{"id":13646,"date":"2025-08-25T02:40:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=13646"},"modified":"2025-08-25T02:40:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:40:44","slug":"color-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=13646","title":{"rendered":"Color television"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Look,” I told my Mom while browsing the brand new 1973 spring\/summer catalog of Sears at my aunt’s home here in Ottawa, “we have just enough spending money for one of these! Let’s buy a color TV and take it back home with us to Hungary!”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Mom — wisely — chose not to listen to her know-it-all ten-year-old and instead opted to make sure that our meager spending money would be sufficient to cover all incidental expenses during our six-week stay, even as my aunt kindly hosted us, offering us food and accommodation during our stay.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, I’d have found out that — even after paying likely horrendous import tariffs after arriving in Budapest, and even after getting a transformer or otherwise obtain some expert help to make sure we can run that 110-volt appliance from a 220-volt supply — an NTSC television set is not even capable of receiving a black-and-white PAL\/SECAM signal, never mind color.<\/p>\n

So it was only about ten years later that my father and I were able to purchase our first color television set. It was still a Big Deal, back then in the early 1980s. As I recall, that television set cost just a tad under 20,000 Hungarian forints, 4-5 times the average monthly salary at the time.<\/p>\n

Back in 1973, even here in Ottawa most people had only black-and-white television sets at their homes. I do recall one exception, when we were visiting a family friend and I was allowed to watch an episode of my then-favorite cartoon series, The Mighty Hercules<\/em> (I know, I know, there is no accounting for the taste of a 10-year old), in full vivid NTSC color!<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Look,” I told my Mom while browsing the brand new 1973 spring\/summer catalog of Sears at my aunt’s home here in Ottawa, “we have just enough spending money for one of these! Let’s buy a color TV and take it back home with us to Hungary!” My Mom — wisely — chose not to listen […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,35,12,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-personal","category-technology","category-television","category-22-id","category-35-id","category-12-id","category-28-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13646"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13656,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions\/13656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}