Do you remember.... antenna TV? | Retro Junk

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Drahken 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 1239	Do you remember watching broadcast TV via antenna, before all the digital stuff? Either going out in the snow to manually turn the big antenna pole or having the (whoa! awesome technology!) electronic rotor setup where you can just turn a knob on a box inside to turn the antenna. Having more snow than picture. Vertical hold that won't hold & either keeps jumping, or remains steady but above the horizontal (like the scene in the one daffy duck cartoon "what are you doing down there? 'Down here?', what are YOU doing UP there?!" ). Days when you couldn't get a viewable picture, but could get clear sound. Signals where the image was relatively clear, but the color kept fading in & out. I see old recordings on youtube these days & think "wow, that's terrible quality", then I remember when I would have thought "whoa! I can't believe it's coming in that clear today!"
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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thabz 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 563	Oh yes, and I still use one but thankfully its smaller and for indoor use only.
	*Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air?* *Can't live, can't breathe with no air*
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Drahken 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 1239	I have a small settop antenna now, but I rarely use it. I got it expressly to check out the whole digital broadcasting thing, to see what the reception/quality is like, to see what stations I can pull in, etc.
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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Sunriser 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 3807	Ah yes. And those clear days when you got "sun spots" that would cause color botches everywhere were so annoying!

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Dyzfunk7ional
3 years 1 month ago
Posts: 3942
With aluminum foil around rusty spots.
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bassman21 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 4553	I used to like when tropospheric conditions were good and I could pick up out of market stations. I used to watch a game show in the morning called Sale of the Centery. Our local NBC station showed some local BS instead. So I would watch it out of Austin. Around 11 am the duct in the atmostpher would close and I would lose it. They finally started showing it localally. There were other shows that the local network premepted I watched too, but I can't recall them off hand. I can get out of market stations with the digital TV, but it breaks up too much.

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CruJonesIsTheMan 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 381	We still have an antenna, but we haven't used it in about 20 years since we got cable. It's rusted as hell, but I like it....for some odd reason.
	Don't pay any attention to the evil spirited and dead of heart. They're not worth your time.
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CleverHans
3 years 1 month ago
Posts: 824
Those were rough times for porn viewing.
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milatchi 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 666	We didn't get cable TV 'til 1988, maybe early '89. I remember we received an independent station, PBS, and 2 or 3 of the big 4 -- Fox was fairly new at the time, so not that big. I partly remember this because Saturday mornings was pretty much the only time cartoons would come on. When we did get cable our MSO was Storer Communications whose operations were taken by TCI a few years later. Drahken wrote: I have a small settop antenna now, but I rarely use it. I got it expressly to check out the whole digital broadcasting thing, to see what the reception/quality is like, to see what stations I can pull in, etc. When my cable\|internet contract is up with bright house I'm going to drop down to basic cable and try out an antenna to complement the basic cable. I'll save a little money if nothing else.
	"ZERO CRATES!" --Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg
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Drahken 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 1239	I told the cable company to go to hell last year & got dish network. Lower monthly bill, several times as many channels, and loads of HD. It's hilarious, the apartment complex whih sits across from the cable company has a sign promoting dish, and it's located directly in front of the cable company's exit driveway. I'd love to know how many customers they've lost due to that sign. We didn't get a fox affiliate here till the early 90s. However, we were always able to pull in WUAB via antenna, and (at the time) it had programming similar to what fox would later bring to the table. Early morning cartoons/kid shows, afternoon cartoons, etc. I saw it again shortly before the digital switch, and it was just the same as any abc/nbc/cbs channel, total disappointment.
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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bassman21 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 4553	CruJonesIsTheMan wrote: We still have an antenna, but we haven't used it in about 20 years since we got cable. It's rusted as hell, but I like it....for some odd reason. It's good to have one as a backup when the cable goes out. We had ours up in the house I grew up in for about 15 years. When my dad and I took it down it fell apart on us. It still worked though before we took it down. It was a cheap Radio Shack one. The medium fringe I have up on my house is supposed to be rust proof. We'll see in 20 years.

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Shaunbadia
3 years 1 month ago
Posts: 2400
Remember it? I still fucking use it. We can't all afford digital TV.
[img]htt
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Drahken 3 years 1 month ago Posts: 1239	There's nothing to "afford" about digital TV. Here in the US, all full power broadcast stations are now digital. Even if you still use an antenna here, the issues/charm of the old analog broadcast doesn't really exist anymore. There are still a few low power stations that broadcast in analog (the federal mandate only applied to full power stations), but those are rare, don't come in to a watchable degree unless you're 10 feet from the transmitter, and the vast majority of them are just religous channels that no one wants to watch anyway.
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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bklynbren 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 868	I don't miss trying to find the sweet spot with those old antenas. Sometimes you had to just stand there and hold the darn thing for the picture to stay clear.

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Drahken 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1239	When I was a kid, we had a big outdoor antenna & a motorized controller. To fine tune stations, you just turned the knob on the box. The one major problem though was that the motor would sometimes freeze up in the winter, meaning that you'd have to go out & either try to thaw the motor or manually adjust the antenna.
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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stake n sheak 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1772	I still use the rabbit ears. It is a digital broadcast now. It looks great. We get a lot of channels, too. With the subchannels now, a lot of stations have really picked up their game so that there is almost always something good on. The Dish commercials make me laugh "why would you ever pay more for TV?" Why would I pay at all? The only thing I don't like about it, is when there is poor signal you get nothing. Analog receiver can handle poor signal and give you something. Digital cuts out entirely. But, it hardly ever happens in my area so I don't care.
	tangspot2 wrote: Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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AtlantaCommercials 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1244	Sunriser wrote: Ah yes. And those clear days when you got "sun spots" that would cause color botches everywhere were so annoying! That happened when I had Direct TV. I was just watching a show during one of those sunspots and bam! I saw instead a ''blue screen of death''.
	Ed:An Apple A Day Keeps The Bus Driver Away! Check out my Youtube page.Full of classic commercials from the 80s,90s,and 00s. http://www.youtube.com/user/AtlantaCommercials96/videos
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AtlantaCommercials 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1244	I had antenna TV until like 1997/1998 when I got Direct TV.
	Ed:An Apple A Day Keeps The Bus Driver Away! Check out my Youtube page.Full of classic commercials from the 80s,90s,and 00s. http://www.youtube.com/user/AtlantaCommercials96/videos
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Drahken 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1239	stake_n_sheak wrote: With the subchannels now, a lot of stations have really picked up their game so that there is almost always something good on. The Dish commercials make me laugh "why would you ever pay more for TV?" Why would I pay at all? We get about 11 digital channels here (including subchannels, 14 if you count duplicated channels), but none of it is worth watching. The only things on the broadcast channels that are ever worth watching are some of the cartoons on RTV on saturdays & sometimes PBS will put something mildly interesting on. ..Oh, and simpsons & family guy on fox. Except for some guy who set up a brand new station, broadcasting retroTV, tuffTV, and 1950s movies (on subchannels), none of the local channels have anything new in the subchannels. Most don't have subchannels at all, and the ones that do just duplicate each other. The CBS affiliate has the local CW station as a subchannel & the NBC affiliate as a subchannel. Meanwhile, the NBC affiliate has the CBS affiliate as a subchannel & the CW as a subchannel. The FOX and ABC affiliates have no subchannels at all. The PBS affiliate has PBS world & create as subchannels. That's it. "Why would I pay at all?" is simple, to have something watchable. (Although these days it's just as easy & infinitely cheaper to just watch it on youtube.)
	*WARNING: The above post may be highly opinionated, read at your own risk. Gee Caspah, you're a twicky one!
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stake n sheak 2 years 8 months ago Posts: 1772	Well like I said, there's enough watchable for me, here. Obviously that won't be true in all locations or for all people in a given location even here. When I visit my parents it seems like the terrestrial broadcast options are pretty limited. But in my city, counting only the channels and subs I watch and no duplicates, there are 21. "Why would I pay," I'm not applying that to anybody else, just me. I do have Netflix streaming to give me more movies and certain cable shows that are really good (Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Mythbusters)
	tangspot2 wrote: Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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