VideoCipher is a brand name of analog scrambling and de-scrambling equipment for cable and satellite television invented primarily to enforce Television receive-only (TVRO) satellite equipment to only receive TV programming on a subscription basis.
111-422: The second version of Videocipher, Videocipher II, was the primary encryption scheme used by major cable TV programmers to prevent TVRO owners from receiving free terrestrial television programming. It was especially notable due to the widespread compromise of its encryption scheme. Though the first half of the 1980s, HBO , Cinemax and other premium television providers with analog satellite transponders faced
222-620: A SECAM L TV with a cable tuner can be used to partially descramble the signal though only in black and white and with inverted luminance and thus a multi standard TV which supports PAL L is preferred to decode the color as well. This, however will lead to a part of the video signal being received as audio as well and thus another TV with preferably no auto mute should be used for audio decoding. Analog set-top boxes have largely been replaced by digital set-top boxes that can directly control access to programming as well as digitally decrypt signals. Although several analog encryption types were tested in
333-688: A Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006. ABC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards , Primetime Emmy Awards , and the Country Music Association Awards . ABC has also aired the Miss America competition from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2004, and 2011 to 2018. From February 2001 to February 14, 2020, ABC held the television rights to most of the Peanuts television specials, having acquired
444-592: A , a design known as the ABC Circle A. In 1962, graphic designer Paul Rand redesigned the ABC logo into its current and best-known form, with the lowercase letters "abc" enclosed in a single black circle. The new logo debuted on-air on October 19 of the same year, but it was not until the following spring that it was fully adopted. The letters are strongly reminiscent of the Bauhaus typeface designed by Herbert Bayer in
555-501: A DigiCipher 2-based system, due to their equipment also being sourced from General Instruments/Motorola. Zenith Electronics developed an encryption scheme for their Phonevision system of the 1950s and 1960s. Oak Orion was originally used for analog satellite television pay channel access in Canada . It was innovative for its time as it used digital audio . It has been completely replaced by digital encryption technologies. Oak Orion
666-565: A Good Skate, Charlie Brown , Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! , The Mayflower Voyagers , A Charlie Brown Valentine , Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales and I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown ). ABC also broadcasts the annual Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade special on Christmas morning. Since 1974, ABC has generally aired Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve – a New Year's Eve special featuring music performances and coverage of festivities in New York's Times Square . ABC
777-710: A chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures . Leonard Goldenson , who had been the head of UPT, made the then-new television network profitable by helping to develop and green-light many successful television series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN , the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several television and radio stations and print publications, to form Capital Cities/ABC Inc. , which in turn merged into Disney in 1996. ABC has eight owned-and-operated and more than 230 affiliated television stations throughout
888-500: A combined 105,000 square feet (9,800 m ) across two blocks with a total area of 159,000 square feet (14,800 m ). This main set of buildings includes: ABC also owns 7, 17 and 47 West 66th Street, three buildings on a 375-by-100-foot (114 m × 30 m) plot. The block of West 66th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, which houses the ABC News building, was renamed Peter Jennings Way in 2006 in honor of
999-423: A compulsory widescreen format, either in high definition or standard definition. With this change, some programs also began positioning their main on-screen credits outside the 4:3 aspect ratio. The ABC logo has evolved many times since the network's creation in 1943. The network's first logo, introduced in 1946, consisted of a television screen containing the letters "T" and "V", with a vertical ABC microphone in
1110-496: A day early in 1985, then did the same with their east coast feeds by August. The two networks began scrambling full time on January 15, 1986, which in many contemporary news reports was called "S-Day". Within two years, encryption through Videocipher II was used by a majority of major cable television programmers. However, lapses in its security enabled some pirate decryption , modifying a consumer descrambler to receive free programming. Beginning in 1991, programmers began to phase out
1221-556: A digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD. Although ABC has not fully transitioned to 1080p or ultra HD , some stations such as ABC affiliate station KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, transmit the network's programming at 1080p via an ATSC 3.0 multiplex stations, such as KASW with KNXV-TV. ABC began its conversion to high definition with
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#17327836960051332-654: A facility on Empire Avenue near the Hollywood Burbank Airport . In nearby Glendale , Disney/ABC also maintains the Grand Central Creative Campus , which houses other company subsidiaries, including the studios of KABC-TV and the Los Angeles bureau of ABC News. ABC owns several facilities in New York, grouped mainly on West 66th Street, with the main set of facilities on the corner of Columbus Avenue. These facilities occupy
1443-626: A fast growing market of TVRO equipment owners. Satellite television consumers could watch these services simply by pointing their dish at a satellite, and tuning into the provider's transponder. Two open questions existed about this practice: whether the Communications Act of 1934 applied as a case of "unauthorized reception" by TVRO consumers; and to what it extent it was legal for a service provider to encrypt their signals in an effort to prevent its reception. The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 clarified all of these matters, making
1554-399: A few markets, such as Birmingham, Alabama ( WBMA-LD ), Lima, Ohio ( WPNM-LD ) and South Bend, Indiana ( WBND-LD ). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station. The network has the unusual distinction of having separately owned-and-operated affiliates which serve
1665-841: A mere 55-mile (89 km) distance between the two cities and the Kansas City-based stations (including KMBC) providing better city-grade to Grade B coverage to the area compared to the signals of the primary ABC affiliates in the other aforementioned dual-affiliate markets. (KQTV was St. Joseph's lone major network affiliate until 2011, when locally based News-Press & Gazette Company began establishing low-power affiliates of ABC's four English-language competitors and Telemundo on three low-power stations to end St. Joseph's dependence on Kansas City.) WWSB, KHGI and WOTV, meanwhile, serve areas that do not receive an adequate signal from their market's primary ABC affiliate. (Of note, ABC initially affiliated with WWSB to cover southern portions of
1776-579: A number of game shows, including The Dating Game , The Newlywed Game , Let's Make a Deal , Password , Split Second , The $ 10,000/$ 20,000 Pyramid , Family Feud , The Better Sex , Trivia Trap , All-Star Blitz and Hot Streak . Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons and Saturday evenings. In 2006, the ABC Sports division was shut down, with all sports telecasts on ABC since then being produced in association with sister cable network ESPN under
1887-466: A production company. However, between the publication and implementation of these regulations, the separation of the network's catalog was made in 1973. The broadcast rights to pre-1973 productions were transferred to Worldvision, which became independent in the same year. The company has been sold several times since Paramount Television acquired it in 1999, and has most recently been absorbed into CBS Media Ventures (formerly CBS Television Distribution),
1998-472: A pseudo line delay effect. Conditional Access system using the D2-MAC standard. Developed mainly by France Telecom, the system was smartcard based. The encryption algorithm in the smartcard was based on DES . It was one of the first smart card based systems to be compromised. An older Nagravision system for scrambling analogue satellite and terrestrial television programs was used in the 1990s, for example by
2109-575: A radio network called the NBC Blue Network . It became an independent radio (and eventually television) network known as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1943. ABC later joined United Paramount Theatres forming American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres (later American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.). After its venture into radio and television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the purchase of ESPN in 1982,
2220-603: A scrambled service in 1984. It was also claimed that it was an unbreakable system. Unfortunately for that company, an electronics magazine, "Radio Plans", published a design for a pirate decoder within a month of the channel launching. In the US, HBO was one of the first services to encrypt its signal using the VideoCipher II system. In Europe, FilmNet scrambled its satellite service in September 1986, thus creating one of
2331-422: A script font. Ten years later, in 1993, the "ABC Circle" logo reverted to its classic white-on-black color scheme, but with gloss effects on both the circle and the letters, and a bronze border surrounding the circle. The ABC logo first appeared as an on-screen bug in the 1993–94 season , appearing initially only for 60 seconds at the beginning of an act or segment, then appearing throughout programs beginning in
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#17327836960052442-577: A seasonal channel dedicated to Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas original content. On August 23, 2024, it was announced on the network's website that the ABC app would be shut down a month later, on September 23. It was later reported that it would be shut down along with all of Disney's other TV Everywhere apps, including those of ABC's sister networks, except for ESPN's. However, the websites belonging to said networks will still operate after September 23, and users will still be able to log in with their TV providers to watch full episodes. ABC's master feed
2553-500: A sequence of still photos of the stars of its programs during the timeslot card as well as the schedule sequence that began each night's prime time lineup). A new four-note theme tune (composed by Mad Bus Music) was introduced alongside the package, based around the network's then-new "We Love TV" image campaign from the 1998–99 season, creating an audio signature in comparative parlance to the NBC chimes , CBS's various sound marks (including
2664-680: A six-story building occupying a 196-by-379-foot (60 m × 116 m) plot at 121–135 West End Avenue . On July 9, 2018, the Walt Disney Company announced that it was selling its two West 66th Street campuses (except for the National Guard Amory) to Silverstein Properties and purchasing one square block of property in lower Manhattan to build a new New York-based broadcast center. ABC maintains several video-on-demand (VOD) services for delayed viewing of
2775-476: A slate of original digital series for the WatchABC service, internally codenamed ABC3. In July 2016, ABC re-launched its streaming platforms, dropping the WatchABC brand, adding a streaming library of 38 classic ABC series, and introducing 7 original short-form series under the blanket branding ABCd. The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on the ABC app, Hulu and ABC on Demand
2886-527: A system called DATE (Digital Audio for TElevision), which used the existing analog video's vertical blanking interval (VBI) to send digital audio. VCI provided this same feature while freeing up the VBI for other purposes like closed-captioning and teletext , making DATE obsolete by the mid-1980s (however, DATE did offer 4 channels of audio as opposed to VideoCipher I's 2-channel stereo). The Leitch Viewguard scrambling system used for satellite feeds as well used
2997-686: A time, many networks, like SportsChannel America , remained on the VC II stream. The Videocipher II+ was a higher-security system with two variants. The Videocipher-RS system (RS for Renewable Security) is the Videocipher II Plus system with a slot in the back of the descrambler module to where a card could be inserted to upgrade the security if the VCII Plus system were ever breached. General Instrument discontinued production of VC II+ RS modules in 1998 in favor of its DigiCipher system. Over
3108-473: A unit of Paramount Global , which owns the competitor CBS . Nonetheless, Worldvision sold portions of its catalog, including the Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera libraries, to Turner Broadcasting System (now a part of Warner Bros. parent company Warner Bros. Discovery ) in 1991. With Disney's 1996 purchase of ABC, ABC Circle Films was absorbed into Touchstone Television, a Disney subsidiary which in turn
3219-403: A way to marry audio and video. Viewers found a way to get audio from a cable line and video from satellite with their VideoCipher II and push both to their VCRs and TVs. Due to the advanced VideoCipher II Plus datastream, video could appear to "flicker" or struggle on an old VideoCipher II module (modules with a newer "pirate chip" installed, tended to be less prone to this issue). VideoCipher II
3330-651: Is also among the broadcasters of the Tournament of Roses Parade (although as mentioned, the Rose Bowl Game now airs exclusively on ESPN as a College Football Playoff " New Year's Six " bowl). ABC owns nearly all of its in-house television and theatrical productions made since the 1970s, with the exception of certain co-productions (for example, The Commish is now owned by the estate of its producer, Stephen Cannell ). Worldwide video rights are currently owned by various companies, for example, Kino Lorber owns
3441-730: Is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific weekdays (subtract 1 hour for all other time zones) (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific for stations to air newscasts, locally produced programming or syndicated programs) featuring the talk-lifestyle shows The View and GMA3: What You Need to Know , and the soap opera General Hospital . In addition, ABC News programming includes Good Morning America from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. weekdays and Saturdays (along with one-hour Sunday editions), nightly editions of ABC World News Tonight (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into
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3552-666: Is also the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Hockey League (NHL), with its package (under the NHL on ESPN branding). In this deal, ABC broadcasts at least 10 regular season games (mostly afternoon), the NHL All-Star Game , the NHL Stadium Series , and four Stanley Cup Finals . During college football season, ABC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with
3663-512: Is based upon MPEG-2. A 4DTV satellite receiver is required to decode DigiCipher 2 channels. In North America, most digital cable programming is accessed with DigiCipher 2-based set-top boxes. DigiCipher 2 may also be referred to as DCII. PowerVu is another popular digital encryption technology used for non-residential usage. PowerVu was developed by Scientific Atlanta . Other commercial digital encryption systems are, Nagravision (by Kudelski), Viaccess (by France Telecom), and Wegener . In
3774-465: Is broadcast in 5.1 surround sound . On September 1, 2016, ABC began to use 16:9 framing for its most graphical imaging (primarily the network's bug , in-program promotions and generic closing credit sequences as well as sports telecasts, where the BottomLine and scoreboard elements now extend outside the 4:3 frame), requiring its stations and pay television providers to display its programming in
3885-516: Is licensed to Boston while WMUR-TV is licensed to Manchester, New Hampshire (which is officially part of the Boston market). WCVB is easily receivable in Manchester with a good antenna as well as having its own news department that covers New Hampshire ; it is the only station licensed to the state that does such. Both WCVB and WMUR are owned by Hearst Television . The Sinclair Broadcast Group
3996-537: Is the largest operator of ABC stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to 28 full, primary ABC affiliates and two subchannel-only affiliates. Sinclair owns the largest ABC subchannel affiliate by market size, WABM-DT2 / WDBB-DT2 in the Birmingham market, which serve as repeaters of WBMA-LD (which itself is also simulcast on a subchannel of former WBMA satellite WGWW , owned by Sinclair partner company Howard Stirk Holdings ). The E. W. Scripps Company
4107-407: Is the largest operator of ABC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning 15 ABC-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Cleveland , Phoenix , Detroit and Denver ), and through its ownership of Phoenix affiliate KNXV, Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV and Tucson affiliate KGUN-TV , it is the only provider of ABC programming for the majority of Arizona (outside
4218-458: Is the only major broadcast network that carries games from all of the traditional "big four" sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). During the late winter months, ABC airs both men's and women's college basketball games on weekend afternoons. In the spring and summer months, ABC also airs games (usually on weekends) from the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and is the broadcast home of
4329-498: Is transmitted in 720p high-definition , the native resolution format for the Walt Disney Company's American television properties. However, most of Hearst Television 's ABC-affiliated stations and some of Tegna 's ABC affiliates transmit the network's programming in 1080i , while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on
4440-414: The 1995–96 season , the respective iterations of the translucent logo bug were also incorporated within program promotions until the 2011–12 season. During the 1997–98 season, the network began using a minimalist graphical identity with a yellow and black motif, designed by Pittard Sullivan, featuring a small black-and-white "ABC Circle" logo on a yellow background (promotions during this time also featured
4551-663: The Disney Entertainment division of the Walt Disney Company . ABC is headquartered on Riverside Drive in Burbank, California , directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Team Disney – Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network maintains secondary offices at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan , New York City , which houses its broadcast center and
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4662-524: The X Games and Little League World Series . In 2015, ESPN's annual ESPY Awards presentation moved to ABC from ESPN. Bolstered by Caitlyn Jenner accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the ceremony, the 2015 ESPY Awards ' viewership was roughly tripled over the 2014 ceremony on ESPN. After the NFL signed a new contract with the Walt Disney Company , ABC will air Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and Super Bowl LXV in 2031. The network has not aired
4773-1010: The Yuma - El Centro market) and Southern Nevada . Scripps also owns and operates several ABC stations in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, including in Denver, San Diego , Bakersfield, California , and Boise, Idaho , and when combined with the ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles , Fresno , and San Francisco , the affiliations from the News-Press & Gazette Company in Santa Barbara , Palm Springs , Yuma-El Centro , and Colorado Springs-Pueblo , and Sinclair's affiliations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon , these four entities control
4884-412: The programming block is syndicated exclusively to ABC owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, rather than being leased out directly by the network to Litton. ABC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show The View , news show GMA3 , and the soap opera General Hospital . Originally premiering in 1963, General Hospital is ABC's longest-running entertainment program. In addition to
4995-511: The (at the time) new RCA based MPEG-2 digital satellite subscription service. Television encryption Television encryption , often referred to as scrambling , is encryption used to control access to pay television services, usually cable , satellite , or Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services. Pay television exists to make revenue from subscribers , and sometimes those subscribers do not pay. The prevention of piracy on cable and satellite networks has been one of
5106-458: The 1920s, but also share similarities with several other fonts, such as ITC Avant Garde and Horatio, and most closely resembling Chalet. The logo's simplicity made it easier to redesign and duplicate, which was beneficial before the advent of computer graphics. A color version of the logo was also developed around 1963, and animated as a brief 10-second intro to be shown before the then-small handful of network programs broadcast in color (similar to
5217-433: The ABC Circle logo's many variants was a 1977 ID sequence that featured a bubble on a black background representing the circle with glossy gold letters, and was the first ABC identification card to simulate a three-dimensional appearance. In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the network's founding, ID sequences had the logo appear in a gold CGI design on a blue background, accompanied by the slogan "That Special Feeling" in
5328-454: The English alphabet in order. ABC launched as a radio network in 1943, as the successor to the NBC Blue Network , which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble . It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC , as well as the lesser-known DuMont . In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT),
5439-553: The German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere. In this line-shuffling system, 32 lines of the PAL TV signal are temporarily stored in both the encoder and decoder and read out in permuted order under the control of a pseudorandom number generator . A smartcard security microcontroller (in a key-shaped package) decrypts data that is transmitted during the blanking intervals of the TV signal and extracts
5550-591: The NBC "Laramie" peacock intro used during that era). The "a" was rendered in red, the "b" in blue, and the "c" in green, against the same single black circle. A variant of this color logo, with the colored letters against a white circle, was also commonly used throughout the 1960s. The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of many graphical imaging packages for the network which based the logo's setting mainly on special lighting effects then under development including white, blue, pink, rainbow neon, and glittering dotted lines. Among
5661-533: The North American home video rights to the ABC feature film library (along with some lesser known live action films from Disney's library, mostly from Touchstone Pictures , Hollywood Pictures and 20th Century Studios ). When the FCC imposed its Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1970, ABC proactively created two companies: Worldvision Enterprises as a syndication distributor, and ABC Circle Films as
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#17327836960055772-467: The SATPAC interfered with the horizontal and vertical synchronisation signals and transmitted a signal containing synchronisation and authorisation data on a separate subcarrier. The system was first used in September 1986 and saw many upgrades as it was easily compromised by pirates. By September 1992, FilmNet changed to D2-MAC EuroCrypt. Added an interfering sine wave of a frequency circa 93.750 kHz to
5883-589: The Tampa–St. Petersburg market—including WWSB's city of license , Sarasota —as the transmitters of WTSP , the market's former primary ABC affiliate from 1965 to 1994, and Miami affiliate WPLG had been short-spaced to avoid interference between their respective analog-VHF channel 10 signals, WWSB remained an ABC affiliate after its Tampa affiliation moved from WTSP to WFTS in December 1994, even though WFTS's signal reaches Sarasota and some surrounding areas.) WCVB-TV
5994-481: The US, both DirecTV and Dish Network direct-broadcast satellite systems use digital encryption standards for controlling access to programming. DirecTV uses VideoGuard , a system designed by NDS . DirecTV has been cracked in the past, which led to an abundance of cracked smartcards being available on the black market. However, a switch to a stronger form of smart card (the P4 card) wiped out DirectTV piracy soon after it
6105-531: The USA used VideoCipher I on its satellite feeds to its member stations in the mid-80s to take advantage of the high-fidelity digital audio capability offered by VCI. This was desirable for some of the programming PBS would air in that era, such as classical concerts and other musical programming, some of which were simulcast by partnering public radio stations using the same audio feed. PBS had attempted in 1979 to send its program audio digitally to its member stations using
6216-933: The United States and its territories. Some ABC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Canada via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas near the Canada–United States border , although most of its prime time programming is subject to simultaneous substitution regulations for pay television providers imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to protect rights held by domestically based networks. ABC News provides news and features content for select radio stations owned by Cumulus Media , as these stations are former ABC Radio properties. In 1927, NBC operated
6327-603: The VCII system in favor of the more secure Videocipher II Plus (RS) system. The system was fully phased out in 1993. Originally sold as a stand-alone decoder box that consisted of a fully electronic decoder and descrambler module, other satellite system manufacturers began to make their receivers with the GI descrambler module installed. This VCII system digitally encrypts stereo audio using the DES encryption scheme and scrambles video by inverting
6438-406: The VideoCipher II datastream in favor of the more secure VideoCipher II Plus (RS) datastream; other programmers followed suit. Having a VideoCipher II module was no longer worth anything unless the viewer wanted to watch adult programming without audio. At the time, most local cable providers did not pass the encrypted audio to subscribers. As such, some viewers who had both cable and satellite found
6549-515: The access of ABC network programming in most of the Western United States, particularly in terms of audience reach. All of ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates have had their own facilities and studios, but transverse entities have been created to produce national programming. As a result, television series were produced by ABC Circle Films beginning in 1962 and by Touchstone Television beginning in 1985, before Touchstone
6660-479: The analog sub carriers on the satellite feed. B-MAC has not been used for DTH applications since PrimeStar switched to an all-digital delivery system in the mid-1990s. VideoCrypt was an analogue cut and rotate scrambling system with a smartcard based conditional access system. It was used in the 1990s by several European satellite broadcasters, mainly British Sky Broadcasting . It was also used by Sky New Zealand (Sky-NZ). One version of Videocrypt (VideoCrypt-S) had
6771-509: The audio intact. Terrestrial broadcast CATV systems in Northern Canada used this conditional access system for many years. It is only occasionally used today on some satellite circuits because of its similarity to D2-MAC and B-MAC . There was also a version that encrypted the audio using a digital audio stream in the horizontal blanking interval like the VCII system. One US network used that for its affiliate feeds and would turn off
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#17327836960056882-685: The biggest markets for pirate satellite TV decoders in the world, because the system that FilmNet used was easily hacked. One of FilmNet's main attractions was that it would screen hard-core porn films on various nights of the week. The VideoCipher II system proved somewhat more difficult to hack, but it eventually fell prey to the pirates. Analog and digital pay television have several conditional access systems that are used for pay-per-view (PPV) and other subscriber related services. Originally, analog-only cable television systems relied on set-top boxes to control access to programming, as television sets originally were not " cable-ready ". Analog encryption
6993-630: The branding ESPN on ABC . General industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports on broadcast television, with Disney preferring to schedule the majority of its sports rights on the networks of ESPN (until 2020). Since 2020 ESPN has prioritized ABC with airings of its sports telecasts with occasional simulcasts and exclusive games of ESPN Monday Night Football broadcasts on ABC. Since 2006, ABC has at least aired ten weeks of primetime sports programming, and since 2020 has aired sports programming almost every week from September to May each year (with primetime encores and movies airing
7104-582: The broadcast rights from CBS, which originated the specials in 1965 with the debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas (other Peanuts specials broadcast annually by ABC, in addition to A Charlie Brown Christmas , include Charlie Brown's All Stars! , It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown , You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown , A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown , Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown , She's
7215-435: The capability of scrambling sound. A soft encryption option was also available where the encrypted video could be transmitted with a fixed key and any VideoCrypt decoder could decode it. RITC Discret 11 is a system based on horizontal video line delay and audio scrambling. The start point of each line of video was pseudorandomly delayed by either 0 ns , 902 ns, or 1804 ns. First used in 1984 by French channel Canal Plus , it
7326-466: The center, referencing the network's roots in radio. When the ABC-UPT merger was finalized in 1953, the network introduced a new logo based on the FCC seal, with the letters "ABC" enclosed in a circular shield surmounted by a bald eagle. In 1957, just before the television network began its first color broadcasts, the ABC logo consisted of a tiny lowercase "abc" in the center of a large lowercase letter
7437-409: The channel being received by those who had not subscribed. These filters would be added or removed according to the subscription. As the number of television channels on these cable networks grew, the filter-based approach became increasingly impractical. Other techniques, such as adding an interfering signal to the video or audio, began to be used as the simple filter solutions were easily bypassed. As
7548-493: The company was acquired and merged with Capital Cities, forming Capital Cities/ABC in 1986. The company was sold to the Walt Disney Company in 1996. The ABC television network currently provides an average of 89 hours of network programming each week. It also offers 22 hours of prime-time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (Eastern and Pacific Time) and 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Sundays. Daytime programming
7659-508: The current five-note version introduced in 2020) and the Fox fanfare (which was phased out by the Fox network in 2019). The four-note signature has been updated with every television season thereafter until 2020–21 season. In 1999, ABC launched a web-based promotional campaign focused around its circle logo, also called 'the dot', in which comic book character Little Dot prompted visitors to "download
7770-399: The day after their original broadcast. In addition, ABC on Demand disallows fast forwarding of accessed content. In 2021, ABC updated the app to allow app users to watch shows from ABC's sister networks: Freeform , FX , and National Geographic . Free ad-supported streaming television channels were added to the ABC app in 2022 and 2023, including a 24-hour version of ESPN8 The Ocho and
7881-563: The early 1980s, VideoCipher II became the de facto analog encryption standard that C-Band satellite pay TV channels used. Early adopters of VCII were HBO and Cinemax, encrypting full time beginning in January 1986; Showtime and The Movie Channel beginning in May 1986; and CNN and Headline news, in July of that year. VideoCipher II was replaced as a standard by VCII+ in the early 1990s, and it in turn
7992-478: The early nineties, programmers increased the frequency of the top tier DES keys from monthly to near daily. Companies (such as Magna Systems) began offering services whereby users could continue to receive keys via fax electronic modifications/add-on boards such as "VMS" modems. These add-on modem modules would dial into a bulletin board system and automatically download the required keys to view all available programming. Eventually (about 1992), HBO completely left
8103-422: The first stations to offer streams of their programming on the service, with the six remaining ABC O&Os offering streams by the start of the 2013–14 season. Hearst Television also reached a deal to offer streams of its ABC affiliates on the service, though as of 2016 these stations are only available for live-streaming for DirecTV subscribers. In November 2015, it was reported that ABC had been developing
8214-510: The following legal: This created a framework for the wide deployment of encryption on analog satellite signals. It further created a framework (and implicit mandate to provide) subscription services to TVRO consumers to allow legal decryption of those signals. HBO and Cinemax became the first two services to announce intent to encrypt their satellite feeds late in 1984. Videocipher was invented in 1983 by Linkabit Corporation (later bought out by M/A-COM in 1985, operated as M/A-COM Linkabit). In
8325-476: The headquarters building on Riverside Drive, other ABC facilities in Burbank include a building at 3800 West Alameda, known as 'Burbank Center', which is primarily associated with Walt Disney Television and functions as the headquarters and broadcast center for Disney Channel , Disney Junior , Disney XD , Freeform , FX , National Geographic , and Radio Disney . Additionally, Disney Television Animation has
8436-487: The headquarters of its news division, ABC News . Since 2007, when ABC Radio (also known as Cumulus Media Networks ) was sold to Citadel Broadcasting , ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television. The youngest of the " Big Three " U.S. television networks, the network is sometimes referred to as the Alphabet Network , as its initialism also represents the first three letters of
8547-605: The in-house productions it continues to produce (such as America's Funniest Home Videos , General Hospital , ABC News productions, and series from Disney Television Studios ( ABC Signature and 20th Television ). Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly known as Buena Vista Television and 20th Television) handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television (formerly known as Buena Vista International Television) handles international television distribution. Since its inception, ABC has had over 300 television stations that have carried programming from
8658-424: The largest U.S. broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.72% of all households in the United States (or 305,347,338 Americans with at least one television set). Currently, New Jersey , Rhode Island , and Delaware are the only U.S. states where ABC does not have a locally licensed affiliate (New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WABC-TV in
8769-564: The last major television network to utilize the VideoCipher II system, discontinued its analog signal on AMC 11 transponder 13 on June 26, 2014, effectively ending the Videocipher era. Within the years of the change of signal scrambling from VC II to VCII+, DirecTV began to take on many former C band VideoCipher subscribers and illegal receivers of programming. Many who were involved with providing illegal VideoCipher II programming moved over to hacking and providing users illegal access to
8880-442: The launch of its simulcast feed, ABC HD, on September 16, 2001, at the start of the 2001–02 season , with its scripted prime-time series becoming the first shows to upgrade to the format, the simulcast feed was launched first on ABC's owned television stations that same date with many major affiliates following after that. Both new and returning scripted series were broadcast in high definition. In 2011, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
8991-454: The long-running All My Children (1970–2011) and One Life to Live (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include Ryan's Hope , Dark Shadows , Loving , The City and Port Charles . ABC also aired the last nine years of the Procter & Gamble -produced soap The Edge of Night , following its cancellation by CBS in 1975. ABC Daytime has also aired
9102-445: The main factors in the development of Pay TV encryption systems. The early cable-based Pay TV networks used no security. This led to problems with people connecting to the network without paying. Consequently, some methods were developed to frustrate these self-connectors. The early Pay TV systems for cable television were based on a number of simple measures. The most common of these was a channel-based filter that would effectively stop
9213-405: The mid 1980s, M/A-COM began divesting divisions which fell outside their core RF & Microwave component and subsystem products. The Linkabit division was acquired by General Instrument in 1987. Videocipher was used throughout the 1990s by RCTI and SCTV to encrypt some foreign programs (such as sports events and movies) as part of the term of their rights, to prevent overseas access so that
9324-492: The network at various times throughout its history, including its first two owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, founding O&O WABC-TV and inaugural affiliate WPVI-TV . As of 2020 , ABC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 236 additional television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. possessions, Bermuda, and Saba . This makes ABC
9435-438: The network's existing streaming portal at ABC.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers. This service provides full-length episodes of ABC programs and live streams of local affiliates in select markets (this was the first such offering by a U.S. broadcast network). Live streams are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers . WABC-TV New York and WPVI-TV Philadelphia were
9546-440: The network's programming, including a traditional VOD service called ABC on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers. The Walt Disney Company is also a part-owner of Hulu , and has offered full-length episodes of most of ABC's programming through this streaming service since July 6, 2009. In May 2013, ABC launched "WatchABC", a revamp of its traditional multi-platform streaming services encompassing
9657-448: The next ten years, broadcasters migrated to digital transmission delivery and discontinued their analog feeds. In October 2008, Motorola (who acquired General Instruments in January 2000) announced that their authorization center would no longer authorize any new decoders after December 31, 2008, and that the current remaining analog Videocipher channels would switch entirely to digital transmission after that same date. The Weather Channel ,
9768-542: The north half of the state and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV in the south, Rhode Island is served by New Bedford, Massachusetts -licensed WLNE , though outside of the transmitter, all other operations for the station are based in Providence , and Delaware is served by WPVI in the northern two thirds and Salisbury, Maryland , affiliate WMDT in the southern third of the state). ABC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in
9879-435: The primetime Saturday Night Football . ABC also airs coverage of selected bowl games, ABC is also the secondary broadcast partner of Major League Baseball (MLB) with the network at least airing wild card series games since 2020 (except for 2021), and select Sunday Night Baseball games by sister network ESPN. Beginning in the 2015 NFL season , ESPN agreed to begin simulcasting/exclusively airing NFL games on ABC. Thus, ABC
9990-531: The program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show This Week , early morning news programs World News Now and America This Morning and the late-night newsmagazine Nightline . Late nights feature the weeknight talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! . The network's three-hour Weekend morning children's programming timeslot is programmed by syndication distributor Litton Entertainment , which produces Litton's Weekend Adventure under an arrangement in which
10101-564: The programs could only be accessed through the RCTI and SCTV networks via UHF/VHF frequency in Indonesia . Indovision also used Videocipher to encrypt their channels as a counteract against piracy between 1994 and 1997. There were several variants of the Videocipher scrambling system: This was the first version of the Videocipher system that was first demonstrated by Linkabit in 1983. Also known as Videocipher IB, this variation on Videocipher
10212-400: The random seed value needed for controlling the random number generation. The system also permitted the audio signal to be scrambled by inverting its spectrum at 12.8 kHz using a frequency mixer. American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company ( ABC ) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network that serves as the flagship property of
10323-592: The remainder of the year). ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the NBA on ESPN branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games , followed by a series of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals . ABC
10434-509: The same market in Tampa, Florida ( WFTS-TV and WWSB ), Boston, Massachusetts ( WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV ), Lincoln, Nebraska ( KLKN and KHGI-TV ), and Grand Rapids, Michigan ( WZZM and WOTV ), with an analogous situation arising in Kansas City, Missouri ( KMBC-TV and KQTV ). KQTV is licensed to St. Joseph , which Nielsen designates as a separate market from Kansas City, despite
10545-484: The same video line re-ordering as well, while also leaving the audio intact. ABC and Fox used Viewguard as well on their analog network feeds to their affiliate stations shortly before switching to digital satellite distribution in 2005 (for ABC) and 2004 (for Fox). Videocipher II was the first consumer TVRO scrambling system. HBO and Cinemax, which had transponders on Satcom 3R and Galaxy 1 , began encrypting their west coast feeds services with Videocipher II 12 hours
10656-494: The systems used for cable feed distribution were expensive. As the DTH market grew, less secure systems began to be used. Many of these systems (such as Oak Orion ) were variants of cable television scrambling systems that affected the synchronisation part of the video, inverted the video signal, or added an interfering frequency to the video. All of these analogue scrambling techniques were easily defeated. In France, Canal+ launched
10767-400: The technology evolved, addressable set-top boxes became common, and more complex scrambling techniques such as digital encryption of the audio or video cut and rotate (where a line of video is cut at a particular point and the two parts are then reordered around this point) were applied to signals. Encryption was used to protect satellite-distributed feeds for cable television networks. Some of
10878-483: The then-recently deceased news anchor. Disney formerly leased 70,000 sq ft (6,500 m ) at 157 Columbus Avenue, on the northern side of 67th Street. ABC also owns the Times Square Studios at 1500 Broadway, on land owned by a development fund for the 42nd Street Project. Opened in 1999, Good Morning America is broadcast from this facility. ABC News has premises on West 66th Street, in
10989-497: The video polarity and moving color information to a nonstandard area frequency. It is noteworthy that the Videocipher II Plus design did not alter the video scrambling scheme (only the audio encryption was improved). As such, a Videocipher II decoder is still capable of decoding the video portion of a Videocipher II Plus encrypted stream. In the late eighties and early nineties, VideoCipher II modules that had been pirated, began to receive constant Electronic Counter Measures (ECM). In
11100-494: The video signal. This interfering signal was approximately six times the frequency of the horizontal refresh. It had an optional sound scrambling using Spectrum Inversion. Used in the UK by BBC for its world service broadcasts and by the now defunct UK movie channel "Premiere". Used by German/Swiss channel Teleclub in the early 1990s, this system employed various methods such as video inversion, modification of synchronisation signals, and
11211-512: Was commonly used by sports backhauls . CBS used this system from 1987 to the mid-1990s to encrypt its transmissions to affiliates on the Telstar 301 and Telstar 302 satellites. In Canada, the CTV television network also used this technology on its network feeds. With this system the video is scrambled by means of re-ordering the video scan lines, while all audio remains in the clear. This system
11322-409: Was in use as late as the early 2000s. Videocipher I (VCI) system was initially considered for use by HBO in the 1980s. HBO tested VCI extensively, but was ultimately rejected in favor of Videocipher II. HBO's use of VCI would have required descramblers for home satellite viewers. Due to costs involved with VC1, maintaining VCI a descrambler was determined to be too expensive for consumer use. PBS in
11433-523: Was introduced. Since then, no public cracks have become available. Dish Network uses Nagravision (2 and 3) encryption. The now-defunct VOOM and PrimeStar services both used General Instruments/Motorola equipment, and thus used a DigiCipher 2 -based system very similar to that of earlier 4DTV large dish satellite systems. In Canada , both Bell Satellite TV and Shaw Direct DBS systems use digital encryption standards. Bell TV, like Dish Network, uses Nagravision for encryption. Shaw Direct, meanwhile, uses
11544-540: Was renamed ABC Studios in 2007. Also part of the library are most films in the David O. Selznick library, productions from their previous motion picture divisions ABC Pictures International , Selmur Productions , and Palomar Pictures International (before its takeover by Bristol-Myers-Squibb) released by Cinerama Productions (films produced by the company themselves are now under the control of Pacific Theatres ), their later theatrical division ABC Motion Pictures , and
11655-677: Was reorganized as ABC Studios in February 2007 and later renamed to its current name ABC Signature in August 2020. Since the 1950s, ABC has had two main production facilities: the ABC Television Center (now The Prospect Studios ) on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood, California , shared with the operations of KABC-TV until 1999, and the ABC Television Center, East, a set of studios located throughout New York City. In addition to
11766-527: Was replaced by VCII+ RS. A VCII-capable satellite receiver is required to decode VCII channels. VCII has largely been replaced by DigiCipher 2 in North America . Originally, VCII-based receivers had a separate modem technology for pay-per-view access known as Videopal. This technology became fully integrated in later-generation analog satellite television receivers. DigiCipher 2 is General Instrument's proprietary video distribution system. DigiCipher 2
11877-588: Was subject to ITAR restrictions on export of cryptography from the United States because of its use of DES, but an exception for consumer descramblers was added to the US Munitions List in 1992. In 1992, following years of security breaches with the Videocipher II system, General Instruments introduced the Videocipher II Plus descrambler module. In 1993, some VCII programming was phased out, especially premium movie channels and pay per view. For
11988-442: Was the last program on the network's schedule that was broadcast in 4:3 standard definition. All of the network's new programming has been presented in HD since January 2012. The affiliate-syndicated Saturday morning educational and informative ( E/I ) block Litton's Weekend Adventure was the first children's program block on U.S. network television to feature programs available in HD upon its September 2011 debut. The HD programming
12099-402: Was typically limited to premium channels such as HBO or channels with adult-oriented content. In those cases, various proprietary video synchronization suppression methods were used to control access to programming. In some of these systems, the necessary sync signal was on a separate subcarrier though sometimes the sync polarity is simply inverted, in which case, if used in conjunction with PAL ,
12210-530: Was used by Sky Channel in Europe between the years 1982 and 1987, and M-Net in South Africa from 1986 to 2018. Oak developed related encryption systems for cable TV and broadcast pay TV services such as ONTV . Leitch Viewguard is an analog encryption standard used primarily by broadcast TV networks in North America . Its method of scrambling is by re-ordering the lines of video (Line Shuffle), but leaves
12321-497: Was widely compromised after the December 1984 issue of "Radio Plans" magazine printed decoder plans. The BBC also used the Discret system in the late 1980s, as part of testing the use of off-air hours for encrypted specialist programming, with BMTV (British Medical Television) being broadcast on BBC Two. This would ultimately lead to the launch of the scrambled BBC Select service in the early 1990s. Used by European channel FilmNet,
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