Who had push-button TVs?

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Smartal3ck@reddit

My first tv was a tiny portable long one with a 4x5 inch screen only black and white, and a long antennae.

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maggie320@reddit

In my parents room we had a black and white Quasar TV with the UHF/VHF dials and a coat hanger antenna. Channel 5 which was the local Fox station picked up truckers CB radios.

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maggie320@reddit

I need to watch that movie. I haven’t seen that in such a long time.

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realoctopod@reddit

I just want to drink from the fire hose.

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867-53-oh-nein@reddit

Same then we upgraded to the model OP posted. It was mind blowing. Then my grandma bought us a big screen TV and I couldn't believe you could get something like that for your house! (40" lol).

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Adventurous_Drama888@reddit

if retro devices could sigh they would mock our fragile remotes

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nefastvs@reddit

Had those dials that vibrate the entire house for each click. "ka-CHUNG!"

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Economy-Weird-2368@reddit

Had this exact same TV.

Wait, I think it's time for my nightly Ensure...

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Typical_Dweller@reddit

Hell yeah, when buttons were buttons and you could use them without looking.

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My grampa had that in his office, and before then it was the living room tv. I was very little back then, however I do remember the other TV they had was a tiny black and white one next to their bed that was also a radio. Plus the porch TV used to be the office TV and before that was the TV my mom and my aunts and uncles watched as kids. It had a dial.

I grew up with my grandparents, so I got to use, watch, and experience a lot of older technologies mixed with newer stuff like the VCR I figured out how to program so I could record 'Hey Vern, It's Ernest!'

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RedditGotSoulDoubt@reddit

Wow. That brings back memories

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nirreskeya@reddit

I think I still have the buttons somewhere, but not the TV. When it died and I deconstructed it I thought the buttons would make cool counters for Magic: The Gathering. Which they did, but I had largely stopped playing by then anyway, with just a few scant games over the next few years. I still have the cards though so if I have the buttons they are in with those.

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bgva@reddit

I swear my mom had a silver Emerson TV that had the 0-9 buttons on the front, arranged similar to a telephone keypad. But Google isn't showing me anything like that, so it might be a Mandela Effect.

Either that or I'm thinking of the remote.

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nostyleguide@reddit

I feel like we had this exact TV but without a remote. I remember the little rainbow logo thing and everything...

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idkmybffjill03@reddit

Everyone?

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spudaug@reddit

We had that exact model, too!

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IceSmiley@reddit

My grandparents got a nice new state of the art TV and I got one of those . In its day it was awesome and had a huge screen! I used to watch WCW Monday Nitro on that

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pudgybunnybry@reddit

Not Xennial but yeah, I had this tv. Buttons are fucking awesome.

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IceSmiley@reddit

Haha I used to and i

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IceSmiley@reddit

Getting Star Trek reception was a bitch 😂

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Roland-Of-Eld-19@reddit

My tv could pick up another channel if you turned the knob halfway between channel 12 and channel 13,( if you held the rabbit ears just right🤣)

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ThepalehorseRiderr@reddit

We had an ancient, top loading VCR on top of this bad boy. That thing would spring open with the force of a bear trap.

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SweetCosmicPope@reddit

We had one of these too. And it didn't have a fast-forward button. You had to double-tap the play button.

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ThepalehorseRiderr@reddit

I think this was the one but can't be sure. Certainly the same gun metal grey and I'm pretty sure it was Magnivox. Probably nearly the same price as seen here but $200 was a fuck load of money back then.

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Few-Weather-3322@reddit

You're lucky. I was the remote.

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xtlhogciao@reddit

I sat/laid on the floor, right in front of the tv, as a kid, anyway. Plus, it gave me power (at least to briefly annoy Dad for a moment).

Dad: “There, stop at the game.”

Me: (ignores, keeps clicking) “Ooh, Super Mario Super Show!”

Dad: “No, go back to the game!”

Me: Su…per……..SHOW!”

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ken830@reddit

We had this exact TV.

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Spartan04@reddit

We had one that was like that. My parents were early adopters of cable TV so the only time I remember using the buttons is when cable was out. Otherwise it was just left on channel 3 to use the cable box.

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superluminal@reddit

I swear the model in our house had that strip of numbers to the left of the buttons, but they weren't 2-13 like that. Instead they were like 2, 3, 17, 23, etc. But I might be remembering wrong.

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GregariousLaconian@reddit

I think you could customize them? Hard to remember

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Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit

I think our living room tv had buttons behind a panel (1980?). I was the remote cause i was the baby. I also remember my parents had a little 13 inch or so in their room that had 2 knobs. I remember turning one knob to change the channel, and the other one I wasn't allowed to touch. I still have no idea what it did, but I constantly messed with it. 😏

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Coakis@reddit

Typically the two dials were one for VHF and the other UHF. VHF somewhat remains as UHF was turned over to digital channels IIRC.

If I were to wager a guess, it was a UHF channel that your parents had a hard getting in so they didn't want you changing it.

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cptsears@reddit

We had the Zenith Space Command, with the faux wood grain on top and dial pad buttons. To my disappointment, it did not command anything in space.

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this_knee@reddit

Ai Seinfeld apartment. Interesting.

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arteitle@reddit

For those who are unfamiliar with this type of tuner: it's not digital, you don't select the channel by typing in numbers like 6-2 for channel 62. Instead you have to manually set up each button for a different channel using the tiny controls under the cover, for each button its switch selects the band and its thumbwheel tunes the frequency. Then when you press the button you get whatever station it's been tuned to. Often the TV came with little tags to label the buttons with the actual channel numbers you'd tuned them to.

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foozebox@reddit

In the early days - Sigma box

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CottaBird@reddit

The first TV I remember had a door that opened up like that, but it looked more like a dial pad if I recall correctly.

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FoxExpensive9319@reddit

A push Button tv give a me a nostalgic feeling about childhood days.alf,mash,ateam (:

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usernames_suck_ok@reddit

Didn't we all have them, at some point? Except for the people here born in 85+ who want to be Xennials, maybe?

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Traditional_Entry183@reddit

Oh not my family. We had 1970s style tvs until the mid 90s. Skipped this type totally.

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Namaslayy@reddit

Look, I was born I. ‘86, and my siblings ‘73 and ‘79. Parents born in ‘52 and ‘55. I remember the shit out of this tv lol.

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Ph4ntorn@reddit

I didn’t. We had a TV with similar styling, except it had dials. I believe my parents got it before I was born, and that was it for many years. It had been hooked it up to a VCR for as long as I can remember.

Eventually, we got something plastic casing with just a few buttons at the bottom. It had a remote. At that point, the old tv went to my parents’ room where it remained mostly functional for another decade or so.

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Traditional_Entry183@reddit

We weren't that rich. I had dial TVs until the mid 90s, when we got a more modern style one on sale. We skipped the whole "higher end" 80s tech all together.

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greaterwhiterwookiee@reddit

Yup. Didn’t have a remote so I used my fishing pole to change channels.z

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childofeye@reddit

We had this exact tv and the screen would turn green with horizontal lines. If you slapped it in the side it would immediately clear up. Mom blamed the nintendo.

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Attenuation@reddit

We had a Sony trinitron with dials that you had to turn. Played a lot of Nintendo on that thing

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red286@reddit

My first TV had a dial.

Second TV had a remote.

Third TV had these push-buttons, but that's because some friends of mine picked one up from the thrift store for a Hallowe'en party I threw after moving out on my own, since I had no TV. It was a whopping 38" screen, built into a gigantic wooden cabinet, and weighed something in the order of 400lbs. It was a struggle to even move it into the hallway when I moved out, so I just left it in the stairwell.

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Warrior-Cook@reddit

Complete with magnet burn cause I didn't know better.

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solissaa@reddit

Man I remember slamming those buttons like a boss felt like I was hacking the matrix at 7

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j65816@reddit

Richie Rich with his fancy push button TV. We only had knobs.

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SidFinch99@reddit

Push buttons? That's some fancy stuff. Our first TV just had a big knob gor the channels and a smaller one for volume.

No push buttons for us until 92.

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spinereader81@reddit

I'd kill for buttons again. You can't even turn on a modern TV without a remote now.

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civiltribe@reddit

I think I had one with buttons and a smaller one with a dial. I miss how tactile things were

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bumbah@reddit

We had a similar one but it was a Curtis Mathis. Had the button channel door and all

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JackosMonkeyBBLZ@reddit

I did. Inherited my Aunt’s old magnavox. Fifteen whole channel buttons for epic variety lol

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CaptianBrasiliano@reddit

When I was a little kid it was still actually a black and white set...

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EvenSpoonier@reddit

Not that exact brand, but very similar looking.

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mist_kaefer@reddit

Our TV had dials and fancy wooden pegs for feet. We also had a VCR that had a top-loading system and a corded remote control.

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S_A_R_K@reddit

My parents had one that the remote was on the front of the tv but could be ejected by pushing it in

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DasKittySmoosh@reddit

my grandma had one like this. I always thought it was fancy

When we finally got a 2nd tv in our house, it had knobs like THIS

Even in the later 80's I never really figured out how to use it properly

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blove135@reddit

We had what we thought was a fancy one that used static or something from just your touch. No remote but everyone thought that it was pretty cool that it's wasn't physical buttons. I can't remember the brand or anything.

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Longjumping-Bug-3487@reddit

I remember moving back home in college into my parents basement around 2004 and buying this ridiculous converter thing so I could use my PlayStation 2 on one of those old tvs 😂

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MrThouu@reddit

Yeah similar to this and the dial ones. Think in early 90s we got our first soft button one.

I also remember having this and it actually worked (not exact model but same type of adjustable antenna). If the reception was bad, turning this helped it sometimes.

This one in the OP picture, it had a remote for the channels? Or were those completely manual buttons?

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fromthedarqwaves@reddit

We had dial. Chanel’s 1-13 and A B C.

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Odd_Ingenuity8918@reddit

My mom's bedroom TV was like this. You could change each push button to whatever channel you wanted with the little wheels on the inside. We used to watch Ninja Turtles on it after school.

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Odd_Ingenuity8918@reddit

We didn't have the stick remote, though. :-(

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Dovetrail@reddit (OP)

I remember when I first decided to use a stick to push the buttons… I was pissed at myself for not thinking of that years earlier.

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Altruistic_Bus1988@reddit

I remember being little and saying I wanted to put it on channel 1-9 because that was the channel Nickelodeon was on and you had to push the 1 and 9 on the tv to put it on channel 19. My memory is horrible but this has always stuck in my brain lol

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Dovetrail@reddit (OP)

I used to rotate the dial on channel 13 to a French channel (we had rabbit ears). It didn’t come in clearly but if I was lucky I was able to catch a late night nipple amidst the squiggles.

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Kcir8378@reddit

I grew up with a small Sony TV that was almost like that model. No digital tuner, no remote, and only buttons on the side that lit up when pushed. When my family moved to a different state, we had to manually reprogram each button to pick up local channels. That TV was still working when we upgraded to a new TV in 2004. My family’s main TV was a 1985 RCA wood console model that we kept until 2015. Still worked but was having issues at the end.

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