They say that kids are aliens.  If they are, they just wouldn't know what this is. Hell, 20 years olds may not even know this artefact, but 10 year olds.. Thanks to the GubMint, if you're lucky and figure out how to "turn on" this "device" that used to show "moving pictures"  and by spinning a knob, happen upon a blurry image of a Spanish speaking "moving B&W image"  delivery service. What in THE HELL did they use these for? Was it for warming up in the winter? It does generate some heat... It does produce a loud "fuzz" sound...

Wowee! A princely relic of antiquity! Made in 1982. In Japan! Remember when "Made In Japan" was a bad thing? There were songs about it. There were movies about it. "They took or JOBBBBS" (South Park, Skitch.) Hell, fans of the JUNK BLOG ova dey will know that I'm the king of the crap. This sure is some crap. It's a Panasonic Black and White, 12" portable TV. Why haven't I chucked this long ago? It still works. Sort of. Kinda. When it warms. I think the last time I turned it on, I needed a digital TV box and had a problem with the vertical hold for a few minutes until it warmed up. I was able to then keep tabs on a Daytona NASCAR race that got rained out on Sunday. No, I'm not a die hard NASCAR fan, but I had waited five hours to see the race at my brother's house when they called it.  I needed my yearly dose of the first race so I could them lose interest. That was a few years ago. Gee, I can buy a TV for $60 that doesn't need a box and has a remote? Yet I hang onto this analog history. 

A blurry look at a way faded technology. This stuff was on the way out in the 80's and pretty much was gone by the 90's except on the cheap black and white televisions like this was made by companies such as "JIC", "Megatronic" "POS" and "Crown." In fact, there were a few small color televisions that I remember selling to parents who spent all their money on a Nintendo, Sega or NEC and wanted a 12" color set for only $99. Let's say it was the late 90's when even cheap televisions went to tuners that were like radio tuners.

So, when we moved into my new house, my brother got the bigger bedroom but I got the television that got UHF. My brother's room came equipped with a 25" black and white that only got VHF channels, or "3" 1980 era channels. When I got an Atari for Christmas, my TV which was a 21" or some weird size GE B&W set became very popular. My brother used to use it, but when I came home from school, it was VIDEO ARCADE with Candy Kramer time on Channel 61 and old time cartoons like Dastardly and Muttley or Top Cat.  We lived right on the lake and one Saturday, we had a huge storm and I was watching whatever, turned my head to look at the mass rain and saw a huge flash into the lake followed by loud thunder, and when I looked back, the GE was no more. It was fried.

So, as I mentioned on this blog a little while ago, I was relegated to playing my Atari video games on a 5" B&W portable television. Finally, for my birthday, I was given this Panasonic. It was smaller than my GE but  did the job and I was back in business.  It even had a headphone jack so I could listen in silence or tape stuff off the TV. Whohooo. I was living it up multi media style with my GE tape recorder and my GE AM/FM portable radio.

Here is the "business end" of this fine television product. For those of you looking at this alien device and wondering if the GUBMINT bugged my television, here's what we used to call a "switch box". You see, in the days when televisions only had screws or a round "coaxial" input or both, if you wanted to play your PONG game or early video device, you had to "convert" the signal, translating it to a language your television understood. I know! Right? Where do you place the coals? This is even an earlier converter box! If your TV had the single coax input you'd have to use a thingy with screws that converted it to a coax. In this case. to hook my digital tuner up to the TV, I needed a coax to screw terminal thingy. Can't we all get a standard HDMI hookup and a USB outlet and WIFI for your DVR? Yep. We suffered for our fun way back when.

You also needed a ton of space for the television. Can you believe that when this television came out, "Car Phones" were huge bulky bricks and it would be a few years until they would fit in a suitcase. VHS or BETA was the big question for your $500 home entertainment investment. "Video Phones" were a novelty that barely worked via telephone lines.  Plus, computer modems allowed you to join a "bulletin board" to post messages or even "chat" one on one (or more via Compuserve.)  This was my "entertainment center" and many an hour was spent watching VHS or playing Atari or programming my Atari computer. I used it up until I bought my current "studio" television, a 20" Toshiba Stereo TV which I bought weeks before the electronics retailer I worked for went belly up. This still got use when I played any video games or my computer but when I joined the Winners Internutty crowd (pretty much 20 years to this week) , I don't believe this was used again. I kept it for the converter box. I used to have a few, likely I have more in the boxed Atari computer boxes I have some place. Now I can get a 35" flat screen for $129 that is thinner than anything from 5 years before and they don't even have the power supply built in??? Next up, paper thin and roll up. It's coming. 

-Ric