Nostalgia of old tv sets

TNG is being reconstructed from the original film elements and looks incredible in 1080p. They released season four on Blu-ray not too long ago.

 

Great response, Metryq! ROTF, and it megahertz! We are in total sync, brother!

 

When I discovered TNG in 1992, I had a 19" b&w set that someone had given me. Luckily, it died shortly thereafter, and I bought a 13" color TV. Now I just watch DVD's or Netflix on my iMac. Obviously, I've never been much of a TV watcher!

I already commented on it in another thread. Great name!

 

Our family was a relatively early adopter of color TV. I think we got our first color TV in the summer of 1965. I remember a lot of promos for upcoming favorite shows switching to color that fall. Until that year, most of what we watched was in black & white anyway. We didn't watch much of the NBC shows like BELL TELEPHONE HOUR or BONANZA that were in color before that year.

But 1965-66 was the first year of about half & half color on ABC and CBS, while NBC was boasting the "full-color network" as its slogan. I can recall the neighbors stopping in to see a show or two in color on our TV.

So when STAR TREK premiered with "The Man Trap", I was there, watching the colorful NBC Peacock announce that "the following program is brought to you in living color on NBC."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE_oHJt_V5M

We lived close enough to good city-grade analog television signals in Philly that we didn't have to contend too much with snow. We had a little ghosting at times, but that was from the signal bouncing off of taller structures.

Unfortunately, I also had a terrible conflict of programming in that pre-VCR era. My favorite show at the time was BEWITCHED, and it aired halfway through this new STAR TREK, so I often watched the first half of TREK and then switched. The fall of 1966 was also the start of BEWITCHED being in color, so that was a big event.

It wasn't until "The City On The Edge Of Forever" that I stuck with STAR TREK and abandoned BEWITCHED for the summer reruns.

Then the worst happened. NBC moved the show to Friday nights. Our family had this summer cottage where we used to spend weekends during nine-or-so months of the year. So when the fall season of 1967 rolled around, I was forced to watch STAR TREK on our summer cottage TV - in black & white. So my views of the series were then reduced to:



... and it wasn't even THAT good. This cottage was in the realm of the Baltimore, MD market, and the NBC affiliate of the day was WBAL, Channel 11. It had a bit of snow in its picture on most nights, but still not too bad.

Gone were the colorful uniforms and the color-lighted sets, and those first 10 or so episodes looked pretty drab in comparison to what I'd gotten used to. But the stories were the thing - I was just happy to be able to watch it.

Then as cold weather set in, I once again had color episodes through until March or so. Then it was back to the black & white again.

There were some episodes that I'd not see in color until it aired in syndication.

I do not miss the days of analog television at all. Those old tube sets may have some appeal to retro types, but I'll take my modern-day, flat-screen, perfect picture set any day.

Harry

 

Incredible. Your experiences by and large echo mine. I've been living in Scarborough my whole life. I first saw TOS on CTV, which back then was CFTO channel 9. I became addicted to it in 1970, watching it on weekends when it was on. Later, around 1974 WUTV channel 29 Buffalo started playing it each week night at 4pm. My picture was snowy on the nights I could get it and of course, B/W. My dad would never opt for cable...so I had to rough it....and I didn't care. One BIG problem with WUTV channel 29 was that they had SO many commercials (locally made...somewhat fun to watch) that they regularly chopped the episodes so that a known scene was missing. One time (and I recall it vividly), they chopped The Omega Glory so bad it not only was missing the fight scene in the cell with Cloud (just showed Kirk getting hit over the head....one didn't know how he got there or where Cloud got the bar) and bits of other scene's....it almost made no sense story-wise (LOL....beyond making nearly no sense it complete form...some may argue).

I almost miss those days.

Thanks for sharing your memories...they parallel mine to a good degree.

 

As someone who grew up watching Star Trek on my iin bedroom B&W 14" TV - I sympathize (Yes, the main living room TV was color, but my parents didn't care for science fiction, so I never got to watch Star Trek or Lost In Space on the main TV); I also on't miss the days of rabbit ear antennas or snowy reception.

that said, sometime the Star Trek (TOS) Blu-Rays can reveal a bit too much detail for me these days (especially on my 73" Mitsubishi DLP HDTV) - where on some of the overhead bridge shots - you can tell the areas where they sanded down and repainted over (in black paint) some of the ship console areas, especially in some of the early first season eps.

 

You had more than one tv in your home?? Wow. That's a lot of wooden cabinetry to polish!

 

We lived with those TV's back then and were content and we couldn't imagine what we would have today. But I doubt anyone could tolerate watching TV like that anymore.

 

I already commented on it in another thread. Great name![/QUOTE]

Thanks, guys for the warm welcome and nice comments!

 

I was on the American side but watching the same stations at the same time. To this day I miss Canadian TV of the '70s on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with all its catchy commercial jingles for toys, Corn Flakes, and Wonder Bras-- some of which I can still sing from memory.

Regarding WUTV, my Dad once got us into their station headquarters on Grand Island for some kind of tour, and I remember asking what they did with all the Star Trek footage that they snipped from 16mm prints. That was the whole reason I wanted to go, in case bunches of film were sitting a waste basket and I could salvage some. They laughed and said they had to send it all back with the episodes.

 

You had Saturday morning commercials for Wonder Bras?!?

 

Yeah, I guess it was a Canadian thing.

In those days the greater Toronto area (GTA) was something of a mecca for television reception in Canada even if you didn't have cable. When we moved to Mississauga from Etobicoke in 1969 we had one of those rotary antennas where you could use a rotary control to turn the TV aerial in the right direction (of whichever station) for better reception. It usually worked quite well.

The stations I recall getting:
Channel 2 NBC
Channel 3 CKVR (Barrie)
Channel 4 CBS
Channel 5 CBC CBLT (Toronto) (later this was changed to channel 6)
Channel 7 ABC (Buffalo)
Channel 8 CTV CFTO (Toronto) (later this was changed to channel 9)
Channel 11 CHCH (Hamilton)
Channel 17 PBS
Channel 19 TVO (Toronto)
Channel 22 Global (Toronto)
Channel 25 CBLFT (Toronto CBC French station)
Channel 29 FOX WUTV (Buffalo)
Channel 47 CFMT (Toronto multilingual station)
Channel 79 CITY-TV (Toronto) (later this was changed to channel 57)

Compared to today that selection looks like nothing, but back then we found we had tons of stuff to watch throughout the week. Today I have hundreds of channels at my disposal and I find little of genuine interest to watch. Of course a big part of that is not being of the prime demographic for programmers anymore. That as well as so much seeming to be recycled so a lot comes across as variations of same-old-same-old.

 

Nice list! I (now) remember tuning in CBLFT (and I had to finesse the UHF dial like a safecracker) to watch James Bond movies in French. Of which I don't speak a word. This was before the VCR...

 

This really is a good list. CKVR in Barrie was the best (for me, anyway) as it ran 24/7 and was my introduction to the late movie, the late, late movie, and the late, late, late movie - usually playing all the great oldies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

 

Channel 2 as NBC? Is this Bizzaro world? Madness!
The sane lineup was
2 WCBS
4 WNBC
5 WNEW, though they never much called it that.
7 WABC
9 WOR out of Secaucus
11 WPIX 11 alive!
13 PBS

and, of course, we would go up to the roof and break open the cable boxes to remove the HBO scrambler!

 

Yes, the New York area. WOR was originally based in New York until 1983. And of course, there was Channel 31, the NYC-owned PBS station. My "golden age of TOS Trek" was the 1975-78 watching the show on a black and white Motorola or Zenith TV on WPIX from 6-7 PM.

 

This is a fantastic thread, and I found it at the right time (I'll explain in a bit)

Anyway, I first discovered Trek from seeing TMP in the theatre in 1979, and after that I had slowly but surely became a fan from watching TOS on WPHL, Channel 17 in Philly.

We watched it on a Sylvania color console model TV with the electric roto-antenna that had the great light up adjuster knob, and when you turned that, it blinked and clicked as the antenna on the roof rotated.

WPHL used to show them from film copies, so they were a little grainy, but they proudly used to say that they didn't cut any scenes from the episodes (I once called to see if they had any of the cut parts of the film so I could get them and make slides, and they told me this. Also, later comparing to the video releases, they really were uncut)

I loved watching it that way, because you had to really use your imagination. Nothing was cleaned up digitally to an inch of its life and it felt like I was watching a real crew on a starship.

A funny couple of points: my parents still use that TV (with a coaxial converter on the back to hook the cable into), and not too long ago, they brought me a box of stuff they found of mine at their house. In there were some of the VHS tapes I recorded from PHL with the episodes! I watched them, and the memories just flooded back. I was 7 years old again!

 

Today with HD it's easy to be critical of TOS' f/x, but back in the day those same f/x looked fantastic on the TVs we watched. And our imaginations fleshed it out and filled in the rest from there.

And to be fair some of it still looks good. TOS' transporter effect (visual and audio) is still one of the slickest and coolest f/x in science fiction in the visual mediums. I also love the rising howl of warp acceleration. A simple thing yet it really conveyed the idea of this fantastically powerful drive to ever faster FTL speeds. That with TOS' exceptional music and you have pure magic.

 

My 20 year old son asked me how could we watch TVs that sat on the floor. Seems strange now.

 

Indeed.

I don't think I could manage to watch a floor-model TV now.