Post a pic of the TV that you gamed on in the 80's

[Ross PK]

My mum bought a new 14 inch Sanyo TV in around 83 or 84 when I was a kid for the living room, when we moved house in 1986 my mum let me have it in my room, I had it on a computer desk with an Atari 800XL hooked up to it up until the very early 90's when I then had an Atari ST hooked up to it, but then in 1994 I ended up throwing it out since it stopped working.

 

To my surprise I just found the same TV on ebay today, I would love to own one again as it holds so much nostalgia for me.

 

Here it is,

 

Edited September 19, 2013 by Ross PK

[BydoEmpire]

I had my 2600 hooked up to something like this awesome B&W console TV (I got to put this in my room after the family got a color TV):

 

 

I also watched episodes of Manimal on it... good times.

Edited September 19, 2013 by BydoEmpire

[Seob]

Not the first tv i gamed on since i used to play on my parents tv. Then we got a schneider cpc464 that had it's own monitor and then we switched to a pc with a monochrome cga screen. When i bought a playstation 1 this was my tv that i played on. Earned it with my own money working in the summer and bought it back in the early nineties. Still have it, its a nice looking tv but only has rf input. And without a remote you can't do anything, since the only button on the tv is the on off switch.

The tv on the picture is of the net, my tv isn't that dirty.

Edited September 19, 2013 by Seob

[RickR]

19" Sampo Color TV

[twoquickcapri]

Did most of my gaming on one of these bad boyz.

 

Our main TV looked something like this but it was made by Zenith

[number six]

 

Circa 1980-1981 Small Sears Color Television.

 

Can't remember if this was the model or not, if not it was close. It died sometime in the 1990s so it got tossed but it did everything from a Commodore 64 to an Atari to the Nintendo and Genesis later on.

Edited September 20, 2013 by number six

[cvga]

I don't have a picture but originally played my atari on a small 13" black and white TV. I wasn't allowed to hook it up to the family's color TV because my dad was afraid the atari would damage it (plus he really liked to watch TV). Luckily for me, I got Starmaster for my birthday. I showed my dad that the instructions said that you have to play on a color TV. We shared the cost on a new (but still small) RCA color TV. Thanks Starmaster!

[mbd30]

19" Sampo Color TV

 

I don't know the brand, but it was a bedroom TV similar to that. I also sometimes gamed on a larger living room Zenith TV. I remember having to get a special adapter for making the Sega Genesis compatible with the automatic picture control on the Zenith.

Edited September 21, 2013 by mbd30

[RickR]

I don't know the brand, but it was a bedroom TV similar to that. I also sometimes gamed on a larger living room Zenith TV. I remember having to get a special adapter for making the Sega Genesis compatible with the automatic picture control on the Zenith.

 

The name "Sampo" was always a joke amongst my friends. What you couldn't even afford a "Sanyo"? But it did work quite nicely. Thanks to my Dad for buying it from "Smith's Home Furnishings" in Portland, OR. I was right there with him, and I remember being so excited. Memories.

[LoTonah]

This was our family TV, except ours had two dials (UHF and VHF)... the picture is a PAL version, we had the NTSC version in Canada.

 

 

It saw me through a Coleco Telstar (pong clone), an Atari 2600, and finally a Coleco ADAM before I got my own TV for my bedroom. Good times

 

Weird that the screens on my Mac are 5" bigger, but that old TV was what we watched in our living room from 15 feet away.

[Eltigro]

My original TV and Atari 2600 were lost in a house fire when I was in Middle School (around 1987 or so). I have no idea what it was, but I remember playing lots of Yars Revenge, Barnstorming, and River Raid on it. I'll write Activision and see if they kept my photo of my River Raid score that I sent them for that patch. lol

[high voltage]

I got my Sanyo monitor and a Philips TV tuner in 1985, with the Philips TV tuner I could switch between my Atari XE and VCS without unplugging anything.

 

 

Still use the same setup nowadays.

 

 

 

 

later on I went monitor crazy

 

Edited September 22, 2013 by high voltage

[retrorussell]

We had a 19 inch RCA color tv from the late 70s (I guess) that looked similar to this one but without legs (we put it on a giant wooden cable spool). Plus, it had a small flip-down compartment inside which were the color/tuning/tint/etc. control knobs. We had this in the living room and christened our new Atari 2600 on it.

We also had a tiny like 9 inch B&W tv upstairs that we also hooked the Atari up to; I think it was an off-brand Japanese name. Kind of like this only with a white plastic shell, not wooden.

I remember the old game/tv switch adapter we'd have to screw into the back.

I also ended up getting a black and white 9 inch Sanyo in the room upstairs by the furnace. No pics, sorry..

I moved out and lived with my mom & stepdad in the Seattle area in the late 80s and I got a VCR/TV Symphonic 20" for my bedroom. I moved back to my dad & stepmom's back in Portland in the early 90s and brought the tv with me.

It generally served me well even after I moved out of my parents' shadow for the last time (about '96 or so).

[Fixitguy74]

We had a big console Zenith that we hooked up to the 2600, and for a short while the Tandy Color Computer II. Then my older brother (who owned the Coco 2) got a 13 inch color set from Radio Shack so he could have a dedicated tv for the computer and Atari. We later got an NES and hooked it up to the big Zenith. In high school I got a little 4 1/2 inch Radio Shack b/w portable tv for Christmas that I later hooked up the nes to while I was in college.

 

I believe our Zenith was this one

 

I couldn't find a useable image of the 13 inch tv, but here is a pic of my 4 1/2 as I still have this one in my posession.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Fixitguy74

[Serious]

It was a Curtis Mathes console television, and I'm pretty sure it was a 1973 model. First, it was in the living room of my Dad's apartment, then it got moved into the game room when he bought a house.

 

This isn't the exact model, but this is very close:

 

 

The control panel on this model looks identical to the one we had, but the model shown in the photo is a higher-end model an 8-track player, record player, and side speakers (not shown). Ours was just the television.

[Seob]

Or living room tv was something like this Philips tv. All i played on that tv was pong.

[JadeETC]

I play on a 1983 RCA TV. The woodgrain on it matches the 2600 quite nicely. I tried taking pictures of it but they came out too dark. I'll try tomorrow morning.

[Krytol]

Here are some pictures of either me or my brother playing Missile Command. The date on the back of the photos says Feb. 1982. The pictures are taken in black and white, but the TV was color. There was a keypad on the right to choose channels with (where the red arrow is pointing), and the channel was displayed with a red LED. No remote. I want to say Zenith, but I'm not sure.

 

 

 

[JamesL]

I bought this 13 inch TV at Sears in 1986 using my paper route money, and I still play my Atari on it to this day! Notice the original remote control next to it.

[Charlie_]

My family had Zenith TV's with knob tuners and slide volume controls during the 70's and 80's.

They were used to play TRS-80 coco and Atari.

When I was 17 I finally purchased my own TV for my room. It was 1988 already and I got a 25" RCA from Macy's.

It traveled with me all my years until about 5 years ago I gave it to my wife's niece.

Loved that TV, it always had excellent composite input display.

 

Something like this

http://www.foundvalue.com/upload/images/products/mcintyre_632736421015508750_tv1.JPG

[Krytol]

I bought this 13 inch TV at Sears in 1986 using my paper route money, and I still play my Atari on it to this day! Notice the original remote control next to it.

 

Still working after all these years, and you still have the remote. Very cool.

[Intellivisioner]

This is quite exactly the TV model I used with my first video games:

 

Telefunken PALCOLOR 6818 Supercontrol 1979

 

 

Actually my parent´s bedroom TV, I was allowed to use it for my games for just a few hours a week.

[cybercylon]

This was our family TV, except ours had two dials (UHF and VHF)... the picture is a PAL version, we had the NTSC version in Canada.

 

 

It saw me through a Coleco Telstar (pong clone), an Atari 2600, and finally a Coleco ADAM before I got my own TV for my bedroom. Good times

 

Weird that the screens on my Mac are 5" bigger, but that old TV was what we watched in our living room from 15 feet away.

That picture reminds me of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes... can't remember which one it was from. I think the latter. Didn't the girl talk to Alex Drake

 

(sorry... way off topic).

 

Not sure if could find a picture of the TV I first gamed on. a 9 inch B&W first, then I got a 12 inch color one for my birthday a year later.

[JadeETC]

 

Finally got a picture.

[Jess Ragan]

That picture reminds me of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes... can't remember which one it was from. I think the latter. Didn't the girl talk to Alex Drake

I guess the girl in the test pattern was the daughter of a BBC (British Broadcasting Company) network executive. And that clown is like something out of my nightmares! Yeech!

 

Anyway, I'm not going to share any pictures of televisions I had in the 1980s, but I did spend a lot of time gaming on a small black and white RCA way back then. The fun ended when I accidentally knocked the TV off the table and broke it. I don't know what was wrong with it, but I DO remember the game I was playing at the time... Berzerk for the Atari 2600. We also had a color Emerson that was the family television set. The TV was so old, it had those stupid VHF/UHF screws on the back, instead of a proper coax connector. If that thing were any more low tech, it would have been carved from rock and sitting in the Flintstones' living room!