A life without TV

My posts nowadays seem to cover tech issues a lot more than they did a few years back. I suppose that's an indication of how electronic equipment has come into every aspect of modern life, and how important it now is to be familiar with it, and to know what it can do for you.

This is a serious matter: so much of ordinary living in 2019 involves using a bit of tech. It would surely astonish any time-traveller from forty years ago. Just as it astonishes many people older than me (and often a bit younger), who profess bewilderment at the general obsession with screen-based gadgets, wearable or otherwise.

Of course, one electronic item with a screen has been with us, in one form or another, since the late 1930s: the television. Such long acquaintance seems to absolve the TV from the taint of tech, although modern flat-panel screens are as super-complex and super-capable as any smartphone or laptop.

My family didn't acquire a television set until 1959, when I was seven. It was a second-hand device in a brown wooden box, with a square screen so small that a large magnifying-glass had to be placed over it, to make the picture watchable. And that was a black-and-white picture scanned onto the front end of a cathode-ray tube, with only 405 horizontal lines - very low-resolution! It quickly broke down. Its replacement had a larger screen, and did not need the magnifying-glass. On such equipment I recall seeing the very first episode of Coronation Street, which from the start thrust a classic formula into our eyes: gritty characters full of prejudice and pretensions, always at odds with each other, always hard done by, living in a rainy world of terraced streets, pubs and corner shops. I haven't watched Coronation Street since the 1980s, but I gather it's much the same, except with the old characters replaced by more modern versions.

Like most people of my generation, I watched a fair bit of TV when young. It was the only in-house screen entertainment going. I remember many favourite shows, drama series and documentaries. Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Pinky and Perky, Sooty and Sweep, Blue Peter, Animal Magic, Dr Finlay's Casebook, Bonanza, The High Chaparral, Alias Smith and Jones, 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive, Peyton Place, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars, No Hiding Place, Softly Softly, Dr Who, Lost in Space, Steptoe and Son, The Likely Lads, The Lovers, Top of the Pops, The Ascent of Man, Civilisation, The Money Programme, University Challenge, Mastermind, Call My Bluff, All Our Yesterdays, Wicker's World, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Danger Man, The Prisoner, The Avengers, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), The Saint, The Sweeney, Department S, The Persuaders, The Water Margins, Doomwatch, The Wombles, The Forsyte Saga, Poldark, Blake's Seven...the list was very long and spanned twenty-odd years of regular viewing. I have omitted all the programmes that Mum and Dad liked, and which I watched too.

A long period followed in which I was much more selective. I might make a point of watching, say, Inspector Morse, or Blackadder, but I never now sat in front of the telly all evening as a habit, or for want of something else to do. I was too restless for that.

Gradually I lost the TV habit. This was helped along from the mid-1980s by being able to record programmes on VHS tape, making live viewing unnecessary. Freed from a fixed viewing schedule, there was no longer a need to stay in and watch a programme. But the snag with recordings is that you still have to make time to watch them, and often I never found the opportunity. And yet it didn't seem to matter, being disconnected from regular viewing.

The radio had always been a good way to hear the news, and listen to the kind of 'serious' programme not much seen on TV, as well as music generally. It had retained its appeal, and more and more became my prime source of broadcast material. It had that great advantage: you didn't need to stare at a screen. You only had to listen. And while you did so, it was still possible to get on with something else that needed most of your attention.

In the year 2000 I got my first computer, and my first digital camera. Now I preferred to be photo-editing, very likely listening to the radio while I did so, and be nowhere near a TV. This occasionally got me into trouble with M---, who objected to my not watching programmes like Strictly Come Dancing with her. Some compromises had to be made while we were together. Needless to say, in the ten years I have lived entirely on my own, the TV has mostly been off, and the radio on. This may explain why I am so unfamiliar with the programmes that flit in and out of the news. Mind you, I don't think I've missed much.

When away in the caravan, I never watch any TV, unless it's something unmissable and I have a good enough 4G connection to watch the programme on my mobile phone screen, using an app. I'm just back from a fortnight in Norfolk. While there I wanted to see only one item, which was a film. I didn't actually get to see it, as the BBC iPlayer wouldn't let me. So I shrugged my shoulders, and got Classic fm up on my radio instead. At home it's exactly the same story, except that I have the options to watch in live mode (on my TV or laptop) or in catch-up mode (on my laptop only). Usually it's more convenient to watch a programme in catch-up mode, effectively making the laptop my prime means of viewing any TV.

So why not make it my only means of watching TV? Especially after I next buy a laptop, which will be a significant upgrade?

It has really come to this, that I see so little television that I might as well get rid of the TV set standing in my lounge, and rely entirely on the laptop. The apparent size of the TV and laptop screens are about the same - the more distant 32-inch TV screen seems no larger than the much closer 13-inch laptop screen. And the laptop screen has much higher resolution. Nor will it cost me more, streaming everything to the laptop, as I already pay for unlimited broadband.

I'm not going to junk the TV set just yet. It's there, it works, and it's fine for occasional viewing, and it's not yet in the way. But it dates from 2008, is seriously outmoded, and will certainly go when I finally get down to redesigning and redecorating my lounge. It's a good make - a Samsung - but it's not compatible with modern gadgets. I can't make it work with my Samsung phone, for example.

I've thought of spending money on a fancy 4K, 60-inch replacement. It would rest on my mantelpiece, and the panel would nicely cover the width of the chimney-breast. I'd sit on the settee directly across the room, which would be a little further away from the screen than now. There could be speakers each side of the fireplace, to get the best sound.

But I'd rather spend my money on another laptop, probably a 4K fifteen-inch, and sit wherever I like.

Assuming there is something on that I want to watch!