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.
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.
CRTs was in use well into the 2000s
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.
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.
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).
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
Yeah I was still using a CRT as recently as 2012. I think OP means analogue TVs.
Yeah, my youngest sibling has definitely seen CRTs. My niblings probably haven’t, though.
Do you think CRTs just magically disappeared after the turn of the millennium?
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.
People born before 2000 think older technology just evaporated the minute the millenium ticked over.
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.
they have to watch HBO shows to compensate
