The Adult Channel

Home Video Channel (HVC) was a British cable TV channel that started broadcasting from September 1985, until on 1 May 1999 and broadcast movies (such as horror, action and adventure) between the hours of 20:00 and 00:00 every night.

The channel was created by "Ealing Cable" as one of two channels to help build up content and viewership, (Other being an Asian channel - Indra Dhnush). During its early years in operation HVC purchased many movies as cheaply as possible, before making copies via low-band U-Matic tapes and distributed its films to other cable operators, along with a paper schedule to play out within their own local cable are on a semi-automated system.

HVC was sold to one of its rivals, Prem1ere in March 1987, who continued the operations of sending out tapes, and increased its operational hours to 19.00-07.00. In 1989 HVC operations were sold to a private consortium, who grow it operations by starting direct broadcast (instead of sending out tape) to British and European Cable operate and transmitting on the Astra satellite system.

In January 1992, the company started a porn channel called The Adult Channel, a satellite delivered subscription service that features cable version adult movies. The Adult Channel broadcast four hours a day commencing at 00:00, and was available to approximately 2 million cable households and approximately 4 million (DTH) satellite households in the United Kingdom. The Adult Channel was also available to DTH satellite households throughout Continental Europe and had subscribers in over 40 countries. The Home Video Channel continued to operate during the evening with exclusive movie service featuring action, adventure and horror during the pre-midnight. The two services were offered to cable operators as a seamless 20:00 to 04:00 programming service at a package price.

In 1995, the station transmission was moved from the Astra 1B Satellite to the then new Astra 1D. Unfortunately channels used frequencies that were not available on the original Sky receivers due to being outside the original BSS band, Sky issued viewers with frequency shifters ("ADX Plus Channel Expanders"), comprising small boxes the size of a cigarette packet with a single switch and an on/off LED. When connected between the dish and the receiver (and powered by the receiver) these allowed viewers to switch manually between the Astra 1A and Astra 1D frequency bands - precisely 250 MHz.

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