Talk:The Box (American TV channel)

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California

I thought the Box was southern California based. I know it was free in Sacramento.

The BOX was actually started by my father, Steve Peters, in the mid 1980's. When he first started it, it was in Miami only. He did, in fact actually sell it to Viacom.

Could you add more detail then for us? I remember reading an article about it at its peak in the mid 90's. Record companies would sometimes pay to "jack the Box," as it was called, having their employees call in to give their videos exposure. Eventually I think the network just offered packaged deals to record companies to openly promote their videos at specified times. One such video I saw heavily promoted was Vanilla Ice's "Roll 'Em Up" about his love of marijuana. It's safe to say that was the ONLY place I ever heard or saw that song.

The channel also featured the R-rated version of videos, when available. One I remember quite well was Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" which featured a dancer in one of the group scenes who wasn't wearing underwear under her skirt. Scenes featuring the nudity were replaced for MTV, BET and other mainstream outlets, and that more risque version is now quite rare (there are a dozen of the "clean" version on YouTube but nary a hint of the racier one). Other "dirty dancers" that seemed to always be on my local (Philly) channel were Dis-n-dat, Hoes with Attitudes (HWA), and Patra (they even ran a contest for two people to go to Jamaica and attend a Patra concert, and then showed the two schmucks who won hanging at the concert as one of the videos a person could order!)

That one article I read mentioned there were problems with collection, too; with the cable companies not collecting from the phone companies, and thus not paying the network--something like that. It would be nice if someone could document how these systems were set up, what the technology was (I assumed the grainy look of the videos was from the "jukebox" system which I assumed used some kind of digital compression), what the financial problems were, and what its relationship is/was to the UK channel of the same name. Although Wikipedia forbids original research, I think if you know how these worked, you could document them here as an authority. --76.114.195.236 (talk) 00:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page really needs cleanup...it would work to add a logo and more information. The only source I have is the Internet Archive page for the site from late 2000. I remember, however, that several artists (notable ones including 3LW, Innosense, and several others, including Insane Clown Posse & Twiztid) having Box-only videos. Bob Greenlake (talk) 04:51, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it may of worked like the old TV guide stars just local listings / like a weather star with out the national feed. Like how today's weather scan is. It likely had a phone line coming in to it at the cable head end. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe The Dragon (talk • contribs) 18:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot missing or wrong, such as once The Box was Nielson Rated that they beat MTV in every market, or that the quality was low (MPEGs were streamed at 4 MB/s). I'll have to talk to my old co-workers to get the details.

Anyone want to format the article (I'm WAY too lazy) I can tell you the technology. Hint... Windows NT 3.51 - Rick DeBay —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.64.240.213 (talk) 09:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]