OT - For My Viewing Pleasure (Sparty Edition)

Submitted by mgobaran on

So, my sister got a new tv and handed me down her old one. Like a 30 something inch LED? Idk. Either way, I am setting it up in my room, as fast as I can to watch the game. And I turn it on expecting a good picture right? Well I got crap cable in my room cause I had an ancient TV in my room before. I'm talking a TV with an actual back on it.

Anyways, I get this TV set up, cable plugged in, and turn on CBS. The picture is horrible. I could see yellow jerseys (so bright that I knew they had to be those alternates) and green and white guys running around. The picture was about as good as the border in Tetris for your Sega Genesis. Not to mention, it only took up about 19" of the TV, while the picture was outlined by black nothingness to the edges of the screen. The TV was never set up for cable, and used to have an HD box connected by and HDMI cord. Worse yet. I dont have a remote for it. And the TV doesn't have a menu button. So pretty much I am watching the worst basic cable ever, without an antenna, and no way to fix it.

I watched the entire 2nd half of the game through barely visable pixelated images. I am so grateful that the commentators for yesterday's game weren't crap, because without them, I probably wouldn't have known what the hell was going on. Let me tell you, watching "The Steal" live (on my TV), vs. the HD video posted above is a completely different experience. It was way too exciting not knowing exactly what was going on, as your eyes and brain tried to make real life images out of what was basically the scramble channels you used to catch soft-core adult films on.

To be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would recommend this viewing experience to everyone to try at least once.

Have you ever had a viewing experience like this?

Is this how watching sports in the 80s was like?

What is the worst sports viewing experience you've ever had?

DrunkOnHiggins

March 4th, 2013 at 1:53 PM ^

You have to remember, in the 80s and 90s we didn't have HDTV to base the picture of off. Therefore if the game was on TV, that's all that mattered. It didn't matter that you were watching it on a 19" CRT.

My cabin up north still has basic cable and standard def TVs. Watching sports is almost unberable. Hockey is the worst, you might as well use gamecast.

restive neb

March 4th, 2013 at 4:11 PM ^

Even though we didn't have HDTV back then, there was a clear difference between good reception and bad reception.  For the 1989 Championship game, I was at a house without cable.  I tried my best to get good reception by adjusting the rabbit ears, but I was ultimately unsuccessful. I watched the whole game with an awful image -- there were two of everything.  Every player had a shadow.  On the positive side, you should have seen how many shots Glen Rice hit since there were two of him on the court!

APBlue

March 4th, 2013 at 1:59 PM ^

Where do I get in line?  I want to get in line (like in the movie Airplane) and punch that kid right in the face too.  Is that movie reference too old for that young fucker?  

Just like drunkonhiggins said, there wasn't any HDTV in the 80's, so there wasn't anything to compare it to.  All we knew is that was as good as it got.  Why do you think Fox came out with stupid shit like the glow puck?  

In reply to by M-Wolverine

APBlue

March 4th, 2013 at 2:42 PM ^

Thanks for the laugh, M-Wolverine.  The only thing funnier than the jive speaking brother with the pipewrench is the old lady with the pistol.  

That, my friends, is hilarious.  

Butterfield

March 4th, 2013 at 2:03 PM ^

Your story reminds me of my adolescence, trying to get the slightest glimpse of a recognizable boob on the scrambled soft porn channels.  You kids probably didn't even know premium content was "scrambled"....if you weren't willing to pay (or didn't want to have a porn movie show up on mom and dad's cable bill), cable operators everywhere threw kids a bone by allowing them to use their imagination. 

M-Wolverine

March 4th, 2013 at 7:49 PM ^

And other picture knobs you could sometimes get it to tune in in fuzzy B&W, usually with the top of the picture at the bottom and the bottom on top like some Picasso porn. At least for a little while.

turtleboy

March 4th, 2013 at 2:13 PM ^

In the 80's a lot of people adjusted their crappy picture by moving the coat hanger around. Some of my friends still had hand-me-down black and white tvs. You got up and turned the chunky plastic dial with numbers painted on it to change channels. My one friend had a remote bigger than 2 stacked decks of cards that popped out of a slot in the tv housing. Nice tvs had a wood cabinet built around it. Only a couple people had cable, I was lucky my parents got it. My neighbors across the street had a beta player to tape games and rewatch them.

LSAClassOf2000

March 4th, 2013 at 3:18 PM ^

I  remember having to get the PBS and the CBC here in Metro Detroit by adjusting the VHF and UHF dials on an RCA 20-inch (a big deal, about 30 years ago, to have a 20-inch TV) in order to find those two stations.

For a time, we also had one of the early commercially available satellite TV setups too. It was simply easier to tell people that you were part of the SETI program, as the dish was that massive, rather than explain the system and how it worked.

To the OP's point, the sports viewing experience in the 1980s was rather that the sports were on at all, as many have mentioned. Even ESPN was not that vast back in the day, and Sportscenter, which for a few years looked like it was filmed in a basement in Bristol, was an overall more diverse, informative stroll through sports (they even covered sailing back in the day, I think).

Hail-Storm

March 4th, 2013 at 3:42 PM ^

My parents had a Beta hooked up to a 13" screen until about 2009 when they upgraded big. Still one of my favorite quotes from the Simpsons is when snake was steeling a VCR and quipped "Oh no! Beta"

Growing up in the 80s and 90s was great. Didn't have cable until my sophomore year and didn't get on the Internet until my freshman year in college in 98.

oldcityblue

March 4th, 2013 at 3:26 PM ^

on that puppy and go ahead and keep your pink pony avatar.

Actually, looking at it a little more closely, it might be awesome to have the block M under the front legs.... or stupid.

Better yet, block M your p.p. then pixalate the whole thing. Then it would make as much sense as your post.

 ...gotta love BiSB.

StephenRKass

March 4th, 2013 at 4:09 PM ^

Yep, you don't know jack. I remember watching the Olympics in Black & White in the 60's. Color TV in the 60's could be really, really awful. There were more than a few occasions when I ended up listening to Michigan games on the radio, because they weren't televised anywhere. Between ABC, ESPN, the Big10 Network, and occasionally NBC or CBS, I don't think they EVER have a time when games AREN'T available on some network.

BlueMan80

March 4th, 2013 at 6:02 PM ^

I think it was my junior year (1978) when the Michigan-Ohio game actually was played on Thanksgiving weekend due to some oddities in the calendar that year.  Fortunately, the game was in Columbus, so going home for Thanksgiving wasn't a hardship.  I knew I was in for late 70s color console TV with rabbit ears no matter how I saw the game.

My mom informs me that the TV isn't working real well,  The picture "rolls".  Veritcal hold problems were a real issue back in the day.  The picture would scroll up every few seconds.  So, being a young engineering student, I pulled the tubes that looked like they could be having problems, took them down to Radio Shack, plugged them into the tube tester, and found 3 were marginal.  Bought 3 new tubes, went home and plugged everything back in and we were in business for the big game on Sat.  Now that's a 1970s TV experience at its finest!  I think I also adjusted the "focus" control on the TV, too.  The CRT guns would wander around on those good old RCAs and Zeniths.