I was reading a thread on an Amstrad forum and there was an interesting comment by one of the users. He claimed CPC users could use their computer more "regularly" (for the lack of a better word by me here) since it always came bundled with a monitor, while C64 or Speccy users may not have had their own TV/monitor so they'd not always be able to use the computer when they wanted to.
Here's what he wrote:
And regarding the cost, the monitor was a godsend in the UK, where many houses still only had the main living room TV as the only TV in the house (if there were two, the second was in the parents' bedroom or old enough that you had to suffer the analogue RF output from the computer).
We were using our CPCs, but our mates weren't using their Spectrums and C64s because Dad was watching the footie or their sister was watching Neighbours.
So, let's see if he was correct. I'm making this a simple Yes/No poll. If you got your own TV later, it's a "No" obviously.
Personally I was kinda lucky, when we got our first 16k Speccy in 1985, we already had a second TV, it was a cheapo 14" black/white one. Sure, colour would have been nicer but b/w is better than nothing, so I used that for a few years. I got a colour monitor in 1990 or so but also occasionally connected the Speccy to the bigger colour TV in the living room.
Here's an anecdote: one of my earlier Speccy memories was sneaking into the living room on a Sunday morning at about 6.30 am, to silently (my mum was sleeping in that room) "steal" the colour TV and carry it into my room so I could play Rifle Range on it
Nope, it was 1982 and getting to play on the computer meant competing with the various soap operas and other things I wasn't really interested in. There was one TV in the house and the Speccy was competing for it. I'd say that was pretty common around the friends I had at the time, I only knew one kid who had his own TV for the computer but even that was a little B&W one.
Some years later I did get a TV for Christmas and could finally play on the computer whenever I wanted. It was one of the best presents I ever got, though I hardly ever used it to actually watch TV shows.
XTM wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:48 pm
Here's an anecdote: one of my earlier Speccy memories was sneaking into the living room on a Sunday morning at about 6.30 am, to silently (my mum was sleeping in that room) "steal" the colour TV and carry it into my room so I could play Rifle Range on it
I have very similar memories, I was stealing "TV time" on weekend mornings and after school, until my parents came home. Then I was trying "to hold position" as long as possible.
So I guess, CPC guys are right.
No, was initially using the only TV in the house (an old PYE TV that seemed to have regular visits from a TV repairman). Later on I had winter use of a black and white portable telly, that spent it's summer months at gran's caravan.
I had a truly ancient B&W set of the variety that needed to be manually tuned, since it didn't have any channel buttons.
On the plus side, I didn't know the meaning of the phrases 'colour clash' and 'dot crawl' until several years later when it was replaced by a colour portable.
I was just thinking, we'd have "greyscale" clash instead, but compared to a colour screen, here it certainly was less noticeable, especially when the colours were close together in luma.
The channel drift was annoying though, I had to realign the signal quite often. This is the model I had, you could open the lid next to the 8 channel buttons to align: https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/bruns_polo.html
Answered yes. I only got my +2 around 1988 (yes, I know), but my parents bought me a Neptun 156 monitor, extremely popular in Portugal. The green monochrome didn't bother me, because it had a very sharp/clear image, compared with the TVs of the time. The only problem was that there were two colours (can't remember which ones) that looked exactly the same. This meant some games had some invisible sprites. :p The monitor connected to the RGB socket on the back of the +2, so maybe that had something to do with it.
My friends had the same monitor but used it with Timex computers, which had composite video output, and they didn't have such problem.
God no - my parents had to scrimp and save just to get me the speccy, no way we could afford a second TV Was fighting for time same as everyone else.
Continued into University - lived with my girlfriend in a flat in 1989, had a big old colour monster then, got raided by the TV licence people once and the good old speccy got me out of a fine - told em we kept the TV solely for computer use
For my Binatone & Atari 2600 I had to use the only TV in the house, by the time I got my grey +2 for Xmas 87 I had a 14” Phillips colour TV in my room so the Speccy was hooked up to that.
Yeah I was lucky to get a small black and white set with my 48K. I think my dad used to use it for watching football (he supported Dunfermline who play in black and white anyway, ha!) and he kindly gave it over to me when the Spectrum arrived for Christmas. Even so I spent a lot of time negotiating usage of Big Telly in the living room (because it was bigger AND in colour!) but yes I had access to my Spectrum whenever I wanted really.
Nostalgia took me window shopping on eBay the other day, mostly to see if it would remind me of the model of TV I had way back then. It didn’t, but I discovered that in general small B&W CRTs seem pretty plentiful and affordable. I was sort of surprised that the retro price bubble hadn’t taken over, but I guess truly nobody wants them. I was tempted to get a tiny 12V B&W 7" set (meant for caravans I think) as a little second screen to use when I set up my Interface 1 multi-Spectrum network. Doubtful how well the old tube would survive eBay postage and “packaging” though!
The day i got my Spectrum, no, I was dependent on the house TV, for which I suffered the same contention that most others here did. But the weekend after I got the Spectrum my Dad went to see his Mum and came back with a 12" B&W TV from her caravan. I didn't have much time for the old bird if I'm honest, but I went round later that day to thank her. It would be fair to say that kindness changed my life.
On January 28th 1986 I got a 16" colour portable. The local TV shop had suddenly got a job lot stacked up in the window, all for £99 which was a real bargain for a TV of that size in 1986. It turned out they'd had a hotel customer return a load of contracted TV sets when the contract expired.
How do I remember that date so well? It was the day of the Challenger disaster. When I went to buy the set, the window was full of TVs showing the news. I walked in and started watching. I think the staff thought this 17 year old was just there to catch up on the news, until i said, "oh, and I'd like to take one of these sets please."
When we had our Dragon 32 we used it on the only TV in the house which was obviously in the lounge. When we got the Speccy I'd got my own portable (luggable at the very least!!) B&W tv which then got upgraded to an excellent Colour Sony portable which is up in the loft somewhere.
I grew up in really tough times, a properly impoverished family since the late 1970s and into the mid-80s. It was a miracle that I even got a home computer in late 1987. We didn't even have a fridge or colour TV until 1986, never had an automatic washing machine back then.
An uncle of mine had left lots of his belongings with us in our attic while he was - ahem - 'away' (parent-speak for being locked up in prison), so while our main telly was a portable 14" colour TV by this point (the old large telly was black-and-white, now relegated as a second TV, colour > black-and-white, obviously) we managed to reappropriate my uncle's portable colour TV for use with my Speccy. Unlike our main TV, it was a manual dial and subject to a bit of channel drift. (It also taught me a lot about the local broadcast frequencies when I wanted to watch normal television on it, I managed to pick up quite a few ITV regions!)
About two or three years in, my uncle wants his stuff back, so my Speccy ends up hooked to the big black-and-white Ferguson telly. I remember buying Cauldron and having to suffer that in tedious greyscale. Plus the tube and construction was showing its age, it would have faint angled lines across the screen, probably because of poor shielding. It was probably for a matter of weeks, but felt like a lifetime. Then my dad got me a very early Christmas present - my own colour portable! A Sony one that had a properly black screen (remember that being all the rage in the late 80s, far better than the dark murky greenish grey of what came before) and far less of a curve. I tell you what, CRTs of the 90s and late 80s are the pinnacles of standard definition television. Do not use any LCD flat screen to watch SD TV if you can help it, it's just so much better on a CRT, whether you're gaming or watching VHS/DVD.
Mind you, this too would have its issues with the Speccy. There'd be a very very precise point where you'd have optimal sound and vision, but even that could drift within a minute to the sound OR vision going a tad iffy. And you'd hear the Speccy 'working' when BASIC programming, you don't get that on yer modern-day emulators, do ya?
That telly was also my companion for when I left my Spectrum for the wonders of the Amiga 1200 (no drift problems there), right to the very end, where in 1997 I finally switched to these new-fangled Windows PCs that came with their own monitors. Tch, flash in the pan, I tell ya...
Nope. Shared a TV with my grandmother. She worked 24-hour shifts, though, so I had a fairly regular access to the Speccy. I tried using my parents’ TV in their bedroom once, but was given to understand that I’d better not do it again if I wanted to live in no uncertain terms. Later, my grandmother bought herself a new set, and I inherited her old one, finally having it all to myself.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
I wonder how much the results vary depending on when you got your Speccy too. The later you got one, the more prevalent having a "second TV" in the house probably was.
I remember that when the Amstrad came out, the idea that it meant you had a dedicated display was considered a big deal.
One incident that sticks in my mind (for some reason) about the black and white TV I had: The first time I played Back to Skool, I was late for the first lesson - MR CREAK - BLUE ROOM - because I blithely sauntered over to the Yellow Room by mistake, and hung around there wondering why nobody else was showing up. Got lines for that, too.
SkoolKit - disassemble a game today Pyskool - a remake of Skool Daze and Back to Skool
Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 12:18 pm
She worked 24-hour shifts
Tough gig!
Also, our Spectrum was connected to the only TV, a MASSIVE ( at the time ) 26" colour behemoth with 6 channels*.
We had to switch cable at the back, and then retune one of the TV channels every time we wanted to use the Speccy. I got very practiced at that - it was like an F1 pitstop by the end.
*Actually, one of the buttons was broken so only 5. This didn't matter until Channel 4 launched. Sorry, Channel 4.
SkoolKid wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:32 pm
One incident that sticks in my mind (for some reason) about the black and white TV I had: The first time I played Back to Skool, I was late for the first lesson - MR CREAK - BLUE ROOM - because I blithely sauntered over to the Yellow Room by mistake, and hung around there wondering why nobody else was showing up. Got lines for that, too.
I guess the same worrying principle would apply if you're a snooker fan. (Er, can't think of any colour snooker games on the Speccy, because I'm more of a pool player.)
Was fighting for time same as everyone else.
