I am 52 and grew up poor and without cable. Even I don’t remember having to do this.
Meanwhile I am 24, not old and remember doing this. My sole electronic entertainment for quite a while was an old Sears CRT with an Atari 2600 plugged into it, and depending on whether the room was warm or cold would change the vertical hold and I’d have to adjust it constantly.
I’m a little younger than you and only Grandpa’s TV has this dial. If I turned it all the way made it impossible to watch Perry Mason.
The picture would not stabilize and you had to turn a knob to center it and stop it from shaking
54 here. You must have had good gear.
Not sure our main tube TV needed it much, but later and smaller TVs sure did. Of course the tube TV would blow one and then it was off to the grocery store kiosk to try and find one. Or call the TV repair guy if dad couldn’t figure it.
Really? I’m 42 and had to do this. It didn’t matter if it was cable or antenna or VHS. You only really had to set it once and almost never had to turn the knob again. I’m assuming your parents had done it to the TV and you just never knew. The knobs were usually on the back of the TV or behind a panel where you could adjust things like the color tint.
“We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. Do not try to adjust your set.”
Outer Limits. Always wondered how many people heard that intro and really believed they had lost control of their TV
especially when you can almost see titties on an hbo channel.
We had a descrambler filter for Cinemax back in the day. Good times. Skinimax
Or the tracking on a VCR.
Who remembers beating the shit out their TV to get red to work again? Different times
Ah, scrambled porn stations…
…I mean, no.
I remember… The before times.
My grandparents’ beautiful wood console TV also had the more rare horizontal hold. I have many fond memories of watching Gunsmoke, Star Search, and Wheel of Fortune on the thing with my grandad.
Yep. I’m 55 and totally remember doing this. I also remember when channels would play the national anthem before they stopped broadcasting and it went to snow.
55 here next week. That was time to go to bed. Much like it is for me right now.
This is before even my time, what does this do?
It controls the beam that forms the image. Basically when it’s set wrong it looks like the image is scrolling past the screen.
Ah, some kind of frequency timing modulation fiddler thingy I guess? I don’t know if you can tell I’m not in the field of electronics… 😎
