Channel video data

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Channel Videodat was a commercial data service of the TV station ProSieben (later VOX ) from the beginning of the 1990s, which emerged from the video data technology developed by Michael Wiegand in 1986 by the WDR Computer Club. Michael Wiegand offered the appropriate decoders as part of his company Wiegand Video-Datensysteme . The company Videodat Medien GmbH took care of the operation.

By using the blanking interval in television broadcasts , files of all kinds were offered for download via a proprietary protocol, which was possible faster than with the analog modem technology customary at the time (approx. 15 Kbits / sec.) And, above all, in contrast to modem transmissions, no chargeable data Telephone line was busy. The selection of software available for download, such as public domain and shareware programs, was limited and was controlled centrally by the provider. Depending on the transmission mode used, the user therefore had to wait until "his" file was broadcast and at the time set his satellite or cable television receiver to the channel on which the data service was broadcast.

Despite these restrictions, Channel Videodat was an alternative to analog modems for many users when it came to downloading larger shareware programs, because ISDN was still not widely used, and broadband access via DSL or cable modems was not yet available in Germany.

The program was later given a graphical user interface and was able to receive images, sounds, HTML pages, messages ( ddp ), drivers and software all over Europe around the clock ; The media artists Werner Kiera, Michael Wild von Hohenborn and Thilo Alt used this for the first time with the artist group MayaMedia to present their own picture galleries. The software not only offered programs for computers running MS-DOS , but also for the Atari ST , for example .

In order to drive development, many of the services became chargeable. The provider also later had to move to the VOX broadcaster when ProSieben wanted to use the blanking interval for its own teletext service.

From 1994, Channel Videodat also broadcast content from the FidoNet mailbox network, which led to fierce controversy among the network's operators regarding the commercial use of FidoNet. Many FidoNet users added attachments to their forum posts that expressly forbade distribution via commercial data services and, in some cases, took legal action against Channel Videodat using warnings.

In addition to these problems, the speed advantage of channel video data began to wane due to the development of faster analog modems ( V.34 ) and the increasing spread of ISDN, so that the hoped-for subscriber numbers could not even come close. Other reasons were the low popularity of the fee-based services, the low distribution of VOX and the growing importance of the Internet .

In 1995, Channel Videodat filed for bankruptcy with approximately 60,000 registered users.

The Net On Air service launched by Wiegand , which broadcast complete websites that were edited, never got out of its test phase and also failed at the end of the 1990s.

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