It's a US thing, where the glory of SCART was unknown thus they had to continue using the antenna input of their TV to connect their consoles to, also, as far as I'm aware only NTSC has fixed frequency assignments. Elsewhere in the world you just programmed the TV to display the console's output on whatever number you wanted, or, if you had a proper input for non-antenna signals, switch the TV to "AV".
We had an SNES hooked up to the antenna input for the simple reason that if you're a kid who wants a TV in the attic, away from adult interference, it's not going to be a brand-new model but a hand-me-down from the living room.
Still we programmed channel 1 to the SNES's frequency so we wouldn't have to switch channels after turning the thing on. On the console side though composite outputs quickly became ubiquitous as including them involves little more than bypassing the RF encoder. Speaking of the ZX Spectrum.
You could get cheap cables that don't have all conductors and/or the shielding wasn't up to spec but that stuff hasn't changed a bit over the decades: USB, DisplayPort and HDMI have the exact same problem.
I'm kind of curious to see if plugging my phone (which charges via USB-C) into my laptop's charger (which plugs into one of my laptop's USB-C ports would blow it up.
I obviously won't do it, but I'm still curious.
I'm glad that there's sort of an agreed-upon standard for phone chargers now, but you're right that it's also a bit of a problem.
I was born in October 96 so gen z and I grew up with a mega drive and PS1 so scart cables were very familiar. The only TV we had for years was a CRT so I was more than familiar with red yellow and white connectors into the back as well.
That said, I've that splitting people up and putting them into groups like this is a pseudo science over generalization.
Exactly. People are always like "younger generations don't know about x", and it's like bro, I know what AOL, VCR, cassette tapes, antennas, flip phones, rotary phones, landlines, DOS, wax lips, even fucking Garbage Pail Kids and so on are. I've grown up with this shit. It's called being poor and living in the country side. Everything is like 10 years behind minimum.
Ding ding. Most of my early childhood memories are video tapes, Compaq PC that was a big brick, playing PC games with a joystick, a mega drive, a PS1, family trips/holidays in the car. My family did not have a lot of money so everything I grew up with to say when I was 10 was older stuff. I got a CRT for my room from my great aunt that I thought was the shit when I was about 7-9 and that was only really when thinner TV's were becoming a thing. It always amuses me that people want to label me a millennial when I didn't actually turn 18 at the millennial, I remember 90's kid stuff because I grew up with a Gameboy and Pokémon, I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons in the UK. I don't relate much to gen z because the younger end speaks a completely different language to me.