A WiFi compatible TV might be used to stream content from the internet such as Netflix or Hulu Plus without the use of an additional device such as a Blu-Ray player or Roku box.
You can get a better speed and signal using a hard-wired ethernet connection but the location of the TV sometimes makes that difficult or impossible.
Some TV’s have the ability to play content that is stored on the network.
My parents got a 25" Zenith Chromacolor console television in 1973. It was a product of its times, with a faux-Colonial style that included Bicentennial eagle pulls for nonexistent drawers. Instant on, analog tuning, and no remote. It cost about $650, or $3,200 in inflation-adjusted US dollars.
To enjoy the set in all its splendor, the 'rents splurged on cable television, paying $4.50 a month ($22 in 2012) for 12 channels. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the local independent station that aired nothing but old reruns and movies (do such over-the-air stations still exist?), three stations from Canada, a public access channel, a stock and news crawler, a community calendar crawler, and one channel featuring the output from a monochrome video camera that panned back and forth between an analog clock and analog thermometer.
One of my grandparents had an old black-and-white console television with a round porthole-like screen and a tuner that included channel 1.
And, in the early days of cell phones, you could use those sets to listen to calls above channel 69! The newer sets with detented or electronic UHF tuners didn’t work as well for eavesdropping on cell phone calls.
This is fun. My dad has had a remote control for the past 40 years, b/c once I could walk? I was the TV remote.
I remember going thru all nine channels and ending up back on the ORIGINAL CHANNEL, b/c he didn’t like anything else. And the changing the channel with the pair of pliers.
You never had to get up to change the channel on the TV I grew up with. It only received one channel! (BBC) Mind you, there only were two channels at the time. As I recall, my parents finally caved in and got a new TV about the time the third British channel, BBC2, started up, although we could not actually receive BBC2 satisfactorily at first because we did not have the right sort of aerial. They got that fixed eventually, but they were still black and white only through the 1980s.
Did they start counting at zero?
I’m only 26, but when I was a kid we still had some old tvs, including one my grandparents had. They were color though, so they weren’t that old, but they were the ones that were all built into a cabinet-like structure, with fake drawers and handles that didn’t actually do anything. I remember hooking up ancient video game consoles to the back; instead of a coaxial cable to connect, you connected the little prongs under two screws using a screwdriver.
I also remember a “portable” black and white TV that I sometimes would use to play the ancient video games on, same sort of hook up, I think the screen was probably 5 or 6 inches.
I do distinctly remember needing pliers to change a channel or something but I can’t recall the TV that required it!
I remember my Grandma’s old TV-it actually had a pilot light! That was so yo would know that it was on…I always wondered about that! Black and White TV was an interesting experience-I remember when we finall got a color set-what a change! Of course, a “film noir” movie is destroyed, if its in color.
Here’s a dumb question I think I asked once, with no answer.
Old American television sets in the USA had the CRT recessed somewhat into the cabinet. However, British TV sets had the CRT bulging out a bit from the cabinet. Why the different design?
I still have a Grundig set that I bought around 1994 with a pilot light. I think minimal power is supplied to some circuits even when the set is off simply because they work better that way; many electrical devices are sensitive to sudden bursts of current, especially when they’re cold, and continually turning them on and all-the-way-off shortens their service life.
My Grundig set still works perfectly, BTW, though I seldom use it anymore.
How is this possible? I know not everyone is made of money, or lives in New York City, but I find this interesting.
We grew up pretty middle class in Indiana, and we had color TVs as early as 1970. Before that, I don’t remember.
I suppose you could grow up in a truly rural location like Appalachia or different country and not get out much.
I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just curious.
This thread reminds me of working on my car in the garage and bringing out the little kitchen b&w to watch football. The picture was fuzzy but you could still see what was going on. Now all those rabbit ear tv’s don’t work anymore… what a shame.
I remember back when I was young and poor…for several years we had two garage-sale console TVs, the kid in the faux-wood cabinets. One had sound only, the other picture only. Stacked on on top of the other, they worked beautifully.
We had TVs beginning in the 50s with a huge box standing on four legs and the rabbit ears on top. At some point my parents got a console set in a giant cabinet. We only had one channel in Juneau, AK and the picture was fuzzy, no matter what you did. The first set I bought for myself was a 13" Webcor that I purchased in about 1971; “portable” was a relative term for the thing, as it must have weighed in at 50 pounds. My last CRT set was a 42" Sony that I got rid of around 10-12 years ago. Cripes that thing was heavy. It took two strong people to carry it out. I ended up buying a 37" Sharp, which I still have and which still works perfectly.
Ah you youngsters. I was 13 in 1950 and people were just starting to get TVs, BW only of course. Flush with my bar mitzvah money, I paid out $130 (think $1300 today) to buy our first TV, 10" job. My father installed a roof-top antenna. We got only three channels, actually CBS, ABC, and NBC. Color was in the distant future. But we watched Uncle Miltie, Smilin’ Ed, Sid Caesar, and Hit Parade. The Army-McCarthy hearings were at least partly televised and I watched some of them.
The first color system that the FCC approved was CBS’s color wheel. A three-color wheel twice the diameter of the screen whirled in front of the picture tube and the signal was time multi-plexed. RCA had a different system based on three-color dots in the tube itself. The RCA system had terrible quality, but it could be–and was–developed to good quality, while the CBS system had good picture quality of the word go, but even a 20" screen would have required a 40" wheel in front of the tube. It would have been a disaster. In any case, hardly anyone bought it and two years later, RCA having further developed their system, the FCC reversed itself and approved the RCA system. It must have required much more careful aiming of the electron beam, but they worked it out.
I well remembered those drugstore tube testers. They worked well. Of course, they were originally there for radios, but TVs used the same kinds of tubes. You could not take the picture tubes there, but all the tuner and amplifier tubes could be tested.
What?!? No DuMont network?!? :eek:
Actually, no; the TV needs some power in order to receive the remote signals, same reason why almost everything nowadays is “always on” with a simple button, as opposed to an actual switch, for on/off. It doesn’t really have any effect on temperature shock either; after all, your electric bill would be really huge if standby power was high enough to avoid temperature changes (as it is, there are big pushes to reduce it as much as possible).
ETA: Maybe you’re thinking of the old tube-type sets that had a switch to leave power (typically with a diode to halve the power) applied to the tube heaters when off - a really big waste of electricity for a minute or so less of warm-up time.
I still have a Sony Trinitron in my bedroom. I could not bring myself to throw it away. Most old sets had knobs. Some had buttons. The Trinitron had buttons BUT each button was hooked up to an individual tuner. You want channel 3? Pick a button and set that tuner to 3.
I still have a CRT in my living room. I also have a CRT PC monitor and several CRT Commodore monitors.
Re Tube Testers
I don’t own one of the wall-mounted store types. But, I do have a vacuum tube tester. IIRC you can test 4 different pin configurations. Naturally, I also have a bunch of vacuum tubes.
Display CRT???
(Pause while filing through obsolescent technological terms…)
Oh, you mean the PICTURE TUBE.
I’ve got a 19" b & w that I bought at a garage sale about 10 years ago for $2.00. Works great. I have it in my home office and use it at least weekly, mostly to listen to CNN. I’ve never opened the case, but assume it has no tubes (except for the CRT) since I’ve never had to replace any. No plans to replace it.
No get off my lawn, you damn kids.
