This is quite off topic, but as it involves the same satellite technology that was in the background of PG I thought it worth mentioning. I guess it might also be quite interesting as I presume the US/Canada moved on from Analogue satellite a very long time ago, as indeed did the UK - commercially at least.
When the first satellite providers started up in the UK there were two different technologies, one was built from the ground up with new satellites and new broadcasting technology (D-MAC), and one used what was sort of considered to be an communications satellite (rather than what at the time was deemed a proper Direct-to-Home satellite) and the existing broadcast standard that had been used terrestrially for many years (Analogue PAL). The former spent too much money on developing the technology, launching the satellites, and having big plush offices and parties and stuff, and failed, leaving the other to gain a monopoly in the UK market (well they officially merged, but not really). The one that won was Rupert Murdoch's Sky - apparently the worlds first commercial DTH satellite service!
The satellite they used to broadcast to the UK public was Astra1 at 19.2 degrees east. It was joined by several other satellites at the same orbital position (I believe this was unique at the time) and so basically transmitted numerous (was 16, then 32, then 48 then 64 AFAIR) analogue channels to Europe. Some were cool in that they were supposed to be genuinely pan-european (like MTV, Eurosport, and Lifestyle satellite jukebox, which I have mentioned before) and in the same way that prevue guide transmitted the different audio and data over audio subcarriers, you could listen to - particularly Eurosport - in different languages while watching the same picture.
Astra 1 pretty much ended up serving the UK and Germany - they were by far the biggest two users of the satellite transponders, although there were channels destined for other European countries transmitted over the years. Germany's TV on this satellite pretty much stayed Free-To-Air so their channels could also be watched on bog standard Analogue equipment as used in the UK at the time. Sky on the other hand had developed videocrypt encryption and slowly but surely nearly all UK channels became encrypted, with subscription payments required to watch. Because of Sky's control of access to the channels, they had forced migration of almost all UK viewers to the Sky Digital platform by 2001, broadcast from a different orbital position (Astra 2), and using proprietary technology, and analogue (and, shamefully, European) watching pretty much ended in the UK.
Again a little bit like the digital data sent to PG, Astra even had a specific digital audio service called ADR, where the data was broadcast on a subcarrier and re-assembled into digital Audio by the receiver - over an analogue TV channel. Weird!
However Astra1 carried on for a lot longer I guess than anyone expected. As of last month there were still a good number of German channels still transmitting, including Eurosport which was the most interesting one still for UK viewers. I still had an Amstrad SRD2000 (with built in dolby pro-logic decoder and amplifer!) set up that still received these broadcasts.
However the end of April marked the final end of Analogue satellite in Germany, on Astra 1, and it seems in Europe, with the cessation of Analogue broadcast on all transponders, and the replacement on some of them with a new digital HD service. The video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EBBRsJJZ5k shows a guy flicking through the channels in the last few hours.
This is sad for me for a number of reasons. Firstly I have two very very nice analogue recievers that work perfectly well that now are of no use whatsoever, and second, because digital TV over here at least is vastly over-compressed. There's no detail in any pictures any more, and the Analogue signal is - ridiculously - much better looking than the digital equivalent. Possibly the rapid adoption of HD which is really gathering pace is starting to make that not true any more, but it does seem odd that we replaced something from 1988 in 2000 that actually gave viewers a worse picture, and in 2012 we're still doing it.
Finally of course, that someone still broadcast analogue pictures with audio subcarriers, as was used in prevue guide, was kind of cool. Now it's gone.
Anyway I hope this hasn't been too boring for you with me rambling on, just thought it might be a little bit of interest! One other thing, I wonder if this means there's the slightest chance of being able to pick up second hand whatever the piece of equipment is called that muxes the video and audio subcarriers to a baseband signal. Such a thing would of course be very useful in getting real PG hardware to actually work 100% again
