur radio licence to
do this. 

> People doing stuff 
> like sending the equivalent of home  videos to family in Australia, etc.

Well, I suppose some people were interested in content, it
stands to reason, but most of us were just technology nerds
who liked soldering things together :-/

In the pre-Internet days amateur radio was the best place [1]
for tech experiments - we pioneered a lot of the practical 
microwave technologies, and sent signals long-distance with
our own satellites, and by bouncing them off the moon :-)

> There's no technology that doesn't get played with unless the law blocks 
> it ;-)

The earlier car-hacking example leads onto modifications well
outside the law of course, but I note your emoticon ;)

The point, of course, is that a healthy portion of the population will
always wish to have control over technological purchases solely in order
to modify them, whether for a particular end, or ``just for fun''.
(Wow, I got back on-topic ;)

 - Richard

[1] There was hi-fi as well, but the exciting tech like building
your own electrostatic loudspeakers, never had that big a following
among the homebrew crowd. Nevertheless there are thousands of people
each year building new hi-fi valve amplifiers, and many more
modifying turntables and CD players, or hacking their loudspeakers.

-- 
Richard Smedley,                                   address@hidden
Sustainable IT Consultant
http://m6-it.org/          ``Software Freedom for the Voluntary Sector''