When did TVs first get on screen display?

[fan-of-fans]

I was wondering when TV first got on screen displays for channel/adjustments/volume, etc?

My aunt has or had a small color TV in the guest bedroom. It has a line on the bottom of the case with channel numbers printed. When you turned it on or changed the channel, a green line would appear on the screen and line up with the channel number. I cannot recall the brand but I think it was from 1985.

But my parent's had a Sears console TV from the 80s with no displays and I also had a 13" Capehart and it too had no displays. Adjustments were with knobs.

I did have a 1990 white case Mitsubishi 13" that would display the channel numbers in green on the screen, but as I did not have the remote, I could never access the adjustments.

The modern TV menus have really come a long way with color icons, etc.

 

[cfz2882]

I had an RCA from 1980 with this feature,and I kinda recall some of the fancier big console TVs had it as far back as 1974 or 75.

 

[twintubdexter]

As a very very old former TV department store buyer...

...I think it was the Magnavox Star System, of course I'm only familiar with the brands I worked with. I thought it was pretty cool. How technology has changed since then and continues to do so!

 

[carmine]

I was going to mention the Magnavox Star System as the first OSD. I believe that is correct.

 

[twintubdexter]

Interesting to note that most people, when selecting a console television like the Magnavox above, were primarily concerned with the cabinet style. Picture quality and features were secondary. Of course the manufacturer sometimes would be the main reason for purchasing. In the 1970's a "Zenith" or "RCA" customer was often loyal to those brands, Then Sony came along and suddenly picture quality was everything. Those were fun times for me, pushed out of the sleepy San Jose stores and transported to the big city of San Francisco. For a guy a couple of years out of school in my mid twenties it was like being flown to another planet. It was good.

 

[rp2813]

No TV's as I recall, but

OMG the SF Emporium basement!  It was a throwback setting for one of those old movie scenes with women fighting over slips and girdles during a big sale.  I wore clothes from out of those giant garment bins and off the tables down there.  It had the most humongous communal dressing room I've ever been in.  The Mountain View Emporium had a basement too, but it wasn't the same.  Way too orderly and not anywhere near as decrepit. 

 

I guess Zenith's Space Command wasn't the first on-screen display, but could it have been the first TV that would act as a telephone (to answer incoming calls only, I think)?

 

[twintubdexter]

Oh Please!

I was not a Basement Store Buyer! All kidding aside, at one time it was necessary to buy a basement department before you were allowed to interview for a regular department. I skipped that step. I think it was my long eyelashes that did it. It was only a year or two after I got to SF that the Basement Store was done away with and became "Market on Market," similar to Macy's Cellar. The basement store was a zoo. You would see ladies (at least I think they were ladies) shopping in their flannel nightgowns having rode into the City on BART. Their were doors down there that went from the BART station directly into the Basement. It was not necessary to parade down Market Street.

 

PS...Mountain View had a parking garage below it, no basement. It was too new for that. We'd have warehouse sales down there that were great fun. That store had a very nice restaurant that was owned and operated by The Emporium. Mountain View, the 8th suburban store built, was always one of my favorites. Sitting by itself with no other stores near it, it was sort of doomed from the start.

[this post was last edited: 3/13/2016-00:22]

 

[rp2813]

Yeah, I think the last time I was in that basement, BART construction may not even have begun.

 

[cornutt]

An aside: STAR stood for Random Access Tuning System, so called because it was the first system where you could just punch in the channel number on a 10-digit keypad. How did STAR stand for that? Well, they figured that RATS wouldn't be a very good acronym for advertising. So they turned it around.

 

[mark_wpduet]

What year is

that touch tune tv from?

Additionally, this is sort of directed to TV's: Did any of you have cable in the 1970s? If so, what channels did you get? Growing up in a small town, we had only 3 networks over antenna from a roof that you had to control from below for each channel. I remember it was such a PAIN , but I always assumed larger cities would not have that problem and they probably had more channels than just the 3 networks.

 

[ea56]

Mark,

when I moved to Petaluma, Calif.in 1970 I got cable TV for the first time. I paid $12.00 every other mo. and I received 12 channels clearly, using the VHF channel tuner on the TV. You just connected the cable to the TV antenna terminals on the back of the set. This was a revelation for me, since prior to this I had only experienced TV received over an antenna. And during the 50's and 60's most areas where I lived we only received 3 or 4 channels. And many times the reception left a lot to be desired. I can recall on many occasions that someone would need to hold on to the rabbit ears in order for the show we were watching to be seen without static and snow. In the late 70's the set top cable box came in and HBO and SHO were available for the first time. If one pressed the four corner buttons on the cable box simultaneously you could get SHO for free. This was something that just about everyone in my area knew about. But this only lasted for about a year or two before Viacom got wise and rectified this glitch in their equipment.
Eddie

 

[vacerator]

Rural areas

had cable before many cities did, because aerial reception was less than optimal, especially in the western Pa. hills. Even with a good rotor antenna.
I recall my uncle had a Gerrold set top cable box in 1974. A toggle switch with 3 row selection, and about 8 buttons for 24 channels.
Some of the first remote control boxes had phone type touch pads and cords connecting them to the box.

 

[mark_wpduet]

Wow you had cable before I was born!

LOL! Anyway, in Brevard NC, I think cable was available to some parts of the town but we first got cable in 1981 or 1982, I can't remember. I can't remember how it plugged in. Intially, it wasn't a set top box, but you just turned the dial on the TV and you got channels 2 through 13 crystal clearly. I remember channel 2 was HBO. It wasn't long after that we ended up getting a scientific Atlanta set top box with more channels.

 

[retro-man]

I believe that where we lived was one of the initial test markets for cable. It was installed I think around 1966-67. You would use the channel changer 2-13. Got the 3 major networks a couple from another state, a couple of educational channels and a weather channel which consisted of just a picture of a barometer, wind speed indicator, temperature. We also were able to receive uhf channels in our area. This lasted for a number of years then they came out with the cable box which had a slide bar on the top to get 26 channels. Then they kept changing the style and function of the boxes to what we have today through Comcast. I can't remember what the name of the company now that started this. It was pretty cool to have cable back then.

Jon

 

[kenwashesmonday]

twintubdexter wrote:
"In the 1970's a "Zenith" or "RCA" customer was often loyal to those brands, Then Sony came along and suddenly picture quality was everything."

I believe that Zenith sets in that era had just as good a picture as the Sony Trinitron, and at least as good a service record if not better. I always felt the Trinitron sets were somewhat overrated.

Ken D.

 

[mark_wpduet]

Zenith

My grandma had a 19 inch Zenith from the early 80s and I remember being jealous of her TV because the black levels were so good. We had a 19 inch new Samsung from 1986 before Samsung was even a big name like today, and the black levels were awful on it. We never had a Sony TV.

 

[cornutt]

We had cable in 1965. The FCC decreed that Huntsville would be a "UHF island" with no VHF stations licensed. Unfortunately, the geography here is terrible for UHF reception. Electronics stores sold special antennas to try to reduce the multipath problems, but nothing helped very much. Hence there was a market here for cable early on.

We had the three networks -- two stations in town and one from Decatur, which is about 25 miles away. There were also two stations from Birmingham and one from Nashville. There was also the "weather channel", which consisted of a camera that panned back and forth around a group of dial-display weather instruments, with things like temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind direction; at the end of the scan was a chalkboard where the forecast was written.