It was TBS, in the 1980s:
http://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/www.stargate.com/history.html
It used TBS because that was one of the first "superstations", distributed
to cable systems nationwide via satellite.
On May 24, 2011, at 8:12 31PM, Max wrote:
> Was PBS one of the companies you are referring to? A colleague of
> mine worked as a developer on a project at PBS in the 90s that used
> the blanking interval for Internet transmissio - very cool stuff.
>
> On 5/19/11, Robert Bonomi <bon...@mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
>>> From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi....@nanog.org Wed May 18 16:12:17
>>> 2011
>>> Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:53:10 -0600
>>> From: Brielle Bruns <br...@2mbit.com>
>>> To: nanog@nanog.org
>>> Subject: Re: Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth Than
>>> Any
>>> Other Company
>>>
>>> On 5/18/11 2:33 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:
>>>> If we're really talking efficiency, the "popular" stuff should probably
>>>> stream out over the bird of your choice (directv, etc) because it's
>>>> hard to beat millions of dishes and dvr's and no cable plant.
>>>>
>>>> Then what won't fit on the bird goes unicast IP from the nearest CDN.
>>>> Kind of like the "on demand over broadband" on my satellite box. Their
>>>> selection sucks, but the model is valid.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If someone hadn't mentioned already, there used to be a usenet provider
>>> that delivered a full feed via Satellite.
>>
>> There were, at different times, two companies that did that. Both went
>> under because expenses exceeded income.
>>
>> The one that was _much_ more interesting was the one that Lauren Weinstein
>> had a hand in. It piggy-backed a Usenet feed in the vertical blanking
>> interval of several big "independant" TV stations -- ones that were
>> carried by practically every cable company in the country. Distribution
>> to the cable companies was via satellite, but the USENET feed, being
>> _part_ of the video signal, consumed _zero_ additional bandwidth, and
>> rode the satellite links for free.
>>
>> To get the feed, all you needed was a TV tuner with 'video out', and the
>> purpose-huilt decoder box that extracted the vertical interval data.
>>
>> This service died as the independants moved to encrypted transmission,
>> because the encryption did _not_ perserve anything in the 'blanking'
>> timeslot. only the 'viewable' field-image was trasmitted, _as_ a full-field
>> image. Sync, blanking, etc. was _locally_ generated on the receiving end.
>>
>> An "elegant" idea, done in by changing technology. *sigh*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
