# Did you ever reject b&w tv/favor color (once you had an option)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 2, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406 "2025-07-02T16:48:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/21 "2025-07-02T22:54:26Z")
IIRC color was much more susceptible to multipath ghosting. Or at least the resulting visual artifacts were much more objectionable than b&w. Yet another thing digital TV cast into the ashheap of history. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/22 "2025-07-02T23:23:37Z")
Color TV just wasn’t around when I was growing up. It wasn’t common in homes until the late 60s, and by then I had left home. I bought my first color TV in 1971. It was a 13" Webcor, and by then most all TV was broadcast in color. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/23 "2025-07-02T23:34:41Z")
When I first moved to California, after a divorce in which I lost my nice Color TV, I made a conscious decision to buy a B&W tv. I got it second hand at goodwill. It didn’t bother me a bit to watch things in black and white. I did that long after color TVs had saturated the market. In fact, I d be surprised if they even sold full size B&W tVs at that time. I got many good years from that TV. Honestly, it wouldn’t kill me to go back. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/24 "2025-07-02T23:41:56Z")
When I was very very young I didn’t notice that our TV was black and white, my imagination provided the colors. Literally I saw no difference between my grandparent’s modern (for the eighties) Color TV and our dinky B&W device. For example I saw the Smurfs as blue, because the characters said that they were blue. (I think this is also a symptom of the way I interpret the world, inside my head everything gets turned into text, comics and tv/cinema are first turned into novels and then processed, but I digress). Later in my teenage years I had some reluctance to watch things in B&W, they reeked of OLD. That lasted for a few years and soon I was watching anything I fancied without much regard to color or its absence. However I remain distrustful of things deliberately filmed in B&W as an artistic decision. (Even If I enjoyed the hell out of Sin City), it strikes me as too “artsy”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/25 "2025-07-03T01:11:14Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > When I was very very young I didn’t notice that our TV was black and white, my imagination provided the colors. Literally I remember as a kid insisting our black and white TV was color for the reasons you stated. I’m guessing I was about 6 or so at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/26 "2025-07-03T01:22:00Z")
> [@Tzigone](#): > > . I have read about terrible colors on early color tvs. NTSC. Never The Same Color. Australia went with PAL in 1975 – color was delayed for political / cultural reasons. PAL has “superior color”. My wife will not watch anything in B&W. She starts with the automatic belief that anything in B&W is not something she wishes to watch, but I don’t think that the ‘color’ is the most important part of that. It’s a hard “no” because she has a B&W confidence in her own opinions 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/27 "2025-07-03T01:32:37Z")
When we had both types in the house in the 80s, often the black and white got better reception or had a clearer picture, because it only had to receive and decode a luminance signal and not a luminance plus chrominance signal. I didn’t understand that at the time of course, but I did know that if something looked like crap on the color tv, the b&w in the other room was probably the better bet. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/28 "2025-07-03T11:13:42Z")
> [@Tzigone](#): > > And for those that are younger - did you ever have a phase where you tended to disregard anything in black & white? I know that there are people who won’t watch anything in black and white – some have admitted it on this board – but I don’t understand the attitude. It’s like refusing to look at black and white prints, pencil sketches, or _grisaille_ paintings simply because you know that full-color painting exists. It’s not just that black and white movies (and later on, B&W television) came first because the technology of color is more complex. As I said above, I’m impressed with the effects early TV shows could wring from such a limited palette. And, as was pointed out when they first colorized _King Kong_, that movie was _meant_ to be seen in black and white. A lot of the scenery was drawn and inspired from Gustave Dore’s black and white engravings. (and which, of course, made the most of that black and white medium. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dore engravings “colored in”, even though they probably exist. People know they’re meant to be cin black and white.) Why would you purposely restrict your experience of art (broadly defined) by refusing to look at any images that aren’t in collor? ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/29 "2025-07-03T11:29:29Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I know that there are people who won’t watch anything in black and white – some have admitted it on this board – but I don’t understand the attitude. It’s like refusing to look at black and white prints, pencil sketches, or _grisaille_ paintings simply because you know that full-color painting exists. I’d say for many (myself included), who did this much later (we only had color tvs), it’s not because of the color objectively, but because of the oldness, which black and white was signifier of. We at least thought old things weren’t weren’t relatable/were boring. The only older shows I watched as a youngish child were Bewitched, 70s Wonder Woman, 60s Batman and the like. Things that were rather fantastical and cartoon-adjacent. Then I just watched contemporary tv because old stuff was old (the 60s/70s decor or color palette and b&w indicated old and boring). I didn’t watch any “realistic” shows from before I was born until college. And even now, I only do small doses of those made before the later 1960s, and really only in a limited repertoire of shows. I wouldn’t idly keep any of those on the background like I would modern episodic shows. But after my cartoon-phase, yes, there were time when I much preferred the colorized versions (don’t now) of certain old movies (mostly Shirley Temple ones) because they just looked more like what I was used to. Don’t underestimate how something being very different than the norm can be off-putting, especially to children. Later I came to not really like most old movies because I don’t like the acting style - obviously, I haven’t seen every old movie, but people say they don’t generally like country music without listening to every song and few give them flack for that. There are exceptions, but even so, older movies are, to me, something I would only watch if nothing else was on (less an issue since so much digital content became available) or if I’d heard something about a particular movie/show that made it seem interesting. Beyond that, some people favor immersion. I’m not really one of those, but I was reading a thread not too long ago (don’t recall how old - I search old threads occasionally) about how actors being too attractive broke their immersion. Shouldn’t be surprising if some feel the same about black and white. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/30 "2025-07-03T11:56:47Z")
I remember watching a lot of movies and TV in black and white. Our second TV was also an old B&W one so it was always something we were accustomed to. I can remember the first day we got a colour TV. The first sitcom we watched on it (this was 1975 I think) was either _That’s My Mama_ or _Good Times_, and someone said on the episode “What a beautiful red dress!” and we could actually see now that it was indeed red! ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/31 "2025-07-03T12:44:10Z")
It took us years to get a colour set and we went on watching in B&W long after colour came in. Eventually the old set got exiled upstairs as the second TV - eventually replaced by a small B&W portable set. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/32 "2025-07-03T15:00:07Z")
We got a color TV in the early 60s; my father sold them. It made no difference to me if the show was in B&W. Indeed, after college, I only had a B&W TV until the early 80s. The stories were the same in B&W and in color. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/33 "2025-07-03T23:14:17Z")
We didn’t have a color TV until I was 13 in 1976. When I was younger our next door neighbors would invite us over to see _The Wizard of Oz_ or _It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_ on their color set. Even after we got a color TV, I’d still watched _I Love Lucy_ and other B&W shows. I never really had a preference and barely do, now. I do have to admit I was kinda blown away watching reruns of _Star Trek_ and _Batman_ in all their saturated glory after years of watching them in B&W, but those are the only two examples I can think of. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2025, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/34 "2025-07-04T04:22:18Z")
Nah, if my parents wanted to watch something I wasn’t interested in, I’d happily drag the old Philco back to my room and set it up. Later when my parents got cable I was perfectly happy to watch Burns and Allen, Hitchcock, or Phil Silvers with them. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/35 "2025-07-04T19:06:12Z")
I can see not being interested in old B&W tv show, most of them were terrible. But having that dislike carry over into silent movies, and other old movies that just happen to be B&W would deprive one of a lot of good stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2025, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/36 "2025-07-04T19:11:56Z")
I wonder how many people refused to watch Schindler’s List or The Artist or Sin City just because they are in B&W. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/37 "2025-07-04T20:18:37Z")
When my parents got their first color TV, it felt like an alien ship had landed in the living room. But for all the hype, most of the shows I actually liked were still in black and white—The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Once those shows made the jump to color (the ones that did), something changed—and not in a good way. The Andy Griffith Show especially took a nosedive after Don Knotts left. It wasn’t just the loss of Barney—it was like the whole town of Mayberry got lobotomized when it got color. The humor got flatter, the characters duller, and Andy just kind of drifted through scenes with a polite grin and nothing to say. Opie lost his cuteness when he hit puberty. Howard Sprague? C’mon, he belonged in an accounting firm, not a sit-com, and Emmett Clark belonged in an old-folks home. Aunt Bea? Ok, she remained hot (especially with her pickles). Maybe they blew their budget on color and couldn’t afford decent writers anymore. Other favorites followed the same pattern. My Three Sons got cheesier. All those new, snotty kids? Blech! Gilligan’s Island doubled down on dumb, going from dumb to dumber. Lost in Space went from somewhat juvenile sci-fi to rainbow-colored dreck—“Oh, the pain, the pain!” Color didn’t elevate these shows—it exposed their flaws. And then came the tidal-wave of rural color sitcoms: Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and the rest of the “hayseed TV universe.” It was like the networks assumed Americans would watch anything if it had a pig and a theme song. Spoiler: they were right. Meanwhile, my parents were busy watching slow, humorless hour-long dramas, so I was exiled to the rec room with a tiny B&W TV that barely got a signal (had to contort the rabbit ears every which way just to get one). Half the time I had picture or sound, but rarely both. Still, I’d take fuzzy monochrome over those garish, tone-deaf color shows any day. At least B&W didn’t insult your intelligence. But, the color shows got better over time and many of the old B&W shows now seem silly, with a few exceptions—Barney, Dobie, Jed, Rob & Laura, I’m looking at you! ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2025, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/38 "2025-07-04T22:27:36Z")
Small town, rural America with two stations available and no cable TV, in the mid-1960s: the first color TV I saw was the Minnesota Twins playing a baseball game. This was at a local small restaurant that also had air conditioning! Amazing! Then we heard the neighbors got a color TV, specifically because the Twins were in the World Series in 1965. We would plan visits to my retired aunt and uncle on Saturdays or Sundays, because we could watch Bonanza or Disney in color. But we were fine with watching anything, even in B&W. Our family got a color TV about 1976, after us kids were away at college. I finally got one after I graduated in 1980. It’s amazing how we survived such B&W hardships. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2025, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/39 "2025-07-05T04:29:09Z")
My parents saw color sets at friend’s houses in the mid 1960’s. The color settings were fiddly to get right. We didn’t get a color set until 1972. By then the RCA chroma correction was much better. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2025, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406/40 "2025-07-05T04:44:01Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > By the time we got a color TV, almost everything was in color. But, if there was something I wanted to watch in Black and White, I would watch it despite it not being in color. (remember, we were very used to B&W) Pretty much the same. My family had a black and white tv when I was young so I grew up watching all shows in black and white and they looked “normal” to me. So when color became an option, I was still used to watching black and white. I can remember the first time I watched _The Wizard of Oz_ on a color tv and the scene where Dorothy stepped out of her house into Oz finally worked. I can also remember watching _Star Trek_ at my cousins’ house and finding out for the first time that the Enterprise crew had different colored uniforms. These are the only two times I can recall noticing that a show was in color rather than black and white. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-reject-b-w-tv-favor-color-once-you-had-an-option/1020406.md?page=3)