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I had a Walkman clone (Aiwa perhaps?) in the mid-late 1980s, and one of the things I remember doing a lot was just slowly moving the analog dial from the far le

I had a Walkman clone (Aiwa perhaps?) in the mid-late 1980s, and one of the things I remember doing a lot was just slowly moving the analog dial from the far left to the far right to see what I could pick up. I could pick up TV sometimes including, for reasons I never figured out, HBO. We didn't have HBO, and so this was pretty cool. Obviously listening to a movie (especially a movie you've never seen) would be annoying, but they used to show a lot of comedy specials too. Dennis Miller, Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, whatever that big day-long comedy special is that raises money for charity. I can't imagine how eye-rolly my kids would get if I told them this now, but at the time that was a blast.

deadmetheny 7y ago
That's very strange! Back in those days HBO would have been a satellite uplink directly to cable or to a personal satellite receiver so it's not like it would normally just be floating around the airwaves. Honestly, radio as a hacker hobby is still absolutely a blast. If you're into breaking out a shortwave radio receiver or HAM equipment there's all sorts of wild stuff out there just waiting to be discovered - same with satellite wildfeeds and free OTA television, honestly. It carries a bit more magic than the Internet since it's all around us just waiting to be picked out of the air.
- larrywright 7y ago
  This was before cable boxes, I think (or maybe they were only needed if you had a fancy cable package). At least around here, there was a physical RF filter that was removed at the cable box that delivered cable to your house, if you subscribed to HBO. I swear I remember hearing about people removing the filter themselves and then getting in trouble when the cable company found out. On most sets you could turn the knob to channel 2 and get a distorted picture and audio for HBO if you weren't a subscriber. I always figured that it was either leaking out from the cable, or maybe a TV or something wasn't shielded well enough. I'm out of my depth on that though, so I'd just be guessing.
  - fmj 7y ago
    Did you have any neighbors? Maybe one of them was using some sort of wireless sound system with a low power FM transmitter.
    - larrywright 7y ago
      Plenty of neighbors but I don't think wireless sound systems were available in the mid-80s. Maybe they were though.

deadmetheny 7y ago

That's very strange! Back in those days HBO would have been a satellite uplink directly to cable or to a personal satellite receiver so it's not like it would normally just be floating around the airwaves. Honestly, radio as a hacker hobby is still absolutely a blast. If you're into breaking out a shortwave radio receiver or HAM equipment there's all sorts of wild stuff out there just waiting to be discovered - same with satellite wildfeeds and free OTA television, honestly. It carries a bit more magic than the Internet since it's all around us just waiting to be picked out of the air.

larrywright 7y ago
This was before cable boxes, I think (or maybe they were only needed if you had a fancy cable package). At least around here, there was a physical RF filter that was removed at the cable box that delivered cable to your house, if you subscribed to HBO. I swear I remember hearing about people removing the filter themselves and then getting in trouble when the cable company found out. On most sets you could turn the knob to channel 2 and get a distorted picture and audio for HBO if you weren't a subscriber. I always figured that it was either leaking out from the cable, or maybe a TV or something wasn't shielded well enough. I'm out of my depth on that though, so I'd just be guessing.
- fmj 7y ago
  Did you have any neighbors? Maybe one of them was using some sort of wireless sound system with a low power FM transmitter.
  - larrywright 7y ago
    Plenty of neighbors but I don't think wireless sound systems were available in the mid-80s. Maybe they were though.