For example:
One time, I was watching a movie I had recorded about a year earlier. The movie ended, and a commercial was playing on the tape. I hit the stop button, but nothing happened.
Wondering what was wrong, I looked down at the VCR and realized it HAD stopped. Turns out the same commercial was playing on TV at exactly the same time. It was so well synchronized that the change from tape to TV was seamless.
Years ago, I was watching TV with my younger brother who was going through a phase of occasionally spouting random nonsense. As I was flipping through the channels with the remote, he suddenly turned to me and said, “Do you know who I am?” Before I could respond, a character on the program I had just flipped to said “I know who you are!”
Freaked both of us out for quite awhile, let me tell you!
Barry
P.S. Welcome to the SDMB!
P.P.S. Gesundheit!
Hi Sneeze, and welcome to the SDMB!
My tv turned itself on to a porn flick whilst my girl and I were at it. I was convinced that the “ooh, yes baby, yes, more” was coming from her, but alas… 
I used to have one that would pick up signals from doctors’ beepers or the airport. So the shows I watched would be interrupted by “You are cleared for takeoff!”
“Roger and out” or whatever it is they say.
Or the TV would suddenly announce “Paging Doctor Bonehead. Doctor Bonehead, you are wanted in the emergency room” I never got to overhear any really juicy conversations but I thought it was odd, as I never had another TV that did things like that.
One night about five years ago, I was lying in bed and just thinking about stuff.
I started to wonder if there was a God and decided (just to amuse myself really) to pray.
Now I never pray, I haven`t since I was at primary school where they used to make you say the lords prayer evry morning.
So I was lying in bed and was asking for stupid stuff like money and a six-pack or the ability to walk up walls and such stuff.
When I was coming to the end of my prayer I started asking for a sign, just any sign to show me that God existed.
Now for the spooky bit, after saying show me a sign over and over in my head I decided to end the prayer by saying amen (as you do)
But I swear to God that the split second I mouthed the letter ‘N’ at the end of amen something happened.
My T.V crackled into life, I got a fright and then I started laughing like I was an idiot, I reckoned the remote control must have been in the covers with me and I must have pushed a button with my elbow or something.
So I roll over and it is then that I spot the remote control sitting in the middle of the floor out of hands reach.
I expected to feel pretty scared by this but I actually felt really calm and relaxed and kind of elated.
That is a true story, its not really the most exciting thing in the world but its pretty mad that the tv switched itself on the second I said “amen”.
The television had never done this before and never did again.
You can bet I never had a wank that night, just in case God was watching.
My TV would pick up conversations on my old cordless phone. The screen would go fuzzy, but you could hear the conversation clearly.
It was like my own huge and expensive speaker phone.
It was also great for Poltergeist-type practical jokes.
[sub]Help! I’m in here![/sub]
My television makes me dress like a catholic school girl and pick up sailors at the docks.
It also steals all my poptarts and puts the ice cube trays back in the freezer after their empty. Damn you, television!
I used to have a couple of cheap guitar amplifiers that would pick up things like that.
My TV doesn’t “do” anything to me. I mete out harsh yet fair discipline at regular intervals. As long as he doesn’t jump in the shower with me some day I think I can handle anything my television tries to hit me with.
For a while we had a TV which would channel-surf by itself. It was one of the early remote-controlled ones with the sonic instead of infra-red remote, and apparently something was activating the “channel-up” signal, causing it to scroll through the channels. Since it was hooked up to the VCR it was always set on channel three, so when it changed channels all we got was varying degrees of static.
Didn’t happen to me but my mom:
Way back in the 70s a rash of tornadoes hit the Lexington, KY area in the spring. (Lots of damage, probably in the record books.)
Mom was at a friend’s apartment, which was near the storm but safe from the twisters. However, they could go out on her balcony and watch the nasty green clouds converging on Scott County, KY and they could hear when a twister hit.
Anyhow, at one point they were on the balcony and the TV was on inside the apartment and they heard it make a really weird sound. She turned and looked and the picture on the TV kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller till it finally went pop and disappeared.
I once spent the night at my friend Emily’s house. We watched “The Ring,” which is enough to make anyone hate televisions.
So the next morning, Emily has to go to work, so it’s just me and her mom in the house. I was hanging out in Emily’s room, just sort of looking at her stuff, and her mom comes in and says, “Do you want anything, Lindsay? A glass of juice or something? You can turn on Emily’s TV if you want…”
At that exact moment, the television flickered on. It was incredibly freaky. We never did figure out how it happened.
My TV committed suicide.
It had been in failing health for some time. When turned on, its sound would wheeze into life, but the picture would struggle to expand itself from a trembling horizontal line into the full screen.
Then one day, when I turned it on, the sound nattered into life… the line appeared, and fluttered toward expansion…
Then screen and sound died, and a dark, skinny plume of smoke rose over the electronic hulk. I unplugged it, and lugged it out the door, flinging (okay, grunting and heaving) it into a handy dumpster.
Why do I say it was suicide, rather than illness of old age? Because that very day was the day before The Great OJ Simpson White Bronco Chase. Methinks the TV foresaw what was coming and couldn’t bear to go on.
An old upstairs neighbor used to have an Apple II computer, which used a 12" b&w television as a monitor.
Once in a while, I could tune him in on my tv downstairs and watch what he was typing. BASIC is not riveting entertainment, believe it or not.
At one time Oprah appeared to be slim. It didn’t last for long. 
Hmm, I had a tv in my room once. It was only allowed to remain there by my parents because… Well, I brought it in myself, that’s why. Black and white with my favorite channel - FOX! Or whatever. The channel with The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, etc.
Anyways, it died. That’s all. I’m just reminiscing…
My cable box crashes all the time. Seriously. I’ll be flipping hrough the channels, when all of a sudden the remote will freeze up. Nothing works. A few seconds later, I’ll hear a loud CLICK! from the cable box, it shuts down, there’s another CLICK!, and it turns on, only to spend two minutes loading an operating system of some sort, all while the LED channel display makes a spinning light effect .
Very strange.
Several years ago, while tripping on acid, I grew tired of licking the sun to see what it tasted like and watching the grass grow, so I decided to go inside and lay on the couch to see what the tv could tell me. I flipped through the channels and stopped on Mama’s Family for a few minutes. Everyone was speaking English in reverse. I then changed it to Jeopardy!. A contestant said, “I’ll take Pirates for $1000, Alex.” Alex Trebek became very irritated and I distinctly remember him retorting, “FUCK NO you can’t have Pirates for $1000! We already DID that one!” I couldn’t take it any more so I picked up the phone and jammed to the dial tone for several minutes. Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm. Very soothing yet vaguely frightening. I had to hang up when spiders started crawling out of the receiver. I hate acid spiders.
About ten years ago, sitting in the basement of my parents’ house late one night with an old antenna-powered Philco set, I picked up the NBC station out of Kansas City.
My parents live northwest of Milwaukee.