The FSOL Message Board

You know when you hear something so many times your mind filters out the meaning and you just passively accept it without question ? Well I realised I'd been doing exactly that with the radio ISDN sets. You know how it usually opens with -

You are listening to a test transmission for a new form of information transfer. Not only are you receiving audio but you are also receiving image and text data. Test transmission begin ...

For further information on any aspect of this broadcast contact PO BOX 1871. London W10 5ZL.

Copyright has been retained in the sound and visual

For internet connection please access the following code - FSOL @ FSOL demon co uk

So the question is - Did an 'audio, video & text version' of these ISDN broadcasts actually exist, and if so - how the blue blazes (especially back then) were you meant to access them ? Was it only piped to the radio stations - was it that essentially they just emailed them some pictures and some information that was put up on the Radio 1 website whilst the shows were being broadcast ?

I'm thinking that PO BOX is now long gone - and especially the email address (or 'internet connection code' - for some reason given without the 'dot' parts of the address) but those are just secondary ponderings

So yeah the a/v ISDN sets: just some technological spin to further the 'Future' part of FSOLs name or is there any evidence of such high-tech witchcraft ever taking place ?

I've been wondering the same thing a few days ago when I was writing about the first 3D Headspace ISDN transmissions...

Apparently there was audio/picture/text stream (no video, the internet was too slow for that back then)
or probably you hear the audio on the radio and log on just the see the pictures/text that go with it...

I don't know anyone who experienced these... I don't know if they're real but there's no reason why they shouldn't be.
The pictures that went through were probably the ones from the ISDN booklet (and the dozens of small ones from the old EBV sites) and the text, the ramblings were never a problem for Gaz, and as we know they have tons of photographed material and additional stuff by Mr. Riphead...

Very few people had modems faster than the infamous 56K back then - and to find people with ISDN lines who listened FSOL - well, that's a needle in a haystack...

- about the access, the radio stations probably had noting to do with it,
you just mail the demon, it gives you access code to a certain website where you see pictures / text while listening - I bet it was hell of a trip

I always took it that the "new form" was somehow including visual and text data in the audio, as their music induces pretty distinct visual images, a bit in the same way "communication without words".

Maybe I completely misunderstood it..

Pandemonium wrote:Very few people had modems faster than the infamous 56K back then - and to find people with ISDN lines who listened FSOL - well, that's a needle in a haystack...

56k ?! You'd be a king of kings back in '94 with that sort of speed - I think it was closer to 14.4 (or 28.8 if you were flash!) back then.

Yeah I guess emailing them and them returning a URL made sense. Though I wonder why they didn't just mention the website on air - unless back then it was something like standford.edu.net/rec/archive/media/~1299432/artists/f/fsol/fsol-index.html back then, in which case that it's probably why they went the email route so send the address !

haha! "fo furrrrther information"

oh yeah that's an echo in my brain!



really though.....i just want to know wtf "spoiler technology" is

Haha, yeah, did you mean that "Warning! Spooler Technology is in use!" Announcement? Yeah me too would like to know what kind of weird technology that was. Think it was only for the drama of it, adding some Cyberspace-like SciFi-paranoia to the atmosphere of it. Or some early copyprotection, when you tried to record the transmission, a high-pitched, not audible signal was sended to destroy the spools of your cassette-player!!

Ah and btw. I really think the part with the visuals and the text data was indeed aimed at the receivers in those radio-stations, as back in 94' only very few people were able to do this with a 'private' internet-connection. I'm still not sure on this whole Internet-thing with FSOL back in the 90ies, I mean my first connection was also with a 56k modem back in 2002, and then with ISDN 2 years later, even with a connection like this it would have lasted days, if not weeks to receive the whole data package of a full 2 hour transmission of audible material in a decent quality. How the hell did those radio stations handle this back in the 90ies, when everything was even slower?

I always assumed the spoiler technology was the audio watermarks stamped over the whole thing.- the digital Future Sound of London voices and so on meaning it's hard to bootleg individual tracks from the set.

Spoiler - pronounced like 'Spooler'? Ah, OK. I always thought it has something to do with 'spools' like spools of tape or wire or something. Another mystery solved Btw, it's heard only on the 'max (original)' track, even on the archived version?

I thought it was 'spooling technology', thinking it was to do with the streaming/buffering aspect of the ISDN transmission - http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/spooling.html

Has anyone got a youtube link with a time code so I can to it listen properly ?

Hmmm... I had 56K modem in 1997, and I live in a 3rd world country, so I thought the 1st worlders had it at least 3-4 years earlier...

I presume radio stations had ISDN lines, most of them by default, and the serious ones had web-sites...

I think that Ross should compile a list of questions and ask Brian in the name of the Board - how were ISDN transmission done in 1994...

Pandemonium wrote:Hmmm... I had 56K modem in 1997, and I live in a 3rd world country, so I thought the 1st worlders had it at least 3-4 years earlier...

According to ol' wikipedia the modems of the 90s were released at the following speeds on these years -

14.4k Modem (2400 baud) - 1991
28.8k Modem (3200 baud) - 1994
33.6k Modem (3429 baud) - 1996
56k Modem (8000/3429 baud) - 1998

But yeah I believe businesses had ISDN lines though am unsure at what speed ISDN ran at

haha this is funny

i surely have always heard it as "spoiler" and not "spooler" and i've always taken it to mean well.....nothing

something like dennis is saying: "Think it was only for the drama of it, adding some Cyberspace-like SciFi-paranoia to the atmosphere of it."

or perhaps as he's suggesting maybe it was some kind of scrambled signal.
but with that said nothing was scrambled.....listeners obviously recorded the broadcasts just fine!

It took 14 years, from 1980 until 1994, for the speed of the modem to develop from 14.4Kpbs to 28.9Kbps but it was only two years later, in 1996, that Brent Townshend came up with the technology for the 56k modem. - I generally studied this, but I see Wikipedia also lists 1998, which is weird...

Maybe I'm wrong and I had 56K in 1998 instead of 1997 - but it definitely was in use since 1996, but when was it in commercial use, I'm too lazy to google right now as I said - Ross - please ask Brian

PS - thinking back, this region may be undeveloped economically, but it always had above-average internet access, even today... so... are we still 3rd world or we made it to the 2nd league...

I always assumed the "spoiler technology" was the audio samples pulled from some of the most dramatic moments in a movie.

haha...that's not a bad guess either!