The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

silvercar

Channel 4 launched when I was at university, returning home to Wales at the end of term I found that Channel 4 Wales (labeled as S4C) was broadcasting Welsh programmes only.

Pyxis

As a child, there was no daytime TV until children's progs started around 4pm? Or 4.30?
Apart from very occasional odd stuff like a school's programme or something.

When I was ill, but improved enough to sit in an armchair downstairs with a blanket round me, but still feeling too unwell to concentrate on reading a book, it always annoyed me that there was nothing to watch except a man talking in Welsh!

Being ill in those days was boring!







On DT there's a thread about someone who wanted to ban the film Trollcatcher 3 or something, because she didn't like her young daughter watching something she considered to be unsuitable.

:huh:

Apparently, if she tries to stop her daughter watching it, the daughter cries.

I can't find the head-banging-on-wall emoticon.

I reckon that the child would be a suitable candidate for one of Pastures' ferals in a couple of years!

LydiaJ

Pyxis wrote: »

As a child, there was no daytime TV until children's progs started around 4pm? Or 4.30?
Apart from very occasional odd stuff like a school's programme or something.

When I was ill, but improved enough to sit in an armchair downstairs with a blanket round me, but still feeling too unwell to concentrate on reading a book, it always annoyed me that there was nothing to watch except a man talking in Welsh!

Being ill in those days was boring!

LNE got chickenpox, very badly, at the age of 27, starting the day Diana died. He felt too ill to read, but could cope with watching TV, but most of the time there was nothing on any of the channels except the same dozen clips of her, over and over again, with various people talking about her. He got very bored too.

Jackmydad

zagubov wrote: »

I can remember when your TV needed an extra button to receive the new third channel as it had more lines than the usual two channels.

It was even more complicated than the "lines" the old stations were broadcast on VHF, and BBC2 on UHF. For a while in the 60s both systems were used. So you needed a TV that would receive VHF and UHF.
There's a bit on Wikipedia under History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/405-line_television_system
Earlier still, some of the first TVs would apparently only receive BBC. You needed a converter, a sort of "set top box" to get ITV.

chris_m

LydiaJ wrote: »

LNE got chickenpox, very badly, at the age of 27, starting the day Diana died. He felt too ill to read, but could cope with watching TV, but most of the time there was nothing on any of the channels except the same dozen clips of her, over and over again, with various people talking about her. He got very bored too.

I remember, some years ago before Freeview, there was some football tournament going on at the same time as Wimbledon - in the early evening one channel was showing the tennis, three were showing football (of which two were actually showing the same game from the same camera feeds just with different commentary) and Channel 5 was showing some dusty old film.
I remember the women at work were furious about it the next day - all the kids TV had been scrapped so they'd had nothing to entertain the kids for half an hour whilst they were cooking their teas. I can't say I blamed them.

PasturesNew

I just measured my telly it's a 21¼" screen. I'm quite happy with a smallish one - a bigger one takes more effort to lug about ... and weighs more. As I've no skills, a telly always sits on something, it's not mounted or hung or anything "clever"

I don't want to buy a new one and get rid of this .... it's only 7 years old and it just feels wrong that it should no longer work ... I "inherited" it when clearing the care home room ... so half sentimental in a way too ... which will make it a wrench to say goodbye to it.

PasturesNew

Today I've been playing the vacuum bag game.... going through them all, filing them, vacuuming them ... then walking away and going back 1-2 hours later to see if they've gone down yet...

Then, I stick a bit of masking tape on them "broken", so I know. Still keeping them for now (they might come in handy) as they do work as covers to move things.

Once I've gone through them all I'll have a lot of stuff vacuum packed ... and a pile of things that can be vacuum packed, which then means I am able to go and buy some more bags as I'll know how many I need.

Slowly .... slowly .... but I am still plodding onwards with it.

The idea is: if I vacuum pack stuff I know I won't want to use in the next 1-2 years.... it'll take up less room and so can then be "hidden/tidied away" more easily. So, instead of having a stack of 12 towels in a cupboard, I'll have 3 tightly packed bags of towels taking up 1/5th of the space...

I've towels, bedlinen and old clothes/wrong size clothes that I still want to hang onto that are ideal candidates.

I bought the majority of these bags 10 years ago and have used them for a few moves/storage situations... so they've done me well and they're thoroughly useful in reducing the volume of belongings

One bag size takes an entire double duvet simply folded into a 1/4 ... that then takes up barely any space at all when moving it about (and I have two double duvets now) ... but they won't be vacuum packed until I'm actually moving, but I've popped the actual bags inside the beds, so they're where they'll be needed come the day.

zagubov

Back when there were only two or three channels, the variety seemed greater. Except if it was Saturday afternoon and you weren't into sport. There'd be an old black-and-white western movie on BBC2.

I can remember there were endless western TV series and a few iconic TV slots like Thursday evening for Top of the Pops, Saturday evening for Dr Who, and Tuesday?Wednesday? Monty Python. There was only about an hour of children's TV just before tea-time and the news, and somebody would read a bit of a book day by day.

The evening ended with the national anthem, and daytime TV was almost non-existent except for toddlers and schoolkids
.
Oh yes and second repeats were illegal. They often erased good TV programmes afterwards.

chris_m

zagubov wrote: »

There was only about an hour of children's TV just before tea-time and the news, and somebody would read a bit of a book day by day.

That would have been Jackanory - preceded IIRC by Play School and followed by Blue Peter or something similar. John Craven's Newsround was slotted in somewhere, possibly immediately after Jackanory (?), then there was usually a cartoon or animated programme (eg Paddington, The Clangers, The Wombles, Roobarb and Custard, etc.) before it went across to the adult programming - 6 o'clock News, regional news and whatever for the rest of the evening.

Oh yes and second repeats were illegal.

Didn't know that. Mind you, some "programmes" today could do with first repeats, or even better first broadcasts, being illegal

They often erased good TV programmes afterwards.

A lot were erased because the tape was expensive so they reused it to avoid buying more.

Quite a few "lost" programmes have turned up because they were often either simultaneously recorded onto film or re-recorded onto film for sending to other countries. Often, even if the magnetic tape recording was colour, the film copies were black and white.

A few years ago, they were trying to restore a lost episode of Dad's Army from one of these and discovered that, even though it was on B&W film, there was sufficient detail to identify the chroma data - so they restored it in colour!!!

chris_m

PasturesNew wrote: »

made tellies

Sorry, just a little bit for context as we've jumped to another page.

There is, or was, a very good exhibition of old radio and TV stuff at the Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre (what used to be called the Amberley Chalkpits Museum).

They had quite a selection of early TVs - many of them being the sort with a small TV tube fixed vertically on end and "back to front" in the cabinet, then a mirror and fresnel lens were brought into position when the lid was lifted so the picture was enlarged and turned the right way up so it could be seen from across the room.