Color television had larger impact than digital television

Reminds me of my brother and his '66 Chevelle Super Sport - his friend's frequently told him the car was "boss"!

 

Digital TV had a bigger impact on me. Getting a 50" plasma opened up viewing for my tired eyes.

I lived in an East Hollywood courtyard apartment in the late 60s and had the only TV, a 19" B&W rental. Friends would come over to listen to music and watch TV, no one minded seeing Star Trek or The Prisoner in B&W. My gf always wanted to watch The Monkees while my friends wanted to listen to Jimi Hendrix. Guess who won. I didn't watch tv for a couple of years after that and when I did color was all there was. It didn't make much of an impact on me.

 

Digital TV (Samsung 32in.720p HDtv around 2014) has had a much bigger impact on me than my family's first color TV Magnavox back in the early '70's.

The picture quality of shows now I'm assuming remastered for HDtv reveals so much more in color and detail that it creates more of an impact of what and who dialog and character is moving the plot forward. More vulnerability and emotion I can see in the detail in the eyes and shape of the eyes that makeup obscured on low rez tv back then.

Women actors with thick mascara and eye shadow looked like dolls back then on our CRT tv and now look like real people with real feelings with more impact to their screen presence. It actually makes me care more for not just the plot but the characters. And the color is more accurate so if someone blushes or is acting inebriated their blood shot eyes now look more convincing and skin color doesn't look clownish.

 

Maybe comparable to using an iphone for the first time.

 

Our first color TV set was the console HeathKit TV my dad built - he worked on that for weeks - each night completing a new board. That was a big deal when we finally had it running. I recall Star Treks etc.

 

I recall when the TVGuide indicated the shows that were in “Color” in a little black box with white font.
Mad Magazine then mocked it with a classification called “Off Color” and the show was “Johnny Cursin”

 

Remember banging the set when the reception wasn’t good? What was that maneuver called?

 

Don't know what your maneuver was called back then but to get clearer reception it involved my brother adjusting the rabbit ears with tin foil smushed around each ear and then have him stand there holding it for the clearer picture and noticing it got fuzzy when he let go. We rigged some metal coat hanger extension so he could watch from an angle.

Sometimes our Magnavox got better reception with a slight hair thin or half millimeter tweak to a knob called "tuning" or "tuner". Sometimes there was enough built up static electricity dragging my feet across the carpet to adjust the picture where I could just "tap-zap" this tuner knob and got a much clearer picture. NO ONE COULD GO NEAR THE TV as we yelled out...or else we'ld lose the clearer picture.

Yes, our first color tv had much more impact on us as a family but in a real bad and annoying way! I certainly don't long for those days.

 

In the Navy we referred to it as "percussion maintenance" though television sets were rarely involved.

 

That’s what I was looking for.

 

Really Rick, I first saw it in about 1975 at 6 or 7 and that was pretty amazing!

 

Color TV made the leap the way that Technicolor movies did to Hollywood back in 1939.

There were movies but in the home radio was the only option for most households. This made TV itself equal to movies in many aspects, except for the color.

When color arrived in the home, except mainly for the size, home TV's had reached a parity with the movies.

Yes digital TV's have better resolution and are a larger size. But regular TV's had grown in size with both front and rear projection since the early 80's.

VHS tapes had given away to DVD's that could be watched on regular analog sets.

Digital TV with all of its improvements, was more of an evolutional rather than a revolutional change to TV viewing.

I think the most impact was that the costs had come way down and now the TV's were flat and easy to handle than the fact that the technology was digital.

I really doubt that the general public was that aware that TV's went from analog to digital.

People live in an analog world. Do they care if their phone is analog or digital?

At the end of the day, everyone experiences digital sound, regardless of the original source.

When we watch video are we really aware that we are watching a digital source?

As movie theaters moved from film to digital, did most people notice, or even care?

 

I just had to look it up, and was surprised to find that Sears sold the last brand-new mass-produced B&W set in America in 1990. Incredibly that they went that late -- I would have guessed maybe 1981-1982.

For the record, the first really cheap, affordable color TV in America was the GE "Porta-Color" set, which was a revolution when it was introduced around 1966-1967, with a retail price just under $300 (and frequently discounted to about $250)...

 

Our first was a Sears Silvertone. Constantly breaking down. Horrible set. I remember back then Sonys looked so much better than any other sets. Sad to see Sony today.

 

This is the kind of thing that burns itself into your brain:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_shGOjzV3U

 

Started watching Carson back when I was 12 or 13. Never got a chance to see the show in NY or CA.

But two things put Fort Lauderdale on the map. They were the movie Where the Boys Are in 1960 and the Johnny Carson show.

Johnny's PR guy had his office on the same floor as a guy that did 16mm movie commercial and radio commercial work. Johnny and Ed were in there quite a bit. I never bumped into either of them.

But I did happen to make some mono 1/4" dubs of a PR spot for radio stations that Ed had recorded. It was made between two Ampex tape machines mounted in a 19" rack. I was dubbing down to little 3" reals that the radio stations could play.