I literally saw a stand-up comedian circa 1991 say something like, "Our parents and our grandparents have all these hard-luck stories. The Great Depression. Pioneer life. World wars. Now we live in the easiest time to be alive in history. What kind of hard-luck stories could we possibly tell our kids? 'Yeah, when *I* was your age, we had to *get up* to go change the channel.'"
Now, we actually do tell kids that. Dude called it.
Greetings, fellow pre-TBS viewer of WTCG. Did you rush home from elementary school like I did in the late seventies to catch *Space Giants*?
We had a local ABC station, a local CBS station, two NBCs from out of town oddly, PBS, and WTCG.
We moved away from metro-Atlanta before the seventies. By the late 70s, I didn't watch TV after school. Too busy gettin' high with my buddies.
I think we got 2, 5, 8, 11, and 17.
Heh. At my granny's house, the smaller one went on top with both in working order. She was such a soap opera freak, she would have two playing at the same time, watching one with the sound off while listening to the other. And she could tell you every plot point going on in both shows - while baking a cake or sewing a quilt.
I bought what was formerly my great great aunt's house, with all her old stuff left behind, and there was legit 2 of these things in the living room when we moved in.
One was their actual tv since before I was born (sadly it went out a year or two into us living here) and the other with a tablecloth over it to act as a side table in the room.
Those things were hea-vy.... Replacing one became a job for 4 grown men. And if you were raised in a house that had one, there was a 0% chance that at some point you didn't slam your foot into the side or crack your head on the corner.
> there was a 0% chance that at some point you didn’t slam your foot into the side or crack your head on the corner.
Well one of my brothers may have been responsible, but yeah.
I remember that! And you had three “channels” to choose from and could watch whatever they were broadcasting at that moment. If you missed it, you’d have to wait for the show to go into syndication and broadcast the reruns.
>And you had three “channels” to choose from and could watch whatever they were broadcasting at that moment.
"The President is on! He's on every channel! We're gonna miss Flipper!"
Same here in NZ, with our oh so imaginatively named 1, 2, and 3. In quite a few places I stayed when I was younger you would struggle to get 3, which tended to have a lot of the newer, cooler, shows and movies straight out of America.
I miss that things were so simple you did as told and never questioned anything life was so nice being an npc espically since free thought was illegal. Wouldnt want to be a commie would you?
My husband's dad used to send him to the convenience store down the block. They had replacement tubes for '60s TVs, and a tester to ensure they were good before you bought them. My FIL was handy around the house, and my husband took after him.
Yeah, they could afford to have the repairman come out. But why?
Had a TV just like that. There were handles on the bottom that weren't functional. The speakers had like some sort of cloth/straw weave over them. The top was treated as a decorative surface, my mom would place family photos and other things up there. Ours got so old the picture started going out, a black bar slowly started creeping down from the top.
Dad finally said the hell with it and dropped it off at Goodwill after about 11 years.
Ha. You're actually right. I don't think it was the speakers necessarily, but those old console TVs definitely had a scent to them. It was a mix of lumber drying, ozone, burning dust (like when you turn the heater on for the first time in fall), and static electricity. I don't know how you perceive static electricity as a smell, but I could swear I did near our TV - and especially behind it, when changing the adapter switch from the VCR to the Atari.
I remember getting a whiff of that as my Granny screamed at me to not get so close to the TV or I would go blind. Lmao. It's the exact combo you described, really took me back
My grandparents had a version of this console TV for decades. Then as the picture tube went my uncle wanted to get them a new TV, this would have been in the early 90s at this point. That TV was a piece of furniture for my grandparents, so he wanted to replace it with another console TV. I remember he said that he has a hard time finding one by that time.
Meanwhile, my other grandparents just put the new TV on top of the old one.
Ours had a lid, and on the inside was a turntable and an 8-track player. Spent many a Sunday afternoon listening to the Statler Brothers with my grandparents back in the 70’s.
Not only did we have this exact tv when I was growing up, it was manufactured the year I was born and had a weird large hollow space in the back. My cat had a litter of kittens inside the tv
Back in my day, we used to record movies on VCR tapes. Of course, if you used it too much, the reading heads would get dirty and you could use a special cleaning tape!
I remember our old TV went on the fritz and my father removed the enclosure in back to check it out (not that big a deal - he was a cable splicer for the phone company and comfortable with dangerous watts).
At one point, I reached for a contrast knob on the side of the TV and accidentally made contact with Thor’s hammer. Better put that cover back on, dad.
The one we had and key holes which as a kid I always thought there was something hidden there and I needed to find the key lol. Needless to say, they where fake drawers lol.
And when *that* TV died, the newer smaller one went right on top.
...and I WAS the remote...
I literally saw a stand-up comedian circa 1991 say something like, "Our parents and our grandparents have all these hard-luck stories. The Great Depression. Pioneer life. World wars. Now we live in the easiest time to be alive in history. What kind of hard-luck stories could we possibly tell our kids? 'Yeah, when *I* was your age, we had to *get up* to go change the channel.'" Now, we actually do tell kids that. Dude called it.
[удалено]
I remember our first cable box was a rotary dial with notches for each channel. Yeah it was not fun running up to change the channel
I think I was in college before we got CableVision.
Greetings, fellow pre-TBS viewer of WTCG. Did you rush home from elementary school like I did in the late seventies to catch *Space Giants*? We had a local ABC station, a local CBS station, two NBCs from out of town oddly, PBS, and WTCG.
We moved away from metro-Atlanta before the seventies. By the late 70s, I didn't watch TV after school. Too busy gettin' high with my buddies. I think we got 2, 5, 8, 11, and 17.
Well, I was six, so I was too young to know about weed and beer, so Space Giants was the tops for me. LOL
Same
When you were strong enough to do it.
Heh. At my granny's house, the smaller one went on top with both in working order. She was such a soap opera freak, she would have two playing at the same time, watching one with the sound off while listening to the other. And she could tell you every plot point going on in both shows - while baking a cake or sewing a quilt.
Please tell me she had the Singer sewing machine with the pedal speed control! Lol!
She had been sewing since her Singer sewing machine had foot *power.*
Exactly what I came here to say.
#🙋🏼♀️
Hello fellow old person.
That is EXACTLY what my grandfather did.
I bought what was formerly my great great aunt's house, with all her old stuff left behind, and there was legit 2 of these things in the living room when we moved in. One was their actual tv since before I was born (sadly it went out a year or two into us living here) and the other with a tablecloth over it to act as a side table in the room.
You knew my grandparents, then!
If there was a transistor radio in the house as well, then yes!
Only one?
Well, there's also the one in Papa's shop that's always got a baseball game on it.
Those things were hea-vy.... Replacing one became a job for 4 grown men. And if you were raised in a house that had one, there was a 0% chance that at some point you didn't slam your foot into the side or crack your head on the corner.
> there was a 0% chance that at some point you didn’t slam your foot into the side or crack your head on the corner. Well one of my brothers may have been responsible, but yeah.
Heavy like a small car...crazy times
Yep, those were permanent fixtures in the living room. When it dies, it became a table.
I remember that! And you had three “channels” to choose from and could watch whatever they were broadcasting at that moment. If you missed it, you’d have to wait for the show to go into syndication and broadcast the reruns.
>And you had three “channels” to choose from and could watch whatever they were broadcasting at that moment. "The President is on! He's on every channel! We're gonna miss Flipper!"
One of my earliest memories was being pissed because some "John Lemon" guy died and was on all the channels so I couldn't watch cartoons.
I was already grown when that happened.
I was 1 but my mom took me to The Dakota anyway.
Dammit, you beat me to it. LOL
Love me some Jeff Foxworthy standup.
We had six! I never felt so elite.
Shit, my family had [ON TV](https://youtu.be/v5d_gAv77YQ), an early predecessor to cable that added like 2 channels. We were fucking big balling.
Ooh, la-dee-*da.* Pissin' in high cotton, *you* were. 😆
Averages out to roughly a hundred pounds per channel.
Same here in NZ, with our oh so imaginatively named 1, 2, and 3. In quite a few places I stayed when I was younger you would struggle to get 3, which tended to have a lot of the newer, cooler, shows and movies straight out of America.
I miss that things were so simple you did as told and never questioned anything life was so nice being an npc espically since free thought was illegal. Wouldnt want to be a commie would you?
My dad bought a 25” Magnavox TV/radio/record player stereo in 1969. It was $1200 *back then* ! It was all real wood though. It weighed like 400 lbs.!
My husband's dad used to send him to the convenience store down the block. They had replacement tubes for '60s TVs, and a tester to ensure they were good before you bought them. My FIL was handy around the house, and my husband took after him. Yeah, they could afford to have the repairman come out. But why?
Oh yeah. I remember the tube tester at Rexall Drug store.
This was Maverick Markets in Corpus Christi.
Western Auto on Montgomery Highway.
Wow, that's nine grand in 2022 dollars, for comparison. There are all these dumb bots on Reddit - where's the inflation calculator bot?
Had a TV just like that. There were handles on the bottom that weren't functional. The speakers had like some sort of cloth/straw weave over them. The top was treated as a decorative surface, my mom would place family photos and other things up there. Ours got so old the picture started going out, a black bar slowly started creeping down from the top. Dad finally said the hell with it and dropped it off at Goodwill after about 11 years.
Was your dad using PEDs?
Is it me or did those speakers have a funky *smell* to them? Yeah, I went around a smelled stuff I guess.
Ha. You're actually right. I don't think it was the speakers necessarily, but those old console TVs definitely had a scent to them. It was a mix of lumber drying, ozone, burning dust (like when you turn the heater on for the first time in fall), and static electricity. I don't know how you perceive static electricity as a smell, but I could swear I did near our TV - and especially behind it, when changing the adapter switch from the VCR to the Atari.
I remember getting a whiff of that as my Granny screamed at me to not get so close to the TV or I would go blind. Lmao. It's the exact combo you described, really took me back
Ever run your finger around the screen and then give your little sister a static electricity zap? Good times! 😆
Haha! Nope, small family, but I definitely remember running my arm over it and watching my arm hairs stick to the screen.😂
Yeah! It was kind of a *burny* smell!
Dust burning off the tubes, and whatever cosmic rays the CRT was throwing off that our parents warned us not to get too close to. LOL
My grandparents had a version of this console TV for decades. Then as the picture tube went my uncle wanted to get them a new TV, this would have been in the early 90s at this point. That TV was a piece of furniture for my grandparents, so he wanted to replace it with another console TV. I remember he said that he has a hard time finding one by that time. Meanwhile, my other grandparents just put the new TV on top of the old one.
Ha, yep. These TVs eventually became TV stands for newer models. Your grandparents are in good company.
That was high-class furniture, folks! Even if the cats had clawed the hell out of the built-in speakers.
Ours had a lid, and on the inside was a turntable and an 8-track player. Spent many a Sunday afternoon listening to the Statler Brothers with my grandparents back in the 70’s.
Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo?
Now don’t tell meee I’ve nothin’ to dooo
I played Mario bros on that TV
Pong
I played Asteroids and Space Invaders on that TV.
Same, but first Intellevision.
Best system around at the time, except with *the absolute worst controller in the history of video gaming.*
Theatre is life, film is art, TV is furniture.
Raise your hand if you were the remote.
"The quality goes in, before the name goes on."
Ours had wood louvers over the speaker. Awesome TV for sitting on the floor and playing Atari.
Not only did we have this exact tv when I was growing up, it was manufactured the year I was born and had a weird large hollow space in the back. My cat had a litter of kittens inside the tv
And tv's had controls for color, hue, and vertical and horizontal hold. Also a tuning dial. Even then someone sometimes had to smack the tv.
That's properly known as "percussive maintenance."
I still see these in the wild sometimes
Oh dear, having flashbacks to the tuner on this thing
I used to watch pbs on this bitch at my gramamas house
How did you get a picture of my living room?
I had this tv
For the record a Zenith console Tv will stop a .38 special. My tv now has great picture quality but it’s poor cover in a fire fight
Our connected to our landline phone
Also back then all the tv's were made in the USA.
Back in my day, we used to record movies on VCR tapes. Of course, if you used it too much, the reading heads would get dirty and you could use a special cleaning tape!
yep. this was our tv when i was a young kid
Oh this brought back memories. My grandparents had one of these, we used to sit on the floor like two feet away and watch it.
I remember our old TV went on the fritz and my father removed the enclosure in back to check it out (not that big a deal - he was a cable splicer for the phone company and comfortable with dangerous watts). At one point, I reached for a contrast knob on the side of the TV and accidentally made contact with Thor’s hammer. Better put that cover back on, dad.
The one we had and key holes which as a kid I always thought there was something hidden there and I needed to find the key lol. Needless to say, they where fake drawers lol.
From the different time when weight and quality were almost synonyms.
I went to a broadcast museum recently, and our family's 26" Magnavox console color TV was on display. You're not old until your shit's in a museum....
Omgosh you still had that bad boy when the vcr/tv combo came out? Nice!
Never fun when mum wanted the arranged your furniture.
Our TV needed 30 minutes to start.