The static on old CRT TVs with rabbit ears was the cosmic microwave background. No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.

  • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    7 days ago

    People born before 2000 think older technology just evaporated the minute the millenium ticked over.

  • bonn2@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    7 days ago

    2001 here literally grew up with CRT static, you have your years a bit off there.

    • TwanHE@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      I was about to say, i think we had a CRT till about 2010. My grandma still has one upstairs so even my youngest cousins still grew up with it.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    7 days ago

    Dude Flatscreen HDTVs were expensive even in 2008, and cable actually got worse for higher price so most people were hooked into local broadcast.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    6 days ago

    2007er here, I grew up with a CRT as the TV in our second living room, I’d occasionally watch stuff like Bob the builder and others, but since it was all on analog tv, channels started displaying lots of static, pretty much only like 2 or 3 channels were working last I saw.

    Also we had that CRT TV until 2018, then chucked it in the store room, then threw it out in 2020, I kinda miss it, kinda don’t, idk.

  • apemint@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    139
    ·
    8 days ago

    Well, not really. The cosmic microwave background radiation was a tiny fraction of that noise. What everyone saw was mostly thermal noise generated by the amplifier circuit inside the TV.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      8 days ago

      Even before the 2000s they started showing a blue screen instead of static.

      That wasn’t just a digital or flat panel thing.

      But of course old sets were around for a long time.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        8 days ago

        My memory of the exacts here are fuzzy, but I think this depended on whether or not your TV picked up digital signal, analog, or both. I remember around that time we had a TV that would pick up static on some channels and have a blue input screen on others.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          8 days ago

          It’s definitelly an analog over the air TV thing.

          The way digital works you would either get a “No signal” indicator (because the circuitry detects the signal to noise ratio is too low) or squarish artifacts (because of the way the compression algorithms for digital video are designed).

        • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          7 days ago

          I remember back in the Wii days when I was young we had a flat screen that would go to the digital pattern with no input. However sometimes once in a while it would get that static loud no signal so I think mine had both

          I don’t really have a point here just wanted to share

        • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          7 days ago

          Yeah, for instance the semi-ubiquitous “small TV with a vhs player built in” that was in a ton of mini-vans and kids’ rooms well into the early 2000s only supported analog cable/antenna signals, so it would give the black and white static when there was no signal.

    • Farid@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      7 days ago

      Technically, it’s not about the display technology, but instead about the signal/tuner. More specifically if it’s analog or digital. Some modern TVs still have analog or hybrid tuners for backwards compatibility and regions that still use analog, so they can display static. For instance, in Ukraine we finished the switch to digital TV only a couple of years ago. If your TV had no digital tuner (as was the case for many) you had to buy a DAC box. Retirees/pensioners got them for free, sponsored by the government.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      7 days ago

      Don’t you still see this when using an OTA ATSC tuner on a newer LCD display? I thought this was a function of the signal generation and not the display technologies.

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 days ago

        Cheap led tvs were like 1/5 the cost of Analog TVs. The digital switch over really finished them off too.

        Really it’s the size/price that did it though. My buddy paid I think $3k for a maybe 40” Trinitron in 99-2000. It probably weighed 200lbs. Looked amazing at the time but it was probably only months before big leds came out. Plasma might have been a thing then but we’re like $10k+

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 days ago

        I think they’re more likely to have been scrapped than other old tech.

        They’re bulky, and mine was too heavy to get out in the attic. I still have my ZX Spectrum and Amiga, but the CRT needed for lightgun games is long gone.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      Well to be fair at some point most/all CRTs showed a blue screen instead of static. So it’s possible someone born in 2000 never saw the snowy display.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 days ago

        As someone born in 2000, I’ve personally seen it and I think most people around me did. Maybe someone didn’t, though.

    • Hobbes@startrek.websiteOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 days ago

      No, I just couldn’t remember exactly when. And as another commenter pointed out, what I should have said was analog TV’s.