I’ve SEEN black and white TV’s (a few of my friends had them when I was a kid, but they were always the tiny little thing in the kitchen, whereas they would have their big-screen beasts in the living room). I’ve never had one myself, though. I was born in '87, if that matters.
Yeah, yeah, getting off your lawn.
My family got a color set in 1979; going over to Grandma’s to watch the one she’d got in 1974 was a big deal. I picked up my own B&W set in HS and used it until I graduated and beyond (hardly ever watched it, only in the mornings) for a couple of years until I got a larger color one in 1987.
I still have an old Zenith black and white that I use to watch Film Noir dvds. Those old b&w films used shadows to set the mood. I think they look better on a real b&w tv. B&W film just isn’t the same on a color set. you don’t get the same depth of blacks and shadows.
Stereo!
You mean…real Hi-Fi? NEVER! ;)
Really? Is there no way to setup the color TV to display it properly?
Based on Mr. Accident’s response to my previous post, I would guess not, unless there is some type of computer program that can convert it.
As for upconversions: I pretty much would rather see them on a Standard Definition CRT TV–the blurring just makes it better. I can sit right on the biggest CRTs I’ve ever seen, and not see the pixels. I get within 5 feet of an HDTV, and I can see them clear as day.
More importantly, is a B&W HDTV signal being broadcast?
My mother had a small B&W television set in the kitchen when I was growing up. As far as I remember it was there until we moved to a new house in August 1983. The new kitchen had no room for a TV, but then again, Mom can see the living room set from the kitchen, so she’s still good.
(I have no room for a television in my kitchen, either, but I’ve been known to take the laptop out there to watch the latest Daily Show or something. Like mother, like daughter.)
We always had a color TV in the house, but I watched afternoon cartoons on the old black and white set with the clunk clunk dial until 1999. (I guess I was kind of embarrassed to be in high school and still watching cartoons, so I didn’t watch them in the living room on the big TV.)
We got our first color TV in 1974 (I was 9). I still remember the first show which I watched on that set was Merv Griffin. 
I watched B&W on (increasingly rare) occasions up through 1996.
Through high school, my family had a second TV (our old B&W), which wound up in my room. I even was able to wrangle getting a second cable box for that TV, so I could watch ESPN in my room.
Soon after I got out of grad school, I wound up with a small portable B&W set (which had an early 1970s streamlined look to it – it looked like it had been swiped from the set of Space: 1999). I kept it in my office, as the job I had at the time required me to work weekends every January (i.e., through the NFL playoffs). I think the last time I actually used that TV was to watch the verdict come back in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. That TV still sits in my basement, but really needs to get tossed. I’m not even sure if it still works (and it would need a digital tuner box now).
My folks had a 1958 GE 14" metal portable with a green and white case which died in 1971 after watching Hogan’s Heroes, replaced by a 1964 Motorola 19" given to us by my grandparents, which began losing channels until by July, 1973, it was down to none. I was sure my father was going to get a color replacement, but instead he bought a 19" Zenith b&w with remote control; my folks got a color set finally in 1976 (Zenith console) and my brother took over the portable. When I was in college in 1984 I bought a 15 year old Admiral 12" b&w from a TV repairman for $6. A year later, I sold it for $35 and got a used Panasonic 13" color TV for $155, which was about three years old.
It was around 1989-90. I finally ditched my little b&w Panasonic, and bought a Proton.
Yes.
Well, not actually “TVs” as such, but they do make monochrome monitors for high definition color cameras. This $100,000 Sony HD Studio camera has an optional “HDVF700A HD Electronic B/W CRT Viewfinder”.
Why? Because virtually all monochrome sets have greater resolution than the equivalent color set. And when you are adjusting focus, detail is where it is at.
Also, if you are the camera operator, you are concerned with framing the image, focusing the lens and adjusting the iris (depending on the shoot). Color is someone else’s job.
For instance, my beloved Canon XH-A1 HD camera has two monitors, a larger fold-out on on the side and an eye piece one. I never use the latter simply because it lacks the resolution to allow me to focus well. If the same number of LCD pixels had been used for a monochrome image, I would have three times the detail and I could easily focus.
As per the above post, yes, color is actually kind of a distraction to a studio cameraman!
As to the OP, wow! I feel spoiled. I was born in 1965 but I have no memory of us not having a color TV. Not rich, very middle class. I was the youngest of seven, so I guess that might explain a lot! TV was pretty central to our family life. Like others have mentioned, my older siblings told me how they used to go to our aunt’s on Sunday to watch Disney and Bonanza in color!
Great big woody, um, I think Sylvania 25" in the living room. Five or so fake wooden drawers (with knobs!) across the bottom of it. Had to get up and turn the channel. And there was usually a foot of snow in the living room!
I was born in 1986 and my family had a colour TV for as long as I can remember. However, I had an old B&W TV in my bedroom until about 1996, when I got a small colour TV as a Christmas present.
I’m very surprised at these answers. I would’ve thought that most people had color TV well before 1980.
In our house we got color TV circa 1969. I watched the first two years of Star Trek in black and white. If we wanted to watch something in color – Thanksgiving Day parade, The Wizard of Oz, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color – we went to my aunt’s house.
I had a portable black and white TV that dated back to the 1960s that I carried around with me through college and grad school and my first jobs, finally getting rid of it in 1994. It’s not as if I didn’t have color TV as well during much of that time, but I was still watching a black and white set at least sometimes until less than 20 years ago.
My parents got a Hotpoint b&w TV when they got married in 1958, and I came along thirteen months later. The set took forever to tune, the picture always rolled, and the dial only went up to 13 (which didn’t matter because the only UHF station in town was a PBS outlet until Channel 61 began broadcasting in 1968). My siblings and I constantly pleaded for a color set like Grandma’s Zenith floor model, but my dad didn’t break down until the Hotpoint finally did in 1971. Even then, we had to settle for a portable instead of a big one like Grandma’s.
I never had my own TV until I brought a b&w in the summer of 1979 so I’d have something to watch in my dorm – first in Cedar Point employee housing, then at college. I used that Zenith for about ten years before Grandma (who always had a “nice little radio” in every room of her house and eventually started accumulating televisions in similar fashion) handed down one of her color rejects. So, to finally answer the question directly, I stopped watching black and white regularly about 1990, though I’ve seen occasional programs on monochrome sets since.
My parents had a single color TV from my first memories around 1977…but not too long later, they bought a little portable Zenith for the kitchen which was black and white, which they kept for another five or six years. I have memories of having to play Atari 2600 on the black and white TV when I wanted to play and my parents insisted on the TV for themselves. 
Actually found a photo of a still working model of the TV on Flickr.
I was going to post in this, then saw that I already posted and noticed it was a zombie. So I’ll just say see post #36.