But Its Not In HD!

[Corrado]

The digital transition has taken the fun out of analog TV DXing. I have a digital channel broadcasting 23 miles to my west I cannot receive at all even with my antenna repointed. Hunter Mountain is in the signal path.

When I was a kid we had the 3 network channels from Albany, NY. Channel 6 WRGB was the strongest and was originally NBC, now CBS. Channel 10 WTEN was next and Channel 13 WNYT was the weakest. We could rotate the whole antenna from the base of the chimney by turning the pipe and once in a while get some distant channels like channel 2 from Utica, channel 8 from Conn. Once in a great while channel 5 from NYC which was over 100+ miles south. I remember watching channel 5 once and a station from West Palm Beach Florida briefly overpowered it clear as day. I used to try to watch the Saturday evening Creature Feature movie on WNEW, signal permitting. Later on we got a rotor to turn the antenna which made tuning a lot easier.

My grandfather had a separate UHF converter and antenna setup. Back then many old TVs didn't have a UHF tuner built in. He could get a channel 19 from Adams MA. which has the same as channel 10 and WMHT channel 17. I remember the small knife switch to control which antenna ribbon wire was selected.

I was so glad in the 1980s when we got UHF channels 23, 45 and 62 in addition. I still watch plenty of TV off air. My kitchen TV is only connected to the antenna and gets plenty to watch.

 

[KE4EST]

Back when we first got cable, the only pay channel on cable was HBO...I had a 13" portable tube TV on my bookshelf and HBO was to be had if I turned it to channel 2 and then turned the fine tuning knob about 2 turns to the right. The picture was still rather fuzzy and the audio wasn't 100% clear, but you could hear it. I watch many, many movies in my youth before that TV finally died...

I did the same thing.
When we did get cable the only premium(pay extra channels) were HBO and Showtime. In my bedroom I had an old set and could tweak the fine tuning knob to watch them.
One was still fuzzy and one came in clear, don't remember now which was which, but it was still cool for a 13 year old.

 

[Kraven]

Who else use to watch scrambled porn back in the day?

 

[barleyguy]

Who else use to watch scrambled porn back in the day?

Guilty as charged. My brother and I used to watch Playboy Channel with a color inversion. It wasn't very effective scrambling, but the girls had blue skin. They went to a more effective scrambling when satellite receivers started adding color inversion (and sync inversion) as features.

I also remember watching PPV Wrestlemania with sync inversion. The colors were wrong and everything was kinda wavy and mangled, but you could still tell what was going on.

------------------------

When I was a kid we had a big (27" which was considered huge then) color set in the downstairs living room. I also had a TV in my bedroom, but it was a 10-inch black and white. I watched a whole lot of science fiction on that tiny little B&W TV set. My favorite channel was a PBS station from a small town that showed Doctor Who weekday evenings and music videos most of the day Saturday.

 

[lost_mesa]

My grandfather had a separate UHF converter and antenna setup. Back then many old TVs didn't have a UHF tuner built in. He could get a channel 19 from Adams MA. which has the same as channel 10 and WMHT channel 17. I remember the small knife switch to control which antenna ribbon wire was selected.

I've always had a fondness for UHF TV converters and have a small collection of them. The Mallory 101 is a vacuum tube model from the early 1950's. A few years ago I feed the Ch 6 output of this converter into a Zenith DTT901 DTV converter box tuned to ch 6. I was able to receive most of the DTV stations on UHF. Kind of cool to watch OTA DTV through a vacuum tube front-end.

 

[lfp302]

And ghosting in the picture. We lived where the line of sight to transmitters was parallel to front range of the Rockies.

 

[KE4EST]

I miss how much more skip I got in the analog days.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Saturday's there was Sci-Fi Theater on channel 11 and they always showed a double-feature. Saw some terrific science fiction movies back then...mainly because I don't remember the titles... Channel 11 was an independent back then, but I think it's a CW station now...

 

[Magic Static]

We didn't have TV in the old days when I was a kid But I remember there were only two channels for ever. Then cable was born and we got four more channels from the next time zone and we could watch programs that were on at the same time on the locals, time shifted

 

[Kraven]

Remember this dude on PBS..

 

[gasman882001]

We lived in the country so had a big antenna way up in the air next to the house to pull in network tv. We were high tech and had a black box on the top of the tv plugged into the power outlet for rotating the antenna outside. Bad thing was you had to stay up by the tv and keep pushing the button until you got it turned to the correct angle for the channel to come in. Of course that angle would change depending on the weather and time of day.

 

[bobvick]

Where I live, before we got our first TVRO system back in the mid 80s, we got about 5 channels from a 60' tower, which we had to have to get good reception from the towers about 65 air miles from Birmingham, WBRC 6 ABC, WBIQ 10 PBS, WVTM 13 NBC, WTTO 21 IND, and if we were lucky WBMG 42 CBS. Had a rotator on that tower, and if turned to the west, could get WCBI 4 CBS out of Columbus, Miss pretty good and WTVA 9 NBC out of Tupelo.
I had that tower upgraded with new antennas, cable, and rotator in 2009, it worked quite well for digital TV, it got struck by lighting in 2013 and the guy that installed everything and climbed towers is out of business now. I just use Dish for locals now, since you can't hardly find anyone that climbs towers anymore.

 

[bpalone]

Ah, yes the old days. My kids couldn't believe that when the wife and I were first married, that we only had ONE channel. Made viewing pretty simple though. If you like what was on, you left it on, if not, you turned it off.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Still remember when stations went off-the-air at around 1-1:30am...felt a bit lonely when the national anthem and the indian-head test pattern stopped and the snow was all there was...on all 5 channels.

 

[lfp302]

I don't really remember Indian Head test pattern. Ours was more like Kraven's Avatar. They would show that, along with an ear splitting 1000 hz audio
tone for what seemed like HOURS.

 

[Cosmo Blatz]

I don't really remember Indian Head test pattern. Ours was more like Kraven's Avatar. They would show that, along with an ear splitting 1000 hz audio
tone for what seemed like HOURS.

It's a classic.

 

[lfp302]

That's the one...

 

[kittyhas1000legs]

Remember this dude on PBS..

View attachment 107744 View attachment 107745

He's still airing here. Heck, I even dressed up as him for KatsuCon this year:

 

[FaT Air]

 

[barleyguy]

Ah, yes the old days. My kids couldn't believe that when the wife and I were first married, that we only had ONE channel. Made viewing pretty simple though. If you like what was on, you left it on, if not, you turned it off.

When I was a kid we had about 10 channels at home because we were in range of Denver (with the antenna in the attic), but we also had a small cabin in the mountains where we only got one channel. They had unlimited syndication rights to Looney Toons and Three's Company, so whenever they had to fill a schedule slot, they played one of those two things.

So in short, I grew up watching entirely too much Looney Toons.