Hey, I never noticed that before....

[scotpens]

I keep seeing posts like this. Guys, I grew up in the '60s and '70s, TV reception wasn't THAT bad. Yeah, it wasn't hi-def, and the TVs weren't huge (well, some of the expensive ones were), but the cliche of somebody having to bang the side of the TV just to get the picture to stabalize is pretty much a joke. TV looked "pretty decent" for most of my childhood/young adulthood. Sure, I wouldn't trade it for my 50" HDTV, but the notion that we spent our entire lives squinting at a bunch of fuzz that barely constituted a "picture" is simply nonsense.

Yeah, I don't know where people are getting the idea that TV reception back then sucked. In the 1960s and '70s, if you lived in or near a good-sized city and you had a decent rooftop antenna, your TV picture would be at least as clear and sharp as a good commercial VHS tape. We did have to spend a lot of time fiddling with the color controls, though.

 

[FormerLurker]

If your dad was an electrical engineer like mine, you let him fiddle with the controls until he was happy with the picture, and then watched what he wanted to watch. If you were lucky, he might let you choose a program or two during the week.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Miri's world must have been in parallel development with earth when they're civilization collapsed due to it's nineteen sixties look and our understanding in later shows that Kirk's Enterprise is three centuries from our present at that time!
JB

I like to think the plague unleashed on 1960'a "Miri" Earth was from their version of the experiments that begat Khan and led to the Eugenics Wars on Prime Earth.

 

[UnknownSample]

Never heard of that one old chap!
JB

"My Mother The Car" for 50 years or so has been the symbol for the bad TV show in the US. Comedians joked about it for 10 or 15 years.

 

[UnknownSample]

I keep seeing posts like this. Guys, I grew up in the '60s and '70s, TV reception wasn't THAT bad. Yeah, it wasn't hi-def, and the TVs weren't huge (well, some of the expensive ones were), but the cliche of somebody having to bang the side of the TV just to get the picture to stabilize is pretty much a joke. TV looked "pretty decent" for most of my childhood/young adulthood. Sure, I wouldn't trade it for my 50" HDTV, but the notion that we spent our entire lives squinting at a bunch of fuzz that barely constituted a "picture" is simply nonsense.

Confirmed.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Easy for the people who got good receptions to dismiss it as nonsense...you guys were the best-case scenario.

 

[UnknownSample]

Easy for the people who got good receptions to dismiss it as nonsense...you guys were the best-case scenario.

You only got bad reception if you were far away from the city broadcasting.

 

[JE Smith]

You only got bad reception if you were far away from the city broadcasting.

I grew up in a small town about 70 miles from the nearest broadcasting stations (which were in St. Louis), and my reception was just fine. Broadcast towers were pretty powerful back in the day, for exactly this reason.

 

[plynch]

I had it Trek on UHF though; channel 50 was good, but UHF was still somewhat ghosty sometimes. What I remember is the prints being very faded. And hacked up, of course.

 

[Spock's Barber]

What I remember is the prints being very faded. And hacked up, of course.

Ahhh, yes. I remember watching reruns of TOS when the local tv station still broadcast using the film version. They wouldn't just edit out scenes, they would rip and tear it out just to create more time for commercials. Oh, the horror!

 

[J.T.B.]

I grew up in a small town about 70 miles from the nearest broadcasting stations (which were in St. Louis), and my reception was just fine. Broadcast towers were pretty powerful back in the day, for exactly this reason.

Which works fine in a flat area like that, but the signals are line-of-sight, so if you lived where there were a lot of mountains like I did they were easily blocked. If you lived in a more rural area, you had to get a relay from a "translator" station, which were sometimes not that powerful. I got reception fine where I lived, but when I went to my grandparents in the summer they only got good reception of the CBS, NBC and PBS affiliate translators, the ABC and the independent channel were pretty staticky. Star Trek was on the NBC station on weekends, then in the early '80s sometime switched to the independent which was UHF. Even at home it could be tricky if you didn't get the loop antenna just right, and at my grandparents' it was un-watchable. About 1987 the station switched from channel 20 UHF to 13 VHF so that was a big improvement.

Then there was the issue of being bumped off the main set with the roof antenna, and having to watch the "kids" set in the basement which was black and white with rabbit ears. So I had some experience of trying to watch not-so-hot OS episodes, but most of the time it was fine.

What I remember is the prints being very faded. And hacked up, of course.

Yeah. There was a noticeable improvement in the syndicated prints in the late '80s, I think there was a clean-up for VHS release.

 

[FormerLurker]

Our local syndication station (now the local CW affiliate) took syndication edits of the shows they aired and made more cuts to them. When they got their hands on Star Trek, I stopped watching it over the air.

 

[CommanderTrip]

This has probably been mentioned before, but one thing I noticed since watching TOS-R on bluray are the black flaps on the away team pants that they would stick their phasers/communicators to with velcro. I remember reading in one of the old Star Trek Magazines an article about how the communicators/phasers had one side with velcro to make them stick to the actors. I never noticed it before, but now whenever the enterprise crew is armed on an away mission it's all I can see.

 

[scotpens]

This has probably been mentioned before, but one thing I noticed since watching TOS-R on bluray are the black flaps on the away team pants that they would stick their phasers/communicators to with velcro.

There were no "away teams" in Trek TOS. They had LANDING PARTIES, goddammit!

 

[Spock's Barber]

There were no "away teams" in Trek TOS. They had LANDING PARTIES, goddammit!

Also known as "Don't Wear A Red Shirt or You're Doomed" Landing Parties.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Also known as "Don't Wear A Red Shirt or You're Doomed" Landing Parties.

It's not a party till some random redshirt dies.

 

[CommanderTrip]

Oh, excuse me. "Landing Party"

I Also never noticed how much larger the interior of the shuttlecraft Galileo was compared to the exterior the landing party all climbs into until I watched the blurays. It's kind of ironic considering they landed on a planet of space giants.

 

[johnnybear]

You are very fortunate, my friend. A brief synopsis...a man's mother passes away, but wait....she comes back as his car. It was supposed to be a comedy. It lasted one year, thankfully.

God that sounds terrible!
JB

 

[johnnybear]

I like to think the plague unleashed on 1960'a "Miri" Earth was from their version of the experiments that begat Khan and led to the Eugenics Wars on Prime Earth.

Good idea but the paperwork they found was about longevity and the immortality gene wasn't it?
JB

 

[johnnybear]

"My Mother The Car" for 50 years or so has been the symbol for the bad TV show in the US. Comedians joked about it for 10 or 15 years.

Weird that I don't know of this one, how many episodes were produced, Unk?
JB