# TV reminiscing



## garsh

styleruk said:


> Wow, not that far back. but my TV when I was a kid had 4 channels and I could scan all 4 in a second.


Your TV could *scan* channels?

When I was a kid, I *was* my dad's remote control.


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## styleruk

garsh said:


> Your TV could *scan* channels?
> 
> When I was a kid, I *was* my dad's remote control.


scan, remote...what are these voodoo? No, when I was a kid, 4 or 5 buttons on the telly that you clicked and changed in a nano-second. Actually, funny thing happened yesterday. I was dropping the wife off at hospital and parked up at a charge point in the hospital car park and had to park close to the fence, so I climbed out the passenger side. plugged in, and thought I'd play chess from the passenger side while I wait for my wife. Turns out you can't use the screen unless you are sitting in the driver seat, this I did not know. So I had to climb over the centre into the driver seat and the screen came active. If I sat in the passenger side, all I got was the charge screen with no way of getting out of it. I guess if I have the tesla key card on the centre console then maybe that would work but I rarely use that. Learn something new every day.


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## Mike

styleruk said:


> scan, remote...what are these voodoo? No, when I was a kid, 4 or 5 buttons on the telly that you clicked and changed in a nano-second


Well (I'm hooking my thumbs in my suspenders now), when I was a kid, there were two rotary knobs.

One for channels 2 to 13, where the "real" channels were.

CBC, and affiliates for NBC, CBS and ABC.

The other rotary know was a free-wheeling affair for UHF channels.

Those were the freak channels up to 99 (?).

All free, over the air.


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## FRC

Mike said:


> Well (I'm hooking my thumbs in my suspenders now), when I was a kid, there were two rotary knobs.
> 
> One for channels 2 to 13, where the "real" channels were.
> 
> CBC, and affiliates for NBC, CBS and ABC.
> 
> The other rotary know was a free-wheeling affair for UHF channels.
> 
> Those were the freak channels up to 99 (?).
> 
> All free, over the air.


What are you, like 106 years old?


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## Jason F

FRC said:


> What are you, like 106 years old?


VHF vs UHF channels. I'm 46 and remember it well.


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## lance.bailey

does anyone remember when this was a thread about software build v10.2 2021.4?

FWIW, i remember rabbit ears to pick up 3 or 4 snowy channels, and now i'm back to a coat hanger and cookie sheet to pick up 1080i OTA


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## PalmtreesCalling

Mike said:


> Well (I'm hooking my thumbs in my suspenders now), when I was a kid, there were two rotary knobs.


You're forgetting about the rotary knob to turn the directional antenna on a tower above the house.... KWCH was one direction, KAKE was slightly a different (but noticeable) direction, and so on...
older than 46 but waaay younger than 106....


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## Klaus-rf

I'm almost 106.


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## GDN

PalmtreesCalling said:


> You're forgetting about the rotary knob to turn the directional antenna on a tower above the house.... KWCH was one direction, KAKE was slightly a different (but noticeable) direction, and so on...
> older than 46 but waaay younger than 106....


If you had a rotary knob to do that for you, you lived in a much more affluent neighborhood than I did. Or truly when you live 40 miles from the major city/broadcast antennas they were all in the same general direction. However after a storm, someone had to go out and rotate the antenna pole while someone else held the back door and hollered to let you know when the picture came back clear.

And No - I still don't have any flavor of 2021.X.X.X.X Software.


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## Mike

PalmtreesCalling said:


> You're forgetting about the rotary knob to turn the directional antenna on a tower above the house.... KWCH was one direction, KAKE was slightly a different (but noticeable) direction, and so on...
> older than 46 but waaay younger than 106....


You guys must have been rich!

The only folks on our road that had a rotating antenna also had central air conditioning.


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## Kernal7

Mike said:


> Well (I'm hooking my thumbs in my suspenders now), when I was a kid, there were two rotary knobs.
> 
> One for channels 2 to 13, where the "real" channels were.
> 
> CBC, and affiliates for NBC, CBS and ABC.
> 
> The other rotary know was a free-wheeling affair for UHF channels.
> 
> Those were the freak channels up to 99 (?).
> 
> All free, over the air.


I am still using an OTA TV antenna in my attic. But now all the stations are digital and provide HDTV and most have Dolby 5.1 or better. The great news is they are all still free! No cable fees.


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## TesLou

Mike said:


> You guys must have been rich!
> 
> The only folks on our road that had a rotating antenna also had central air conditioning.


LOL...this sounds like a Monty Python sketch.


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## Long Ranger

Hey, I remember watching TV on a 19” CRT using rabbit ears and a free government provided DTV converter box. 

Yeah, that was just last week in my “Home Theater”.


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## lance.bailey

Mike said:


> You guys must have been rich!
> 
> The only folks on our road that had a rotating antenna also had central air conditioning.


I have an FM tuner which was designed to record antenna rotation with the station selected. 15 memory locations, each with an associated frequency and rotation. The bits for the antenna hookup are now unobtanium, but the tuner itself is still veddy veddy nice.


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## lance.bailey

Kernal7 said:


> I am still using an OTA TV antenna in my attic. But now all the stations are digital and provide HDTV and most have Dolby 5.1 or better. The great news is they are all still free! No cable fees.


cookie sheet and coat hanger. too pretty for the attic.


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## Mike

lance.bailey said:


> I have an FM tuner which was designed to record antenna rotation with the station selected. 15 memory locations, each with an associated frequency and rotation. The bits for the antenna hookup are now unobtanium, but the tuner itself is still veddy veddy nice.


I think of all the "mid century modern" stuff I grew up with and wish some of it still existed.

Stereo systems that were huge pieces of furniture, with belt drive turntables that let you stack about a half dozen LPs...simple, two straight forward controls for bass and treble...no need for a 250 page pdf to get the thing to work...sigh.


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## TrevP

We had rabbit ears and the TV tower with the rotary knob thing to pick up channels.
Who remembers when TVs were a rural furniture, as in made of wood ?


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## GDN

Yep and even remember when that day in 1976 we brought home that piece of furniture, 23". We couldn't afford the new bigger size of 27" and that funny corded thing that would save the kids from having to get up and change channels.

However it was awesome as it was our first COLOR TV in the house.

A side note - my grandparents wouldn't buy a color TV for many more years as the color hurt their eyes and they believed there was something in the tube that was bad for our health anyway. Hell, who knows maybe they were right.


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## serpico007

I remember we had one of those late 60's or very early 70's TV built in with a record player on one side and a radio tuner on the other side. I still remember the sound and feel of that old knob scrolling up and down to find a radio station. I think the TV had only a few channels that worked with those silly rabbit ears. But that huge heavy media cabinet had the largest tv tube I've ever seen. That was some solid wood work and technology for that time and it lasted for a few decades. 

Imagine now telling people that what ever tech they bought needed to last at least 10 years. Things cost a lot back then because it was made locally so people kept it longer. Today is a different story with throw away electronics.


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## garsh

I have a homemade antenna in my attic for picking up HDTV broadcasts.


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## garsh

Remember the "remote controls" for those early VCRs?

They didn't even require "line of sight" like today's infrared remotes! Ahead of its time!


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## iChris93

garsh said:


> today's infrared remotes!


Infrared remotes are old school now!


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## GDN

I miss my Pronto. Was the coolest thing ever. Could select all 300 CD's by name, way before we knew what an iPod was.


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## lance.bailey

first off @garsh I am jealous of the attic you can enter and walk about in, my attic is all trusses and annoyance.

your antenna - it is a new design to me, no Hovermann-Gray or whatever my cookie sheet thing is called. got a link to a design?


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## garsh

lance.bailey said:


> first off @garsh I am jealous of the attic you can enter and walk about in, my attic is all trusses and annoyance.


One of the first things I did when I moved into this house was to add a floor to the attic.  
The floor just goes down the middle where there's enough headroom to store things.


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## garsh

lance.bailey said:


> your antenna - it is a new design to me, no Hovermann-Gray or whatever my cookie sheet thing is called. got a link to a design?


I went through a phase where I was making all kinds of DIY antennas to try out this new "broadcast HDTV" thing. 
I can't find plans for this one anymore, but it might have just been me trying to extend the double-loop UHF antenna to have four loops.

https://streamfree.tv/ota/diy-antennas/pennyloop/


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## serpico007

That is nice. I'm using one too with a HDHomerun plugged into my network for TV. Works very nicely with the Channels app on AppleTV and other devices. I have a 2011 Mac Mini to use as a server for recording shows and tuning.

I set up my parents with the same setup using their PC for recorded shows.


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## Bigriver

Antennas for TVs make me think back to a children's book from 1965, popular through multi generations in our family, of Kermit the Hermit: "That poor people lived there was easy to see, for it was the one house without a TV."








I remember when neighborhoods looked like that. As for us, we have been OTA and cable free for 24 years now, relying on an antenna that looks very much like in this drawing, only hidden away inside the attic. I figure the savings over the years pretty much paid for our model 3. Not really, but the savings were substantial.


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## styleruk

and to make it fully monti python... Here in the UK we only had 3 channels up until the 80s then it went to 4. Then towards the end of the 90s it jumped to 5! what is this madness....5 channels. Nobody watched channel 5 because it was thought to be excessive. But back then I could turn the telly on, flip down the 4 buttons on the front and shout 'there's nothing on the box', then get on with something interesting. Nowadays it'll take you all evening to do just that. 
When satellite TV appeared in the UK, (sky), that was designed for people who had no life and sat indoors all day, which seems to be the norm now.
Still not a fan of staring at the box, I have a workshop and a ton of projects lined up. People always say, where do you find the time to play in 2 bands, renovate a classic car, do up motorbikes, make tons of strange projects. Then they start telling me about a box set they watched over the weekend.


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## Needsdecaf

PalmtreesCalling said:


> You're forgetting about the rotary knob to turn the directional antenna on a tower above the house.... KWCH was one direction, KAKE was slightly a different (but noticeable) direction, and so on...
> older than 46 but waaay younger than 106....


OMG My grandfather had one of those things. I thought it was the COOLEST thing ever.


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## Needsdecaf

Oh, and I have like 220 channels on cable and yet still can't find anything to watch and have at least 3 subscription services to streaming. 

SMDH we are ridiculous. My kids are so spoiled. They get mad when there's a problem with Netflix or they can't rewind a show on the DVR. Sheesh. Try having to fiddle with the rabbit ears because the reception is bad because of the weather when you're trying to watch GI Joe.


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## Needsdecaf

OK, so here's some further trip down memory lane.

We had cable for as long as I could remember (on one TV only, the others had the rabbit ears). First box I remember was one like this:










It was wired, and had a range selector on the right.

My cousins had the more modern version, like this:










I then remember these, wood grain and everything. We had these for the longest time.










These were good because you could buy the bootleg versions out of the back of magazines and get free HBO.


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## garsh

Needsdecaf said:


> These were good because you could buy the bootleg versions out of the back of magazines and get free HBO.


And that brings up another memory.

The cable company somehow messed up and gave my grandmother HBO even though she didn't pay for it. Then one day a cable technician came by her house, messed around outside a little bit, and HBO stopped working.

She told my dad. He took a look at where the cable entered the house, removed whatever filter they had installed, and she had HBO again. 

EDIT: this was in the early cable days - there was no "scrambling" of the pay stations back then - only filtering.


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## Madmolecule

I do miss stealing cable, although it was tough seeing the naked girls between the scramble lines. I don't have that many channels but at least mine runs off the space lasers.


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## PalmtreesCalling

Mike said:


> You guys must have been rich!
> 
> ... also had central air conditioning.


Guilty. But I never 'felt' rich.... the only reason I got a car for my 16th birthday was my dad owned the car lot...


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## PalmtreesCalling

serpico007 said:


> I remember we had one of those late 60's or very early 70's TV built in with a record player on one side and a radio tuner on the other side. I still remember the sound and feel of that old knob scrolling up and down to find a radio station. I think the TV had only a few channels that worked with those silly rabbit ears. But that huge heavy media cabinet had the largest tv tube I've ever seen. That was some solid wood work and technology for that time and it lasted for a few decades.
> 
> Imagine now telling people that what ever tech they bought needed to last at least 10 years. Things cost a lot back then because it was made locally so people kept it longer. Today is a different story with throw away electronics.


I loved that entertainment center. my folks had the same, a little pocket in it for LPs, you could stack them, or 45s with the insert. Friggin magic! God I'm old... Sigh...


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