When I cast my mind back to my early years regarding television I instantly recall “Radio Rentals” and the “repair man”.

Homes seemed embarrassed about them and people would hide them away in wooden cabinets with shutters and tuck them away in corners. Not that most homes could “tuck them away” in corners as they were bulky and heavy pieces of industrial architecture.

The screens were small but the workings were huge and the repair man became a family friend due to the amount of breakdowns one had to endure.

Christmas was always a challenge and my dad used to place the old set behind the new one as an emergency backup as more than once the new set would die on Christmas Day.

Most people rented as television sets were expensive and relatively unreliable and costly to repair. It also allowed one to keep up with change and indulge in the latest technology.

Black and white was the norm until the mid 70s when our house played host to a brand new colour set. The spare however, until the 90s was black and white.

The one thing in common though was the fact that picture quality was anything but good but for the time is was brilliant.

I think one of the more social pleasing and agreeable aspect of early television was the fact that there were so few channels. It meant that everyone was on the same page if they discussed the previous evenings viewings but more importantly if one wasn’t interested in a broadcasting then you went of and found something more constructive to do instead of aimlessly scrolling through pointless rubbish and recordings and that will bring a new dimension to how we view.

It wasn’t until 1967 (BBC 2 launched) there were only two BBC 1 and ITV. It wasn’t until 1982 that a fourth station, Channel 4  funnily enough, beamed into our homes. Fourteen years later saw the arrival of channel 5.

Now we have dozens of channels on freeview alone let alone the dozens more on TV packages and pay to view. Is it better? No. It has just resulted in repeats, cheap commercial shopping and unwatchable reality channels and a mind bogglingly confusing schedule of programmes.

Flat screen technology, that utilised LED and LCD  displays, saw sets become less bulky and box-like. It meant That Televisions could be thinner and less intrusive. They could be wall mounted, hidden in popup units and made larger, much larger. And picture quality? We have never had it so good what with High Definition, 4K and 8k becoming common in homes around the world.

The way we watch our content has radically changed too. Once it was down to organising the day or evening around what was the desired choice. If you missed it then too bad and sometimes hard choices between which of two simultaneous broadcasts had to be made. By the 1980s we saw the battle between VHS and Betamax as a recording medium which VHS went on to win. Now we could mould our viewing times around us rather than the broadcasted timings and we could watch one thing and record another if they clashed.

However, the VHS player/recorders were bulky and one was limited to 3 or 4 hour cassette times but that wasn’t a problem and one huge change came about that revolutionised the viewing medium.

Film!!

If you wanted to watch the latest film then a visit to the local cinema was called for otherwise is was a long, long wait to see it on Telly if it was shown at all. With the introduction of the video we could watch at home but that took a radical stance from the movie industry. They had to release their films on video. Once they had it allowed the home to become a cinema and is was to be a death knoll for the high street big screens as many decided to turn away and watch when they wanted and where. Sad? Maybe but its just how social history changes over the decades and centuries.

Then came the DVD and Blueray which are still in high demand but…

Today we have computer hard-drives in our recording machines that can handle 3-400 hours of viewing and can record two or three channels at the same time. We can pause and rewind live broadcasts and even watch content on demand and that includes some shows before the scheduled run in a series. We can get “catch-up” on what we missed and have it streamed to computers, tablets and mobile phones anywhere.

The choice of how we watch, what we choose, where we view and when is enormous but is it enriching us as a species?

Sadly,  I think not. Socially we used to discus the shows at work or with mates down the pub that were shown the evening before and due to the few channels most of us sang from the same hymn sheet. That is not the case in modern times as there are so many packages of viewing mediums that we are often out of cinque  with each other.

There is also the fact that producers constantly have to come up with new ideas and as the viewers we are often short-changed. Reality TV (introduced in the US in mid 70s to fill air time when they experience the TV strikes), mindless gameshows, repeats, endless soaps and sales channels has watered down the content and quality of television and today we have lost our way. Its just too much and the price? Well advertisements make up more air-time than show-time, content packages are truly expensive, our minds have become numb and desensitised and social interaction has been hindered.

But still we can’t tune out and turn off. Or can we….?