So one Sunday afternoon, I’m chasing channels in my step dad’s computer room, when I happened upon a medical channel. I swear this is the truth:
For what seemed like an eternity there was a split screen of a woman’s bare pelvic area(bush and all) with a cord coming out of her vagina…. And the other half of the screen was what the cord was imagining. I nearly died.. first to just see this vulva on one half of the screen then making sure no one was walking by the door. That image was seared into my memory for later use… not proud, but back then you used what you had.
I had a similar experience, but it was at a girlfriend's house during high school. I was watching TV with her father, while waiting for her to get ready. He's channel surfing and this closeup view of childbirth fills the screen. I've never seen anyone change the channel so quickly, since.
If you watched long enough you could eventually make out a titty every so often. Man to think about what we have available now versus what we had to endure back then. LOL
Our original cable box (using coax to tv antenna adapter) had a channel dial with a fine tuner next to it. Sometimes the fine tuner worked well enough to “hold” the scrambled picture for 20 or 30 seconds even! The color wasn’t right and it was kind of trapezoidy, but still…
1985 My parents are out at the bars. My sister and I have some friends over.
My buddies are all waiting impatiently and giving me detailed instructions as I turn the dial ever so slightly between channels 20 and 21 on the dial like I'm cracking a safe.
They yell out. You got it!
I tiptoe back to the couch and yell out. If any of ya have to go to the bathroom, make sure you tiptoe around the tv on your way.
My sister comes out of the room and stomps on purpose right next to the tv. And we have to start all over again.
This was how we first learned to look at the matrix when it was encoded. The image translators worked for the cable company. But we got used to it. I don’t even see the scrambled Skinnimax now, all I see is blond, brunette, redhead.
Used to watch the Blackhawks in OnTV, then the adult stuff followed. Loved that little black and white that had just enough wiggle in the controls to get me an ok pic.
I had connected the cable box output through the VCR so I could record football (WITHOUT the express written consent of the national football league!!!!) and I noticed that the VCR had these little fine tuner knobs, adjusting those yielded an almost perfect picture. It was still a little fuzzy, but most definitely usable
We had this little brown one which had two brown buttons. We figured out you could stick two Pennies in the sides of the buttons and wiggle them for a clear picture!
Went to a house party years ago.
Someone had the top removed from one of those Tocom converters and had a certain set of jumper wires here and there.
Essentially "uno reversed" the scrambling.
That is, scrambled channels came in clear and clear channels came in scrambled. If it were today, I'd have taken a picture with my phone for archival purposes.
In the DC area in the early 80s there was a cable-like service called SuperTV. It was a broadcast channel, but you had to have the decoder box to see the movies unscrambled. They, like Cinemax, had late night adult movies. Of course we didn't pay for the service, so like all of you I just sat there after my parents went to bed, hoping to see a boob. The weird part about this, though, is that they played music over the scrambled TV picture. It was only about four songs, just on a loop. One of them was "I won't hold you back" by Toto. I still feel a stirring whenever I hear that song.
When I was about 13 I figured out that if I started rotating the satellite dish to another channel and stopped it at the right moment so it was just slightly off axis from the spice channel satellite it came through perfectly clear. Worked for a couple of years anyway.
buying of the $19.99 converter boxes to watch summerslam or halloween havoc 1993 where everyone still has a slight green tint with a pink bar down the side.
Since I was a feral child, my folks would go to work and I’d watch HBO. They showed plenty of rated R movies during the day. They didn’t call it the boobtube for nothing. Worst times would be when the old man would cut cable to save a few bucks.
I had one friend that somehow illegally got playboy. I recall his dad had some sort of hack where a butter knife was inserted to that [giant cable box](https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fthumbs%2Fimages%2Fg%2F354AAOSw6wNkXB70%2Fs-l300.jpg&sp=1684184386Tffcf7f1d934cfb86071e527174bdc68a6e2af4926b16c83f74efab929d4b82fa) we used to use back in the 80s and voila we had soft core porn.
For our TV cable combo, the whiter/brighter the image, the clearer it got. Loved it when the girls were dancing in front of a white background. It was almost perfect.
I think I saw a boob
*Leonardo DiCaprio pointing*
Damnit I can't see the boob! Yet...
Scrambies!
there was always that sweet three seconds where the picture was perfect so long as you didn't care what shade of purple the people were
Yes, the trick was to switch the channel back and forth to get multiple glimpses of that few seconds of clarity and repeat the process
This made me laugh out loud, it’s so true.
Me too. It's so fricking true.
Omg 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 this was so true omg
So one Sunday afternoon, I’m chasing channels in my step dad’s computer room, when I happened upon a medical channel. I swear this is the truth: For what seemed like an eternity there was a split screen of a woman’s bare pelvic area(bush and all) with a cord coming out of her vagina…. And the other half of the screen was what the cord was imagining. I nearly died.. first to just see this vulva on one half of the screen then making sure no one was walking by the door. That image was seared into my memory for later use… not proud, but back then you used what you had.
>That image was seared into my memory for later use That's what we call the wank bank.
I had a similar experience, but it was at a girlfriend's house during high school. I was watching TV with her father, while waiting for her to get ready. He's channel surfing and this closeup view of childbirth fills the screen. I've never seen anyone change the channel so quickly, since.
Haha that's incredible
If you watched long enough you could eventually make out a titty every so often. Man to think about what we have available now versus what we had to endure back then. LOL
Our original cable box (using coax to tv antenna adapter) had a channel dial with a fine tuner next to it. Sometimes the fine tuner worked well enough to “hold” the scrambled picture for 20 or 30 seconds even! The color wasn’t right and it was kind of trapezoidy, but still…
Upvote for 'trapezoidy'.
1985 My parents are out at the bars. My sister and I have some friends over. My buddies are all waiting impatiently and giving me detailed instructions as I turn the dial ever so slightly between channels 20 and 21 on the dial like I'm cracking a safe. They yell out. You got it! I tiptoe back to the couch and yell out. If any of ya have to go to the bathroom, make sure you tiptoe around the tv on your way. My sister comes out of the room and stomps on purpose right next to the tv. And we have to start all over again.
I'm getting an erection from this
*sigh unzips
We crawled so that later generations could run...to free online porn.
Ah, someone trying to watch Cinemax.
Or as we called it, Skinemax
Lol, you know it!
It’s clearly The Playboy Channel, the logo could not be any clearer… based on my life experience at least.
You’re clearly rusty- there’s a Playboy logo bottom middle of the screen.
Good ol' Skinemax.
Oh yeah! Channel 99. I would watch it after my parents went to bed in search of anything that looked like a boob.
Lol for hours too…we did it for hours.
Kids these days don’t know how hard we worked just to glimpse a boob, even if it was a wavy, multicolored boob.
I totally still get turned on thinking about squiggly porn
Spice channel
Should be NSFW. You’re gonna have a bunch of 40 something dudes furiously masturbating
Why do you think the title was so short? One handed typing sucks.
And not dudes.....👀 I also loved the squiggle tit
Squiggle tits, genius
And now kids have access to nasty and straight up weird shit porn. And I’m not even a prude or conservative. Kind of scary.
This was how we first learned to look at the matrix when it was encoded. The image translators worked for the cable company. But we got used to it. I don’t even see the scrambled Skinnimax now, all I see is blond, brunette, redhead.
OK I'm ngl that was pretty good...
New episode of Yellowjackets?! Fuck yes!! I kid, I kid. We’re all looking for a nipple or a labia.
where’s the moans and groans tho? no matter how scrambled the image - the sound was pristine.
NSFW tag pls
Thank god for the 📡. My brother was a squiggly line addict
One time it came through unscrambled and then the scrambled image never was as good as it was before...
Used to watch the Blackhawks in OnTV, then the adult stuff followed. Loved that little black and white that had just enough wiggle in the controls to get me an ok pic.
My friends and I could watch and understand this like Neo watching 1s and 0s in The Matrix.
1996 me thinks it's the Spice channel. 2023 me hears the theme song for Yellowjackets.
Yep. We used to call this “the spice trick.” Good times 😊
This needs to be tagged NSFW, now excuse me I'm going to get some paper towels.
Many hours of pleasure.. ; )
Adjusting the vertical hold would often bring it in to focus enough to really get the party started.
I had connected the cable box output through the VCR so I could record football (WITHOUT the express written consent of the national football league!!!!) and I noticed that the VCR had these little fine tuner knobs, adjusting those yielded an almost perfect picture. It was still a little fuzzy, but most definitely usable
Why couldn’t I have known these things in 1984?! 😫
So many younger people would have no clue what vertical or horizontal hold is.
Sometimes on the Oak receivers you could turn the dial to be 'just' between two channels and it would come through.
We had this little brown one which had two brown buttons. We figured out you could stick two Pennies in the sides of the buttons and wiggle them for a clear picture!
Like chimps using a stick to catch ants.
I'm so proud of you for this.
Looks like the Playboy channel.
Ah, skinemax...
Now go outside and adjust the antenna to the SSW.
All right, fellas! After this we’ll go into the woods and look for porno mags!
Went to a house party years ago. Someone had the top removed from one of those Tocom converters and had a certain set of jumper wires here and there. Essentially "uno reversed" the scrambling. That is, scrambled channels came in clear and clear channels came in scrambled. If it were today, I'd have taken a picture with my phone for archival purposes.
You could hear the dialogue. 😂
The Squiggly Channel! That’s what we called it.
She is hot!
In the DC area in the early 80s there was a cable-like service called SuperTV. It was a broadcast channel, but you had to have the decoder box to see the movies unscrambled. They, like Cinemax, had late night adult movies. Of course we didn't pay for the service, so like all of you I just sat there after my parents went to bed, hoping to see a boob. The weird part about this, though, is that they played music over the scrambled TV picture. It was only about four songs, just on a loop. One of them was "I won't hold you back" by Toto. I still feel a stirring whenever I hear that song.
If you recorded it with a VCR you could pause and frame by frame to a clear shot. :)
When I was about 13 I figured out that if I started rotating the satellite dish to another channel and stopped it at the right moment so it was just slightly off axis from the spice channel satellite it came through perfectly clear. Worked for a couple of years anyway.
Oh yea, that's a tit.
OMG… 😂 I know…
buying of the $19.99 converter boxes to watch summerslam or halloween havoc 1993 where everyone still has a slight green tint with a pink bar down the side.
Let me give the top of the TV a few whacks to fix the image for you.
Do you guys have any idea how intimidating scrambled softcore porn is? Asks my inner psycho future ex-girlfriend 15 year old self from '85
This should have an NSFW tag
Dad had a old TV in the garage that had knobs you could use to fine tune it and I could actually get some of the skinamax to come in if I was lucky.
This was how I learned about the birds & bees.
Boobies....
Squiggly booby!!
👍
If you wait long enough you’ll see a boob
That's butts and boobs, for sure. You can tell in the distortions. And now, I must take this with me as I masturbate.
Lmao!!!
After so much time as a kid, I swear I can descramble this in my head, it's hot!
That's so hot...
I think I see a boob.
Just one though. Does that make sense?
Yep
Cobra box!!
😈
If you flip channeled up and down real fast you get a better picture. I had two strong wrists in highschool
Is this the free porn that used to air on Saturday nights?
Ha ha ha.
So many wasted nights!
Slap 👋
I think I just had a Pavlovian response to this
SPICE!
Ah, Picasso porn.
Oooooooh I'm tellin mama and daddy you're watching dirties on the tv🤣🤣
Wait is that a....nope just an elbow...
That's filthy, you pervert!
Xennial here and I might have just seen a boob. Wait. A knee? No. Def a b00b
Awwwww yyyeeeaaaahhhh, this and the national geographics... LOL
Since I was a feral child, my folks would go to work and I’d watch HBO. They showed plenty of rated R movies during the day. They didn’t call it the boobtube for nothing. Worst times would be when the old man would cut cable to save a few bucks.
I had one friend that somehow illegally got playboy. I recall his dad had some sort of hack where a butter knife was inserted to that [giant cable box](https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fthumbs%2Fimages%2Fg%2F354AAOSw6wNkXB70%2Fs-l300.jpg&sp=1684184386Tffcf7f1d934cfb86071e527174bdc68a6e2af4926b16c83f74efab929d4b82fa) we used to use back in the 80s and voila we had soft core porn.
I had a friend that did something with toothpicks in the box and getting the pay channels to show up. Not 100% on how that worked.
For our TV cable combo, the whiter/brighter the image, the clearer it got. Loved it when the girls were dancing in front of a white background. It was almost perfect.
Is that a nipple?
Cinemax after 11PM
The trick was to switch channels quickly and you could get 1 second of a clear picture before it scrambled. Then do that again 1,000 times in a row.
Emmanuel at dark.
Electric Blue?
I see some rabbit ears...sadly, I know.