Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandy G
The BEST OTA we ever had here in Greater Bugtussle was in 1965-66 when the guy who operatd the "Cable" TV system bought a B/W camera, pointed it out of the storefront, & we got to see the local elementary schoolkids as they trudged home. No sound at 1st, eventually he rigged up a system w/the local Angel Modulation station playing in the background... As far as I'm concerned, hey never have ben able to surpass this..
|
Your local cable TV system at that time must have predated Charter by many years. Speaking of Charter, they are now the cable operator in my area, 30 miles east of Cleveland. The cable company is branded "Spectrum", but Charter apparently owns the system here and those in several other states as well. The only difference I see, however, at the moment is a different name on the Spectrum TV application used with my Roku player. That app used to be labeled "Time Warner Cable", but it was changed to Spectrum when the latter took over TWC.
I haven't had five minutes' worth of trouble with my cable service since Spectrum (Charter) took over, even though the only reason I have a cable account at all is so my Roku player (a small media player about the size of a hockey puck) will receive the local TV stations (this is a strict requirement of both Charter and the former Time Warner Cable). I have a three-way bundle (cable, home phone and Internet) which has been working absolutely flawlessly (except for one small problem with my telephone service a few months ago). I am sold on Spectrum (Charter) Cable and intend to stay with them.
Today's cable systems are all automated, so the days of seeing local images such as the ones you said were being shown locally on your cable system 50+ years ago are long over. I knew a few folks (relatives of my dad's second wife) in the seventies who lived in West Virginia and had cable TV service, but I don't recall the name of the cable operator. That system, IIRC after all these years, did have a camera that scanned weather gauges, and probably had background audio, either from a local radio station or from tape; this was the '70s equivalent of today's Weather Channel. Besides that, the system didn't bring in much except network stations from Clarksburg and Weston, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and, IIRC, Steubenville, Ohio and Wheeling.