How was tv back then?
>>220429026I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, and my dad was a drunk and mild criminal, who besides being a fuck up, was actually fairly intelligent. We basically stole our phone line and cable. My dad broke into the box and tapped into it. We also had a black box, which was like a jail broken cable box with all the channels. I had a lot of fond memories of my dad sitting outback with the neighbors, getting drunk and all the neighborhood kids watching movies on HBO.
the static shocker
>>220429026It was shit. Most people only had basic bitch ass cable. Zoom zooms don’t even understand how shit it was. VH1 and Comedy Central shared a channel, so they would switch back and forth. Also, you had to buy a TV guide, look in the newspaper or watch the TV guide channel to figure out what to watch. We got satellite it was better since there was a guide built in, but most channels had nothing to watch. We live in the middle of nowhere, so during summer we spent a lot of time watching garbage. 300 channels and 80% was infomercials or reruns of shit.
Channels changed instantly and you really could channel surf by holding the button down and rapidly scrolling through them.
during VCR times? it was horrible. everything was 480p on a shitty glass tube with a 4:3 aspect ratio. if you wanted to watch something again you had to record it while it was playing and never change the channel. When it came time to playing it back you had to tune the video to get all the white static lines out of the picture and even then it there was still some left, and sometimes the VCR would just decide one day to eat your tape and destroy everything you recorded.
>>220429250>VH1 and Comedy Central shared a channelMaybe in your town but not elsewhere>Also, you had to buy a TV guidePreview Guide or just channel surf. The selection was so limited you usually knew when the stuff you wanted to see was on>>220429256>Channels changed instantly and you really could channel surf by holding the button down and rapidly scrolling through them.I miss this, in retrospect it's easier to find something to watch just surfing instead of looking through the guide and thinking no no no no no no...
>>220429250Spotted the turd worlder
>>220429295>if you wanted to watch something again you had to record it while it was playing and never change the channel.If you left the channel on the VCR the same and changed the TV channel it wouldn't affect the recording>When it came time to playing it back you had to tune the video to get all the white static lines out of the picture and even then it there was still some left, >and sometimes the VCR would just decide one day to eat your tape and destroy everything you recorded.I think you had had a shitty VCR
>>220429112I’m surprised the cable company didn’t catch him. Some of the companies would sue you and it’s a felony in some states.
>>220429343>I think you had had a shitty VCRprobably. my parents had low income and bought cheap>If you left the channel on the VCR the same and changed the TV channel it wouldn't affect the recordingi don't get what you mean. did you have a separate cable in the VCR? the VCR recorded in real time so you had to have whatever you wanted to record actively playing and changing the channel would change what you're recording unless you had two separate lines.
It was before my time, but early satellite dishes could do some pretty wild stuff if you had the knowhow. These were the huge plastic or metal mesh ones, like 6 feet across. Not the little DBS dishes that they still use. They had motors on them to turn and aim the dish at different satellites to pick up different channels. The coordinates were pre-programmed into the box, so it knew to point at coords X,Y,Z to get Channel 150 or whatever. But you could also aim them manually. And if you knew the coordinates for other satellites and pick up syndicated shows before they aired, raw newsroom footage, sports games, PPV events, all kinds of stuff.
>>220429396Lightning hit our house and fried our cable. I think my dad got spooked and we started to pay for satellite after.
>>220429438Are you me? We weren’t stealing cable, but we just plugged the coax in one day and realized we had cable. I’m guessing someone just never turned it off. We had free cable for years and the cable company got bought out by a couple of companies before it turned into COX. We just had free cable until a garbage truck hit the distribution box and they replaced it.
>>220429396You know who works for cable companies? >fuck ups>weirdos >guys that were smart but retarded at life I’m sure someone saw it but just never cared. Hell, some cable guys probably would hook up people with free cable for $50.
>>220429415VCRs had their own channel changer in addition to the TV's. So if you wanted to record something on channel 5 you'd set it to 05 on the VCR and then flip the tv channel to whatever you wanted. Usually that didn't happen since people typically wanted to watch what they were taping, if they were at home. But I did it a bunch when my dad was recording something he'd watch later. No idea how it was wired up
>>220429548oh i'm talking about cable though. you're probably talking about pre-cable antennae television. most cable providers required a box so you had to connect the cable to the box and the the box to the VCR and changing the channel on the box would change what you're recording because then the VCR wouldn't have access to any of the channels because of the cable box. i think you had to get extra hardware to get around this when cable boxes became mainstream.
>>220429611Idk we had cable and I could watch other channels while the VCR was recording whatever channel it was set to
>>220429657idk maybe you had a fancy VCR. my parents bought the cheapest shit
>>220429657This was done by using the VCRs internal tuner, and using the tuner on the TV to watch something else. Most VCRs could do this unless you had a really cheap one.
>>220429771i think you needed an A/B switch for this to work with cable
>>220429026>check the TV guide every week>oh shit [movie I like or wanted to see] is going to be on this weekend>stay up to watch it with the familyIt was nice. Not as convenient, but there would typically always be something on, and if there wasn't you'd just go outside or play Nintendo or some shit instead. And of course there was the classic>get home after school>watch latest episode of whatever craze is hitting the playground that year>reenact it all the next day
Not having an interactive television in your pocket 24/7 meant television was just part of your life, not your primary experience.
>>220429295best video recorder we had was the first one we had, and it lasted absolutely ages. it was probably high end in the late 80s, had all kinds of features, analogue, digital and fine tuning/tracking, and the remote control had an led display and tons of buttons. I was the one setting up things like timed recordings. I became a master with it, to ensure perfect tracking I'd pause the tape and manually track with three analogue knobs, then digital fine tune til it was absolutely still.i even remember us going to buy it, for some reason out of what looked like a loading warehouse, maybe they'd paid in side and that's where we picked it up.like others have said, most video recorders could record a different channel to that which you were watching, if set up properly. they had a pass through aerial and a scart cable, you could even chain to a second video recorder and run tape to tape if you had one, which we didn't.they were part of the best years, when I used to record tons of stuff, several times a week, all kinds of films or late night comedy specials since I had to go to bed pretty early. I'd watch the films with my dad and we'd comment on them, he'd point out patterns across films, "you know when a woman has curly hair she's going to be killed off", seeking out the best and the worst mostly of scifi/adventure/action and so on.reused the tapes all the time, some I kept along with the films on them for a few decades until I finally threw them all away maybe ten years ago.tapes kept surprisingly well, still watchable after all that time..
>>220429026>holding the antenna to get a better picture
>>220429112My parents paid for cable, but they only paid for one connection. They used wire splitters to feed the TVs in the kids' rooms. The cable company would occasionally do maintenance on their own or for the neighbours, spot them and cut it down. When asked, my parents would claim they rented out parts of the house and one of the tennants might've done that. It worked until the cable company started moving people to digital boxes.
>>220431148>moving the antenna around to pick up channels from overseas
>>220429026Better
>>220429026well the ring was certainly a more effective horror movie when static was something commonly encountered
>cableFeh. I remember having to use a device to turn the antenna on the roof to get better reception for different channels.
>>220429548I think I remember the trick was running the coax through the vcr then to the tv. There was a video in ans video out.Wgen my grandpa when to Florida, my dad would borrow his vcr and we'd have it going through two vcrs. That way he could duplicate tapes we rented .> /tv/ - minor crimes and felonies
>>220429539>some cable guys probably would hook up people with free cableNO BIG DEAAAAAL!
Ironicly this was one of my roommate's vhs tapes we had on rotation in the dorm when the free cable still running from the previous occupants ran out.
>>220429295>with a 4:3 aspect ratioThere were widescreen vhs tapes. I remember asking my parents to make sure they got me the widescreen versions.
imagine all that but in 50hz instead of 60 because you live in europe.you may think 10hz wouldnt make much of a difference but it do.in the late 90s i was using a 233mhz pentium ii to decode canal + an encrypted channel, those were the days XD.
>>220429026It was gay and retarded and I'm going to kill you
