The Sky analogue viewing cards

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Page corrected and additional info added 7th July 2002.

Heres a bit of history - scans of the front and back of Sky analogue viewing cards.

I have erased the serial numbers on the card using MS Paint just to stop any possible problems with Sky.

20th April 2003:     Coming soon - scans of more of the Sky cards.

Thanks to Stephen McGarry for the scans of the cards below

If anyone has one of the other cards lying around, please scan the front & back, and send me the pictures.

Thanks to Chris Wathan for the information below.

The yellow card in the middle was the last analogue viewing card design. All the cards of the blue design you have at the top were de-activated around late August/early September 1999, after a  decoder message telling you to use your new card was transmitted for a couple of weeks before hand (every so often your VideoCrypt decoder would overlay 'PLEASE USE YELLOW CARD' over the programme - I think 

I'm pretty sure there is only 1 design you don't have on that page. IIRC,  there were only 4 different designs over the years, mainly because it wasn't actually that many years - the first viewing card design came out in  December 1990 IIRC (the entire Sky service was free at launch, but following the re-arrangements that took place during the BSB merger, The Movie Channel (retained from BSB, but had a revamp with new Sky branding) continued to be a subscription channel as it was on BSB, and at  the same time Sky Movies became subscription too) and the last design came out in July 1999.

Not sure when the blue one at the top was introduced, but I think it was sometime during 1996.

The only thing I can remember about the card you don't have is that it's black and it features the slightly modified Sky logo (the first logo had a little y in Sky, as it is on the clouds card at the bottom of your page. The replacement was exactly the same except that the little y was changed to a big Y).

Note also that the 1999 yellow card features the Sky 'egg' logo. This is the wrong logo for the time because Sky dropped it in late 1998 / very early 1999 and replaced it with the Sky 'swoosh' logo (same as they have today only with a curvy line in there too). So it would seem that they designed that card a while in advance.

It's interesting that Sky's attitude to viewing cards has changed with SkyDigital. Analogue viewing cards held the same design until the card itself was changed, which is why there were only 4 designs. So a card sent out in April 1999 (which would've still been the blue one at that time) would still have an out of date 1996 Sky logo on it.

In contrast, there are at least 2, and possibly 3 different viewing card designs in circulation for SkyDigital already. But no one's card has ever been replaced. A viewing card sent out in 1998 when the service was launched (the short lived 'egg' logo SkyDigital viewing card) will still be in use today, even though it has been surperceded by a 'swoosh' logo card (which I have) and possibly another design since then. It would seem that your SkyDigital viewing card is a permanent testament to the era of Sky's branding in which you first had SkyDigital, because a new design does not automatically mean a new type of card.

9th July 2002 update.

I ran across these 2 pictures on a web page somewhere. These are also Sky analogue viewing cards. I have no idea exactly when they were in use - so if you know, get in contact!

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