joe@loonam.UUCP (Joseph R. Mann) (04/04/85)
Greetings video buffs, I have recently installed a home satelite
receiver, and am over the initial shock of the awesome amount of
signals that can be received.
Using a Kenwood R-1000 I am able to recieve many data channels,
phone conversations and fax signals, but the signal that
interests me the most is netnews.
I understand that netnews is on the VBI (vertical blanking
interval) of WTBS on Galaxy 1, channel 18. The book "Tune The
Hidden Signals on Satelite TV" (available from Universal
Electronics, 4555 Groves Rd. Suite 3, Columbus, OH 43232 614-
866-4605) touches on teletext, and VBI information.
If anyone has experience in receiving ascii data over a satelite
antenna or any articles about non-video signals available on any
satelites, please let me know.
Thanks in advance, Joe.
ihnp4!umn-cs!{digi-g,circadia}!loonam!joelauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (04/06/85)
The "netnews" that is on the WTBS satellite vertical interval is controlled by, uh, me. It's part of the Stargate experiment that I developed to test the various issues surrounding transmission of netnews-type materials in a broadcast-type mode. Note that at this time I do not have current netnews data running, though some selected current materials may appear in the fairly near future. Right now about a 100 or so demo messages from some months ago circulate endlessly. The encoding system used for the data is considered proprietary by the satellite carrier (I don't even know the details) and in any case will be changed in the fairly near future to an encrypted system as part of an upgrade to newer decoding equipment (which also has built in ECC functionality). As a practical matter, even without encryption, extracting the data in a meaningful way is a lot of work without access to the appropriate (proprietary) LSI chips. Not impossible, but probably not worth the effort. --Lauren--