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.

  • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    2002 here, we still had such a TV. For quite a while actually, since we never upgraded and just started using phones and computers instead. It became my console monitor.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Yeah OP full of shit. My three sons all born after 2000 have seen this. Hell my flat screen will show snow if I turn it to antenna and there nothing for single to pick up. Also I have console tv for our old gaming systems so they seen that as well

      They also know how a vcr works and what a payphone is. We are not that far removed from that technology. Hell my middle son 17 has a record collection and cds. Also we have the cassette audiobook version of Stephen King Dolores Claiborne.

      • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        Modern Tv project fake static when there is no siginal because of fimilarity. OTA broadcasts are all digital, either you get a siginal or you dont.

        • Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          15 hours ago

          Some TVs may project fake static.

          Just because OTA broadcasts are digital doesn’t mean you are stuck with all or nothing. You can definitely have poor signal and see or hear something other than what was intended. Doesn’t manifest as analog static, but depending on your decoding and error correction schemes, you can have cut audio, frozen frames, iframe inconsistencies, and stuttering.

          • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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            14 hours ago

            No digital is all or nothing. What you are describing is some digital packets making it through and the algothrim is designed to accept some packet loss and has error correction. Its more complicated then i make it out, but thats the jist of it.

            It is nothing like analog thats being drowned out by background radiation.

  • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

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

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Like when the black and white world suddenly got colorized! My grandpap told me about them old days - when the lawn, the sidewalk and the sky were just different shades of gray.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    My mother had one of these. I got to use it as a hand-me-down as a teenager because my mother was abusive AF.

    For clarity, the subject of the TV wasn’t the abusive part. Her rationale of “I didn’t have one when I was a kid so you don’t get to have one while you’re a kid” was. It didn’t apply just to the TV.

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      23 hours ago

      Same lol. Only 3 channels until I was 12 or so and no internet in the house until I was 15 or 16.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    12 hours 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.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      1 day 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
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        1 day 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
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          1 day 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
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          16 hours 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
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          16 hours 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
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      1 day 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.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Many likely haven’t seen a channel sign off for the night with a test pattern up til they come back on

  • Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I bought a plasma in 2009 that would show static if I turned it to cable channels without cable plugged in. Plasmas were susceptible to burn in and since I would game a lot I could see health bars etc start to burn in after a while. Whenever that would happen I would turn it to the static screen - making each pixel flip from one end of the spectrum to the other rapidly like that would actually help remove the burn in.

  • ODuffer @lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    You can still hear it on the radio. Although most of the noise floor is probably man made.