An historic event’s upcoming 71st anniversary

[DWalt]

On January 1, 1954, NBC made the first nationwide color broadcast - The Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. There were only 50 TV sets in the USA capable of receiving it. They were put on sale only a few days earlier. Everyone else had to watch the parade in B&W.

 

[swsig]

When I was a teenager, my parents were the first among our friends and neighbors to buy a color tv. So guess who got to host a Rose Parade watching party every year. Our small living room was crammed with 12-15 people, starting around 8am on New Year's Day. What fun , especially after we'd been up well past midnight celebrating. My long standing habit of sleeping though much of the parade and waking up in time for the bowl games came to a crashing halt, but such is the price of progress I guess.

 

[DWalt]

We bought our first color TV set sometime in 1969. I believe it was a Zenith. Sort of a hybrid, it had both tubes and transistors. We had a fair number of problems with it, but we continued to use it until the early 80s. The first color TV I remember seeing was in the display window of an appliance store, that had to have been sometime in the late 1950s. A memorable experience.

Am looking for a new TV set now as a pre-Super Bowl purchase, trying to figure out what OLEDs, QLEDs, etc. are all about. The flat screen we now own has none of that stuff, as it is almost 5 years old. Plus wife wants one with a 65" screen, our current size is 50". Any opinions?

 

[quikdraw67]

We didn't get a color TV until Christmas 1981. It was a big deal.

 

[Rustyt1953]

I remember our first color tv. I was the remote.

 

[Baxter6551]

DWalt - don't know if you have a Costco near you. They have excellent prices on TVs and the Visio or LG brands have been great for us. Plus they double the Mfg warranty without additional cost. You can also purchase additional protection they offer. I've never had any issue with a TV purchased there.

Does Costco offer an extended warranty on products?

 

[Onomea]

... Any opinions?

My opinion is that TV technology today is an amazing bang for the buck. I have three TVs, with the oldest purchased n 2016 and the newest in 2020. The 2020 TV, a Samsung 55", was the most expensive at less than $500, and looks pretty darn good to my eye. (Maybe I just don't watch enough TV to want a better picture quality — even the cheap stuff, like mine, are so much better picture quality than TVs used to be.)

I do think that TVs typically have ****** built in audio, and that a good soundbar is a solid investment. Seems unbalanced to have a great picture and lousy sound, and a good sound system makes music video/concerts much more enjoyable.

 

[oldbrownhat]

I remember our first color tv. I was the remote.

 

[soFlaNative]

..."and endured the static spark as soon as the selector was touched."

 

[TX-Dennis]

I bought a 70 inch Vizio a couple years ago on sale for less than $500. It's not OLED or QLED or anything fancy, but it looks darned good to my old eyes. Yeah, I can see that OLED has a little better picture quality, but not enough better for me to pay three or four times the price. Of course your priorities may be different than mine.

Vizio's weakness is their remotes. They are very cheaply made. I have already replaced ours twice after they got broken when knocked off the table. Now, don't get me wrong the remote works well (other than the voice control feature which leaves a bit to be desired). but the cheap plastic shell is flimsy and easily broken. The good news is that you can get a replacement on amazon for around $10.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Recently I mentioned to my Grandkids about watching Black and White TV.
They asked - why didn't you have color?
When I replied nobody had color. It was all B&W.
They just looked at me like, Grandpa is old!

 

[DWalt]

I bought a 70 inch Vizio a couple years ago on sale for less than $500. It's not OLED or QLED or anything fancy, but it looks darned good to my old eyes. Yeah, I can see that OLED has a little better picture quality, but not enough better for me to pay three or four times the price. Of course your priorities may be different than mine.

Vizio's weakness is their remotes. They are very cheaply made. I have already replaced ours twice after they got broken when knocked off the table. Now, don't get me wrong the remote works well (other than the voice control feature which leaves a bit to be desired). but the cheap plastic shell is flimsy and easily broken. The good news is that you can get a replacement on amazon for around $10.

The TV we have now is a 50" Vizio bought in 2020. No problems with it so far, and its picture does look good. Bought it at Walmart. I have replaced one Vizio remote, they are cheap on eBay. For the most part, the remotes we use are those supplied by the cable service (AT&T U-Verse), not the Vizio remotes. The exception is Netflix, need to use the Vizio remote for it and other "smart" channels. Mainly my wife just wants a larger screen, else I would stay with the old 50" Vizio. Before the Vizio, we had a Samsung Plasma, 42". It had an excellent picture, and it gave over 10 years of trouble free service before it quit working. It was not worth the cost of repair. I believe Plasma displays have been extinct for a long time.

 

[chief38]

Our first color TV was a .99 cent colored piece of plastic my Dad pasted up on the B&W screen - lol. The top was blue, the middle a light yellow or tan and the bottom some shade of green. Great if you ware watching an outdoor scene but after an hour we ripped it off - awful!

Finally about 6 months later we shamed him into buying a real color tv - a whole 19" too - lol I think we were one of the last people in the neighborhood to get a color tv.

We just recently bought a new 75" LG tv which has new nano technology. Instead of a few larger LED's it has 240 smaller ones which results in a superior picture with no dark areas. We have been exceptionally pleased with it and still comment to each other on how terrific the picture is. When people come to our house and we have it on, they always ask me what kind of tv it is. So far two friends have bought one as well.

 

[Just another 22 shooter]

I remember our first color tv. I was the remote.

Same at our home. Wasn't too complicated; we got one channel.

 

[DWalt]

Same at our home. Wasn't too complicated; we got one channel.

Back when my family got its first TV set, same thing. One channel and it broadcast programming only in the late afternoons and evenings until about 10. The rest of the day was just a test pattern.

 

[GypsmJim]

In my Grandparent's final years they were really concerned about money. They had very little. Grandpa's pension had been canceled by the new company, and their SS was small.

They would not turn on lights in the evening. They watched an old B&W TV for the news and maybe a single program in the evening. When the TV finally broke, my Mom offered to buy them a new TV.

No B&W available any more. Grandma said the color used too much electricity so they wouldn't take one. A small radio was used, but only for 30 minutes to hear the news.

When they finally had to go to a nursing home, the place consumed most of the rest of their savings.

 

[TX-Dennis]

My grandparents told me a story about buying their first TV in the 50s. Their radio had quit, and they went to the hardware store to buy a new one. The salesman showed them a TV. He told them it's like radio, but with pictures. You can actually see the people instead of just hearing them. Impressed, they ponied up for the latest in home entertainment.

What the salesman failed to mention was that we had no local stations at the time. It was two years before they could actually watch anything other than a snowy mess from a station 120 miles away late in the evenings.

 

[Rustyt1953]

The only channel our first telly received was BBC because BBC Two didn't exist yet. They only broadcast a few hours a day and programming was abysmal. The children's shows traumatized an entire generation.

 

[DWalt]

We once lived in the mountains of Western Maryland. No TV reception as it was so remote. Not even any cable service. Some group built a mountaintop rebroadcast transmitter that carried a Pittsburgh station. Quality was so bad it wasn't worth watching. Later we got cable.

 

[LoboGunLeather]

I saw my first television in about 1961. Black & white display screen about 12" square, frequently alternating between horizontal lines, vertical lines, and snowstorm effects until the rabbit ears antenna was adjusted just right. It sat on a shelf in a tavern where my dad and uncle sometimes stopped during shopping runs to town from the farm where I was born. We got electricity to the farm about that same time, first for the barn (chillers for the milk waiting to be picked up) and later for the house.

Lassie, Rin-Tin-Tin, Leave It To Beaver, Lone Ranger, Highway Patrol, M Squad, baseball games, national news broadcasts with Walter Cronkite and Eric Severide. All black & white, of course. Color TV was for rich folks!