Ignorant people.

[Thyratron]

Another day, another overheard conversation of a small group ridiculing "those 19 inch TVs" with "that wood trim" and "those knobs that go 'click'", and how "I remember when you had to get up to change the channel, ha ha ha," all the while glorifying the latest "HD" set to roll off the boat from China. It's even more frustrating when the group generally appears not even old enough to remember a TV with manual tuning, never mind tubes. Just had to get that off my chest!!

[jedo1507r]

They'll soon realize there is zero tolerance for dropping that large plasma (or LCD) television.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by Thyratron

Another day, another overheard conversation of a small group ridiculing "those 19 inch TVs" with "that wood trim" and "those knobs that go 'click'", and how "I remember when you had to get up to change the channel, ha ha ha," all the while glorifying the latest "HD" set to roll off the boat from China. It's even more frustrating when the group generally appears not even old enough to remember a TV with manual tuning, never mind tubes. Just had to get that off my chest!!

I know what you mean. Most people my age (and some older) think I'm some sort of nut for collecting vintage electronics. The conversation recently come up among a group of friends at church that I wanted old TV's with rotary tuners and vacuum tubes. One person replied, a little sarcastic, that he didn't have anything old enough to have a rotary tuner and he didn't even know what a vacuum tube was. I remember the first TV in my bedroom that was actually MINE (early '90's) was an old tube type 17" RCA B&W with no UHF tuner. I was on cloud nine after fixing that thing. I later sold it to a young married couple for $20, and, they were happy to get it. In 2007, most people would turn their nose up at anything less than a 32" with remote and stereo sound. My high school still had one of those 23" RCA tube type "Mural TV's" in one of the classrooms. I can remember my teacher turning it on to view something, and, one of the students asked why the TV didn't come on instantly. That was in about '93. What really irritates me is when I ask the local TV shops for older TV's and they usually tell me "those sets were junk when they were new" or "why do you want that old garbage." Well, my old sets will probably be kicking when they are on their fifth LCD set!

Sorry, I just had to let off some steam

Bryan

[Tubejunke]

I have posted this before but it fits here. Once a single Mom friend of mine metioned her teenage son badly needing a TV for his room. I had an extra 19" color set with a manual tuner that I offered her for FREE. She declined the gift saying that he would not watch a TV without a REMOTE!!!!!! Give me a break!! Not just is kid somehow entitled to his own personal color television, he also has set standards for what is acceptable. Geez!! Actually I think it was more the Mom's attitude than the kid. Reason being is I spoke to Alex who at 14 was smart enough to know that you can hook up a VCR or a cable box to any old set and have remote control. By that time somebody had already PURCHSED the poor child a REAL tv.

I'm 38 and I remember well getting up EVERY time you changed the channel and it really didnt matter. Really I kind of miss those days. We had a TV guide and a FAMILY tv. We knew at 6:00 Dad would want to watch the CBS or NBC news. After that we would progress to watch a few of the sit coms of the time that WE liked till around 9:00 when the evening movie would come on or some other "special". We only had about 4 or 5 channels to begin with, but that was ENOUGH. As far as a remote goes again it really didnt matter. We might have had to get up 3 or 4 times in an evening. OHHH the torture!!

Imagine not having a freaking TELEPHONE everywhere you go!! This is another modern day trend that I think is ridiculous. I walk around sometimes and feel like I'm in some bad 70's sci-fi movie or something where everyone is talking (or just playing with) a telephone EVERYWHERE you look. As if THAT werent bad enough they came out with that Hounds Tooth or whatever goes in your ear so you can go around looking like some kind of escaped mental patient munbling to your other personality. I really believe people buy those ear devices just to freak people out looking all crazy. I mean COME ON, how important are you, or how busy is your life that you have to have MA Bell wired directly into your brain? I just don't get it!

I guess I'm just missing the days when things just seemed a little more simple and NORMAL. We once had sense enough to figure out that a car door was "AJAR", or that a lit heater was HOT, and the phone was to "reach out and touch someone" and not to be a walking, talking, telecomunication network. It rang a few times a day, or week and I dont remember minding at all putting my finger in the little hole and turning the DIAL.

I'm going to quit before I get into LAPTOP'S..............

[mr_fixer]

I agree, Tube Junkie, since i've gotten older and wiser "i hope!" I 've found that keeping up with fads is tiresome and futile. about 3 years ago i shut off the homephone and went cellular and cable modem, but i started to leave the cell phone at home. I found it wasn't really necessary to have a umbilical cord connected to my every friend. The only advantage of the cell phone to me was it was cheaper have it , with voicemail and long distance, than to go with Ma Bell for the same services. The worst part is, as time goes by quality seems to get worse, my old phone had 12 ring tones built in, free of charge. and no real features to speak of. The new phone has 1 ring tone unless you purchase extra. WTFlip? Can I buy a simple cell phone today without some over priced, power draining, impractical features? Whew!, Rant over, had to get that off my chest. Logan

[JimJ[VT]]

People aren't entitled to their opinions about older technology?

We had a TV guide and a FAMILY tv. We knew at 6:00 Dad would want to watch the CBS or NBC news. After that we would progress to watch a few of the sit coms of the time that WE liked till around 9:00 when the evening movie would come on or some other "special". We only had about 4 or 5 channels to begin with, but that was ENOUGH.

The programming found on the local channels here is awful. If someone's willing to pay for it, I don't see the issue with having hundreds of channels available.

I mean COME ON, how important are you, or how busy is your life that you have to have MA Bell wired directly into your brain? I just don't get it!

I'll agree with you there. A good portion of the cell phone use I see is useless, but I don't have a landline phone so I'm not about to throw my cell out either.

I'm going to quit before I get into LAPTOP'S...

Well, if there's a way for me to carry a desktop around campus, I'd like to hear it

[Celt]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

I have posted this before but it fits here. Once a single Mom friend of mine metioned her teenage son badly needing a TV for his room. I had an extra 19" color set with a manual tuner that I offered her for FREE. She declined the gift saying that he would not watch a TV without a REMOTE!!!!!! Give me a break!! Not just is kid somehow entitled to his own personal color television, he also has set standards for what is acceptable. Geez!! Actually I think it was more the Mom's attitude than the kid......

I know what you mean. I too, could rant on about this type of mindset, but will leave it alone.

[Sandy G]

When people come to my house & see all the various & sundry One-Eyed Monsters of varying vintages staring back at them, they get a look on their faces like the mousy guy in all the Horror Flicks you've ever seen does when he realises he's in the House/Clutches of the Mad Scientist, & there's No Escape...

[radotvguy]

Well , i suppose we all have our views on modern times and past times . However i will say this , the new stuff seems to be pure junk , however it will go for 6 years or so usually with no problem . Unfortunatly we are living in the the age of make it cheap and sell it cheap . Thats kinda what our country is coming too . Its just the way it is ,we cant change that . Thats why so many tv repair shops went out of buissness , for what it would cost to get something repaired , you go to walmart and for a few bucks more , buy a new tv . I will say the older sets were built a hell of a lot better and built so a technician could work on them , however i guess if you took a 1960s zenith, it would cost a arm and a leg to buy it if they still made them like that . Now a days , its just make it cheap and fast . I seem to like the old sets still better then the new ones, becuase of the workmanship in them . You will never see the new stuff being made like that again .
Funney story , but a few weeks back my neighbor threw away all the tvs in their house . A few 19 inch tvs and a 32 inch tv . I asked "why are you throwing all these tvs out , whats wrong with them . She replied , there was nothing wrong with them , her kids wanted flat screens throughout the house . So i took the the 32 inch zenith , basically just had to put new batteries in the remote . Just goes to show you how much waste there is in this country .

[zenith2134]

I distinctly remember going into an AV shop in the Marine PArk section of Brooklyn around 1 year ago. I asked the elderly gentleman if he had any vintage audio equipment, or tube-type televisions he'd be willing to sell. His reply was "What, you like that old crap?" I'll never forget that phrase. I turned around, said thanks and left disappointed. The mentality is really a shame, especially when the repair force doesn't recognize the value of older stuff. Meanwhile, he had a shelf in that store with a stack of silver stereo gear, and he refused to let me have a look, since the store was a mess and the shelf was inaccessible. That shop has since closed down.

[dr.ido]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

When people come to my house & see all the various & sundry One-Eyed Monsters of varying vintages staring back at them, they get a look on their faces like the mousy guy in all the Horror Flicks you've ever seen does when he realises he's in the House/Clutches of the Mad Scientist, & there's No Escape...

I remember at least one movie (Far From home?) where one of the bad guy's "hideout" was full of old TV's that he repaired. Watching it when I was a kid I remember being more disturbed when the other guy followed him there and busted up the TVs than when various people were killed, etc.

Around here 16:9 flat CRT sets in working condition are starting to be dumped. These were high end sets no more than 5 years ago. The things that people just throw out never ceases to amaze me. I'm not complaining though, all the furniture and most of the gear in my place is stuff that other people have dumped. There are several guys around here who make their living picking up what people dump and selling it.

Cell phones drive me nuts, but with the ever increasing charges for a landline here a cell phone is cheaper if you rarely make a call (the telcos have responded by charging $20+ more for cable internet if you don't have a landline service). If the batteries still held charge I'd be happy with one of my old Nokia's with a mono display and simple beeping ringer. The color display in my current phone is unreadable in daylight and the ringer isn't loud enough, but it can display stupid animated graphics and play distorted music clips if I subscribe for the to some service that costs more than I spend on calls in a month.

I wouldn't be without a laptop, but I'll stick with the 7 year old IBM Thinkpad that cost me $25 from one of the guys picking up rubbish. I did repair a flashy Acer Pentium 4 laptop that I found, but the keyboard/mouse felt so flimsy I couldn't stand using it and gave it to a friend.

[Thyratron]

Excellent posts here, guys, especially Tubejunke (I agree 100%). I guess what annoys me so much when I hear people putting down the old sets is that they're often assuming it's "junk" or "inferior" just because it's old, when in fact, though the picture quality might be somewhat better on the modern set (or it most definitely might not be, in many cases), the build quality and component quality of the old sets is usually far better. And, as radotvguy mentioned, the old ones are actually meant to be repaired. Enjoy whatever type of set it is you like, but don't assume a TV should be in a landfill just because it has a curved screen!

[JimJ[VT]]

It's all in what you're going to use it for. To someone who watches a lot of DVD's, a 19" black and white set is inferior.

[Tubejunke]

Originally Posted by JimJ[VT]

Well, if there's a way for me to carry a desktop around campus, I'd like to hear it

Somewhere in the confusion of the past two decades or so we redesigned our method of doing everyday business and education around a freaking PC. So now you need a portable office to function in an enviornment that not that long ago required only a pen, a pencil, a few notebooks, and maybe a spiral binder. Maybe you needed a bag, briefcase or whatnot to transport these items (now I think at school they use backpacks). I'm sure many will agree that from an educational standpoint we got a better result in the "old school". There are far too many examples of HS diplomas being handed out to kids who wouldnt pass the 8th grade 30 years ago

I guess my original point was more to remind us that we CAN do just fine without a lot of the creature comforts that so many of us have the attitude of being some kind of a birthright or something. I also know there are positive benefits of a lot of things like cell phones and laptops. I know that unfortunately the teaching method has changed in schools to center its self around the use of a computer and a student MUST have a PC or laptop to function AT ALL!! I think its insane, but the person seeking education can't help it. Its insane that my girlfirends daughter will be using a PC to learn in the FIRST grade!

I work for a major retail business and it is bizarre that virtually NOBODY on the front line knows what to do in the event of a computer crash, or for that matter what to do if the lights go out. I'm serious, there IS a procedure called STANDALONE but due to cutting personell and training there is no time to go over issues that fortunatly don't happen a lot. Its cheaper to post a HELP DESK phone #.

Geez all we hear is terrorism these days! Hell nobodys got to die! All someone will have to do is find a way to smoke every microprocessor in the U.S. and the country will come to a hault. At least long enough to relearn how we got by all those years without any of these things we just cant live without.

I'm NOT really on a PC rant but more the fact that we have leaned a LOT to heavy on what basically is a toy to RUN our country. Now from a political standpoint I would rather have a 200mhz. Pentium processor with 8 megs of RAM in charge anyday than what we are stuck with, but thats a whole different story.

I personally enjoy my PC quite a bit as a form of entertainment. As a kid I used to enjoy looking through what we used to know as an encyclopedia, so to me the internet represents a hyperaccelerated version of that. Pretty exciting!!

Oh well I guess I can just be glad to be old enough to know that I CAN function without a lot of todays technology, but I am young enough to still be able to catch on and enjoy the things I find use or entertainment in. Back to my original point in my first post I still think life for everyone would be so much simpler and in the end EASIER if our work and home lives were not centered around technology. All we really accomplished was speeding up the business world and in some ways our home life to unrealistic expectations, this is SO true in the business world. Its like we were walking, now we are running and if you stop for a second you are doing major damage to your bottom line. Too many irons in the fire to make sanse of it all. So we have MICROmanagement!!

I'll stop here and go puke

[Thyratron]

Another great post, Tubejunke. As you were referring to, the problem today isn't even that some people are "addicted" to technology, it's that they can't FUNCTION without it! People need to try, if only for a day, to turn off the cell phone, keep the computer shut down, and pick up the road map instead of the navigation system. You will make it to the next day, trust me!