Do you remember black and white tvs?

[memphis]

I do. When I was a kid, they were already on their way out, but it was common to have one as a secondary set in a bedroom. Even a small 13" color set would set you back a few hundred dollars. A tidy sum in the 1980s. I also remember that Qbert was impossible on the b&w!

[Miles]

Yes. When I was a kid I went to a party and there was a guy dressed up as Barney. I was confused because I thought he was supposed to be gray!

[Beet]

No, but I do remember record players and rotary phones.

[Mr. Morden]

Of course.  Also, black and white computers.  (Or green and off-green.  Whatever pea soup-like colors they used to have on those old Apple IIs.)

[Lief 🗽]

I don't think I've ever seen a black and white TV in my entire life.

[Mr. Morden]

At one point when I was a kid, I think my family had one color TV and ~two or three black & white TVs.  Those black & white TVs were so cheap, might as well have about one TV per family member, for those times when everyone wants to watch something different. 

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Yes, had a B&W TV in my bedroom until replaced by a color one when I was 9.  I also had a portable one in my early teens.

I wonder when there will be a post on the Atlas with the subject "Do you remember analog or non-HDTV?"

[dead0man]

Of course.  My mom had a TV in the kitchen that was B&W that I was using up until the early 90s.  My parents had one in their bedroom that I watched much less frequently.  Our main TV was always color while I was alive though.

[Reaganfan]

Yes. My grandmother had one in her craft room that was small. I remember watching it as recently as the Santos-Vinick "Live" West Wing debate, which was in 2006.

My other grandmother also had a rotary phone. I used it once or twice as a kid, probably atleast 15 years ago. I used a payphone as recently as 2009 at an Airport when my cell phone had no reception.

[anvi]

Of course.  A number of my friends had them, and both my best friend and I, once we became teenagers, got to have old family black-and-white sets in our rooms, both to watch and play Atari on.  Yeah, that's right, there's nothing like Atari on black-and-white televisions... 

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Of course.  We didn't get a color one until I was a teenager.

[dead0man]

Of course.  A number of my friends had them, and both my best friend and I, once we became teenagers, got to have old family black-and-white sets in our rooms, both to watch and play Atari on.  Yeah, that's right, there's nothing like Atari on black-and-white televisions... 

The first generation of them (the one we had) had a color/BW switch on the back....I'm not sure if the second generations did (the with ones without the big a/b switches on the front instead of halfway hidden on the back like most Atari's I ran into).  I don't think the B/W switch worked on very many games other than some of the "base" games (Combat,Missile Command,Adventure,etc) made by Atari themselves.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Nah.  I was plopped onto this planet in 1987.  Everyone pretty much had color TV by then. 

[Supersonic]

Yes, although very, very vaguely. My grandfather had one, and this was probably around 1996 or so.

[TDAS04]

Nah.  I was plopped onto this planet in 1987.  Everyone pretty much had color TV by then. 

[Torie]

I remember when my parents got their first color TV, and watched that NBC bird.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

My grandmother had a black and white TV into the mid 1990s.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I voted no.  While of course I remember seeing them in the stores, I never watched TV on them. Dad did not think we needed a TV in every room, so we had one fairly large TV in the family room and that was it until I got one when I was in high school to be the monitor for my TRS-80 Color Computer (which had a full 32K of RAM) so it of course was a color TV as well.

[opebo]

Of course.  I don't ever remember not having at least two color TVs in the house, but we always also had a couple black and white ones around - I seem to remember there being one in the semi-finished 'walk-out' basement (we had a pretty cool room down there with a big fireplace, hand-me-down furniture, and a collection of guns on the walls), and one in the kitchen/breakfast room, which was normal in those days.  Come to think of it, at that time we had two rather picturesque and large 1930s radios in that basement.. didn't work alas. 

I do miss those enormous old console TVs, regardless of whether color or b/w.  Lastly I don't recall TVs ever being 'expensive'..

[Oak Hills]

No, my parents got a color TV a few months before I was born (in 1995).

[WalterMitty]

yes.  i remember having a b&w tv in my room as a kid.

i also remember a family member having a tube type tv.  it had to 'warm up' before it came on.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

yes.  i remember having a b&w tv in my room as a kid.

i also remember a family member having a tube type tv.  it had to 'warm up' before it came on.

All tube TVs need to warm up, it just is that later models were made to stay warmed up even when they were "off" which made them more convenient but also more of an energy hog.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Not personally, although my family didn't have a color TV until about 1980. 

On a related note: when I was little, my family had an old RCA (color) TV that sat on the floor.  It had a big wooden box and a door with a dial on the side.  Instead of pushing a button to turn it on, though, you pulled a switch (I can still kind of remember the sound it made when you turned it on and off.)  It was pretty old when I was born, though, and it kicked the bucket years ago.  We kept it for a few years after that, though, but we finally put it out in front of our house to be taken to the junkyard.  (I kind of wish I could have salvaged some of the tubes for keepsakes, since it was probably old enough to run on them.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Not personally, although my family didn't have a color TV until about 1980. 

On a related note: when I was little, my family had an old RCA (color) TV that sat on the floor.  It had a big wooden box and a door with a dial on the side.  Instead of pushing a button to turn it on, though, you pulled a switch (I can still kind of remember the sound it made when you turned it on and off.)  It was pretty old when I was born, though, and it kicked the bucket years ago.  We kept it for a few years after that, though, but we finally put it out in front of our house to be taken to the junkyard.  (I kind of wish I could have salvaged some of the tubes for keepsakes, since it was probably old enough to run on them.)

Sounds like it was the sort of TV that could have been refurbished into furniture.  I have an old radio cabinet that my paternal grandfather refurbished into a small china cabinet and it's where I keep the portion of my maternal grandmother's china I inherited from my mother. (It was a twelve piece set split three ways among her daughters.  My mother also had two other twelve piece sets, one inherited from a her husband's aunt, and one they got when she wed my father.  Those sets went to other members of the family.  I only wanted four place settings, so it made sense for me to get my grandmother's china rather than split up one of the other two sets.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yep. My family had at least one until I was in about third grade or so.