[Overlord]

At some point I fully intend to go though all the StC issues (I've been doing it to some degree for my frontpage pieces). Assuming no-one else gets to it first I'll see what I can pull out in general.

[Black Squirrel]

Don't forget to make pages on Sonic Retro - our coverage is dire. Too much squabbling over ROM hacks I think.

[Black Squirrel]

http://www.telecompa...tarts-up--97940

Quote

SEGA CHANNEL STARTS UP
Tuesday 24 December 1996 | 00:00 CET | News
Sega Channel, games channel of Sega, has started up in Germany and the Netherlands. In Germany, the channel has been included in the TKS cable network, Kaiserslautern, covering 200k homes. Deutsche Telekom holds a majority stake in the privately-owned system. In Germany, the channel costs DM28/mo, plus a DM80 total deposit. In the Netherlands, the Sega Channel has been added to the Enecor network, covering 500k homes in Rotterdam and Dordrecht and their environs. Take-up of the Sega Channel in the Netherlands has been slow, mainly due to there being less Megadrives in the market. In the Netherlands, the channel costs DFl 20/mo, plus DFl 399 for the total kit

(because that site blocks you after a while)

I'm thinking Germany and The Netherlands got it in December 1996. Or late November. Sometime around then.

Chile, from the Spanish wikipedia:

Quote

El 17 de octubre de 1996 comenzó a funcionar un canal interactivo de videojuegos llamado Sega Channel, que permitía el acceso total a 25 juegos de la empresa Sega. En aquel momento, la cobertura de Metrópolis-Intercom alcanzaba a las comunas de Las Condes, La Reina, Peñalolen, Macul, Ñuñoa, Providencia, Vitacura, Lo Barnechea y varias comunas mas. También se prometió lograr cobertura nacional, pero esta meta no fue alcanzada.

Basically the order is US (December 1994) -> Canada (June 1996) -> UK (July 1996) -> Chile/Argentina (October-ish 1996)-> Germany/Netherlands (December 1996).

Australia some time between May 1995 and some point in 1997. My best guess is that the Japanese Sega Channel came out in 1994 as well. Possibly before all of them!

[Flygon]

As a side-note, regarding the Australia side of things. Going by memory, all the sources refer to Galaxy TV as being the network for Sega Channel being run on.

There's one slight problem. I'm not sure Galaxy ever had a HFC network. How would Sega Channel work with wireless transmission? Unless they did actually support uploading, too. I really don't know.

This post has been edited by Flygon: 29 March 2015 - 04:32 AM

[Pirate Dragon]

Should be November 9th, 1996 for the Netherlands (although maybe that's just when they started taking orders for an upcoming launch). Rotterdam at first, Dordrecht en Hoogvliet planned later. 20,000 Mega Drive owners estimated to be covered, but only 50 signed up in the first month. Dordrecht & Schiedam starting early 1997. Here's an interview with the Dutch product manager of Sega Channel, it only ever attained a few hundred subscribers. This article talks about the announced closure of the Sega Channel in the US, Eneco comments that as long as they keep receiving discs (I believe Sega Channel was distributed to cable operators by CD in Europe, unlike the US where it was broadcast to cable headends via satellite) they will continue to broadcast, they have content until end of 1997. That's when Telewest dropped it, so I suspect that Sega Europe discontinued the Sega Channel then (they had also stopped supporting Mega Drive with physical releases in late 1997).



Article on Argentinian launch (October 1996), seems to have done relatively well (compared to Netherlands :p) with 2,000 initial subscribers.

Sega Power #83



UK launch was at the Sports Cafe, I think I remember that place.

This post has been edited by Pirate Dragon: 29 March 2015 - 05:11 AM

[Black Squirrel]

Interesting titbit: In the US, Sega Channel was transmitted to the Galaxy 7 satellite, before being received by various cable operators and pumped across the country. It's the only region where a satellite was involved.

But what happened to that satellite?
http://spaceflightno...0011/25galaxy7/

it broke... and is now drifting out in space. Though the first problems turned up in June 1998 so it's not outside the realms of possibility that this affected the service, or at least the decision to keep bothering.

[Pirate Dragon]

Sega announced the discontinuation of the service in 1997, to occur at the end of June 1998, so it may have had an affect on the service;

http://space.skyrock...at/galaxy-4.htm

Quote

On 13 June 1998, there was a brief shut-down of a portion of the C-band capacity on Galaxy VII that was accompanied by the failure of the primary on-board spacecraft control processor (SCP.) Control of the satellite was automatically switched to the spare control processor and the spacecraft was operating normally. Since then, Galaxy VII was used as backup satellite, providing occasional services in the United States. On 22 November 2000, the secondary SCP failed. The satellite was declared a total loss.

Here's the technical details of the transponder Sega Channel used;

Hughes Communications Galaxy 7 - C-band

91 degrees West longitude

NORAD: 22205

Satellite Type: Three-axis stabilized

Launched: October 15, 1992 (Ariane)

Inclination: .0164 degrees

Transponder Power: 24 transponders - 16 watts each

Tr.  Uplink Freq     Downlink Freq	Block IF	Channel
       in MHz		in MHz		  Freq		Readout

1(H)	5945		3720		  1430		  1

G7-1(C)      DATA		    Sega Channel - interactive digital
G7-1(C) 			    data transmissions on this channel	UA

It used transponder G7-1, which was C-Band (the general view on the internet seems to be that it used Ku-Band, but C-Band probably makes more sense for this kind of service). So it's quite possible that the service was affected a couple of weeks before the service was due to end anyway.

Satellite distribution made sense in the US, where hundreds or even thousands of local cable operators could benefit, but satellite bandwidth wasn't cheap, so it wouldn't have made financial sense to use the same distribution method for the handful of cable operators offering the service outside of the US (except possibly Canada if the cable operator was already able to receive content from Galaxy 7).

Somebody needs to track down some Sega Channel CDs in storerooms at the various cable operators, similar to how they track down missing Doctor Who episodes in TV relay stations around the world :p.

This post has been edited by Pirate Dragon: 29 March 2015 - 09:14 AM

[Overlord]

And just for fun, here's where Galaxy 7 is right at this very moment! http://www.n2yo.com/?s=22205

[ICEknight]

Think we can ask somebody to catch it and recover any leftover SEGA Channel data there may be? =P

[Qjimbo]

Black Squirrel, on 26 March 2015 - 03:53 PM, said:

Looks like someone's about to hand Knuckles, him and Sonic a couple more bags coming from the terminal.

This post has been edited by Qjimbo: 19 June 2015 - 05:26 PM