1980's HBO city flyover movie opening

[mego73]

How many remember this?

YouTube - HBO 1983 Intro (HBO)

I also remember the making of it

YouTube - HBO Intro: Behind the Scenes

with all the cool pre-digital technology. Actually building the city model and the HBO letters out of metal and the kinetic animation.

[Mikey]

That brings back memories

If you watch, he's turning the cable box by hand.

It sucked they didn't have remote controls for cable boxes back then

Good stuff

This title appeared about 6 months after we first got cable- HBO

Before that, they had a junkier intro

[cjefferys]

Wow, that brings back memories. Of course HBO wasn't (and still isn't) legally available in Canada, but back in the mid 1980's we got one of those big satellite dishes, so we could watch HBO and all the other American cable channels for free (before they started to scramble the signals). Good times!

[mego73]

That brings back memories

If you watch, he's turning the cable box by hand.

It sucked they didn't have remote controls for cable boxes back then

Good stuff

This title appeared about 6 months after we first got cable- HBO

Before that, they had a junkier intro

Our first cable box had a channel selector on a long wire that went to the main box. It was long enough to bring to the couch. What was on the wire was a smaller version of this type of slider tuner


Vintage Hamlin CATV Converter Cable Box 1989 - eBay (item 290350242566 end time Oct-27-09 11:01:05 PDT)

[Mikey]

Our first ever cable box was weird ...

It was small and white

It was only about the size of 8 CD's stacked

It had 1 switch on top ... The settings were TV, HBO, SHOWTIME and ESPN

If you wanted to watch regular TV you set it to TV and turn the channels on the televison ... For HBO etc you switched the box.

Very primative

[Tyme2tyme]

I remember when HBO (with Cinimax) was the only game in town. It was wonderful. Then all these other movie channels started to get their exclusive contracts with the different movie companies and made HBO much less special. JOHN

[UnderdogDJLSW]

I remember it. Life did feel simpler then.

[HardyGirl]

I remember back in NYC, some kids had this new thing called "cable" and some of them had "Home Box Office". One time, my dad's girlfriend's kids and I were at the babysitter's and we were actually watching "Beyond The Door" on Home Box Office. Man, I felt like such a big shot walking into my 6th grade classroom the following Monday, b/c I could talk about a movie I watched on cable television.

[wilbs518]

That opening was really cool. I also loved the shorts they would play in between movies.(when HBO actually played different movies)

[TEXASFETT]

Well that's just classic aw...the good old days.I was a little kid at the time and the behind the scenes was cool.Lots of work and good to see it again.Man I totally forgot about it.

[Mikey]

I'd love to own the metal HBO "satellite"

That thing is a pop culture icon