I remember the grocery store tub testers well. My dad would send me off with a bag of tubes to test. I vaguely remember in my high school electronics class some sort of machine you could actually hook a CRT to to test it. It even had some sort of feature to overdrive the CRT, which was supposed to clear up faded screens. (Didn’t work as I remember it.)
We had a black and white TV in the 70s because my parents didn’t see the point of wasting money on a color set just to keep up with the neighbors. We mainly read books and rarely watched TV. Later on my mother was raising six kids by herself and definitely didn’t have money for non-essentials. The first color TV we ever had was my Aunt’s old set that she gave us when she bought a new one.
We didn’t live in Appalachia or a different country.
I remember our old B&W set. It was “portable,” though it weighed about fifty pounds, and it used rabbit ears. Dad took “portability” literally, and depending on where we were, it got between one and six channels through the rabbit ears.
We did not get a color set until 1974. Prior to that, Mom informed us kids that color TV wasn’t perfected, and would ruin our eyes, until Sis was featured in a figure skating program. Suddenly, color TV had become perfected, and we got a color set. The first show we saw was Sis on ice.
Bricker I love how changing out your last old TV made you think of your dad. We should all have a Papito in our memories.
The TV we had for a while had a very small screen, even for back then. Maybe 10 inches? Set in the top of a narrow column that was mainly speaker I guess. Three channels were available but we only got two because the other network had too weak a signal, don’t remember which one. Our next one was a hefty portable set on a spindly stand with a hinged cover in front to hide the little knobs. I scratched our phone number on the inside of it because it was too long to remember. (Five whole numbers!) It never occurred to me that if I was off somewhere and needed to call home…But who was I going to call from the swings in the park? It also had a UHF dial but I never knew what was on it because we didn’t get it. I remember when TV Guide was received like the tablets from Mt. Sinai.
We didn’t have a TV when I was small so we went to a neighbors to watch the first moon landing. We had to go home to bed before it actually happened, though.
Another neighbor had a color TV before we finally got a B&W set. Mom and Dad would go out and tell us no TV, so we’d watch it until they’d turn into the driveway.
Of course, that damn dot remaining in the center for several minutes would bust us, every time.
I remember my older brother had a little B&W portable in the '70s whose vacuum tubes were always glowing, even when it was switched off; when I asked him about it, he said it was normal and better than putting the set through cycles of hot and cold.
I used to work in radio, and know for sure that switching a modern transmitter on and off is the worst thing you can do to it, because it gets hit with a sudden burst of voltage each time. Unless undergoing maintenance, they all run 24/7.
I have two CRT TVs. One in the kitchen and a small portable with a digital converter box velcroed to the top and a small antenna velcroed to the top of that! Looks funny but I can take it out to the garage or back yard. Most of the time I keep it in the bathroom so I can listen to the news while I shower.
I remember when our old 1970s Sony Trinitron packed up and we replaced it with a (standard-def) LCD TV. The picture on the new set wasn’t a patch on the old one. Even now, standard-definition TV through cable gives much worse picture (on an HD set) than good old analogue TV through the aerial did on the CRT.
Technology doesn’t always go in the right direction. (Although new TVs at least can be lifted by a single human being, and don’t take up a large proportion of your lounge.)
My household didn’t get a color set until 1967 or '68, and the picture actually wasn’t all that great. Before that, it was strictly B&W at our house.
The family of a friend of mine got a color set in what must have been the spring of 1966. I remember suddenly spending A LOT of time at his house, mostly waiting for “Batman” and “Gilligan’s Island” to come on (if “Combat!” had been in color then, I would have camped out there on Tuesdays too).
It pissed me off that “The Avengers” was on too late for me to stay and watch in color; Friday nights, I had to jump on my bike and make it home by 9:00 o’clock.