PAY TV
SIR,—Mr. F. C. McLean's letter published on January 13 in the Spectator leaves the reader with the impression that scrambling and unscrambling devices are required when wire distribution is used for pay television. It should be made quite clear that no scrambling and unscrambling devices are neces- sary in the pay television system developed by this Company when it is used in conjunction with wire distribution.
Those of us who have been connected for many years with the distribution of broadcast programmes over wire to millions of people in different parts of the world are not particularly impressed by, or frightened by, the high American cost figures of wire distribution systems quoted in Mr. Mcl-ean's letter. Wired television systems already serve nearly half a million homes in this country and are growing rapidly because they represent a more rational and economic method of distributing television pro- grammes to the people of an urban area than the alternative of a Conventional television receiver and its associated aerials. These systems can be readily adapted to carry additional pay television pro- grammes by the provision of simple and inexpensive apparatus in each home where the pay television service is required, whether that home is already served by the wired system or is not and wishes to continue to use a conventional receiver for the re- ception of the broadcast programmes.
Admittedly the cost of a wired system in rural areas will be higher, and it may be a good many years before a wired pay television service could be made available everywhere. Exactly the same was true of the telephone and electricity services, but no one thought of using this as an argument against their original establishment.—Yours faithfully,
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