A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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).
Yeah I was still using a CRT as recently as 2012. I think OP means analogue TVs.
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.
Grandpa was telling you about 50 shades of grey?
Do you think CRTs just magically disappeared after the turn of the millennium?
Don’t you still see this when using an OTA ATSC tuner on a newer LCD display? I thought this was a function of the signal generation and not the display technologies.
It actually was a pretty rapid switch where all the CRTs disappeared
It is entirely possible for people born after 2000 to have grown up with CRTs.
It is, but those late model CRTs often had a lot of digital circuitry that displayed a solid color on channels with nothing on them. Unless there was a much older CRT around, they never would have seen it.
Most of the CRTs are going to be older
2001 here literally grew up with CRT static, you have your years a bit off there.
Last time I thought about static I wondered why colour TV didn't show colour static.
Turns out the colour signal was on very specific frequencies, and if it wasn't present, it would assume it was a black and white signal and turn off the colour circuit.
Tube TV's remained in common service well into the 2010's. The changeover from analog to fully digital TV transmission did not happen until 2009, with many delays in between, and the government ultimately had to give away digital-to-analog tuner boxes because so many people still refused to let go of their old CRT's.
Millions of analog TV's are still languishing in basements and attics in perfect working order to this very day, still able to show you the cosmic background, if only anyone would dust them off or plug them in. Or in many retro gaming nerds' setups. I have one, and it'll show me static any time I ask. (I used it to make this gif, for instance.)
In fact, with no one transmitting analog television anymore (probably with some very low scale hobbyist exceptions), the cosmic background radiation is all they can show you now if you're not inputting video from some other device. Or unless you have one of those dopey models that detects a no-signal situation and shows a blue screen instead. Those are lame.
By the way, the picture illustrating the post isn't actually displaying the real thing - the noise in it is too squarish and has no grey tones.
TV static in recent movies and shows that are set in the past almost always instantly pull me out of the narrative because no one seems to be able to get it right and some are just stunningly bad. It's usually very subtle, so much so that I'm not sure I could even describe what's wrong. Makes me feel old to notice it.
I think the problem is because CRT displays didn't have pixels so the uniform noise which is static was not only uniformely spread in distribution and intensity (i.e. greyscale level) but also had "dots" of all sizes.
Also another possible thing that's off is the speed at which the noise changes: was it the 25fps refresh rate of a CRT monitor, related to that rate but not necessarily at that rate or did the noise itself had more persistent and less persistent parts?
The noise is basically the product of radio waves at all frequencies with various intensities (though all low) with only the ones that could pass the bandpass filter of the TV tuner coming through (and being boosted up in intensitity by automatic gain control) and being painted along a phosphorous screen (hence no pixels) as the beam draw line by line the screen 25 times per second so to get that effect right you probably have to simulate it mathematically from a starting point of random radio noise and it can't be going through things with pixels (such as 3D textures) to be shown and probably requires some kind of procedural shader.
It really isn't though. It is thermal noise.
Random radio sources, but a small part of the signal is CMB. I wasn't sure what you even meant by thermal noise but I believe it's a phenomenon of flatscreens. I found something that said it was "similar to snow on analog TVs" - so apparently there's a difference.
Funnily, Google AI says, "In the 1940s, people could detect the CMB at home by tuning their TVs to channel 03 and measuring the remaining static after removing other sources. This allowed them to prove the Big Bang before scientists did." So they had that going for 'em, which is nice.
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.
No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
I mean you can still find a CRT today and turn it on if you like, they're less common for sure, but they're still around if you're looking for one
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. - William Gibson, Neuromancer
One of the most beautiful opening lines to a novel.
If you remember that it was written in 1984, the color is obviously black and white static. If you don’t think about the year, you might be lead to believe it is blue.
People born after 2000 can see it on their phones, much more clearly:
The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel...........
Dude I was born after 2000 and this is firmly planted in my memories. Maybe people born after 2010 haven't but 2000?
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.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - William Gibson, Neuromancer
Gibson describes the static as metallic, silvery gray in an interview.
"The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel." - Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I remember the white static myself.
My family had several tvs that did this until around 2013
Cosmic microwave? Is that what you are calling "ants in a snowstorm" these days?
That's not background, that's a free channel that showcases a polar bear in a snowstorm.
Say that to my three CRTs. I was born in 2003.
yeah i have
They haven't?
I have a TV from ~2010 that still gives me static when something isn't connected.
Born 2000, yes i have. So has my younger brother
On a CRT? Sure, probably a lot haven't seen it. On a modern TV? Still possible for some - mine does this if I hit the channel button rather than volume accidentally.
I think they call it "analog horror noise" now, along with vhs cassettes.
...
Feel the passage of time XD
Except for that most of it was not.
A lot of the noise on the screen (and speaker) was affected by radiation from nearby stuff.
I'd think that nowadays, it would be even more so, with way more WiFi and mobile phone signals everywhere. Now sure, different frequencies mean they would affect less, but the cumulative effect would still be more than the CMBR.
Also, I have a flat-screen CRT at home.
CRTs were fairly common until the early-mid 10s
I'd say born after 2008ish aren't likely to be familiar with them, except seeing the odd one in their grandparents bedroom
I was born after 2000 (though not too long after) and this is actually one of my core memories. I think about the sounds of the static and the sound of the CRT turning off all the time.
Also, we had a really old tv in our basement till at least 2008 that had no remote, just knobs and I remember messsing with the “hue” dial all the time trying to figure out how it worked.
The only reason that tv worked so late is that we had a black box connected to the antenna which I later learned was converting the digital signal to analog for the TV.
Also, you’ve just reminded me that I remember the switch from analog to digital. Specifically, I remember watching Elmo talking with some adult on TV about the change. Now I really want to find that video. I think the guy was wearing a suit had short dark hair and glasses. I also think the background was pinkish purple. I want to know how accurate my memories from so long ago are. (I’ll add the link to the video in an edit if I can find it)
Edit: I cannot find the video :(
