Cable Revolution.

I was introduced to the concept of Cable TV when our suburban town started selling the idea, door-to-door. As a kid I kept wondering what more can this offer. We had our antenna, the booster, a television set with 9 channel support and just one channel showing us the amazing “Spiderman”, hilarious “DD’s Comedy”, the spectacular “Giant Robot”, meaningful “art-house films” and vintage regional cinema. But then the idea of just a cable providing more entertainment had us and we proudly plugged in that white square-head to the television set. Out of our 8 redundant noise channels, 2 came alive. Star TV and BBC - Both english channels.

Star tv had a wide variety of shows ranging from Cookery to Series to Talk shows and a special segment called Star Plus from 4PM to 6PM where they telecasted old and famous tv shows (Wonder Years, Small Wonders, Doogie Houser MD etc). BBC had news most of the time and some random sports - both too boring for my taste. To keep the customers happy, the cable vendors often hacked into one channel and streamed a movie. The antenna was forgotten. The booster never saw power again. It was just a matter of time for the cable tv universe to expand. Star Plus became a standalone channel. We got to see killer series like The X Files, Friends, Frasier, Cheers, Home Improvement and more. Channels kept adding up and went beyond our 9 channel television set. We had to tune and replace channels for the new ones. Fun times, when I had to set up the fashion channel, watch it and revert it back to asianet before mom’s back from work!

Cable Tv was a sensation. Everyone was talking about it. Heard from friends who lived in metropolitan cities about a channel which showed hollywood films back to back and it was called Star Movies. Was so psyched about the channel and I kept searching for it on my box but had no luck. Almost an year later, I was randomly browsing on the tuner when I found out that we finally have Star Movies! Words cannot explain that moment. Me and my brother, we spend an entire week sitting right in front of the tv without turning it off because we thought it might just go away. Every single film that we saw during that initial week were special for so many reasons. We never got to watch hollywood films in that clarity ever before. The colours, the sound and above all, the suspense of which film they are gonna show next - it was out of the world! We saw a lot of films. “Air America, The Big Bet, The Good Son, Gross Anatomy, Ernest the scared stupid, Pet Cemetery, Monkey Trouble, Commando, Wild America, Raising Arizona, Beverly Hillbillies, Trapped in Paradise and many more.

We had to get a new television and dad got us one! A 30” big screen! Channels started adding up. Star World, TNT (where we saw some retro classics like Wizard of the Oz, Poltergeist and Platoon), HBO, MTV and tons of others. Time flew, technology grew, we are where we are right now. Movies aren’t hard to access; you can stream it, you can download it, you can watch it on your tv, and if you miss it you can ask your tv to record it for you- but even then; I can feel the same excitement I once had, when I accidentally stumble upon a new channel on my TV. That excitement brings back a lot of memories. Innocent, wonderful memories.

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