Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 July 2

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July 2

Does any company still make black and white TVs?

Just wondering. I had a black and white TV in my room as a kid in the late 80s, used a black and white TV that came with my flat in the early 2000s and (apparently) the TV license in the UK is still cheaper for black and white even now. Iloveparrots (talk) 01:56, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems highly unlikely. Why would anybody continue to make a product for which there is no demand? And if, for some reason, you wanted to view the screen that way, you could just turn the color off on a regular, color TV. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Steady on there with the 'no demand'. According to this, there were "4,200 black and white TV licences in force in March 2022" in the UK, and I imagine some of those people are quite demanding. I was thinking about this recently, that families often didn't own TVs back in the black and white days in the UK, they rented them from DER. Maybe not owning things, appliances etc., will make a comeback one day if the price (no cost) and logistics (arrives instantaneously) work. Still waiting for that communist utopia I was promised as a child... Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

This 2008 BBC article says that new blank & white televisions can still be found in the UK, but I imagine that they would have been from old stock rather than newly manufactured. A reasonably thorough Google search failed to find any actual new ones. Alansplodge (talk) 15:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Blind people qualify for a 50% discount on their UK TV licence; a B&W licence is a third of the price of a colour one. So by going B&W (which they may not be able to see anyway) they pay about one sixth (£28.50) of the full price (£169.50). -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 17:32, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems amazingly regressive that everyone has to pay hundreds of dollars or £169.99 a year to own a TV (more than throwing a basic TV in the Thames every year and almost as much as basic cable just for BBC). In the states they offered everyone a subsidy just to avoid the much cheaper one-time cost of the box to run analog TVs on digital signals. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:21, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

In the words of Frank Zappa, "Communism doesn't work, because people like to own stuff." Regarding old TV's in stock, I recall not too many decades ago reading that there were still after-market parts available for the Model A Ford, which hadn't been manufactured since the 1930s. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, this company says they have over 500,000 Model A parts in stock, and they have quite a few competitors. Cullen328 (talk) 20:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

All the better! And I would suspect there are still companies making tubes for old radios and televisions. Not to mention phonograph needles for antique Victrolas. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:31, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I saw a YouTube video a while back where someone took a Model T to a Ford service centre. The people there had no problem with fixing it up, for what it's worth. Iloveparrots (talk) 02:27, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I expanded the concept slightly, and found a bunch of suppliers of new monochrome monitors built with modern technology and wiring (LCD with DVI, etc.). Get a tuner for your favorite local broadcast mode and you're all set. Lots of medical and other imaging is intrinsically monochrome, so there's a market for monitors optimized for high resolution and other visual qualities rather than colors and their rendering properties. DMacks (talk) 16:19, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Many years ago I had what might be described as "television on the go". It was black and white and the screen was about two inches wide. 2A02:C7B:204:8E00:E0E4:8C0D:4571:6A6F (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Why didn't those very small TVs get more popular than they did? Small battery-powered radios got popular, Walkmen got popular, wireless boomboxes got popular, portable record players got popular. Did they ever reach battery-powered flatscreen color before streaming video crippled sales? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

One reason is that they soaked up battery power, and if mains was available why have a tiny TV? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Watching any sport involving fast activity (e.g. cricket or baseball) would be pointless on such a small screen. Golf would also be challenging. HiLo48 (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

If you could speedread 20/15 line with nearsighted glasses (which shrink everything) and focus 4 inches from cornea like the first few decades of my life then you could see pixels on 2 inch diagonal full HDs. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I had a couple of pocket TVs back in the day. The reception on them was pretty poor. Like watching everything through snow. Maybe that was the reason? Yes, they also are batteries very fast too. Faster than the original Gameboy, which was notorious for consuming batteries. Iloveparrots (talk) 02:24, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I found this 2007 article from the Denver Post which says: "The most dangerous inmates in isolated lockdown, such as those at the “Supermax” facility in Florence, have access to black-and-white TVs in their cells.". And this 2023 CNN article says that is still the case. 213.125.228.2 (talk) 12:49, 8 July 2024 (UTC)