More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

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

 

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/sega-channel-starts-up--97940

(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:

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

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://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0011/25galaxy7/

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.

 

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.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/galaxy-4.htm

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

Code (Text):

1. Hughes Communications Galaxy 7 - C-band
2.  
3. 91 degrees West longitude
4.  
5. NORAD: 22205
6.  
7. Satellite Type: Three-axis stabilized
8.  
9. Launched: October 15, 1992 (Ariane)
10.  
11. Inclination: .0164 degrees
12.  
13. Transponder Power: 24 transponders - 16 watts each
14.  
15. Tr.  Uplink Freq     Downlink Freq  Block IF    Channel
16.        in MHz       in MHz        Freq      Readout
17.  
18. 1(H)    5945        3720          1430        1
19.  
20. G7-1(C)      DATA           Sega Channel - interactive digital
21. 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.

 

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

 

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

 

From Weekly Famitsu #289, includes the Japanese June 1994 line up;

Party Quiz Mega Q
Sonic Spinball
Mahjong Cop Ryuu: Hakurou no Yabou
Puyo Puyo
Columns
Ecco the Dolphin
The Super Shinobi II
Gunstar Heroes
Sonic the Hedgehog
Rocket Knight Adventures
Gain Ground
Crack Down
ESWAT: City Under Siege
Altered Beast
Golden Axe
Super League
World Cup Soccer
Battle Golfer Yui
Super Monaco GP
OutRun
Super Hang On
Shining Force
Bahamut Senki
Rent A Hero
Dyna Brothers 2
Phantasy Star II
Crying
Ex-Ranza
G-LOC
Super Thunder Blade

 

Via google translate this site suggests that May 1994 was the first month, it lists the initial titles too. Maybe it was just a trial, the article above says something about July, but it would need a Japanese speaker to translate the article properly. From the prior six issues I only noticed one other article in issue 286 (cover date 94.06.10, Famitsu cover dates were two weeks after publication date). I don't know what the article is about, but it has a picture of what looks like a prototype Sega Channel adapter. My coverage of earlier titles is patchy, the only other article I found was in issue 231 (cover date 93.05.21) which seems to be about the planned US version. I made a super high-res scan of the small picture in issue 286, the picture on the adapter has similar art to the JP Sonic cover which is different to the final production adapter posted in this thread, and different than the earlier prototype. I've also included a scan from Mega Force issue 24 (cover date January 1994) which includes pictures of the earlier Japanese prototype hardware and software. That must be from late 1993 or maybe a little earlier. So it does seem that US & JP versions of the Sega Channel were developed in parallel.

 

I think it's just showing examples of Network hardware for the Mega Drive, presumably the Sega Channel was just conceptual then with no hardware images available. The peripheral on the right is the unreleased Baton Teleplay Modem.

 

Ah the memories, I never owned one but remember reading an article on it could have been Sega Power as read that I came from a smallish town with not much there yet the funny thing is in recent years it got Fibre internet quite early.

 

Sega Channel German Lineups;

May 1997
July 1997
August 1997
September 1997
October 1997

Unfortunately they dropped the news section for the next two issues, so they didn't publish what is presumed to have been the final two months.

Thanks to Black Squirrel for uploading those, and whoever scanned them originally.

It's funny how they also list the US Sega Channel exclusives as "exclusiv", even when many of them were released in Europe already, but don't list the games which hadn't been released in Europe as exclusive. Added to the fact that they used NTSC versions and ESRB ratings suggest that the international versions were made in the US, with little input from the local branches. I'm guessing that the international Sega Channels were all the same, going by the number of games (25), and the fact that they were in English even in South America. One exception is Canada, where local content rules meant that they had to have a certain amount of Canadian produced content (hence lots of different FIFA games and stuff like Klondike).

 

It was different to the US service. The US had 50 games/month, which became 40 games/2 weeks in Feb '97. Later it seems to have dropped to 35 games/2 weeks (advertised as 70 games/month). All international Sega Channels (except Canada) were said to have 25 games/month, and that seems to be the case for the whole period the international SC ran (July 1996 - December 1997).

There should be four different Sega Channels;

Japan 1994/05 - 199x/xx (no longer mentioned as being a country with the Sega Channel in late 1996 reports) - 30 Games/Month
US 1994/06 - 1998-06 - 50 Games/Month - 40 Games/Fortnight - 35 Games/Fortnight
Canada 1995/12 - 199x/xx (Still running in March 1997) - 50 Games/Month (10% Canadian content)
International* 1996/07 - 1997/12 - 25 Games/Month

*Confirmed UK, Germany, Netherlands, Chile, Argentina. Probably Australia, but I haven't found anything concrete yet. Planned for France & Norway, but no evidence that it ever launched. These all seem to have been in English.

I'm not aware of any Asian Sega Channels outside of Japan.

 

So digging into Asian Sega Channels.

The date here seems to match with the first Famitsu article I posted, so it suggests that the service wasn't already running in June. It's not clear if the service was planned to start on the same date as "Sega Digital Communications" was formed. That also means that it's unclear what the lineup list is for (pre-release test?). We could do with someone translating the Famitsu article.

So it was planned for Taiwan and South Korea at least, whether or not it ever did is another matter.

Computing Japan September 1994

Now planned for a September launch in Japan.

Possibly still not released in Japan by October, or maybe his info is dated. Sega Digital Communications made up of; Sumitomo Corp., Itochu Corp. and Sega.

These plans for Hong Kong release sound quite advanced. Sega Digital Communications must have had the distribution rights for Asia.

Tele-Communications International had the distribution rights for the EU/PAL region;

I don't think a lot of that stuff ever happened (direct-to-home satellite systems; available in four languages: English, French, German and Spanish; Multithematiques S.A. in France). It's interesting that the rights were split roughly inline with actual Mega Drive regions. Presumably Sega Channel (Sega of America, Inc., Tele-Communications, Inc. and Time Warner Entertainment Company L.P.) had the distribution rights to the Americas/NTSC-U region.