Imagine a world where we never again hear the symphonic startup of a Windows 95 machine. Imagine generations of children unacquainted with the chattering of angels lodged deep within the recesses of an old cathode ray tube TV.
The Museum Of Endangered Sounds preserves the sounds made famous by old technologies and electronics equipment.
Two sounds that I wish were extinct are that obnoxious sound when you hit a TV channel that has no visual (i.e. “snow”) and the other one when a “real” station is “off the air”.
Anyone know the techie reasons behind them?
They are not techie answers, but I think the “snow” is caused by a bad reception. The TV stations at are broadcasted out through the air (at least back in the analog broadcasting days) laid on either side of the FM band (if you have an old TV with a fine enough tuner, the FM band is between channels 7 and 8) so things like storms, distance, mountains, and metal frameworks/structures could interfere with the signal strength, causing the annoying “snow” pattern.
As for the station going off the air: back then, it was probably cheaper to just stop broadcasting when most people went to bed. Also, there was not much to broadcast, so instead of being like ESPN in the early days (jai alai anyone? Any other obscure sports?), they just shut down. With nothing being broadcasted, static would be what you got. Like not finding a radio station in the car.