Anyone remember these old Cable boxes with a Wired Remote & knob

[jmm83]

I remember a guy using one up to the early 2000's his was a Comcast Cablevision one I know these are from the early 80's looks like it went up to CH 36. anyone else have any info on it seems like it's the only one i can find online.

[ARC Tech-109]

Sorta remember something similar to these in the early 80's and as I understood they were nothing more than a local oscillator that would beat against the incoming signal to produce an IF that corresponded to channel-3 or 4.

We had the Rogers Cable Zenith Z-TAC system but I used a leftover Sylvania that did the same thing but used this big calculator looking wired remote with a 2-digit LED display that also went to CH-36. Back then the only one that mattered to me was CH-28 and that was MTV.

[consoleguy67]

I had a few friends that had that. Our first one was a set top, with a dial in the middle.

[dishdude]

I remember the Jerrod that had 12 buttons and an A B C switch that gave a total of 36 channels to select. Also had a fine tuning knob.

[ARC Tech-109]

Plenty of weirdness in those days with everyone trying to one-up the other in designs. Back in those days we had both cable and this Zenith SSAVI based addressable over-the-air subscription service called Spectrum that lasted a few years but as I understand the pirates got the best of them and the channel (UHF-23) became a broadcast. The cities also had this microwave TVRO that broadcast HBO and a something else I can't recall that went well into the 1990's but that too fizzled out.

[Telecolor 3007]

Did any of these remotes moved the tuning knob from the tv set?

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Did any of these remotes moved the tuning knob from the tv set?

Pretty sure no cable box ever actuated the knob of the TV... Doing so would have required adding a motor and interface for it to non-remote TVs (too much Liability to the installer) or having and tuning an ultrasonic tone for remote sets (which while doable is fiddly). (In the US motorized knob tuners only existed into the late 70s and only were paired with ultrasonic remotes... in the late 70s early 80s remote TVs transitioned to electronic push button varactor tuners and IR remotes.)

Also most cable boxes either output a single fixed VHF channel (in which case you'd never change channels in the TV, and only change channels in the cable box) or the cable box block converted a bunch of cable channels to UHF frequencies.... That is a murky slippery slope to try and tune... Before ~1974 most TVs had continuous UHF tuners with no detents.. Almost NO mechanical tuning TV had remote UHF or provisions for it (with the exceptions of the extremely expensive RCA 2000 which had a signal seeking UHF tuner, and some Zeniths with UHF channel strips replacing unused local VHF channels in the VHF tuner... There'd only be about 7 presets max so not very good for cable with more channels and possibly requiring tuner maintenance to get the right UHF channels). I've never heard of a motorized/remote click stop mechanical UHF tuner...By then most remote sets were varactor tuned.

At any rate (TLDR) in the 70s and 80s there was such a plethora of different tuner and remote designs in TVs that no sane cable box maker would touch the idea of controlling the TVs internal tuner.

[consoleguy67]

Magnavox had a remote controlled UHF tuner.