[James2001]

I wonder why they went to the extent of making that caption for Rock DJ instead of just showing the edited version of the video and pretending that was what the official video was.

They did that after a while, editing clips from earlier in the video over the end of the song, as well as running the "studio" version of the video.

Another thing it's a shame they haven't dug up was the (incredibly bizarre) original video for Mucho Mambo by Shaft. Was actually an advert for Kiss 100 Radio, but The Box put together an extended version without any Kiss references (bar the 100 on the radio display at the start) and ran it until the proper video was ready.

www.youtube.com 

[James2001]

Another thing I've remembered is around 2000/2001 for a couple of hours in the afternoon the break bumpers had The Box and Smash Hits joint branding. I remember them promoting it in the lead up to the launch, which had us on The Box's old website forums speculating what it was going to be about, hoping it might have been a live MTV Select style show or similar... in the end it was literally nothing other than said different break bumpers, not even any differenced in the playlist. Not entirely sure what the point was. Can't remember if it ended at the same time the Smash Hits channel launched or if it continued for a short time afterwards (it definitely didn't survive the September 2001 revamp anyway).

[James2001]

Kiss still using the incorrect 1998 year on their graphics today, was hoping they might have corrected it.

[TVenthusiasm]

Happy farewell The Box day everyone!

The Box is now using tribute titles - different from the channel's current graphics

[WillPS]

A 1992-2024 graphic has appeared on The Box at some point since Friday night on The Box too. Final afternoon now.

[James2001]

Only appeared on there this morning, it wasn't there last night.

[BlueFrog]

I know they've been testing an on-off 1992-2024 graphic for quite a bit, during the day/night for brief periods. I seem to remember not long after The Box changed their logo that they were testing such graphic.

The weird thing is that the one they were using was meant to be for the previous logo, and was placed as if it was going underneath the DOG for that previous logo. So you could barely see it because it was being covered by the Music Television You Control DOG which is placed differently as opposed to its precedent logo. Weirdly enough, I only remember seeing that happen for one singular video.

[WillPS]

It seems to have appeared and disappeared fairly randomly on the other channels when I've been watching too. Not sure if that's intentional/expected or something not quite behaving as it should.

[James2001]

A bit more digging, and there were at least 3 different styles of burnt-in song captions from the old laserdisc days

This one was presumably in use around 1994/95 (though this recording dates from later)

   

This one was in use around 1996-98

   

And this one 1998-2000

   

At least they changed styles occasionally, the chunky, neon 1980s MTV Europe ones never changed, and they were still in use on some regional MTV versions until 2000 (even popping up on MTV UK occasionally that late- I remember seeing them on Westlife once, and they still pop up on some old videos on MTV 80s and 90s sometimes).

And a final thing I found I have a recording of- "second pick", there was a week in the spring of 1999 where you could request 2 songs per phone call. Was sponsored by Nestle Lion bars (and you got the sound of a lion roaring when you rang up)

   

Would be interesting to see some really early presentation from the channel. The first time I saw it was when friends got cable in 1997 (some family in Derby had cable as early as 1993, but I don't recall ever seeing the box on there... it might not have been on there that early, and wasn't in their packages even by 1997/98 when it was). I'm assuming the ident they've been running with the cube is a really early one, certainly not one I'm familar with so presumably pre-dates 1997.

[mixchris]

I stumbled across these videos from The Box in their early years

youtu.be 

youtu.be 

youtu.be 

There’s loads on this YouTube channel youtube.com 

YouTube - Pop Unlimited
Classic pop & dance from the 90s and 00s.
  Source: youtube.com