Can you do without color?

[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

[old_tv_nut]

There is something to be said for moving away from reality when telling a story. HD TV taped at 60 frames per second is great for "you are there" sports, but for drama, you may begin to see the actors more clearly than the roles they are playing. Many directors prefer the 24 fps "film look" for story telling, and going to black and white can be a step further in that direction - but trying to convince modern audiences may be difficult. Our secretary at work opined that she doesn't or won't watch black and white movies. I just walked away - it surely shuts her off from some great films of the past, but no use arguing.

[truetone36]

We had an RCA roundie in the house when I was a kid, but the first set I had in my room was a G.E. combo that my grandparents bought new in '52 (the
roundie had replaced it as the living room set a few years before I was born). So I spent a lot of time watching B&W. I can live without color, in fact I've only used a color set as a daily watcher for about 3 years or so. Until then, I was using a 21" Admiral console from '59. It's been replaced by a Zenith CC2,
which itself has been temporarily replaced by a early 80's Emerson (Zenith needing repair) as my wife won't watch B&W if she doesn't have to.

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.

[Adam]

I watch about 90% of the time on b/w sets, I currently have the 1956 8" RCA in the bedroom, and the 1960 17" space command Zenith on my desk, and that's where I do most of my tv watching. I actually prefer to watch b/w in bed at night over color. And I currently only have one working color set, the 1963 Philco roundie combo, and I only turn that on if I really want to see something in color. Now I do think early color sets are cool, but for everyday tv watching, give me b/w. Also I'd rather not put so many hours on my color sets, they're harder to repair, and harder to get picture tubes for. Even the 21FJP22, probably the most common color tube, is harder to find than most of the b/w tubes. After working on old sets for the past 8 years or so I've managed to collect many spare b/w tubes, but not a single spare 21FJP22.

[Dan Starnes]

This has been very interesting to know how people view color or B&W.
Dan

[NowhereMan 1966]

One time, when I had my Sony in the bedroom, I also used it to run my Playstation on. It was kind of weird to play a game like "Final Fantasy VII" in black and white. I now have a Commodore 1702 computer monitor in my room, no tuner but I feed it with a Zenith DTT-900 ATSC tuner (with the RCA jacks) so I just use it as a TV. If I want to run the Playstation I unplug the ATSC tuner and plug in the game unit. I wish I had something like a 1950's TV, it would be wild to run a Playstation on that.

Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966

One time, when I had my Sony in the bedroom, I also used it to run my Playstation on. It was kind of weird to play a game like "Final Fantasy VII" in black and white. I now have a Commodore 1702 computer monitor in my room, no tuner but I feed it with a Zenith DTT-900 ATSC tuner (with the RCA jacks) so I just use it as a TV. If I want to run the Playstation I unplug the ATSC tuner and plug in the game unit. I wish I had something like a 1950's TV, it would be wild to run a Playstation on that.

Although I came to this forum in search on info on the Tele-Beam B&W Projector, I also posted a request for info (kindly answered) on a 1965 Motorola that I used in the 1970's as a monitor for my home-built Cosmac ELF. (For those of you familiar, picture the chunky, pixelated B&W Enterprise, in 24".) I got the Sams (again, thanks) and if I get that running again, I'll have to hook that back up and post a picture. (I still have a running ELF I can hook to it.)

Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966

Cool, another AKer from Pittsburgh!

What can I say, the 'burgh just attracts cool cat lovers who watch B&W TV. (We've got 3 cats, all adopted, one of which requires meds for cardiomyopathy every 12 hours - talk about slave to cats. I'm with you there, it's my life :-)

My "last" B&W was a 13" zenith that I got in 1980, with a bright orange plastic case. On that TV I watched the Buggles debut MTV, and watched Ronald Reagan get shot. Alas that one, and a 19" that I bought at a motel sale in 1979, that was probably late vintage 60's, are both long gone, victims of my youthful "tinkering" phase. (And subsequent "home", a.k.a. the junkyard.)

Luckily, I have going on 30 years experience now, and a much better success rate. So I look forward to the upcoming projects.

[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.)