Never got it, still don't have it.  Pay t.v. is the biggest scam going.  It started out, as Foo said, so you didn't have to watch commercials.  Now they charge you and the advertisers.  I only see pay t.v. when on vacation and every time I turn it on I don't see why anyone would pay, unless you are in an area with particularly poor reception, then basic is enough.  I have an antenna on the roof and it's all I need. 

For a brief time we had something called WHT(Wometco Home Theater) in the early 80's.

My parents got rid of it and never got cable until 2 years ago.  ;D

"Son, it's normal you're trying to watch The Playboy Channel, but what's with all the patch cables?  Anything you wanna ask about?"
"Um... what porn?"

'Coz I don't want to miss any House votes on CSPAN!

For people of a certain age, here's everything you wished you knew about SSAVI but were afraid to ask.

If that sounds like way more effort than it's worth, it probably was, but that's what life was like before the Internet.  Why you think the net was born? (Warning: You should know me well enough by now to know the sort of thing I'm gonna put in a link like that.)

Sometimes the signal would unscramble itself for a second and it was a quasi-divine vision!
:)


Never got it, still don't have it.  Pay t.v. is the biggest scam going.  It started out, as Foo said, so you didn't have to watch commercials.  Now they charge you and the advertisers.  I only see pay t.v. when on vacation and every time I turn it on I don't see why anyone would pay, unless you are in an area with particularly poor reception, then basic is enough.  I have an antenna on the roof and it's all I need.


And now you pay ten bucks for a box office ticket and STILL have to watch a Pepsi commercial between the previews and the feature!
::)

I guess I should explain WHT...we had a box ( de-scrambler).  You turned TV to channel to 68 (the same channel that showed The Uncle Floyd Show in NewYork and New Jersey after 7 or 8PM and you were able to watch movies, late nite they would show adult movies.

Without the box we were able to get 7 or 8 channels.

I got cable in '89, without it I was able to get 1 channel and it wasn't very clear.

I guess I should explain WHT...we had a box ( de-scrambler).  You turned TV to channel to 68 (the same channel that showed The Uncle Floyd Show in NewYork and New Jersey after 7 or 8PM and you were able to watch movies, late nite they would show adult movies.

Without the box we were able to get 7 or 8 channels.

I got cable in '89, without it I was able to get 1 channel and it wasn't very clear.


Kids today don't remember rabbit ears and static!  Depending on the weather, you might or might not be able to watch Kung Fu movie on channel 38!
:-\\

Kids today don't remember rabbit ears and static!  Depending on the weather, you might or might not be able to watch Kung Fu movie on channel 38!
:-\\


I remember rabbit ears and when TVs had two dials one for VHF and one for UHF channels.  The reception on the UHF channels was much worse, lots of snow and horizontal lines.

I remember rabbit ears and when TVs had two dials one for VHF and one for UHF channels.  The reception on the UHF channels was much worse, lots of snow and horizontal lines.


I almost forgot about that.  Hey, I remember when you were someone in the neighborhood if you had a television.  This wasn't a poor neighborhood, either, working class, but all single family homes.  I can remember the first guy in the neighborhood who got a color television, he was an engineer and one step a head of the crowd with all this high tech stuff, and all the neighbors were invited in to take a look.

Kids today don't remember rabbit ears and static!  Depending on the weather, you might or might not be able to watch Kung Fu movie on channel 38!
:-\\



Rabbit ears with aluminum foil at the end. When the rabbit ears broke, they were replaced by a clothes hanger.


Cat

Rabbit ears with aluminum foil at the end. When the rabbit ears broke, they were replaced by a clothes hanger.


Cat


Or the youngest in the family standing up beside the tv holding on to the antenna  ;D

Or the youngest in the family standing up beside the tv holding on to the antenna  ;D



Yeah, that was my job.  :-\\






:D ;D ;D ;D ;D



Cat

Or the youngest in the family standing up beside the tv holding on to the antenna  ;D


You'd get that tease of a clear picture and then the reception would go all to hell again as soon as you let go!

I got it...I got it...I got it...just a little farther left...Perfect!

AWWW F**K!!!

;D



Rabbit ears with aluminum foil at the end. When the rabbit ears broke, they were replaced by a clothes hanger.



Don't forget the pliers to change the channel when you pull the knobs off the set and lose them under the sofa.
:-\\

Don't forget the pliers to change the channel when you pull the knobs off the set and lose them under the sofa.
:-\\


When where you at our house to see our little B/W t.v.? Not only did we have to use pliers to change the channel, we had to plug it in/unplug it to turn it on & off. That poor little t.v. went though so much. I can't remember when we finally put it out of our misery.



Cat

Sometimes the signal would unscramble itself for a second and it was a quasi-divine vision!


Eeyup, spoken like one who was there!

And now you pay ten bucks for a box office ticket and STILL have to watch a Pepsi commercial between the previews and the feature!


I just wanted to watch a movie.  And they wouldn't show it to me!


I remember rabbit ears and when TVs had two dials one for VHF and one for UHF channels.  The reception on the UHF channels was much worse, lots of snow and horizontal lines.


Which reminds me:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
  - William Gibson, Neuromancer, ca. 1984

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/30/95729255_9da5906762.jpg

Attention Anybody Born Before About 2000:  William Gibson's Neuromancer was written in 1984.  See that picture of a TV?  He meant that 'color', every pixel flickering pseudo randomly at 60Hz modulated by a thick vertical blanking bar modulated at 59.99999 or 60.00001Hz crawling its way down the screen every 20-30 seconds depending on the razor-sharp difference between your local power plug's idea of 60Hz and your broadcaster's idea of 60Hz. 

He meant precisely the opposite of a sky made of a beautiful bluer-than-cerulean, we're talking #0000FF absolutely-no-red-no-green-as-blue-as-blue-can-get sky marred only by a with a few words in the corner saying "No Video Signal Detected".

And televisions used to be shaped like that, too.  (4:3, not 16:9.)

When where you at our house to see our little B/W t.v.? Not only did we have to use pliers to change the channel, we had to plug it in/unplug it to turn it on & off. That poor little t.v. went though so much. I can't remember when we finally put it out of our misery.



I remember my stepmother had a little B/W jobbie like that.  One time, I was sick in bed with the flu, so she brought the B/W set into my room.  When the signal crapped out at sundown, I was too wracked with fever to fiddle around with it.  So I stared at the snow while my eyeballs throbbed!
:(


I just wanted to watch a movie.  And they wouldn't show it to me!

Well, I want to your matinees, I went your double features, I went to your family movie festivals, so how can you say I'm crazy!

I grew up with four TV stations, all network affiliates, and they all went off the air around midnight.  So when we finally got cable in the late 70s or early 80s I was in tube heaven.  The best things were Monty Python, all-night movies, and all the great syndicated stuff (old TV shows and first-run syndicated series).  Also the stations that showed lots of movies like TBS and WGN in Chicago.  MTV came a little later and in those days they actually showed nothing but music videos, which were interesting because MTV would show just about any video to fill up their airtime (this was before the record companies discovered what a great marketing tool they were and started churning them out like sausage).  Early HBO was a big novelty, too. 

Growing up in western Canada we only had 2 channels..CBC ( great for hockey) and CTV (great for US shows). oddly enough you could get a third channel saturday mornings until about 2pm or so. It was ITV out of Edmonton and was great for cartoons like Spiderman and Rocket Robinhood. We only had the one color tv in the livingroom like most people, so after a while we were usually kicked outside to play.
  We finally got cable in around 1982 and was so excited for 10 channels lol....eventually we got a simmilar cable box to that one ( only had channels 14-23 I think) and could get Superchannel and First Choice movie channels. I still have a few movies taped off there including Trick or Treat!

Growing up in western Canada we only had 2 channels..CBC ( great for hockey) and CTV (great for US shows). oddly enough you could get a third channel saturday mornings until about 2pm or so. It was ITV out of Edmonton and was great for cartoons like Spiderman and Rocket Robinhood. We only had the one color tv in the livingroom like most people, so after a while we were usually kicked outside to play.
  We finally got cable in around 1982 and was so excited for 10 channels lol....eventually we got a simmilar cable box to that one ( only had channels 14-23 I think) and could get Superchannel and First Choice movie channels. I still have a few movies taped off there including Trick or Treat!


Then there were the CanCon rules, which SCTV spoofed with the McKenzie Brothers!
;)

Of course I do! When I go to primary school and one day my father bring back a black box like stuff, very thick. And the pics are not clear and not colorful. But we all liked it.

Then there were the CanCon rules, which SCTV spoofed with the McKenzie Brothers!
;)


haha yeah SCTV was so good. I always loved the Halfwits game show spoof as well as the Godfather (Network) wars or when the cabbage aliens took over.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I just "rediscovered" this site after having been away for awhile.  :)

It was 1976.  Our box was probably close to what basscatfrank described--30 channels, a two-position toggle switch on the side, but unfortunately no remote.  :(  The company was Syracuse NewChannels.  We got the 4 Syracuse networks(natch), probably the Rochester channels, the 3(then)NYC indies, and HBO!  I remember watching Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie" about 75 times.

Our version of the Weather Channel was all text, with wind direction indicated by a blinking N, S, E or W arranged in the traditional cross on the upper-left corner, the main forecast in the center, a news ticker on the bottom, and one of Syracuse's AM radio stations in the background.  Occasionally, there would be messages from one viewer to another("happy birthday", etc.), one being "If your Maserati does 185, don't lose your license or you won't be able to drive."

When I got old enough to break out of the ropes!
:o

My grandparents got cable t.v. before my parents did.  It was 1980/1981.  I don't remember the box or remote but it did have one.  That was where I discovered Mtv when they actually played pretty good music.  I think my first video was The Eurythmics "Sweet dreams are made of this".  Annie's hair and Dave playing a cello in a cow pasture and I was like... woah... and I was hooked.

Cable wasn't available for years to my parents.  I think around 1984 or so?  I remember seeing some mild porn movies late, late night.  I can't imagine they'd play them on regular channels... or would they?  ???

Now cable is almost a necessity.  It's really sad, I suppose.  I'd rather stay home and watch t.v. then go out and do anything.  I guess that might also explain my current physical condition as well.  :-[

I'm not certain of the exact year. I believe it was 1978 when we got cable.
There wasn't any great excitement for me though, we already had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and a few Canadian TV stations (CBC, CTV, GLOBAL, CITY-TV and CBC French)

There were enough good shows back then that there was enough to watch already, no need of more channels. 

I'm not certain of the exact year. I believe it was 1978 when we got cable.
There wasn't any great excitement for me though, we already had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and a few Canadian TV stations (CBC, CTV, GLOBAL, CITY-TV and CBC French)

There were enough good shows back then that there was enough to watch already, no need of more channels.


Wow, you got cable a full 16 years before we did. We were still stuck with just the Big Three (plus PBS of course) up until 1994.

That means that you were either really early to party, or (more likely) we were really late to the party. ;D

How come there's 200 channels now and STILL there's usually nothing good on?  ;D

How come there's 200 channels now and STILL there's usually nothing good on?  ;D


Same here. I can't really remember the time of only 3 channels (in our household before 1989 - even though I remember getting cable), but from what I have heard, the program was better and more selected  ;D

How come there's 200 channels now and STILL there's usually nothing good on?  ;D


True. It's amazing how segmented television has become in the past decade or two.

How come there's 200 channels now and STILL there's usually nothing good on?  ;D


It's called variety.