Albert's Attic Gallery

For many people reading this, 'BSB' will mean 'British Sky Broadcasting' and nothing else, but originally 'BSB' was 'British Satellite Broadcasting', a hapless competitor for Sky.

I propped up a 'Squarial' in my back window, and we had perfect D-MAC reception through the double-glazing. The 'Squarial' was a diamond-shaped flat-plate antenna. They were beautifully made things of cast aluminium and stainless steel, and they must have cost far more to manufacture than the selling price. BSB had worked itself into a corner, by pushing the 'Squarial' image as being so superior to the Sky dish. This marketing decision was made on the basis of an early promise by the boffins that the thing would be ready in time and within budget. In the end the squarials had to be supplemented by conventional 45cm dishes that probably cost a quarter as much, worked just as well, and were just as unobtrusive. See also 'Ancient' section.

The receivers used a Belling socket instead of an 'f' type for the dish connection - rather unfortunate because it was possible to plug the aerial lead in by mistake and short out the LNB power. For some strange reason BSB didn't have teletext.

With a scart connection the picture quality was staggering, rather like modern digital reception but without all the horrible compression effects. For those who care about such things, this was British Television's Finest Hour! And what happened? Well, how could they hope to compete with Sky? Mr Murdoch gobbled them up, of course. At the time of the take-over we had five BSB kits in stock. Overnight they become scrap. Elegant state-of-the-art stainless steel D-Mac scrap, but scrap nevertheless. Bah!

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