Question For Senior DISsers

[NYCgrrl]

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[NYCgrrl]

No idea when my mother got her first color tv but it was after I went to college certainly. We didn’t have a b+ w tv until I was somewhere between 11 and 13 y/o and it was a used one from an aunt who bought a color version. When I told this to my kids their mouths fell open and they asked my mother for confirmation .

 

[Pea-n-Me]

We got ours in 1973. Next to our couch it was the largest piece of furniture in the living room. Something like this:

Going from black and white to color TV was an even bigger jump than standard def to high def, IMHO.

My brother still had one of these until a few years ago.

 

[GAN]

It had to be 1968 or 1969, as I remember watching Sesame Street and Star Trek in color. And I also remember watching the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Funny because that's how I determined we didn't have color till 1970 ...I distinctly remember watching in black & white but pretty sure the control portion was color but don't remember any of that

 

[barkley]

had to have been late 60's b/c i remember that my dad kept saying no b/c not all shows were airing in color so it was a waste of money. i remember the only reason he finaly gave in was b/c i was playing in the living room and jumped off a hassock on to the floor which caused our old black and white to give a groan and die (i think my mom was thrilled ). we got one of the big consoles w/ the am/fm stereo and a record player-that sucker lasted forever-i think when mom sold the house a couple of decades later it was still working.

A Magnavox. A great looking piece of furniture and but a very good TV, it constantly needed repairs. Because the cabinet looked so good, my mom still had it in 2013 when she passed away, decades after the TV had stopped working.

1975, one of these monstrosities

View attachment 809391

this was the style of magnovox we had-i recall that when mom was getting ready to move she thought she was going to have to pay someone to haul it off only to find that several of my brother's friends wanted to take it off her hands to convert into a home bar (i've wondered since with the resurgence of popularity in 'mid century modern' design if there might be a number of newer homes that have done the same b/c i have not seen one sitting in the local thrift stores in ages).

 

[tony67]

I cant recall not having a color tv, but you did not watch as much TV either - you went out to play.

I do recall having some secondary portable 12" black and white TVs though

 

[BrianL]

We got ours in 1973. Next to our couch it was the largest piece of furniture in the living room. Something like this:

Going from black and white to color TV was an even bigger jump than standard def to high def, IMHO.

Hillariously, that's a PlayStation 5 on top there! My bet is this person has a flat-screen sitting right on top of this console.

 

[Snowysmom]

My first color TV was when I got married in 1976. My Dad finally got one after I got married and left home. To be honest it wasn't something we could easily afford so he waited until the black and white TV stopped working. My friend's family got one in 1966 so I would go over there sometimes and watch TV.

 

[tony67]

Hillariously, that's a PlayStation 5 on top there! My bet is this person has a flat-screen sitting right on top of this console.

Did you ever try to move one of those things? Its there forever...

Its meant to be very good for retro gaming - but Ill stick with a modern flat screen.

 

[Praying Colonel]

Hillariously, that's a PlayStation 5 on top there! My bet is this person has a flat-screen sitting right on top of this console.

Yep, I saw that, too. It was the closest match I could find on Google Images to the TV we had.

Also, the TV in the photo has a push-button channel selector, which was way ahead of ours. We had the old-fashioned knobs (one for UHF, one for VHF) and no remote control. Well, we kids were the remote controls, I guess.

 

[BrianL]

Did you ever try to move one of those things? Its there forever...

Its meant to be very good for retro gaming - but Ill stick with a modern flat screen.

Oh yeah, but nobody was going to steal it!

 

[Kitty 34]

My Dad (91) made us our first TV from a kit when I was 13. It was 1967. They didn't believe in color as that would ruin our eyes. I do wear glasses now, tho.

 

[Babs Johnson]

I remember it was the summer of 1970 because my family had just moved to the suburbs and we upgraded both the furniture and the TV set. Like others, my grandparents had color TV a few years before that and extended family would gather there to watch special events.

Rabbit ears?

 

[kanerf]

We moved out to Arizona from Wisconsin in 1968 (Dad was an Army Colonel). I am pretty sure we got one in the new house (new to us anyway, it was over 100 years old).

 

[BrianL]

I remember it was the summer of 1970 because my family had just moved to the suburbs and we upgraded both the furniture and the TV set. Like others, my grandparents had color TV a few years before that and extended family would gather there to watch special events.

Rabbit ears?

View attachment 809436

Rabbit ears? Pretty fancy! If you really wanted the experience you had to use a coat hanger and tin foil!

 

[Babs Johnson]

My Dad (91) made us our first TV from a kit when I was 13. It was 1967. They didn't believe in color as that would ruin our eyes. I do wear glasses now, tho.

Yeah, more than a few were suspicious of color tv back then For a variety of reasons.

 

[Babs Johnson]

Rabbit ears? Pretty fancy! If you really wanted the experience you had to use a coat hanger and tin foil!

I brought my parents old portable B&W TV to college. It had built in rabbit ears that retracted into the set when not in use.

At a drunken party with the TV on, someone bumped into it and it fell and the rabbit ears snapped off. I used various things as the makeshift antenna: the hanger and foil, a pair of open metal scissor, two screwdrivers, etc.

 

[BrianL]

I brought my parents old portable B&W TV to college. It had built in rabbit ears that retracted into the set when not in use.

At a drunken party with the TV on, someone bumped into it and it fell and the rabbit ears snapped off. I used various things as the makeshift antenna: the hanger and foil, a pair of open metal scissor, two screwdrivers, etc.

Oh, man, been there. I had a little set in my tiny bedroom and a broke off the top of the antenna. I clipped a coat-hanger and used it inside the antenna to hold it then wrapped it in foil at the break. It seemed to do just fine.

Man, it's no fun these days where we can't really MacGyver our electronics and all.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

The 55+ crowd. When did your family get its first color TV?

Oh, good grief, I think sometime between 1962 and 1964. The first color show I watched was Mitch Miller. Back then you had to have the "technician" de-magnetize the set because the colors were bunched in different areas on the screen. Watching the Mitch Miller dancers their costumes would change colors as they moved around the picture until the set was de-magnetized.

 

[longboard55]

About 1970 as well, we would go to our grand parents house to watch big shows because they had an early one, which were terrible, but it was color. The first 18 years of my life the biggest tech invention was the phone answering machine. That was it.