The static on old CRT TVs with rabbit ears was the cosmic microwave background. No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
Well, not really. The cosmic microwave background radiation was a tiny fraction of that noise. What everyone saw was mostly thermal noise generated by the amplifier circuit inside the TV.
2001 here literally grew up with CRT static, you have your years a bit off there.
I was about to say, i think we had a CRT till about 2010. My grandma still has one upstairs so even my youngest cousins still grew up with it.
I bought a plasma in 2009 that would show static if I turned it to cable channels without cable plugged in. Plasmas were susceptible to burn in and since I would game a lot I could see health bars etc start to burn in after a while. Whenever that would happen I would turn it to the static screen - making each pixel flip from one end of the spectrum to the other rapidly like that would actually help remove the burn in.
Well, if they had watched any HBO show, they kind of saw it !
I think they call it “analog horror noise” now, along with vhs cassettes.
…
Feel the passage of time XD
Do you think CRTs just magically disappeared after the turn of the millennium?
They lied to us. The real Y2K was the CRT rapture.
No, I just couldn’t remember exactly when. And as another commenter pointed out, what I should have said was analog TV’s.