I was watching a football game on TV recently when I realized that the picture was so vividly clear, I thought I could have been sitting in the stands. We have a nice TV, but nothing special, yet the picture is brilliant. Most al of them are today. What a change from our first TV!
I remember the day that my brother Pat and I waited and watched for the Appliance Store’s truck to pull in the driveway to deliver our TV set. This would be a defining moment in our lives – an actual TV in our home. Two guys finally showed up and unloaded the monster set which came in a console and must have weighed 250 pounds. They uncrated the beast, then showed us how it worked. We plugged it in and connected it to our recently installed antennae. There were 4 knobs – on/off/volume, horizontal control, vertical control, and contrast. Since it was a black and white set, there were no color controls. The TV guys fiddled around a bit and a picture amazingly appeared on the 24-inch screen. We sat in awe.
Ultimately, each member of the family became an amateur TV adjuster, trying to eliminate the rolling picture with the vertical control, then bringing it back to straight up and down with the horizontal knob. I’m not sure the contrast control ever did anything – the picture was usually fuzzy, sometimes worse, sometimes better.
Somewhere around 1961, we bought a color set. They were terribly pricey at first, but quickly dropped as technology improved and the Japanese began turning out affordable sets. In the early days, most programs were still in black and white. I think Bonanza was the first color program of consequence.
Today, we have a complicated remote control with a myriad of buttons and features and an endless choice of programs. We turn to Hulu or Netflix, click through a thousand choices before settling on a program.
In spite of the great picture, in spite of all the possibilities in programs, sometimes I think it would be nice to just be able to get up, walk over to the TV and just turn it on – especially if Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan Show.