The static on old CRT TVs with rabbit ears was the cosmic microwave background. No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
or a new smaller tv sitting on top of the old, wood frame tv as a stand now
I was born after 2000 (though not too long after) and this is actually one of my core memories. I think about the sounds of the static and the sound of the CRT turning off.
Also, we had a really old tv in our basement till at least 2008 that had no remote, just knobs and I remember messsing with the “hue” dial all the time trying to figure out how it worked.
The only reason that tv worked so late is that we had a black box connected to the antenna which I later learned was converting the digital signal to analog for the TV.
Also, you’ve just reminded me that I remember the switch from analog to digital. Specifically, I remember watching Elmo talking with some adult on TV about the change. Now I really want to find that video. I think the guy was wearing a suit had short dark hair and glasses. I also think the background was pinkish purple. I want to know how accurate my memories from so long ago are. (I’ll add the link to the video in an edit if I can find it)
No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
I mean you can still find a CRT today and turn it on if you like, they’re less common for sure, but they’re still around if you’re looking for one
Kids born after 2000 aren’t looking for one
You’d be surprised, some people born in the 2000s want them for the retro factor now
Dude I’d kill for the opportunity to get my hands on a half-decent CRT
CRTs are popular with people who have retro games consoles.
They’re surprisingly difficult to acquire though. Big, heavy and either very expensive or free.
Well that’s a lie, I know an early 20 year old who’s into retro games and has definitely been to an arcade with CRTs in the past year or so. It’s not a stretch to imagine he’s seen static on one
i know i am.
I had three different ones growing up. The first 2 were black and white and the last one was color. All found on the side of the road.
I find one every once in a while, on the side oft the road aswell, unfortunately some idiot usually sprayed graffiti on it for some dumbass Instagram post, or I have no room at my place ATM.
Born 2000, yes i have. So has my younger brother so thats ok
they have to watch HBO shows to compensate
Surely you mean the much worse “Max”.
Logo still shows HBO for that intro though
I have an old mini tv(the kind that took C cell batteries) that can still pickup the good ol CMB!
I have seen this on a much newer TV last year. It didnt just disappear
Movies depicting this haven’t vanished from existence though
The trope of video/audio breaking down into static is an easy shorthand that is unlikely to be forgotten, probably even well after all the devices capable of doing so have long since been buried in the landfill.
It’s especially hilarious in media depicting the far-flung future, where apparently all technologically advanced space men and their communications devices – not to mention high powered central supercomputers and so on and so forth – somehow still work over NTSC television signals. Even by the early 1980’s it should have been entirely predictable that in “the future” anything like that would be digital, considering we already had widespread digital audio media (CD’s), and digital video was already making inroads into the computing industry.
My grandpa always just called it “The ant races”
I saw on ‘how it’s made’ a conveyer belt of a bunch of apples and it reminded me of the TV static the way they all rolled around forming random structures like a crystal. From then on I always think of apples on a conveyerbelt when I see static.
Opening line of Neuromancer doesn’t make much sense any more "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“The sky above the port was blue, with a grey rectangular box with writing saying ‘No signal found.’”
No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
People didn’t just mass-destroy CRTs in 1999…
I bought an LCD TV in 2006 (a Sony Bravia that is still going strong) and that was earlier than most people I know switched
CRTs was in use well into the 2000s
Yeah I was still using a CRT as recently as 2012. I think OP means analogue TVs.
Yeah you’re right.
Even before the 2000s they started showing a blue screen instead of static.
That wasn’t just a digital or flat panel thing.
But of course old sets were around for a long time.
What are they hiding from us?!
My memory of the exacts here are fuzzy, but I think this depended on whether or not your TV picked up digital signal, analog, or both. I remember around that time we had a TV that would pick up static on some channels and have a blue input screen on others.
I remember back in the Wii days when I was young we had a flat screen that would go to the digital pattern with no input. However sometimes once in a while it would get that static loud no signal so I think mine had both
I don’t really have a point here just wanted to share
I’m talking long before digital channels existed. (In the US anyway)
It’s definitelly an analog over the air TV thing.
The way digital works you would either get a “No signal” indicator (because the circuitry detects the signal to noise ratio is too low) or squarish artifacts (because of the way the compression algorithms for digital video are designed).
Yeah, for instance the semi-ubiquitous “small TV with a vhs player built in” that was in a ton of mini-vans and kids’ rooms well into the early 2000s only supported analog cable/antenna signals, so it would give the black and white static when there was no signal.
Yeah, my youngest sibling has definitely seen CRTs. My niblings probably haven’t, though.
I thought they were teaching it in all the schools? /s
Technically, it’s not about the display technology, but instead about the signal/tuner. More specifically if it’s analog or digital. Some modern TVs still have analog or hybrid tuners for backwards compatibility and regions that still use analog, so they can display static. For instance, in Ukraine we finished the switch to digital TV only a couple of years ago. If your TV had no digital tuner (as was the case for many) you had to buy a DAC box. Retirees/pensioners got them for free, sponsored by the government.
Our cable provider (my parents like cable TV) had analog channels even like 2 years ago, but they started encrypting everything which required purging the analog selection.
This sucks. At worst analog would be grainy, digital just keeps cutting out in worse conditions.
I wish there was also still analog OTA TV for this reason. Much easier to pick up usable signal.The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. - William Gibson, Neuromancer
One of the most beautiful opening lines to a novel.
One of the most beautiful opening lines to a novel.
Abundantly clearly not.
This is it:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."Torrents >> TV
Uh, no:
“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”
“She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.”
Look here dude, we still doing “no nut November” or what?! Why must you tempt me?!
If you remember that it was written in 1984, the color is obviously black and white static. If you don’t think about the year, you might be lead to believe it is blue.
Literally 1984
The opposite of a Bulwer-Lytton!
Sixth and Seventh Generation video game consoles were still using scart/composite/component outputs for CRT up until their discontinuation in 2017 so I’m pretty sure a lot of kids would have had a CRT to game on as well was watch TV in their rooms.
Remember, kids typically get the hand me downs when the adults get new shiny.
