???? – 1998retired
IBM WebExplorer
“Built in Research Triangle Park, browsed the early web, and asked for so little in return.”
“It locked the signal, unlocked the 80s, and even its hackers loved it.”
VideoCipher was the analog scrambling and descrambling equipment that decided which satellite programming TVRO dish owners could actually watch, gating the sky behind a subscription. For everyone with a big dish in the backyard, it was the gatekeeper between free-roaming satellite TV and the wired-up world of pay television. Love it or grumble at it, it defined what satellite TV meant for a generation of viewers.
Its second incarnation, the VideoCipher II, became especially famous for a less flattering reason: its encryption scheme was widely compromised, making it a legend in both boardrooms and basements. By 1998 the system had been retired, its analog locks finally pried open for good. What it left behind was the memory of an era when watching TV from orbit felt like a feat of engineering — one you could occasionally outsm
Spotted something wrong? Every fact on this page traces to a dated source. Fixes make the graveyard better for everyone.
“Built in Research Triangle Park, browsed the early web, and asked for so little in return.”
“The ancestor at every modern desk — 29,290 descendants and counting.”
“The x stood for 68030, and for a Mac that finally read your floppies right.”