I inherited a late 1990s era RCA TV from my grandmother. It has some peculiarities.
For starters, it doesn’t pick up a channel right away when you turn it on. You get snow and noise for about 5 minutes and then, ZOOM, instant clarity. Then a minute or so later, the picture rolls down the screen, fuzzes up a litte, and then stays clear.
Different channels come in clear at different times. Some will come in clearer faster if you flip through the channels, but if you go directly to a channel, it doesn’t work.
A further twist is that this TV, once it got hooked up to cable (it had the same problems with a rabbit ears as it does with cable), I discovered that it picks up HBO, although my other TV in my home doesn’t. Of course in the loose morals that exist between American cable TV subscribers and cable companies, I’m not complaining about this. It picks up no other premium channel.
So, I have three questions:
If I bought a new TV, would it still pick up HBO? Is this bonus a feature of the cable hookup or the TV?
If I hook up a VCR to this set, will it have the same problem with picking up channels? I don’t think so, but I thought I would doublecheck.
Is there a cable box attached to that TV? If so, that’s probably what’s picking up HBO. If you have two TV’s in the house, why don’t you just switch the connection to check whether you have a bona-fide miracle TV on your hands?
I had an older Sony TV that developed some similar quirks–taking time to “warm up” to each channel, with heavily distorted pictures suddenly becoming crystal clear. Eventually, the picture quality became unacceptable. We got it repaired very cheaply…apparently some connection inside the TV had come loose, and soldering it back together returned the TV to good as new.
Oh, using your VCR will probably not fix the problem with your TV’s reception. As you said, it happened even with the rabbit ears, so the signal coming from your VCR would most likely be distorted in just the same way. Hmmm…but maybe this would allow you, once the signal started coming in clearly, to change channels without a warmup-period being required for each different channel you view.
Thanks for the advice.
No, there is not a cable box attached to the set. It’s a cable ready TV. I suppose I could have it repaired. I think it’s a miracle TV for its free HBO. Perhaps I should build a small shrine in front of it and light votive candles.
Some friends’ TV suddenly started picking up a whole bunch of cable channels, and they didn’t have cable in their house. Their upstairs neighbor did, and the cable wire coming into the house had bad insulation, and would bleed into the wiring of the house, and the TV somehow picked it up from there.
Unfortunately, the upstairs neighbor had a problem with the cable going out when it rained (no insulation) and the cable company installed a new wire. The free cable when away, sadly.
I observed this happening, so it clearly is possible to get cable without a cable drop.
Now that I think of it, the cable company did install a new cable. I originally complained because Channel 2 didn’t get stereo all the time. They said a new cable would fix that.
It didn’t. But they repaired the cable and I must have gotten some side benefit. Anyway, my cable system is the evil Time-Warner who has seen fit to black out Dodgers and Angels telecasts on my Fox Sports affiliates because they refuse to pay any added fees to their hated rivals at News Corp.
