Do you remember black and white tvs?

[Indy Texas]

When I was young, there was a small black-and-white TV on the counter in my parents' bathroom. It had a retractable antenna and was supposed to be portable in the event that you wanted to take it outside for some reason. I think it was mainly so they could watch the news or whatever while shaving or putting on makeup in the morning, but I don't know how often they actually used it.

It looked kind of like this...

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Although Australia was a latecomer to colour TV, only debuting down here in 1975, they were very much gone by 1991, the year I was born. I've seen an old TV or two, but never watched or used one myself.

On a related note, Australians were one of the fastest adopters of colour TV, by 1978, 64% of Melbourne households and 70% of Sydney households had a colour set, and my family had one by '76 or '77.

[opebo]

I seem to remember one looking like this, but I remember it as slightly bigger.  I do remember the handy handle, and carrying it to various places around the house.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I seem to remember one looking like this, but I remember it as slightly bigger.  I do remember the handy handle, and carrying it to various places around the house.

When we were kids my dad would carry it on the handy handle into our room on Saturday mornings and set it up so we could watch our shows and they could sleep in.

[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.)

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.)

My family generally doesn't do stuff like that.  If it stops working, they throw it away.  We'd been setting drinkng glasses and stuff like that on it anyway, though.

[rejectamenta]

I had a small wood grain television in my room growing up that was black and white. It was a cheap, portable little thing, but it did the trick for watching the X-Files and wrestling.

[courts]

my parents still had one when i was very young (like around 5 or 6 maybe) that I vaguely remember.

[MATTROSE94]

I personally don't remember black and white TV, although my family was late in getting one. My grandparents got their first color TV in 1980 and my parents did not get one until March of 1985, at the same time that they got their first VCR, a 1984 model Magnavox purchased from Jc Penny for around $500. Their first color TV was a used 1984 model 25 inch Quasar with dial tuning that they purchased from a local TV repair shop for about $250. It worked well for almost 11 years until 1995, when the picture tube finally blew out on it. The Quasar color TV they had actually had an excellent picture quality, probably the best of any CRT color TV ever produced.

[muon2]

Remote monitors at work sites are still sometimes B&W.

[The Mikado]

My grandmother had an old black and white TV in her room when I was young.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Do you remember, your President Nixon
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay
Or even yesterday?

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Young Americans remember all of those things.

[Badger]

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!

Yeah, when I was a kid we had one just like that which you described in my folks bedroom.

[Leftbehind]

Yeah our nana had one in her bedroom, which she never seemed to use.

[politicallefty]

I remember camping when I was younger with a small black and white TV (my parents had colour TV with them), but that was it. I've never lived in a house with one, nor can I recall ever being in any house with one.