Just put your TV on top of your TV!
October 22, 2017 8:29 PM Subscribe
I’m watching Mindhunter and a character has a small TV set on top on a large floor console TV set. I know I’ve seen this in other shows and movies. Did people actually do this, and if so, why?
The only explanation I can come up with involves the relative unreliability of non solid state electronics, their expense, and the heaviness of a console TV (all that wood and glass!) so: your expensive console TV breaks, you can’t afford a new one nor can you afford someone to haul your broken one away, so you buy a small one and set it on top of the broken one.
The only explanation I can come up with involves the relative unreliability of non solid state electronics, their expense, and the heaviness of a console TV (all that wood and glass!) so: your expensive console TV breaks, you can’t afford a new one nor can you afford someone to haul your broken one away, so you buy a small one and set it on top of the broken one.
Yes. Both sets of my grandparents had this going on when I was little (late 70s so right era for this to be shown on this series) because the console tv was super heavy.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
I've had two friends who used old TVs as stands for new TVs.
posted by adamrice at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by adamrice at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2017
Yeah, I did this in college. I got tired of seeing the blank dead screen of the console TV so I painted a picture of a hatchet-handed birdman being attacked by bats on it.
posted by goatdog at 8:52 PM on October 22, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 8:52 PM on October 22, 2017 [7 favorites]
Response by poster: Cool, so people did this. Why didn’t you just get rid of the old tv?
posted by Automocar at 8:55 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by Automocar at 8:55 PM on October 22, 2017
In college we had three successively smaller TVs stacked on top of each other. All 3 were wired together and each was flawed in a unique way. Between the 3 we could see what was happening.
posted by sleeping bear at 8:57 PM on October 22, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by sleeping bear at 8:57 PM on October 22, 2017 [13 favorites]
Yeah, but this was when you could just take something like that to the dumps.
posted by rhizome at 8:59 PM on October 22, 2017
posted by rhizome at 8:59 PM on October 22, 2017
Not a console TV but, yep, I too had 2 TVs stacked. One for sound and one for picture.
Bonus: the "good" sound had a short, so I had to keep my finger on the volume knob and tweak it every few minutes or the sound would cut out. And the "good" picture TV had a weak vertical hold (wow, remember that?) so I had to keep my OTHER hand on the vertical hold adjustment on that TV. I did that for way longer than I like to admit. Just, ZERO money for a new, or even used TV.
posted by The Deej at 9:12 PM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]
Bonus: the "good" sound had a short, so I had to keep my finger on the volume knob and tweak it every few minutes or the sound would cut out. And the "good" picture TV had a weak vertical hold (wow, remember that?) so I had to keep my OTHER hand on the vertical hold adjustment on that TV. I did that for way longer than I like to admit. Just, ZERO money for a new, or even used TV.
posted by The Deej at 9:12 PM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]
Yeah. Early-mid 90s. It was so heavy we couldn't just carry it out, and people made fun of us because their grandmas were doing the same thing.
Honestly I think we might have just left it there when we moved out.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:12 PM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
Honestly I think we might have just left it there when we moved out.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:12 PM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh, jeez. I just realized it's like this at my dad's house! The old console makes a great stand for the new flatscreen.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:58 PM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by SLC Mom at 10:58 PM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also useful when watching two channels at the same time.
posted by Scram at 10:58 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Scram at 10:58 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Some TV consoles had stereos in them. And if you went to the trouble of hauling away your old TV what are you going to set the little one on?
posted by bongo_x at 11:40 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 11:40 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Best answer: When I was a kid our console was made of real wood (not particleboard with a wood grain decal) and was actual furniture. It matched the rest of the room, including the stereo speakers. If we got rid of it, my parents would have had to look for a wooden TV stand to put the new TV on as well as the new TV and like many families in the 70s, we were struggling. And although you didn't have as many garbage regulations as we do now, there wasn't as much of a culture of throwing things away as there is now either.
posted by kimberussell at 3:44 AM on October 23, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by kimberussell at 3:44 AM on October 23, 2017 [12 favorites]
I laughed when I saw the two stacked TVs on the show; someone in the art direction department on that show really remembers the '70s. In general the show has a lot of nice period touches like the foil wrapped baked potatoes and the lack of seatbelt use. Not nearly enough smoking though.
posted by octothorpe at 4:01 AM on October 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 4:01 AM on October 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
We had this arrangement too, when I was a kid. One reason the old TV was not gotten rid of is that it was a pretty nice-looking piece of furniture! Why get rid of an attractive wooden table that held the new TV perfectly well, only to replace it with a less nice TV stand? My dad was not made of money, you know! As he liked to remind us from time to time.
Also, ours had a stereo built in (basically a turntable with nice sound from the built-in speakers) and there was room to store records in the bottom.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:28 AM on October 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Also, ours had a stereo built in (basically a turntable with nice sound from the built-in speakers) and there was room to store records in the bottom.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:28 AM on October 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Why didn't they get rid of them? Back in those days, a lot of people considered their console TVs fine furniture, and was very hard to part with.
posted by james33 at 4:31 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by james33 at 4:31 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Why didn’t you just get rid of the old tv?
In addition to what others have said, if you kept it around you might eventually get someone in to fix it. These things were expensive -- just looking at old catalogs, $700 in 1979 -- and mostly simple enough to be fixable depending on what broke.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:58 AM on October 23, 2017
In addition to what others have said, if you kept it around you might eventually get someone in to fix it. These things were expensive -- just looking at old catalogs, $700 in 1979 -- and mostly simple enough to be fixable depending on what broke.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:58 AM on October 23, 2017
This was totally a thing when I was going into lower socioeconomic households as a mental health case manager in south Mississippi the early '90s, even. I would say that the MAJORITY of my clients had this set-up.
posted by thebrokedown at 7:12 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by thebrokedown at 7:12 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
There was also a thing about watching two ball games that were on at the same time, especially Sunday football.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:19 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:19 AM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Best answer: TV's were expensive. Getting one in was a big deal, throwing one away would feel like a waste and if you were my family you were waiting for the day that you'd have the money to get the big TV fixed. This was an era where there were shops that just fixed TV's & radios & stayed in business. Also there was less of a throw away mentality & getting a new model every 2 years than there is now, this was the beginning of that era. You'd want to fix the new TV but the little tv was cheaper than the cost of repairs, but you'd spent so much on the big one & you just knew one day you'd be able to afford to get it fixed.
posted by wwax at 9:13 AM on October 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by wwax at 9:13 AM on October 23, 2017 [5 favorites]
We did this for many years when I was a kid. The console tv was not only made of hardwood, my dad had built it from a HeathKit and was proud of it. My dad is an electrical engineer, and my mom's dad ran a radio/tv repair shop. They would get the old tv working for awhile, then it would stop again. Grandpa would bring more parts the next time he came to visit, and they would fix it again. The "tv" on top was actually a Commodore monitor that went with our Vic 20 computer.
Also, we were watching off of an antenna, so it's not like the picture looked that good to begin with. The really small picture on the "high end" monitor looked way better than the big picture on the old console anyway. And the console held the monitor at the right height.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:54 AM on October 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
Also, we were watching off of an antenna, so it's not like the picture looked that good to begin with. The really small picture on the "high end" monitor looked way better than the big picture on the old console anyway. And the console held the monitor at the right height.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:54 AM on October 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
So one person could watch something while another played a video game, both sitting on the couch.
posted by radiosilents at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2017
posted by radiosilents at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kickingtheground at 8:46 PM on October 22, 2017 [3 favorites]