TVs

RainMaker

Does anyone remember back in the 80s and TVs only had like 8 maybe up to 12 physical stations on them - then then number of channels available started increasing and you ended up with a situation where say Channel #8 became more than 1 actual channel - that you had to retune every time you wanted to change the channel! Even just having to tune a TV in the first place seems ridiculous now!

I also remembered our first tv that came with a remote - the remote had one button that just meant the channel jumped up 1, so if you were on 5 and wanted to go to 2, you had to go 6,7,8,1,2! Even that seemed great at the time, before that we had to actually walk to the TV and press a button, or maybe more then 1 - maybe it was one of those dials you had to turn to change channel

cml387

When we came back to Ireland from England in 1966 we brought our television with us.
To get RTE (before we got set up proper) we had to twist the channel knob until it was poised precariously between 6 and 7.

Stained Class

In 1980, Bush were the best selling telly by a mile.

They brought out the '10' series that year, or '79?. A 1020 was a 20" a 1022 was a 22" and so on.........

You had a 6 button layout on the telly for channels & no remote.:eek:

That covered RTE 1, RTE2, & the 'hated by some' foreign channels.

Namely BBC 1, BBC 2 & whatever ITV network was in your area.

5 buttons covered so far.

If you were lucky or rich enough to have a new fangled Video Recorder, you used up the 6th button.

A couple of years later C4 came online & the 6th button was now 'booked'.

Canny VCR owners of the time used the remotes they got with their machines to change channels on manual tellys by sticking their button on 6 all the time & using the tuner on the 'Vidgeo', which 'usually' had more than 6 presets.

Mundane & largely forgotten facts about livin in the '80s by Stained Class Pt 1.:)

cml387

Some televisions had a button marked "ITV2" for a service that was planned for but was still at that time in the future.

L1011

We got a French made but pal mode tv in 1979ish that had not only a full remote but a 'peritel' connector - scart to the rest of the world. Had to use the video for teletext when it came around though

cml387

Never knew that SCART was derived from a French standard, thanks MYOB!

gipi

I remember the first VCR (Ferguson) and the new-fangled remote control....which was attached to the VCR by cable!

I have a Philips 14" from 1985 which has 12 channel buttons and a perfect picture, but no remote, and no scart connection either!.

chakotha

Our first colour TV was a Bush in about 1980 just it time for the Christmas telly. The job.

Followed by a Sony Trinitron in about 1986.

Zebra3

Can't remember what tvs we had, but I remember my folks going north to buy a second tv for us. A b/w portable stuck into the boot and fingers crossed getting through Customs!!!

We also had a Betamax video recorder. It was bloody huge!!! :pac:

padd b1975

Stained Class wrote: »

In 1980, Bush were the best selling telly by a mile.

They brought out the '10' series that year, or '79?. A 1020 was a 20" a 1022 was a 22" and so on.........

You had a 6 button layout on the telly for channels & no remote.:eek:

That covered RTE 1, RTE2, & the 'hated by some' foreign channels.

Namely BBC 1, BBC 2 & whatever ITV network was in your area.

5 buttons covered so far.

If you were lucky or rich enough to have a new fangled Video Recorder, you used up the 6th button.

A couple of years later C4 came online & the 6th button was now 'booked'.

Canny VCR owners of the time used the remotes they got with their machines to change channels on manual tellys by sticking their button on 6 all the time & using the tuner on the 'Vidgeo', which 'usually' had more than 6 presets.

Mundane & largely forgotten facts about livin in the '80s by Stained Class Pt 1.:)

You got a better quality picture if you watched your english channels via the VCR.

RainMaker

Zebra3 wrote: »

Can't remember what tvs we had, but I remember my folks going north to buy a second tv for us. A b/w portable stuck into the boot and fingers crossed getting through Customs!!!

We also had a Betamax video recorder. It was bloody huge!!! :pac:

We had one of these Picture doesn't really show how big they were, unbelievably heavy as well!!

Ann22

I remember well the old tvs. We had one once that had a big dial like a washing machine's. You had to twist it round to the station you wanted. Ours were always rented, I remember the tv man coming out to fix our tellies and the odd time we'd get an upgrade:). We didn't get a colour tv 'til '82. Big excitement that. It was a novelty to see a prog in colour before then. I remember one Christmas, in a friend's house watching The Wizard of Oz, being disappointed to see it was in black and white, then when Dorothy landed in Oz, she opened the door and lo and behold, all the colour flooded the screen:):):).

PauloMN

Renting televisions was really popular when the colour TVs came out. We had an old black and white valve TV and then "upgraded" to a rented colour Bush TV from Totterdells in Dun Laoghaire. Colour TV was amazing after years of B&W!!

We all had massive aerials on our roofs in Dublin, and got TV from Wales.... anyone remember HTV Wales?

BlaasForRafa

PauloMN wrote: »

Renting televisions was really popular when the colour TVs came out. We had an old black and white valve TV and then "upgraded" to a rented colour Bush TV from Totterdells in Dun Laoghaire. Colour TV was amazing after years of B&W!!

We all had massive aerials on our roofs in Dublin, and got TV from Wales.... anyone remember HTV Wales?

We had cablelink down in Waterford but we had an aerial on the chimney just in case "the cable" went down (which was quite often, especially in the summer). Also for some reason, in the summer the picture on HTV used to get fairly soft and blurry.

We used to get HTV, BBC Wales and S4C (the only welsh show I can remember is Pobol Y Cym).

Our main tv was a Ferguson 22", it didn't have a remote and as the youngest I usually had to get up and change the channel on these big chunky buttons. Out in the kitchen we had a 12" black and white tv. It had a dial to change the channel and another dial to fine tune the signal.

Panrich

I remember the ones with the dials. We had a Pye. The valves inside meant it was 30 seconds before a picture appeared while everything charged up. It was replaced by a Philips colour in about 78. We got a Hitachi in about 82 and that lasted my mother for nearly 15 years.

PauloMN

Our first remote control telly was a Salora, I remember it had a whole EIGHT buttons, and I was wondering what we were going to do with the spare button we had left after tuning the six channels and the ZX Spectrum in lol!!

Then Super Channel came along and all was complete.

The telly was just like this one - it lasted in my parent's house for the guts of 20 years. I'd say I only got rid of it about three or four years ago: