Did you have your own TV/monitor when you got your Speccy?

[Alessandro]

Starting from June 1984, for the first two years and a half I connected my Spectrum to an old black and white Autovox TV, once belonged to my Grandad, which was used for that purpose only. My parents believed, I don't know upon which basis, that the Spectrum would fry our 28" Nordmende Spectra colour TV. Only very rarely was I allowed to use the computer with that TV, and only for a few hours. It was only in December 1986 that my Dad purchased a Mivar 15" colour TV I could attach my Spectrum to.

[1024MAK]

The ancient scrolls detail the events way back in time, in a distant galaxy, that seems like it was far, far away. Back before mobile telephones, before the phase “smartphone” or “streaming” was ever heard of. It was the dim and distant past. Red LEDs were a brand new thing (no other colours ready available).

Anyway, in this ancient time, the year was MCMLXXXIII. Brand new, wrapped up, under the Christmas tree, was a rubber key 48K Speccy. To use it, there was one, and only one TV available. That was in the living room (not that we called it that).

Mum and Dad (in that order) decided when that TV was on, and what TV channel it was tuned to (normally BBC1 or HTV {now called ITV}). Dad was sports mad. Mum loved quiz shows and soap operas. Hence apart from mornings on weekends, and for a short time after school in the afternoon, the Speccy could not be used (well, apart from messing about blind typing BASIC commands…).

Sometime the following year, a black and white TV become available (it had been in my parents bedroom, but had been off limits), as they got a colour TV for themselves. So for the most part, I lived in a shades of grey Speccy world…

Then I think at either next Christmas or my birthday the following year (can’t remember when), a colour TV was bought for use with the Speccy. At last, I could play (sorry, educate myself) in colour!

Mark

[PeterJ]

I had to share the lounge TV. So any spectrum stuff happened during the day. I don't recall feeling hard done by at all. I think there was an old B&W TV which we may have used with the ZX81, but the new world was colour.

It wasn't until I purchased an Amiga that I got a monitor.

@1024MAK mentioning HTV (which was still actually ITV, but the regional one for Wales and West), reminded me of fond memories of Southern TV. These were there days when regional TV made their own programmes. I'm pretty sure Southern made Worzel Gummidge and Dick Barton. Anyway, I'm digressing. Apologies

[1024MAK]

Also, our Spectrum was connected to the only TV, a MASSIVE ( at the time ) 26" colour behemoth with 6 channels*.

Err, at the time a Speccy made it into our house, the “massive” colour TV in the main room was a huge 21”…!

We had to switch cable at the back, and then retune one of the TV channels every time we wanted to use the Speccy.

Ghosh, I can’t believe I had forgotten about all that messing about. I ‘think’ our main TV at the time only had (Picard voice) FOUR buttons. This being long before Channel 5. We were only concerned with one ITV channel (HTV West), as the only other one we could get was HTV Wales.

Mark

[Ast A. Moore]

I ‘think’ our main TV at the time only had (Picard voice) FOUR buttons.

You rich kids and your “buttons.” I remember a B&W TV we had (pre-Speccy) with a channel selector knob. The plastic knob had broken off, so we used pliers to grab the metal selector stub and switch channels (thonk-thonk-thonk!).

[Mpk]

My parents believed, I don't know upon which basis, that the Spectrum would fry our 28" Nordmende Spectra colour TV.

This was a concern I think because screen-burn from early b&w consoles was a real problem. The games were much simpler and often did just draw on one area of the screen - you'd end up with the Pong bat and the scores area permanently shadowed.
You still get this on tvs that are always on news channels ( in hotel bars etc. ); Sometimes you can see the chyron and logo even when they're turned off.


Edit: wocka wocka wocka

[1024MAK]

… screen-burn …

Definitely a problem for CRT technology if the same image (does not matter on the source of the signal) is displayed continuously, or for long periods. Affects both monochrome and colour tubes.

The phosphor ages faster if continuously activated, and it changes the “colour” when it’s not being activated. Hence you can see a “shadow” of what is normally shown, even if the set is powered off. It also affects plasma displays and any other type that uses phosphor.

This is not a such a big problem on LCD displays, as they work completely differently. They may however have a different problem.

Mark

[Oloturia]

My father and his friends were tech enthusiasts so there wasn't really a fight to connect the Spectrum to our main TV, which was a Minerva Color (not this exact model).

After one or two years we upgraded our main TV with a smaller one but with a remote control, so I had old Minerva just only for the computer. Anyway my parents let me play only on weekends because they didn't want me to play too much. They plugged the Spectrum on Saturday mornings and disconnected on Sunday evenings every week.
When I upgraded to the Amiga they let me use it without any limits, they bought also the monitor (which still works).

Fun fact about old TV: I don't know what kind of sadistic engineer thought that push buttons were a thing of the past and that conductive touch buttons were the future. Our TV had such buttons for channel switching that, with time, got oxidized and so they weren't working properly, like having ghost touches or refusing to work. I remember that one time I was so frustrated by the behaviour of the control panel that I thought it was a sensible thing to do to hit it with a hammer. Obviously I broke the thing, but anyway it was repaired. When we gave the TV away in the nineties to a game club it was still working.

[Andre Leao]

Yes, still have the TC 2048 + Neptun 156 monitor in perfect condition...

[presh]

When my folks bought the family 48K+ I was too young to use it on my own... but that didn't matter, as my dad loved Atic Atac and Arcadia, so was on it quite a lot!

Eventually we moved house, had a separate dining room and living room, so the Speccy (soon to be replaced by a +2A) was in the dining room on a computer desk with a 15" colour telly. Other than the occasional clash between what Dad & Mum wanted to watch (Dad being relegated to the dining room, of course!) it was pretty much dedicated to the Speccy, bar the occasional football match.

Due to my dad working shifts, we'd spend 1 week in 3 at my nana's house after school... the +2a had arrived at home already, so the 48+ got moved to the spare bedroom at Nana's, permanently hooked up to her old TV.

So... strictly no, but kinda yes?

[Cosmium]

Initially I was hooking up my ZX81 to the shared (Granada?) family TV in the living room. After about a year I got a small B&W TV for my birthday that I had in my bedroom.

I continued using that TV after I'd saved up for the Spectrum, so just shades of grey for me to start with, unless I wanted to test out the colour and haul everything back downstairs!

One of the first purchases from the proceeds of my games was buying a small colour TV - a Sony Trinitron which was all the rage at the time. You'd see them everywhere at the ZX Microfairs in London.

Definitely a problem for CRT technology if the same image (does not matter on the source of the signal) is displayed continuously, or for long periods. Affects both monochrome and colour tubes.

...It also affects plasma displays and any other type that uses phosphor.

including the newer OLED displays, which is one of their few negatives and something I'm keenly aware of and very careful to avoid. But wow, what a picture!

[Cosmium]

You rich kids and your “buttons.” I remember a B&W TV we had (pre-Speccy) with a channel selector knob. The plastic knob had broken off, so we used pliers to grab the metal selector stub and switch channels (thonk-thonk-thonk!).

You rich kids with flashy knobs. My old B&W TV was so basic in didn't even have a channel selector knob. You had to tune the TV to find a channel manually using a single rotary dial, just like you would tune an old radio to the right frequency by wading along the whole spectrum looking for it. Luckily I wasn't darting between channels, so mainly I just left it tuned to the computer's "channel".

[Matt_B]

This is rapidly turning into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Well, I say television because it was a TV to us, but it were nowt really but a an etch-a-sketch with a power cord rammed in one side and an aerial lead in t'other...

[zup]

2 years before my parents bought the Spectrum, we had a very old 19 inch black and white TV that was dying. My father bought another 12 inch black and white TV because it was failing too often and spent much time outside home.

In the end, the TV failed, went to scrap and he bought a 22 inch colour TV while the smaller TV was stored in a closet. So when he bought the Spectrum, we had our own TV

[Ast A. Moore]

I say television because it was a TV to us, but it were nowt really but a an etch-a-sketch with a power cord rammed in one side and an aerial lead in t'other...

You were lucky to have a power cord. We used to have to take turns pedaling the bicycle to power a dynamo!

But, you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor. You try and and tell the young people of today that, and they won’t believe you.

[jorgegv]

You were lucky to have a power cord. We used to have to take turns pedaling the bicycle to power a dynamo!

But, you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor. You try and and tell the young people of today that, and they won’t believe you.

Gloriously wealthy you were, if I might say, if you had a bicycle to turn the dynamo!

My brothers and I had to turn our dynamo by using one screw driver!

[1024MAK]

My brothers and I had to turn our dynamo by using one screw driver!

You had a proper screwdriver! That’s just pure luxury. Us kids used a bent Thing-Ummy-Bob made out of, well, I’m not quite sure…

Mark

[Tan Coul]

12" B&W jobbie I'd got the previous Christmas (Zeddy was a birthday present)

[jorgegv]

You had a proper screwdriver! That’s just pure luxury. Us kids used a bent Thing-Ummy-Bob made out of, well, I’m not quite sure…

Mark

That's one of funniest sketches I've ever seen, Python's or other's. Good to remember them here.

"...LUXURY!!"

[TMD2003]

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.)

You could have made up "Professional Snooker Simulator" and you'd have accidentally come up with a real title. Or just... "Snooker", as in the one by Visions. I had both. Wasn't any good at them, mind. Now, a pool simulator... other than Archer Maclean's Pool on the Atari ST, and something very basic on the Magnavox Odyssey that had a grey 8-ball because it couldn't handle black, I'm stuck.

Visions' Snooker helpfully designated the balls with different patterns as well as different colours - a regular "O" character for the cue ball and a zero for the black, the reds were filled in, the brown was also red but was only filled on the right half, the yellow was filled in on the left, the blue on top and the green on the bottom, shown in cyan. And the pink was a backwards zero. So, if Whispering Ted Lowe was commentating on a game of Visions' Snooker, for those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green - and you know which is which!

@1024MAK mentioning HTV (which was still actually ITV, but the regional one for Wales and West), reminded me of fond memories of Southern TV. These were there days when regional TV made their own programmes. I'm pretty sure Southern made Worzel Gummidge and Dick Barton.

As of almost two years ago I'm back where I belong, in the region formerly known as Anglia. And never mind Sale of the Century, Anglia made Knightmare. Game, set, match, knapsack, Helmet of Justice and Silver Spurs of Squiredom.

This is rapidly turning into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Allow me to un-Yorkshireify it. Because, you could say I came from a family with an excess of TVs, though not the 1980s equivalent of these 100-inch leviathans that some mad people spend five grand on these days and that will break within the first year.

When I were a lad (the same age as my four-year-old nephew plus a few months), I was presented with a shiny new (and obsolete) ZX81, which was plugged into a black-and-white TV that my grandparents (from Yorkshire) had finished with, after finally buying a very un-Yorkshire-like colour TV. It was one of those with a rotary dial and probably dated from the early 1970s. Seeing the setup that Simon Ulyett had brought for the ZX81 on the Cronosoft stand at Spectrum40 certainly brought back a few memories, although his TV was even older and probably from the 1960s. Speculation elsewhere on this thread that having to share the family TV is inversely proportional to the date the Spectrum arrived is... probably true; I didn't have to do so for long, as barely four months into Spectrum ownership, I bought my own TV. Aged not quite nine, I raided my savings account for a cheap but functional Dixons-own-brand 14-inch colour TV. Barely able at the time to get my head around anything that cost a three-figure amount, £112 in 1988 equates to £285 now. But, despite its cheapness, that TV served me well all through my early years. Once my brother had been handed a Dragon 32 so he didn't miss out, he too bought (at the age of seven) a very, very cheap and nasty Chinese TV, priced at only two digits and presumably designed for the east-Asian and Pacific Rim market (maybe even Australia and New Zealand) - it had switchable UHF/VHFhi/VHFlo on each of its channel buttons, and only earlier this year did I find out when VHF TV was switched off in the UK (1984, so those VHF switches were useless to us). But, again, that TV served him well... and it only needed to handle four colours at a time, until he plugged a NES into it in later years. At some stage, I know I also inherited a hand-me-down from my great-aunt (from East Laaaandan, geezer) - it was another 1970s job, still with a rotary dial, but at least it was colour. I think she just didn't want to dump it, being from a not-very-wealthy background (and not sharing the social-climbing tendencies of her older sister who would eventually become my grandmother). I can't remember it ever working properly, mind.

[uglifruit]

I've done some sleuthing, I was on telly sharing on the only TV in the house from 83-85, then onto black and white portable in '85 (winter months, when it was not at caravan). I inherited this proper in about 89, cos it was my TV I used my speccy on at uni (90-92). The 80s Twilight Zone and Moonlighting should only be in black and white as far as I'm concerned.

It's astonishing you can still buy black and white t.v. licenses. And that 4200 were issued for 2021/2022. It'd actually be pretty difficult to find a B/W monitor, and get it connected to a Freeview box, I'd have thought.

[1024MAK]

… and only earlier this year did I find out when VHF TV was switched off in the UK (1984, so those VHF switches were useless to us).

Even if not switched off, 405 line services were not supported on a lot of sets that were on sale in the 1980s, as it was an obsolete standard that was incompatible with the 625 line standard. And who wanted a black and white image when by then all UHF 625 line stations were in colour?

Also these transmissions officially ended in January 1985, it being a phased switch off from 1982. More here. But as so few people were using 405 line sets, it was not unknown for a fault to occur and not be reported for a while…

Mark

[Joefish]

Also had to borrow time on the (rental) colour TV in the living room. Fortunately neither of my parents were into sports (except my Mum when it came to horses), so once the cartoons finished on a Saturday morning the computer went straight on.

When we were older, my brother and I had the old family B&W telly in the bedroom for the Spectrum. This was a really old type with four long buttons you pressed in to select channel, and twisted to tune in. It didn't last long. After my and Nan* and Grandad died, we had the B&W TV they had had in a bedroom. That was a newer one, but smaller, and again had the single dial you turned to find the channel, like a radio.

Most annoying was one year when my Gran* was staying with us, she bought me a computer game (Jason's Gem), then when I tried to play it, loudly complained 'haven't we had enough of that do we have to have the television on on Christmas Day haven't you better things to do' etc. I guess nowadays she'd just asked my Mum to buy me something and had no clue what it was herself.

*For those not familiar with the oddness of UK life, there are many regional variations of what you call your grandmothers (Nanny, Granny, Nan, Gran, Nana, Grandma, Grama, etc.) but every family has their own versions of how to distinguish between your two grandmothers, and they usually develop along rather silly and obscure nicknames coined by the first child. In our case we had one northern and one southern grandmother, hence one 'Nan' and one 'Gran', which made things fairly simple compared to some families.

[Vampyre]

When I got my Speccy Xmas 1983 my grandad got me a big colour TV (22" I guess?) which he got given by a work colleague who's parents had passed away (I'm a bit hazy on this - heck, I was 11). It was awesome but unfortunately didn't last long - six months max before it finally died. We had a tiny B&W portable that I used until Xmas 1986 or 1987.

My combined birthday/Xmas present that year was a colour portable that saw me through my Speccy and Atari ST days until I got a SNES when I started working. I then treated myself to a portable TV with a SCART socket and the difference in quality was night and day.

Fondest memories are probably of that B&W portable. It had no way of remembering any presets and only had a dial to change the signal. So if I wanted to watch any normal TV I had to find the channels all over again (on a crappy indoor aerial) and vice-versa when back on the Speccy. Oh, the days of fiddling with that dial in the late hours to watch some dodgy Red Triangle programme on Channel 4, careful not to wake my parents.

[TMD2003]

Even if not switched off, 405 line services were not supported on a lot of sets that were on sale in the 1980s, as it was an obsolete standard that was incompatible with the 625 line standard. And who wanted a black and white image when by then all UHF 625 line stations were in colour?

Old people who'd bought their first TV for the coronation in 1953 and didn't want to get rid of it, I'd suspect.

The "family TV" at the time was missing the VHF switches; I'd assumed it was my parents' wedding present and thus dated from 1975, but it had eight selectable channels (i.e. seven plus "VR") so was most likely from slightly later (say, 1978 or so, once video recorders had arrived on our shores). My brother's Chinese portable TV was the first time I'd seen VHF controls, and I was wondering at the time why it had been built to pick up radio.