Anyone else remember these?
Our cable TV system in the 1980s and 1990s had 2 sets of channels: 'A' and 'B'. The cable box had 'A' and 'B' buttons so you could switch between each set of channels. But each set only had maybe 30 channels, and there were only a small percentage of those that anyone ever watched. A lot of it was stuff like "color bars" (which was just color bars) or "reserved for future use." This was on Storer Cable, which later became TKR.
Our cable went out sometimes, but the 'A' channels were worse. Sometimes the entire 'A' set would go out, while 'B' would be just fine. When MTV finally came to the area, it was a 'B' channel. But at the height of its popularity, it became an 'A' channel, and everyone was mad because the 'A' channels went out a lot more.
If you were taping something off TV, you had to have the TV on the same set of channels that you were taping off of.
Also, I think some parts of town may have had only one set of channels (and thus fewer channels), because Storer just didn't want to bother.
I remember this from Kansas City (actually Merriam, KS) back in the 80s and 90s.
Never saw that, just one big bank of potential channels and we either got them or didn't.
I think people actually had three banks of channels on their boxes where I grew up (A, B, C).
Growing up with what was Lowell Cable all the way back to 1981, it was just one bank of channels. Went from 2 to upper-40's or so.
San Jose had the A/B switch. All the network channels + HBO, ESPN, etc. could have fit on one side with room to spare, but they just had to bundle in home shopping, QVC, etc. and arrange them randomly, so there we were.
I knew a guy who worked there and asked him about getting Comedy Central added (for South Park; this was many years ago). He said no actually, the next one they would add is Food Network. Oh, what's that? 24 hours a day of cooking shows, taking up one of the remaining slots.
Never had A/B channels, it was always one set. From what I recall the late 80's Zenith set had a tuner that covered the superband/hyperband so it would not have been required for less than ~100 channels.
I grew up with Warner Cable in suburban Cincinnati, which used QUBE hardware until we got a Scientific Atlanta digital cable box around 1996. The TV in the basement had a hard-wired remote similar to the one below. It's not an A/B selector, but you would pick a channel by column and row. The famous interactive features that were QUBE's trademark upon its debut had been turned off long before we moved to Cincinnati in 1988.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Qube_Cable_Remote.jpg)
The TV in the family room had a Pioneer set-top box made of two components: One was a large, beige/brown box with a key, and the other as a small box with an LED display, about the size of a small alarm clock, that you could use to change the channels.
The cable system in the City of Pittsburgh had a dual-coax A/B system. When I moved to the city in '99 it was under the TCI name - then soon after bought/merged and became "AT&T" for not very long, before becoming Comcast (which it is today).
In the early 2000's they upgraded the existing plant to a modern HFC system - When they replaced all the equipment - splitters/taps/amps, they removed all of the old dual stuff so it looks pretty clean, but since they just retrofitted, most spots still have all the coax lashed. And most houses in the city have the 2 coax-glued-together wires strung about unless they're new or renovated.
As far back as I remember we just had a single box with a dial. Don't remember how high the channels went. In the late 1980s we got a digital box with a remote you could plug your remoteless TV into to power it off and on. That was cool. By the time I got back to the States all TVs sold were cable-ready.
The channel numbers used a box with a slider, but the 'A' and 'B' buttons were on a smaller box on top of that.
That was before we buyed a remote control set in 1984. I think you could use the remote control to change the channel numbers, but if you wanted to switch between 'A' and 'B', you still had to use the box.
Also, I remember one of the channels on Storer Cable was called Network Preempt. The Cincinnati stations were absolutely loaded with preemptions of network programs. Just loaded with them. So the Network Preempt channel was supposed to show the programs that the local stations preempted. But one evening, one of my favorite shows was preempted, so I tuned to Network Preempt, and they were just showing the same local station that preempted my show, so it was worthless.