Can you do without color?

[cfranz]

B&W/Color who cares. As long as it's big and loud, like me.

[peverett]

One thing you do need color for is weather radar. This is especially important in Tornado Alley.

[Carmine]

I do without color just about every night. My bedroom Tv until recently was a '56 Bugeye Zenith. (It didn't die, I just decided to change it up) Now I have a 1965 17" Zenith from Doug®.

My girlfriend (age 25) and I usually watch Law & Order, and a couple weeks back, we watched "Bad Day at Blackrock" on a Canadian UHF channel thats a bit fuzzy.

She doesn't complain, but she does like to crack jokes about "Do we HAVE to watch it on the old-timey TV set?" This comes after I shut off the color 1978 Zenith daily-watcher. Truly, she's told me she doesn't care. So there is a Gen Y'er that should skew the ol' age graph.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Carmine

I do without color just about every night. My bedroom Tv until recently was a '56 Bugeye Zenith. (It didn't die, I just decided to change it up) Now I have a 1965 17" Zenith from Doug®.

My girlfriend (age 25) and I usually watch Law & Order, and a couple weeks back, we watched "Bad Day at Blackrock" on a Canadian UHF channel thats a bit fuzzy.

She doesn't complain, but she does like to crack jokes about "Do we HAVE to watch it on the old-timey TV set?" This comes after I shut off the color 1978 Zenith daily-watcher. Truly, she's told me she doesn't care. So there is a Gen Y'er that should skew the ol' age graph.

I know the feeling, I see myself more of a "Generation Jones" type, I'll by 42 in July. I remember when we only had black and white, we had a 1959 Philco with no UHF tuner. I still have the rabbit ears, they serve as the antenna to the DTV box feeding my 1984 Commodore 1702 monitor that I use as a TV set. I get cracks myself, our newest set is a 1982 Zenith that we've been watching since 1983.

[mattdavala]

I'm 25 and have grown up with color. I can say thay since I have the TV "bug" I find it very easy to watch B/W as a primary TV. . . . In the bedroom or office.

I've got a nice 17 inch Setchell Carslon sitting on top of my Zenith Roundie. Got it tuned up nice and watching its picture is very enjoyable.

I've got a 10 inch GE locomotive in the office. Its picture is bright, but produces shadowing, outlines of the objects. I ignore it and watch it anyway.

I only watch B/w just for the fun fact that they are 50 year old TV's that I have fixed up and are working. I enjoy it, but everyone who visits finds it very unusual. They think its weird!!

Best regards,
Matt Davala

As a newbie I wouldn't usually post a late response, but since this thread picked up again anyway... How about B&W WIDE SCREEN HD TV! (See proposed solution below.)

(Not withstanding that the tubes in this thing barely handled the frequencies needed for 30Hz interlaced at 480 lines... lol)

To answer the question, though, I’m sorry to say no, I couldn’t live without color. I recently posted pics of the actual TV I grew up in front of back in the 60's, a Moto B&W, which I recently recovered from storage and am going to restore soon. I didn't actually own my own first color TV until the 1980's, in fact I watched the debut of MTV on a 12" B&W portable.

And if the projector shown below turns out to be restorable, as I hope, I *might* even be able to coax 50 or even 60 inches out of it, with a REALLY good rear projection screen (and a major dark room.)

BUT, my wife would *kill* me (and I’d have to grudgingly agree she's right) were I to suggest that we watch the next Pens playoff game on the 52" B&W projector, vs. the 52" plasma... (Sorry if that makes me a traitor to the cause – but the question was asked, and that’s my honest answer.)

However, Casablanca, or even better yet Forbidden Planet, in 52" B&W, would be an ENTIRELY different story... So hopefully I will be able to round up some additional info on the projector, and get it running again soon.

My goal is to get these examples running while they can still be demostrated with unaided rabbit ears... And that puts a definite limit on the timeframe! (This should be the last year anyone can make that happen, right?)

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by cpmuseum

As a newbie I wouldn't usually post a late response, but since this thread picked up again anyway... How about B&W WIDE SCREEN HD TV! (See proposed solution below.)

(Not withstanding that the tubes in this thing barely handled the frequencies needed for 30Hz interlaced at 480 lines... lol)

To answer the question, though, I’m sorry to say no, I couldn’t live without color. I recently posted pics of the actual TV I grew up in front of back in the 60's, a Moto B&W, which I recently recovered from storage and am going to restore soon. I didn't actually own my own first color TV until the 1980's, in fact I watched the debut of MTV on a 12" B&W portable.

And if the projector shown below turns out to be restorable, as I hope, I *might* even be able to coax 50 or even 60 inches out of it, with a REALLY good rear projection screen (and a major dark room.)

BUT, my wife would *kill* me (and I’d have to grudgingly agree she's right) were I to suggest that we watch the next Pens playoff game on the 52" B&W projector, vs. the 52" plasma... (Sorry if that makes me a traitor to the cause – but the question was asked, and that’s my honest answer.)

However, Casablanca, or even better yet Forbidden Planet, in 52" B&W, would be an ENTIRELY different story... So hopefully I will be able to round up some additional info on the projector, and get it running again soon.

My goal is to get these examples running while they can still be demostrated with unaided rabbit ears... And that puts a definite limit on the timeframe! (This should be the last year anyone can make that happen, right?)

Cool, another AKer from Pittsburgh! Here is my answer to a B&W HDTV or at least B&W DTV, I have a Zenith DTT-900 box on top of a Sony VT110 B&W TV/VTR monitor. Somebody here said they saw the same TV in the Beatles' movie, "A Hard Day's Night" so this set must have been made in 1964 or so. I use a simple 50 cent bow-tie antenna for reception although when our local Pittsburgh stations go back to their VHF channels (except WPXI, they stay on channel 48) I'll have to hook up a VHF antenna to it as well. Right now, I'm tuning in the NASCAR race on the wide screen HDTV channel and selecting the wide screen option on the box so now, wide screen B&W (H)DTV. I watch this set a lot.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by cpmuseum

However, Casablanca, or even better yet Forbidden Planet, in 52" B&W, would be an ENTIRELY different story...

Both of those movies are available on the now-defunct HD DVD format, and they look stunning in HD. (Forbidden Planet is in color, but if you wanted to watch it in B&W, you could connect the player using its component-video output but unplug the Pr and Pb cables.)