The development of a pay-television system and equipment

The system described applies to wired-broadcasting networks of the multi-pair variety. The pay-television user establishes credit by the insertion of one or more coins into a special subscriber´s unit. The established credit will be consumed at a faster rate for an expensive programme, and vice versa. On the other hand, the subscriber can at any time switch off, and preserve the remaining credit for some future occasion. If the credit is exhausted, the unit switches off, and no pay-television programme can be received until more money is inserted. Means are provided in the central station from which the pay-television programmes emanate and from which the price is controlled to display numerically and to print out minute by minute how much money has been collected from viewing subscribers since the start of a particular programme. This is achieved by digital techniques combined with data transmission, and it constitutes a complete, automatic and instant accountancy system.