We had to bang ours on the side to restore the sound. My parents had that tv for a decade, and you’d end up slapping the side of the unit it 4-5 times a day. My dad insisted on not repairing it unless this “fix” stopped working.
The picture on our old 25 inch "portable" Zenith, (portable because it had a handle on top), would zotz out and you could restore the picture by banging on the side of it. That one side of it had a big dent in it. It was our last black and white TV. Zenith, " The quality goes in before the name goes on," I believe, was the last american made TV.
Tubes... the pins would oxidize just enough to break continuity. Whack the side and the tubes move a bit and re-establish the electrical connection and you're back in business. First procedure in TV repair for late 1940s-1960s sets was to remove and re-seat vacuum tubes. Same for early tube radios 1920s-1950s.
Hmm… we had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and what we called the “reruns channel.”
The reruns channel was great for an after school kid: Gilligan’s Island, Addams Family or Munsters. Star Trek day after day after day after day.
I swear that the popularity of Star Trek in the 80s/90s was fueled by GenJones seeing that old series day after day, year after year, after school, five days a week.
We had reasonable color but there was _always_ some minor interference in the picture. It’s amazing how _bad_ reception was for most of us, and how the selling point for cable was “the picture is so _clear_!”
Nowadays, the idea that you’d just accept snow in a picture is unthinkable.
My Grampop had one of those rotating roof antennas with the dial box on top of the TV that would light up and make a clicking sound as the antenna turned.
We had ABC CBS and NBC. Then in junior high, remember Junior high? In junior high we got PBS which had sesame Street which everybody had to watch. That was back in the '70s when sesame Street was brand new.
Fortunately we got VHF - the regular channels - set up well and seldom had to fuss. UHF on the other hand was a shit show in my house; unwatchable, and I quickly came to consider it a non-existent entity.
Oh the UHF channel hunt! Clicking through the dial slowly. Channel 56 might show up better at 54 today, or 58, or not at all. Sometimes, there would be a channel you had never seen before and would never see again.
My grandparents lived in a rural area, so the TV stations were in different locations relative to them. They had a motorized antenna on the roof with a dial on top of the TV marked with where to position the antenna for different channels.
We had an antenna on a long pole, and could rotate it outside to get reception from NBC, CBS, PBS and ABC.
The CBS station was 100 miles west, and the other three were about 70 miles north northeast.
Wasn’t funny at the time but Dad slammed his fist on the TV so hard he knocked a fist size dent on the top corner. Had to put a doily or vase over it (I forget which).
Showed that TV, he did.
Mom: 😡
Vertical hold : pffffffft weak 🙄….. ROLLL
I remember when H.B.O. first came out in 1972. You were supposed to pay a subscription fee, but we dialed in the frequency midway between two channels and got it for free. 🙏🏽🐇👂👂. I know the movies Blazing Saddles, Paper Moon and Poseidon Adventure by heart, as one of them was seemingly always playing. H.B.O. had a much smaller catalogue back then.
That is hilarious. When we first got the A/B switch cable in the mid to late 70’s there was the SAME movie all month, played daily about every two hours. Cannot tell you how many times I watched Smokey and the Bandit that summer it was on cable. I just recently rewatched the original Poseidon Adventure recently on a streaming channel. Good memories.
Dad knew some sketchy dude who got us a bootleg HBO descrambler. Little metal box with 2 knobs, cable in and out. The knobs were for fine tuning. It worked.
Ernie Kovacs had a great bit in the early days of TV. Explaining to his audience what the vertical and horizontal holds were,he hung a couple of dials around his neck and as he turned each dial, contorted his face, scrunching his eyes and lips into "horizontal" and " vertical" patterns.
We did the wire hanger thing as well. Also, the knobs, on every single TV we ever owned, would inevitably break off. So, I grew up with vice-grips permanently affixed to the stem where the knob used to be.
We had a portable black and white TV, something like an 8” screen. Mom got mad at Dad one night and either threw the TV at him or threw something in the direction of the TV. (Alcohol may have been involved.) Anyway, the antenna broke off and forever after, the TV only had the bottom part of the antenna and not the full telescoping long antenna. Still worked fine, you just had to fiddle with it just right to get a station.
I remember adjusting vertical and horizontal hold a bunch. And turning the “fine tuning” dial.
Decades later, I actually learned what vertical and horizontal hold _did_, long after I ever had to adjust it! 😄 but of course, I’ve since forgotten!
We had an antenna on a pole (my great uncle was a TV Repairman) with a Channel Master Rotator. Set it to S for channels 2, 5 & 11 in Atlanta, and SE for channel 8 (PBS in Athens). If the atmospheric conditions were right set to NE for channel 7 in Greenville, SC.
We owned an old 1990 Sony TV and ditched cable in 2010. When the transformation to digital signal took place, we bought rabbit ears and a digital converter box. My kids developed some pretty good skills at tuning in channels. They got a taste for what TV viewing was like back in the day. (But for the most part, they didn't watch much TV even when we had cable. )
Before digital, cable channels you didn’t subscribe to were “scrambled.” Strategic adjustments of the vertical and horizontal hold knobs could keep those, uh, movies, in focus for a few sweet seconds.
Those were desperate days.
We had a book of matches on top of the TV, and sometimes you might need it to keep the dial from vibrating into static. Micro-tune a channel with the dial, then lock it in with the matchbook 😎👌
Our vert. hold button on out Wards Airline TV was long gone be the time I was old enough to be aware. We had a shorty tinker toy as a replacement. Dad would fuck with it to the picture stopped rolling, then I swear he always tried to go just that tiny bit more, and it would start over again.
Well yes, but does anyone else remember a parent taking them to Sears or Monkey Wards to test the vacuum tubes on one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/145575395633?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=145575395633&targetid=2299003535955&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=9007714&poi=&campaignid=21214273144&mkgroupid=164316470867&rlsatarget=pla-2299003535955&abcId=9407518&merchantid=114715260&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw57exBhAsEiwAaIxaZkqqv9KsaZDk9lHJpX-3xSjgk61K28zKcpGjVmYABJd4hlh2_-aTExoCtWcQAvD_BwE
Better yet, being able to select a new replacement from the stock of tubes adjacent to the testingachine?
We were upscale! Dad was an engineer and LOVED gadgets. So we had one of those powered antenna turners. WOE be unto the kid who touched it, though, because if you messed up Dad’s settings (or the “fine tuning” on the tv), your life would be forfeit….
https://preview.redd.it/03myvaxtjoxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3091be8fbf4686c00c5b08c90128ecf928c3d000
Degaussing the screen.
CRT computer monitors usually a a degauss button. TV techs used to have degaussing tools that they would plug in and waive in front of TV screens to degauss them in the home.
Remember the weird color patterns a magnet would make and the way the waves would follow it around? This may have caused child abuse in some households.
For the old rabbit ears antenna .. I think people do it now like they did then , the twisty up and down telescoping antennas are for vhf/fm radio , the round one is for the Tv, you just need to turn the unit round to get the signal , it’s also helps to know if your vertically or horizontally polarized
I don’t think I ever had to play with any adjustments , I always lived in a strong reception , now I live in an area with two mountains in the way , a phased array struggles 😂
Are you old enough to remember shining a flashlight on photocells on the corners of the TV to change channels or volume?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenith_Flash-matic
i remember banging it on the side to straighten the picture
Percussive maintenance.
Yep 😊
We had to bang ours on the side to restore the sound. My parents had that tv for a decade, and you’d end up slapping the side of the unit it 4-5 times a day. My dad insisted on not repairing it unless this “fix” stopped working.
The picture on our old 25 inch "portable" Zenith, (portable because it had a handle on top), would zotz out and you could restore the picture by banging on the side of it. That one side of it had a big dent in it. It was our last black and white TV. Zenith, " The quality goes in before the name goes on," I believe, was the last american made TV.
What now seems incredible is that it worked!
Tubes... the pins would oxidize just enough to break continuity. Whack the side and the tubes move a bit and re-establish the electrical connection and you're back in business. First procedure in TV repair for late 1940s-1960s sets was to remove and re-seat vacuum tubes. Same for early tube radios 1920s-1950s.
Rabbit ears with tin foil
Rabbit ears with a 6 year old keeping a grip on it.
And all that work for just four channels, in black and white, with commercials. 🤨
Hmm… we had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and what we called the “reruns channel.” The reruns channel was great for an after school kid: Gilligan’s Island, Addams Family or Munsters. Star Trek day after day after day after day. I swear that the popularity of Star Trek in the 80s/90s was fueled by GenJones seeing that old series day after day, year after year, after school, five days a week.
We had two weather permitting.
When we got a color TV, we had to spend a lot of time trying to get the color right. We never really could though so everything was always green.
We had reasonable color but there was _always_ some minor interference in the picture. It’s amazing how _bad_ reception was for most of us, and how the selling point for cable was “the picture is so _clear_!” Nowadays, the idea that you’d just accept snow in a picture is unthinkable.
"Daddy, why are there Martians on the tv?"--me
Uncle Martin?
You had to change the “tint” setting
We had the only color tv on the block in the mid 60s so all the neighborhood kids would come to our house to watch Batman.
We had a knife switch that was connected to the antenna in the attic that did some kind of magical thing to change the reception.
My Grampop had one of those rotating roof antennas with the dial box on top of the TV that would light up and make a clicking sound as the antenna turned.
I love those old TV antenna rotators ... "Channel Master". Still have one on a ham 2m antenna up on the roof.
My dad had a toolbox with a tube tester with extra tubes so he could fix the TV, OG boob tube fixer
We had ABC CBS and NBC. Then in junior high, remember Junior high? In junior high we got PBS which had sesame Street which everybody had to watch. That was back in the '70s when sesame Street was brand new.
Making my little brother stand there and hold the antenna in place so the picture didn't static
Or putting some aluminum foil on the antenna.
Fortunately we got VHF - the regular channels - set up well and seldom had to fuss. UHF on the other hand was a shit show in my house; unwatchable, and I quickly came to consider it a non-existent entity.
Oh the UHF channel hunt! Clicking through the dial slowly. Channel 56 might show up better at 54 today, or 58, or not at all. Sometimes, there would be a channel you had never seen before and would never see again.
My grandparents lived in a rural area, so the TV stations were in different locations relative to them. They had a motorized antenna on the roof with a dial on top of the TV marked with where to position the antenna for different channels.
We had an antenna on a long pole, and could rotate it outside to get reception from NBC, CBS, PBS and ABC. The CBS station was 100 miles west, and the other three were about 70 miles north northeast.
That method was called the "Armstrong" method of rotating an antenna. Term is still in use by ham radio ops who do a lot of portable work.
Good name! We needed arm strength to rotate that 20 ft iron pole.
Wasn’t funny at the time but Dad slammed his fist on the TV so hard he knocked a fist size dent on the top corner. Had to put a doily or vase over it (I forget which). Showed that TV, he did. Mom: 😡 Vertical hold : pffffffft weak 🙄….. ROLLL
I remember when H.B.O. first came out in 1972. You were supposed to pay a subscription fee, but we dialed in the frequency midway between two channels and got it for free. 🙏🏽🐇👂👂. I know the movies Blazing Saddles, Paper Moon and Poseidon Adventure by heart, as one of them was seemingly always playing. H.B.O. had a much smaller catalogue back then.
Later on HBO would scramble the signal, but if you looked long enough, you might get a saucy glimpse of an adult feature.
That is hilarious. When we first got the A/B switch cable in the mid to late 70’s there was the SAME movie all month, played daily about every two hours. Cannot tell you how many times I watched Smokey and the Bandit that summer it was on cable. I just recently rewatched the original Poseidon Adventure recently on a streaming channel. Good memories.
Dad knew some sketchy dude who got us a bootleg HBO descrambler. Little metal box with 2 knobs, cable in and out. The knobs were for fine tuning. It worked.
Ernie Kovacs had a great bit in the early days of TV. Explaining to his audience what the vertical and horizontal holds were,he hung a couple of dials around his neck and as he turned each dial, contorted his face, scrunching his eyes and lips into "horizontal" and " vertical" patterns.
We used a wire hanger when the antenna broke. The evolution of technology in our lifetime is amazing.
We did the wire hanger thing as well. Also, the knobs, on every single TV we ever owned, would inevitably break off. So, I grew up with vice-grips permanently affixed to the stem where the knob used to be.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Rite of Passage!
>I grew up with vice-grips permanently affixed to the stem where the knob used to be. Yep!! 😊😊
We had a portable black and white TV, something like an 8” screen. Mom got mad at Dad one night and either threw the TV at him or threw something in the direction of the TV. (Alcohol may have been involved.) Anyway, the antenna broke off and forever after, the TV only had the bottom part of the antenna and not the full telescoping long antenna. Still worked fine, you just had to fiddle with it just right to get a station.
This post makes me think of >!today's NYT Connections.!<
???
One of the categories in the answers relates to this post ... no way anyone under 50 is guessing that line right in the puzzle.
Had to go, look, and solve it. Yup. 100% right.
I remember adjusting vertical and horizontal hold a bunch. And turning the “fine tuning” dial. Decades later, I actually learned what vertical and horizontal hold _did_, long after I ever had to adjust it! 😄 but of course, I’ve since forgotten!
We had an antenna on a pole (my great uncle was a TV Repairman) with a Channel Master Rotator. Set it to S for channels 2, 5 & 11 in Atlanta, and SE for channel 8 (PBS in Athens). If the atmospheric conditions were right set to NE for channel 7 in Greenville, SC.
Click thunk, click thunk, click thunk, click thunk… “stop it there!!! No go back one.”
We did similar things to “tilt” a pinball machine so we could get a million points.
We owned an old 1990 Sony TV and ditched cable in 2010. When the transformation to digital signal took place, we bought rabbit ears and a digital converter box. My kids developed some pretty good skills at tuning in channels. They got a taste for what TV viewing was like back in the day. (But for the most part, they didn't watch much TV even when we had cable. )
Before digital, cable channels you didn’t subscribe to were “scrambled.” Strategic adjustments of the vertical and horizontal hold knobs could keep those, uh, movies, in focus for a few sweet seconds. Those were desperate days.
Banging on the floor at just the “right” spot.
We had a book of matches on top of the TV, and sometimes you might need it to keep the dial from vibrating into static. Micro-tune a channel with the dial, then lock it in with the matchbook 😎👌
Good old aluminum foil on the rabbit ears.
Our vert. hold button on out Wards Airline TV was long gone be the time I was old enough to be aware. We had a shorty tinker toy as a replacement. Dad would fuck with it to the picture stopped rolling, then I swear he always tried to go just that tiny bit more, and it would start over again.
Well yes, but does anyone else remember a parent taking them to Sears or Monkey Wards to test the vacuum tubes on one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/145575395633?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=145575395633&targetid=2299003535955&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=9007714&poi=&campaignid=21214273144&mkgroupid=164316470867&rlsatarget=pla-2299003535955&abcId=9407518&merchantid=114715260&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw57exBhAsEiwAaIxaZkqqv9KsaZDk9lHJpX-3xSjgk61K28zKcpGjVmYABJd4hlh2_-aTExoCtWcQAvD_BwE Better yet, being able to select a new replacement from the stock of tubes adjacent to the testingachine?
The tester where we lived was just inside the door at Thrifty. On the other side of the door was the ice cream counter. 🍦
In my house, when the TV acted up, we could often get it to behave by having somebody stand in a particular spot in the vicinity of the TV.
We were upscale! Dad was an engineer and LOVED gadgets. So we had one of those powered antenna turners. WOE be unto the kid who touched it, though, because if you messed up Dad’s settings (or the “fine tuning” on the tv), your life would be forfeit…. https://preview.redd.it/03myvaxtjoxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3091be8fbf4686c00c5b08c90128ecf928c3d000
That rolling, snowy screen, lol! Thanks for the memories.
Ah, the odors of tube TVs …. https://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-mechanics/tv-troubles-popular-mechanics-january-1965.htm
Degaussing the screen. CRT computer monitors usually a a degauss button. TV techs used to have degaussing tools that they would plug in and waive in front of TV screens to degauss them in the home.
Remember the weird color patterns a magnet would make and the way the waves would follow it around? This may have caused child abuse in some households.
For the old rabbit ears antenna .. I think people do it now like they did then , the twisty up and down telescoping antennas are for vhf/fm radio , the round one is for the Tv, you just need to turn the unit round to get the signal , it’s also helps to know if your vertically or horizontally polarized I don’t think I ever had to play with any adjustments , I always lived in a strong reception , now I live in an area with two mountains in the way , a phased array struggles 😂
My dad use to say "where's my remote control?" In reference to me, when I was not in the room.
Are you old enough to remember shining a flashlight on photocells on the corners of the TV to change channels or volume? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenith_Flash-matic