Does anybody remember Wometco Home Theater?

[jack p sampson]

In Nj and Ny in the late 70s and early 80s, people subscribed to this Miami based movie service. It consisted of a decoder box and antenna and was the only source of pay movies and really coincided with the growth and popularity of vhs. The first film i saw was the Last Hard Men, the first R rated western i ever saw in my house and i remember it being a major event because my tv reception was terrible and seeing clear sharp pic resolution was such a revelation. The one drawback to this was that a microphone was needed for the audio and everyone had to remain absolutely quiet during a recording. Sometimes the sounds of dinner plates and conversation would be heard on playback, lol. A fun time tho.

[Charlie_G]

I remember this service well. It was on channel 68 in my area. They used to have Adult programs late night, and as a kids my brothers and I used to move the rabbit ears all around the room trying to get a good view of some scrambled nudity...lol. Being the youngest of three boys made me the designated lookout in case our parents suspected anything. I am happy to say we were never caught. A friend who lived across the street had it installed in his house and I would on occasion see some interesting movies on this service.

[John P]

Channel 68 in NJ?

Every night staring at 5pm, I would watch Speed Racer/The Mighty Hercules which would be followed by one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Uncle Floyd Show at 6.

Then WHT would come on and the screen would scramble.

[Charlie_G]

Originally Posted by John P

Channel 68 in NJ?

Every night staring at 5pm, I would watch Speed Racer/The Mighty Hercules which would be followed by one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Uncle Floyd Show at 6.

Then WHT would come on and the screen would scramble.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was channel 68. (I grew up in Paterson NJ). I remember watching Uncle Floyd as well and like you mentioned, WHT would come on and the screen would scramble.

[scott favareille]

Does anybody know which came first, WHT or ON-TV (Los Angeles), which was similiar as much of the Los Angeles metro area did not get cable until the 1980s. (ON-TV also showed live sports like the Lakers, Dodgers, & Angels) LA had a second similiar system, SelecTV, which started shortly after ON-TV. (ON-TV did show edited versions of XXX films late at night also. Both systems started at 7 PM weekdays, and around 6 PM on weekends.)

[Mike S.]

Originally Posted by scott favareille

Does anybody know which came first, WHT or ON-TV (Los Angeles), which was similiar as much of the Los Angeles metro area did not get cable until the 1980s. (ON-TV also showed live sports like the Lakers, Dodgers, & Angels) LA had a second similiar system, SelecTV, which started shortly after ON-TV. (ON-TV did show edited versions of XXX films late at night also. Both systems started at 7 PM weekdays, and around 6 PM on weekends.)

We had On-TV in the Detroit suburbs as well in the early 80's -- before cable tv was available.

[Robert Richardson]

Here's a 1982 WHT promo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIuSPrLRN4

[joe pete]

In my case it was wht from ch67 smithtown new york.
I built the audio descrambler myself and remember listening to the movie
called "repo man" circa 1984.
I was later in the process of building the video descrambler when the channel
went belly up.
The drawback to this type system was it was prone to interference during
thunderstorms,which are numerous around here during the summer months.
The channel was taken over by "U68", a poor mans version of MTV.In the early
days people were complaining you never see blacks on MTV,so U68 tried to
pick up the slack.No VJays on camera,just narrators.This was before the must
carry rule for cable tv,so to get U68 you had to revert back to a uhf antenna.
People were converting to cable tv and didn't want to bounce back and forth.
That is what did in U68 and they bit the dust.

[Luis Domenech]

I remember WHT and I thought it was a premium pay channel like HBO but I vaguely recall being able to catch snippets of fuzzy programming on some UHF channel in NYC. Wasn't there also a Wometco Theatre chain?

[joe pete]

Originally Posted by Luis Domenech

I remember WHT and I thought it was a premium pay channel like HBO but I vaguely recall being able to catch snippets of fuzzy programming on some UHF channel in NYC. Wasn't there also a Wometco Theatre chain?

They also used to broadcast from the empire state building.
In their final days they broadcast from there only- as a last resort.

[Mark R. Hill]

We had something called HOLLYWOOD HOME THEATER in the mid to late 70s. It was on our cable system. Required a descrambler box the size of a cigarette pack. They showed just 2 movies a night, with 2 showings each. Somehow this was just ran on videotape from local the cable office. And if something went wrong with the showing- which it did FREQUENTLY!- the picture would start rolling. We would watch it anyway! Early offerings were: SILVER STREAK, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THE GODFATHER, CARRIE. This was back when we had just 10 cable channels and a brown and tan WIRED "remote control" box with buttons for each channel. Whoever held the box was the LORD OF THE DEN!

[Jeremy Slate]

Never had this stuff, the earliest I remember would be 82 or 83. My mom for a time worked at the cable company and we had all the premium movie channels, HBO, Showtime and Cinemax. Just a week or so back I was looking at the 80s and early 90s HBO bumpers. Now that's nostalgia. The HBO one where the camera travels through the city and over the buildings into the O of HBO just takes me back. To a lesser extent the 1987 one with the light through a filmstrip also brings back great memories.

[BobG]

Here's a Wikipedia entry on the station that started out as WBTB (which is what it was when my brother and I discovered Uncle Floyd) and then became the Wometco Home Theater station (and later U-68)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WFUT-DT

[RichardDoyle]

In Winnipeg we got a single pay channel that started up around 1982. I remember that if you eased your rotary channel tuner to between channels 6 and 7, you could pick it up mostly unscrambled. I used to do this to watch the Playboy show that came on around midnight on Fridays (I had a small TV in my room). I also saw "Night of the Living Dead" for the first time this way (My mother stormed in to see what all the noise was right when the little girl zombie is killing her mother ... ouch.) Unfortunately, they fixed this after about 6 months.

Later on my dad was given a pirated descrambler by a friend of his (My dad worked in television at the time.) That was good for a couple of years until they changed their method of scrambling.

[joe pete]

After WHT went belly up a guy gave me a legit antenna used by WHT customers.It was a yagi tweaked especially for that channel.