WORLD TELEVISION DAY | BEDN

Well, for today, I'm writing about television. I could get all technical on you and blather on. But, I want this post to be fun. So, there will be pictures and stuff that's fun. My experience with TV has stretched over time. Yes, I'm nearly 1/2 a century old. I've seen a lot of changes in television in as much time.


< The early TV. All early TVs were black and white.

This model is from the 1940s. At first it only would receive one station. In 1950, a model was made that received five stations. I'll talk a bit about that again later.

When TVs arrived in homes it was a huge family event. It was family time. They all gathered around to watch TV together. I'll talk more about that again later.

As time marched on the advent of color TV arrived. I remember when I was about 5 or 6 when we got our first color TV. It was a huge floor model. 25 inches if I recall. Like this:

I remember my mother covering it in all her baubles and trinkets.

It was huge to us, then. We kept the small b/w model. This is the part where it gets interesting. Remember the stations originally? There were five. Now, in the late 60s early 70s came along cable TV for us. Cable tv was actually established in 1946. Just before color TV. Also, came more stations. It's funny because statistics show that people only watch about five stations. More later on this.

Remember before when I mentioned how families gathered around to view a TV show?

We all have different tastes in what we liked to watch. Also, this is where the TV babysitter era started. When our parents wanted us to be unseen and unheard we'd get put in the back room with the b/w TV to be entertained. Other times when our parents watched stuff we children didn't like we'd set up the li'l b/w TV in their bedroom. They had the big bed we could sit or lay on while watching TV. I was around 8 years old when this took place.

For a couple of decades TVs didn't change in the way they operated. But, the styles did. The makers were trying to make them more compact to take up less space.

There was this neat invention that was introduced about the time I was in my mid-thirties where some makers used something called smart-sound. That was where the sound was controlled internally to not allow the audio to go up higher when the commercials came on. I liked that option.

In the 90s flat screen TVs were invented:

Also, at that time the information highway, as some call the Internet, was also integrated into TVs. The internet is a whole nother post. It's ancient. Before TVs. LOL

Because of the information highway there were more TV watching options because more options came along with things like satellite TV.

In the 90s, along with those bigger TVs came my first satellite TV experience. We got a satellite dish installed in our backyard.

We had over 300 channels to choose from. Who uses 300 channels every day to watch TV? Back to my comment earlier about how many stations we watch... still the average person only watches five stations.

Still today, people choose these options because there's this mentality of wanting more...of everything. I call it: "keeping up with the joneses!". Anyway, that's for another post another time.

In the mid 2000s we quit watching conventional TV. Via the Internet and inventions thereof, we bought something called a "Google TV box" via Logitech.

At the same time, we bought a 42' big screen TV, which doubles for +Paul Edwards' computer monitor. Basically, the GTbox is a mini computer connected to the Internet. We are subscribed to a few online media sources where we have the option to watch what we want, when we want without commercials! Others available are Roku, Apple TV, now, instead of the original Google TV is what is called: Chromecast. Chromecast is really new and still needs some improvements.

I'm a fan of forensics and police dramas. Also, I love true life inspired stories. I love comedies. One of my and +Paul Edwards' favorites is "Frasier". I'm sure those of you in America are familiar with that classic. We love to watch science related shows too... for example: "Mythbusters". It's science and comedy. It's a win win!

So, that's my TV experience.

How and what do you remember about TV?