When "color" TV was a big deal???

Hmm. I remember when we moved up to a used 16 inch B&W "portable" TV that was able to get 2 of the 3 local channels reliably but no UHF so the new "educational" channel was only a rumor.

We did have some better off relatives who had a large color set when they came out, but us kids were not allowed inside the house on our rare visits. We were allowed a peek through the front screen door at "Bonanza" in color for a few seconds once though.

I remember acquiring my first 14 inch color TV sometime after I got a permanent full time job and had moved from an old tenement building to an apartment above a storefront. Maybe 1978?
 
My parents bought their first color TV around 1972 or so. I still remember them bringing it home and my dad setting it up. I know that it was a Saturday afternoon because the first thing that we watched for a few minutes was a college football game. Some of my friends already had a color TV at their home so it wasn't mind blowing to me anymore but of course I was happy my parents finally bought one. I think it was a 19" Zenith color TV.


I bought my first HD TV in 2004 and I thought about that day while I was setting up the TV.
 

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I bought our first color TV in '71 from a guy at work. It was one of the early RCA consoles and it didn't work. I gave him $40 for it and put it in my garage to work on. I fixed it and got it aligned, which was not easy on those early sets. There were 6 electrical adjustments and six adjustable magnets and they interacted with each other. Then, after all that, I looked at the corner of the screen and saw a tiny crack developing. So, I had to knock the tip off the rear of the tube to kill the vacuum and the TV went to the dump.

Our second color TV was a hand me down from my wife's folks. They had bought a new one. It worked, but the picture tube was getting gassy and the picture wasn't sharp. I bought a rebuilt tube and replaced it and it worked great for years.

When I look at today's TV's I'm still amazed at how sharp the image is. And, there's no vertical or horizontal hold to fiddle with, or fine tuning needed. In fact, no knobs at all.
 
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My grandmother had a sort of color-wheel that looked like what people used to shine on aluminum Christmas trees, but smaller. Aimed at the TV, it was supposed to look like you had a color TV. It didn't. She also had some sort of

My first color TV was one I bought from a sale of hotel color TVs when they were replacing all the sets. If I remember, it cost maybe $30. It weighed more than an elephant and it had such a big "boot" on the back that it was hard to find anywhere to put it. But it was COLOR!

Unfortunately, a few days after buying it, I set a large glass of ice tea on the top of it while surfing the channels (no remote) and promptly knocked the glass over, sending all th.e contents into the grill on top of the boot. There was much fizzing and sizzling. I immediately jerked the plug out of the wall.

I let it set for a few days, with fans pointed at it and finally took the plunge and plugged it back in. It came on just fine but it was totally black-and-white. Bummer. Then a few days later, there was a hint of color, very faint. Over the next few days, the color came back completely.
 
Our first color television was a house Christmas present in the late 60s.

It was a large piece of furniture made of wood! šŸ˜‰šŸ¤­šŸ˜‚

I remember that my stepfather spent hours adjusting the color.

I retreated to my room and watched an old 19ā€ white plastic black and white television with built in rabbit ears. I had aluminum foil on the rabbit ears to improve reception and I remember having to constantly fiddle with the vertical and horizontal hold knobs on the back of the set.

Now, my television is more modern but I still have rabbit ears for my AirTV.
 
This was the exact same colour tv we got in around 1979...

d869362b5787af9b6e169544d76ae9fa.jpg
...up until then we coud only afford to rent a B&W one. there was a big difference in the rental prices of colour and B&W...

I first saw a colour tv in 69 when I was 14... my friends parents who were the first in the street to get the newest things had one.. and it was like being at the movies watching it.. it was so colourful.

My father was very mean with his money so he never bought a colour tv.. and so I didn't get one until I;d been married for about 3 years...

I'm just sitting her now wondering f it's still possible to rent a TV...as we could back then when TV's were so expensive to buy..
 
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My TV sets were all black and white screens until I started my first full time job in the 70ā€™s. My first major purchase then bought on a credit card was a color tv with a 19ā€ screen, the standard at the time but tiny by todayā€™s standards. I can remember how proud I was to have a color tv, because it meant that I had arrived as a working adult who had their own place and could buy stuff! šŸ˜ŗ
 
I watched BW TV at home growing up. After I got a color TV when first married, I realized that TV shows were better when the story was what sold it and not how it looked.
Color can make up for a thousand things lacking in a show.

My father didn't get a color TV until we all moved out.
 
The first big deal I remember as a kid, probably in the mid-sixties, was a b&w TV with a remote control that had a long, long wire on it. That was pretty slick because you could change the channel without getting up from the couch! My grandmother had a color TV, again probably in the mid-sixties. I remember watching "The Wizard of Oz" on that TV and was amazed at the color while in "Oz". I also remember the NBC peacock logo and being blown away by that.
 
hollydolly said:
This was the exact same colour tv we got in around 1979...

d869362b5787af9b6e169544d76ae9fa.jpg
...up until then we coud only afford to rent a B&W one. there was a big difference in the rental prices of colour and B&W...

I first saw a colour tv in 69 when I was 14... my friends parents who were the first in the street to get the newest things had one.. and it was like being at the movies watching it.. it was so colourful.

My father was very mean with his money so he never bought a colour tv.. and so I didn't get one until I;d been married for about 3 years...

I'm just sitting her now wondering f it's still possible to rent a TV...as we could back then when TV's were so expensive to buy..
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Do you remember the 'trade test transmissions' - short films to demonstrate colour TV ? And the 'test card music' ? People used to turn on the TV during the day for the background music, much of which was composed specially.
 
Capt Lightning said:
Do you remember the 'trade test transmissions' - short films to demonstrate colour TV ? And the 'test card music' ? People used to turn on the TV during the day for the background music, much of which was composed specially.
Click to expand...
I don't remember that, because we never had the TV on during the day ..I've seen it since of course but not back then
 
When we got our first color television, there were still television shows being filmed in black and white. Add to that, there were reruns of old TV shows and old movies that were in black and white. So even if you had a color set, sometimes it was still like having an old B&W television. Then again, the commercials were now in color.

"The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC"

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, was the title of his show on NBC. Part of the theme song went, "The world is a carousel of colors. Wonderful, wonderful color."
 
I remember hearing a conversation between the mothers of two of my friends, Kim and Sue. Kim's mum remarked how different the characters looked in colour and mentioned one of the female leads in a popular soap. Sue's mum said "I like the way she dresses, she has some very nice outfits". Kim's mum snapped back "Yes, but you only have black and white, she looks dreadful in colour". Kim's mum may have been right but, the tone was such a put down.

I think that may have been the first time I became aware of how an item could define you; if you had a colour tv you were one of the in-crowd but, if you had a b/w set, you were definitely in the uncool zone.
 
Paladin1950 said:
When we got our first color television, there were still television shows being filmed in black and white. Add to that, there were reruns of old TV shows and old movies that were in black and white. So even if you had a color set, sometimes it was still like having an old B&W television. Then again, the commercials were now in color.

"The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC"

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, was the title of his show on NBC. Part of the theme song went, "The world is a carousel of colors. Wonderful, wonderful color."
Click to expand...
We didn't have a color TV. I always remember that Walt Disney intro with the little fairy waving her wand and all those colors came out, and the theme song,"The world is a carousel of colors. Wonderful, wonderful color. Color. Color. Color." It wasn't so spectacular in B&W.
 

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