Clearing out my hefty old TV sets has proved to be an emotional experience
Living in an area that has recently experienced analogue switch-off, I was left with two useless sets, which squat in the corners of rooms on backsides that seem unfeasibly gigantic to the flat-screen generation.
Pre-changeover, we had four TVs, not especially excessive for a household containing children and a critic. Over the years, the senior devices ? big-bottomed 80s and 90s plasticated crates that got ominously hot if left on too long ? have been relegated to playrooms or bedrooms, replaced as the main focus by thinner, wider models, tuned in to the digital or HD future.
Now, those old boxes are out of the picture completely. One of them has no direct successor, having been replaced by the computer screen in my office. Another has given way to the massive, cinematic flattie I bought on Saturday morning, its elegance and breadth so impressive that it has now kicked out from its spot opposite the big sofa a svelte, towering Sony that seemed, only a few years ago, absolutely the one to watch.
I was surprised, though, by how emotional and nostalgic this set-aside was. TS Eliot's Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons; for most of us, past a certain age, the progression is told through TV sets, throwing up old family pictures.
The rental men (another lost historical detail) carrying in our first colour set. Watching with my dad, at Euston station in the 70s, something called "space TV": a plastic chair with screen moulded into the arm, the picture fuelled by coins. The first portable, so-called, its heft leaving the tendons in my arms protesting. The switch from sets that stood on legs to ones that rested on stands, with shelves for video and DVD players and drawers for tapes and discs. The shock that a TV could fill not just a corner, but most of a wall.
And so it goes on. "Is it 3D-enabled?," one of my juvenile assistants asked of our new arrival. Their children, with multi-purpose screens in every wall, will have no idea what a TV set even was.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/19/tv-matters-mark-lawson
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