I spotted this in today's paper. It pretty much sums up my feelings both towards old TVs and what's "on" TV nowadays!

Yup! :yes:

Right on! You said it. The programming on most broadcast TV networks (except PBS) these days is so bad I don't bother much with it anymore. I watch mostly TV Land, Nick at Nite, WGN and PBS, although every now and then something that interests me will turn up on the networks, and of course I watch the news on NBC (channel 3 in my area) at 6:30 p.m. EST.

Hollywood made better TV in the '70s and earlier, which is why I like the classic-TV cable channels (as well as AMC and TCM classic movie channels) much better than I like most of the programming on the networks. TV sets themselves were built to last in those days, and looked better than a lot of today's table models as well. Of course, one can always get close to the same effect as having a console in their living room by getting an entertainment center or a nice-looking TV stand, and putting their equipment in it or on it as the case may be. I've seen some very nice entertainment systems housed this way (a buddy of mine has his TV and stereo in an entertainment center that I swear takes up much of one entire wall in his living room; I've seen it and can vouch for that)--kinda' like those big RCA, Magnavox, etc. 3-way entertainment centers of the '50s and '60s. I did something very similar to that with a utility cart, covering the back with woodgrain paper to match the finish; the result now is that my VCR and cable box are on the two shelves beneath my TV, which of course is on the top shelf. This installation is shown in my avatar (my stereo is hooked up to the audio output of the cable box, but the stereo is some distance away, next to my computer).


RCA and Zenith, among others, do make flat-panel plasma and LCD TVs one can hang on a wall "like art", as the comic from Carmine's local paper says. However, the programming, for the most part, is anything but art these days, except on channels such as PBS, the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel. Television technology of the 21st century is great, with 16:9 50"+ flat screens, out-of-this-world surround sound and so on; why aren't the programs just as good? Television these days is not art, for the most part; much of it is low- or no-class garbage unfit to be seen on standard tube TVs, let alone fancy-dancy projection and HD sets. Until the programming is much better and until I can afford an HDTV flat-panel set, not necessarily in that order, I will continue to watch my favorite stations on my RCA XL-100 19-incher on cable (through a cable box).

Much of today's TV programming, IMO, is just not good enough yet to justify my even considering purchasing an HDTV. I am reminded of a letter to the editor of an electronics magazine of the late '60s; the letter's author stated, in part, "Can you imagine today's violent TV shows being blown up to that extent (to 50"+)? Heck, even a station (test) pattern will frighten our children!" Below the letter's text was a cartoon showing a baby in a crib, looking at a test pattern from a TV station on a giant-screen TV mounted on the wall some 10 feet away. The infant, scared to death, was crying and screaming its lungs out (probably thinking the test pattern was going to jump out of the screen or some such thing). If this sort of thing can make kids jump out of their skins, just imagine what it might do to some high-strung or nervous adults. I can imagine someone watching a horror movie on a 16:9 52" plasma TV screen and having nightmares for a week or more afterwards.

In any case, however, television programming will have to improve quite a bit before I will even think of getting an HD, plasma or LCD wide-screen TV. I don't see that happening any time soon, so all of my viewing will be either on my RCA or my Zenith 19" set in the bedroom. Garbage is still garbage (and the horror movies will still give some folks nightmares) whether the stuff is shown on a 19" delta-gun or inline CRT screen or a giant 61" projection TV.

I agree that much of the stuff on TV is junk; a lot of the time I watch TV it is DVD's/videotapes because there is nothing good on.

Also--is there anyone else here that doesn't have Cable TV available? I wanted to get cable but there is no one that serves the area. I have seen a very few DSS dishes in the area but mostly people appear to still just use antennas.

I'm one of those weirdos without cable. Didn't really grow-up with it, except at friends houses. Don't want yet another bill. Afraid that if I did get it, I'd watch too much TV Land, Discovery, History, A&E-type stuff and would never get anything done!

But damn, broadcast TV has really gotten BAD!!! If it wasn't for PBS and CBC (Canada) there would be absolutily nothing on Sat/Sunday morning TV but infomercials!! I notice that a lot of non-network stations are even running double episodes of crap TV like "Friends", "Will & Grace" and so on! :puke:

I really miss the days of UHF before the invasion of Fox, WB, UPN. Every weekday our Detroit channel 50 always had "The Eight O'clock Movie", which was usually something cool from the 70s like "Superfly", "Blues Brothers", "Bullit" or "Freebie & the Bean". Sometimes there would be a theme, like Kung-fu week or Japanese Monster week. Today we get "The Parkers" or some other insipid drivel. :thumbsdn:

Channel 20, WXON was the best for re-runs. I remember a solid block of Adams Family, Twilight Zone, Leave it to Beaver, then Lost in Space. Now it's 2 hours of poorly drawn Japanese cartoons/toy commericals.:yuck:

Channel 62 WGPR was the lowest budget station. If Channel 50 ran B-movies, Channel 62 ran C's and D's! They also did a bunch of low-rent, local dance shows which could be good for some laughs! Currently, 62 is our CBS affliate and is also tied-in with 50, which means double helpings of infomercials and 2 hour blocks of "Everybody loves Raymond", which is funny now and then but if I had to watch the whole thing, I'd stick my dripping-wet hand in the HV cage! :angel:

So much for serving the public interest!:bs:

Originally posted by Chad Hauris
I agree that much of the stuff on TV is junk; a lot of the time I watch TV it is DVD's/videotapes because there is nothing good on.

Also--is there anyone else here that doesn't have Cable TV available? I wanted to get cable but there is no one that serves the area. I have seen a very few DSS dishes in the area but mostly people appear to still just use antennas.

Chad,

I find it almost impossible to believe that your area isn't serviced by at least one cable-TV operator in this day and age of digital everything, including TV. You live in Texas, which should, IMO, have more cable operators (even in its smaller cities and towns) than one can shake a stick at. As an example, I live in a small town (population 3,180) 30 miles from Cleveland; my area, as well as the greater Cleveland area itself, has Comcast cable, which serves even this area's smallest villages, and the greater Cleveland area itself is serviced by at least a half-dozen other cable companies. (The television reception here is terrible without cable--almost everyone in town, myself included, has it, although, ironically, my FM radio reception, using an amplified Terk indoor "tower" antenna sitting on the top shelf above my desk, is great.)

I did a search once on TV Guide's web site, entering the zip code for Midland, Texas (I remember seeing an identification for that city's KMID-TV on one of your old Zenith sets recently, which is how I know you're probably near Midland); the search returned channel and program listings for at least two cable companies in the Midland/Odessa area.

Where is your area, roughly? It sounds to me as if you are so far out in the country that cable companies servicing west Texas do not or cannot run their service to your town. I would think the cable operator in Midland, for example, should have service to your area.

I personally cannot imagine any place in a state the size of Texas not having cable service. However, lacking cable service, I would also think your area would have many more DBS systems near the broadcast TV antennas on rooftops of houses, unless the DBS systems in your area offer local TV reception (whatever the so-called "local" channels in your area may be) as part of their service.

If you cannot get cable, for whatever reason, why, I wonder, are there not more satellite systems in your town than you say there are? :dunno: Satellite TV is not perfect (reception problems in rainy/snowy weather, sun outages in the summer, etc.), but it is often the only way folks in very small towns not serviced by cable (and too far distant from broadcast TV stations to get good reception on an antenna) can get CNN, ESPN and other cable networks, not to mention local channels (in many cases).

Kind regards,

Jeez. We've had cable service here since 1965! :rolleyes:

Jeff, yes, you would think there would be cable service...my little community is about 15 miles from Odessa and 25 miles from Midland...and there is what looks like a Cable TV line out on the electric poles, but from what I can see is not connected to anyone's house. There is a cable drop dangling from the line, cut, at the entrance to my driveway. I called Cox, Cable One, Grande Communications, all of the Cable TV companies I can see in the phone book...they all said they didn't serve Gardendale.

That's the weird thing...that maybe some company served the area in the past but abandoned the line. In addition to the simple rustic houses like mine there are some fairly fancy homes right nearby and you would think they'd want cable. Maybe some more detective work is in order to find out the real situation.

There are a lot of TV/radio towers in my area, however, as it is wide open and higher above other terrain, so off-air reception is great...just would like to have the variety of cable sometimes.

When I lived in my last place, we didn't have cable either. If I walked the 60 feet to the road, I could look to my right and see the corner where the cable service stopped. It was within throwing distance, literally. The cable company wanted 2500 dollars to run a cable and hook up service, sheesh, then charge me 60 bucks a month on top. The cable took a turn down the other direction because there were houses all the way around the 3 mile long block, but our road was a long distance access way to get to another town which was served from another direction 10 miles away. However, even without cable we didn't miss anything. I now have cable and all we do is watch tv, even sit and change channels just to keep busy. And then they put the different channels on different plans so that if you only want one certain channel, you need to get the whole package. Though I dispise most things on TV, I do need my fix of American Chopper/ Monster House/ Monster Garage each week :D