Colour TV

[designgirl]

In Australia, colour TV began broadcasting in 1975 (yeah, way later than the rest of the planet…, even NZ had colour TV from 1973).

It was such a HUGE thing, I remember all of the family gathering at my grandparents house when they bought their first colour TV sometime late in ‘76 - a large Kriesler model complete with wood finish and corded remote control. Us kids thought it was the height of sophistication to change channels with the remote.

The first shows I really remember being so excited about seeing in colour were cartoons – The Flintstone’s, Jetson’s, Bugs Bunny and the Wonderful World of Disney on a Sunday night.

Does anyone else remember how amazing seeing colour TV was for the first time? :)

[yelever]

We didn`t get a colour tv until about 82 and remember everyone sitting around it to watch it only to find they was showing a black and white film on tv and felt ripped off:D

[designgirl]

We didn`t get a colour tv until about 82 and remember everyone sitting around it to watch it only to find they was showing a black and white film on tv and felt ripped off:DReally? That is amazing, I thought Australia was behind the rest of the world with colour TV...however, we make up for it by being early adopters of new technology.....:cool:. Still, that figures you got to see a black + white film first!

I was 5 years old in 1976 and remember being really impressed when my dad got to watch a total eclipse of the sun, on a colour TV at someone's house, while we watched it on an old black and white set. It was only years later I realised that what difference would it have made....like exactly how much colour is there in a broadcast of an eclipse anyway?:confused:

[Heather74]

The reason I've not answered this thread before is I'm a 74 baby and I'm sure I was born into a world of colour tv. From what i can find out the first colour broadcasts ran between 1967-1969 here in the U.K.

Edit Just spoke to mum she believes she would have had her first colour tv somewhere around 72/73.

[HG]

I was born in 71 and as far as I can remember we always had a colour tv, a big brown wooden one. I remember some programmes were broadcast in black and white, and colour shows often had BBC Colour in the end credits.

My gran had a black and white tv well into the 70's perhaps early 80's.

[pedro]

Early 70's for my family.We had a small portable black and white when first married in 75 until we could afford to rent one(Radio Rentals anyone?)

[john]

I was born in 1971 and we'd had a black and white Bush TV for years, and then in the late seventies/early eighties we had my Grandma's big 26" colur tele from her, we had it for years.

[suzannewozere2]

Mum and Dad rented a colour one for the wedding of Charles and Diana.
Before that my great aunts had one that was never tuned in properly so everyone had a neon aura.

[Cat Weazle]

Mad memories,

We had a Pye 26" colour in a wooden cabinet. It had sliding hideaway doors and a remote that worked by clicking like a "TICK" sound.

Radio rentals I think.

Pong played great and so did the atari.. cool:)

[yelever]

Ok just wanted to clear this up. Colour tv`s were around before 82 but our family didn`t get one until then. May have caused some confusion. Sorry about that and haven`t been online that much to reply. Sorry again guys.

[chrisredditch]

In the late 60's I remember coming out of the ABC cinema in Romford and waiting for a bus across the road. They had a colour TV in the window of an adjacent Electrical Store. I think about 5 buses went by before we could tear ourselves away from this wonderful invention! LOL

[ClaudineJones]

We rented one that had a coin meter at the back for 50p's.

[Richard1978]

My family got a colour set before I was born so I've don't have that much viewing in black & white, in fact I can't remember knowing anyone first-hand who had a B&W set as their main TV.

A few did have a B&W 2nd set, my gran used to have one at her caravan in North Norfolk for years. Plenty of memories of the 1984 olympics & summer holiday children's TV in B&W on that.

My Dad first remembers seeing Wimbledon in 1967 on a TV in a shop window, & my Mum's first viewing was Prince Charles's ceremony for becoming Prince Of Wales.

[Kiop]

We rented one that had a coin meter at the back for 50p's.

We also had one like this with the old ten bob bits in the back, LOL.

I never remember us having a b&w tv either, but my dad was a tv engineer at the time and they let him bring colour sets home as a perk. When I was 4 years old I was bought a b&w portable tv for Christmas that still works to this day - 36 years later :)

[rossobantam]

When I was 4 years old I was bought a b&w portable tv for Christmas that still works to this day - 36 years later :)

Mu mum & dad had a 'wooden box' type Phillips colour TV for 25yrs..things were built to last back then. If you had a spare telly it tended to be a b&w portable, with the round knob for tuning it in

[stuckinthe80's]

I was born in '73 and I can only remember having a colour telly. We had a rented one from the D.E.R. The DER was much more popular in our town becase of the discounts offered to the Thorn EMI factory workers. My mam and dad both worked there.

[kazboot]

We didn't get our first colour tv until 1973, which was embarrassing because all my friends had one before me. :o

[chilligrape]

I was born in 1970 and only remember stuff i colour. But my nana had a black and white main tele. does anyone remember Reddifusion with the dial you turned to turn the tele over and also had radio channels on it. A bit like cable but in the 70's.

[glam_racket]

The brand name Pye made me laugh 25 years ago.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3514/3863175686_3b46860abf.jpg

And it still does now.

(I know I've too much time on my hands!)

[darren]

I was born in '73 and I can only remember having a colour telly. We had a rented one from the D.E.R. The DER was much more popular in our town becase of the discounts offered to the Thorn EMI factory workers. My mam and dad both worked there.

well i was born in 75 and we still had a black and white telly till the mid eighties.
although we did have a colour telly as well.
the b&w was a wooden tv it was light brown in colour.

[sf1378]

Glam_Racket's pic brings back memories...Lots of folk had black and white sets in the UK even after colour came along as the tv licence for a b&w set was cheaper....My Mum used to rent b&w sets much like that pic from Rediffusion from the 1970s to mid 1980s...! I remember the first time we saw colour tv was when Rediffusion gave us a COLOUR replacement when they took our b&w set for repairs when it was on the blink...my sister and I were amazed to see Sesame St and see Grover, Cookie Monster and Hairy Monster were blue!!!!! I think the colour setting had been turned up to the max by accident as we all ended up with reddish eyes and they really hurt....Mind you, there was that complaint 'colour tv gives me headaches' when it all first came to the UK and that did feel like it to us....

When our old set came back my sister and I were dead gutted...We begged Mum and Dad to keep the colour one but it was basically 'shurrup or get a slap' lol...We finally got a colour set WITH REMOTE CONTROL (WOW!) by 1986....Seriously!

What makes me smile about the old box sets was how they always conked out, and the engineer-or 't.v. man' would come round and it'd be an 'event' in our house watching him with his big box of stuff...seeing the innards of the back of the set and being told to stand well away lest be electrocuted! Lol...The prognosis was more often than not 'the valve being blown'...Another thing I remember was the knobs on the set. We'd watch Mum crouched and twiddling the channel buttons like she'd been told by the 't.v. man' to retune the channels...And then there was the fact that you'd get two channels working but not the third...Or as in our case, by 1982 when C4 came along and we moved into 4 channel tv, had a **** t.v. reception in our house! Sometimes we'd get two channels jammed in and would have to watch Mum figure out how to get the channel buttons pushed back out....like watching a safe cracker at work....Mum, bless her was the 't.v. woman' in the home, it was afterall, 'her set' as she put it, Dad didn't give a toss about having a t.v. hence Mum renting it...

And does anyone remember being told 'don't leave it on all the time!' It may overheat and blow up the valve!' Remember the smell these old sets gave off? The warmth off the back of the set? Ah, memories!

[darren]

yes i used to get the buttons jammed once in a while.
oh for sure i remember that smell they gave off.
but it was not a real stinky smell it was kind of nice.
did you have one of those wooden tellys a light brown it was.
i can picture it in my head.
i think it had vents on the front.

[Sly]

My first TV was a B&W portable that had a dial to change the channel. It had a hoop aerial which needed to be altered for every channel. :mad:

I used to play my C64 on it all the time until 1 Christmas I got a colour tv with a remote with no wires. I have to say, I didn't actually watch much tv on it, I've never been a big tv watcher. It did see thousands upon thousands of hours of games though. I used it up until 2003. Thinking about it, it is probably one of my most used presents I have ever received.

[Trickyvee]

I was born in '76 and can only remember watching colour TV at home, although weirdly I can remember the day we got a colour TV for the first time (probably around 1981), so I must have watched some B & W before this!

My nanna had a B&W TV into the mid-80's and had one of those plastic things to go over the screen to make it look 'coloured'. It was rubbish, with a stripe of green at the top, a stripe of red at the bottom and a big bit of a sort of dirty sepia orange in the middle. Totally useless!

[Sly]

How was that a good idea? I bet it just looked like you were looking through a sweetie wrapper.

[Trickyvee]

It did! I'm assuming this was something you could actually buy for black and white TVs and not just a random bit of transparent stuff that my nanna decided to put over the screen. I don't know to be honest.

[Sly]

I dunno, old people can do some weird stuff. My gran detuned all the other channels out of her TV because she just wanted to watch Ideal World shopping channel. I wish I was joking. :(

[sandie76]

I remember us having a colour TV around the very late 70's, I would have been 2. I remember seeing the credits at the end of Coronation street, with the roof tops and the theme tune. I can remember this memory really clearly as my sister was asleep on the carpet right in front of/below the television (tv was on the stand with wheels), and I wondered how she could sleep with the noise of the tv. I obviously didn't realise or understand at that age that she was deaf, so obviously couldn't hear it.

[Elbmek]

For ages all I ever saw was the BBC2 test card in shop windows.

[Richard1978]

My Dad can remember seeing 1967 Wimbledon in a TV shop window, & being surprised at how orange the Robinson's squash was due the the colour level being turned right up.

My Mum's first memory of colour was Prince Charles's investiture in 1969.

Sorry if I'm repeating myself from a while back!

[marilynd04]

We had one of those very little b&w tv's - surprised we didnt have to wear glasses. I think we were one of the first in the street to have a tv - we were very popular

[grhaffdd]

I sort of remember when we got our first color telly, wasn't anything special.
I can remember not wanting to watch a film as it was black and white..
My nan had a black n white telly into the 1990's and when she died we had it
in our kitchen. We only got rid of it few years, it still worked but we got a modern
telly, which only worked properly for a few months!

[darren]

I sort of remember when we got our first color telly, wasn't anything special.
I can remember not wanting to watch a film as it was black and white..
My nan had a black n white telly into the 1990's and when she died we had it
in our kitchen. We only got rid of it few years, it still worked but we got a modern
telly, which only worked properly for a few months!

should have kept the black and white telly mate.
modern tellys are not built to last.

going to try to get an old black and white telly meself.

[bakermuk]

We used to have a black and white rented set until 1981 despite the fact that everyone else I knew had a colour one ! The first thing I remember watching was snooker! It was fantastic!

Go on, admit it, if you ever get pangs for those heady B/W days, you turn the colour down on your 50" LED 3D TV dont ya?! lol

[Elbmek]

And of course those immortal words from the commentator, "for those of you watching in black and white, the pink is behind the blue" which I was actually watching at the time.

[Richard1978]

I remember my parents renting a TV until late 1984, did anyone rent a set beyond the mid 1980s?

I can remember a friend's parents renting a video until the late 1980s, something which kept the rental shops going until the start of the 1990s, when Sky propped things up for a few more years before the whole rental business started to fade away.

[bakermuk]

Freinds of mine rented a TV into the early 90s.....had a 50p slot thing on the back!

[Richard1978]

I've heard of TV's having a meter on them, but have never seen one.

One good thing about renting was that when the TV had a problem you could get it sorted out easily.

I remember an engineer from Granada coming round to sort out my parents telly when they rented one.

Rental shops were often a good source of second hand sets, My uncle got 2-3 for my Grandad this way over the years.

[darren]

Freinds of mine rented a TV into the early 90s.....had a 50p slot thing on the back!

i remember them well.
Knew someone who had one.

lots of things like electric metres had slots on them where you could insert monet.
i have seen phones that work the same way.

[stuckinthe80's]

i have seen phones that work the same way.
Are you being serious? Of course you have seen phones that work the same way!!! What do you think was in a Phone Box? I give up!

[Sly]

That has to be a wind up?

[ayrshireman]

Freinds of mine rented a TV into the early 90s.....had a 50p slot thing on the back!


I remember the Glasgow Evening Times for years used to advertise 50p slot TV's.
I swear to god that they were still running said ad as late as 2003-2004.

I was working in Glasgow as late as May 2004, then spent 2-3 yrs working in Kilmarnock and Ayr, so stopped reading the Evening Times, so the ad could have run until very recently. Last time I read the print version was last year, I didnt see the ad, so one can assume slot tv's died out in Glasgow 2005-2010.

I am happy to be proven wrong lol.

[ayrshireman]

First colour TV:

1974 (ITT model, bought in nice time for the World Cup).

[ayrshireman]

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/british-television/100806-coin-slot-televisions-i-e-meter-pay-you-go.html

[battyrat]

I can remember we had an old black and white rental when I was young,but cannot quite remember when we first got a coloured tv.I expect it would of been around the time of the queens jubilee,1977.Asking dad,it appears to have been a rental as well,just like our old black and white set.It was not worth owning your own TV back then as it was common for the thing to break down regularly.Have more memories of the tv repair man and the smell of the warm valves then what colour the TV was.I guess I was not all that impressed,or other things took up more of my time like playing out with my mates.Perhaps our neighbours had coloured TV so it was not that much of a shock to the system,just a minor progression of home tech.

[Fatboy]

I was born in 71 and as far as I can remember, we always had a colour TV. My Mam & Dad always rented their TV's until around the midish 80s, then they started buying their own TV (perhaps TV's became more affordable then).

[victorbrunswick]

I believe we got our first color TV sometime in 1972. I remember one of the first things I saw in color was the Olympic games in Munich. I also remember back then that the only TVs that had remotes were the high-end models.

[Fatboy]

I believe we got our first color TV sometime in 1972. I remember one of the first things I saw in color was the Olympic games in Munich. I also remember back then that the only TVs that had remotes were the high-end models.

I can remember VCR's when I was a kid, having wired remotes, like this one.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7022/6451653099_dfbb2d0f02_o.jpg

[Elbmek]

BBC 2 Testcard, in a Rumbelows shop window, first colour tv I ever saw!!!

[Retrogames]

We got a colour Telly in 1984, Dad bought a Betamax recorder and a colour Telly at the same time. Us kids got a c64 and a portable tv Xmas 1986 as mum had got a job at Granada TV and could rent them for £5 a week. The tv shop got robbed when she'd worked there for six months, cue Dad shouting that 'women shouldn't work anyway' and us scared of losing our rented tvs!

I used a b&w 10" tv that I picked up second hand for my camper van well into the mid 90s. Any knock on the door and it got shoved into the cupboard in case it was tv licensing lol. I then got treated to a black plastic 20" Ferguson by the parents which lasted til 2003. The speakers packed up in 2002 so I watched it for over a year with subtitles on or if I was alone with headphones plugged in!

A decade on and we have a 42" Sony in the front room, two projectors (bedroom and home cinema) a 26" in the games room, and the kids are getting 32" TVs soon. Still nowt on the Telly eh!

[Sly]

There's always something on mine. Hardly any of it's broadcast though, games FTW there.

[Retrogames]

Yeah my bro+ his mrs just have a detuned tv nowadays, ariel cut off, no sky/freeview/virgin box, they save the licence fee by watching dvds, box sets, and playing games, i'd do this if it wasnt for the odd gem like Sherlock and Not Going Out (new series starts soon!)

Lovefilm is probably a better option with all its tv series now, abailable for less than the licence fee too!