Color TV brand popularity - 1960's

[lordkenmore]

"Oh the agony of being the last on the street, in the neighborhood, in the world to get a color tv."

Well my family probably was the last to have color. Early 70s for the first color set? Ha! Try not even by 1990! My family's first TV was a small GE black and white that my parents bought in the early years of their marriage. It gave up the ghost in the early 80s someplace, and it got replaced by another small black and white TV. I never heard the reasons for only getting another black and white TV. We weren't heavy TV watchers, so getting a high end TV would not have been a priority. But the timing may have been an influence--the new TV was bought right after Christmas. At that time, it may have been desirable for the family finances to keep the price as low as possible. I remember going to Fred Meyer with my mother to get the new TV. They were on sale, and she grumbled all the way home about that fact. Not that we'd saved a few dollars, but her view that it was to hook teenagers who had some Christmas gift cash, and get them to buy a TV for their room. She did not approve of that idea in the least. She had a low opinion of TV...and that opinion did nothing but sink as the years went by.

There was some talk about getting color about the time we got a VCR. But that was a "someday" type of thing. Someday became "never." Meanwhile, we were probably the only family in America who did NOT have color, but DID have a VCR.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I was never bothered by black and white. It was what I was used to. Plus at times it didn't really matter. For a while in the 80s, most of the TV shows we watched were old 60s reruns aired by a Seattle station specializing in classic TV. Many if not all of these were black and white, anyway.

My own first color TV--and still the current one--is a Magnavox. Probably about 20". It was something abandoned when someone I know moved on to bigger and better things. It isn't the best set, but it works OK for now. I don't actually watch TV, just library DVDs, and thrift store VHS tapes.

 

[whirlcool]

Oh, and besides Kenmore, Silvertone Sears also had the "Homart" brand. I think I saw that brand once on a Sears central air unit and maybe some outdoor lawn equipment sometime. I think it faded away in the mid 60's when they started to brand these items as just Sears.

I remember the MGA brand before it became Mitsubishi. A smaller television only store in the mall sold those. Usually they were large screen projection televisions.
I only knew one person with one. A guy I used to fly with. We were talking about televisions one day and he said he bought an MGA because he felt it was a good deal for what you got.

A guy that lived down the street from my uncle had a Heathkit Color TV. He built it as part of a electronics night school he was taking. He had it installed in the wall in his den. My uncle said it had a fantastic picture on it, but I never got to see it. I kept asking if we could go down there to see it but my aunt said you can't go visit people just to see their television set. Why the people would think I am strange or something. Later Zenith was bought by Goldstar, not Samsung as I mentioned earlier. Zenith also bought out Heathkit and closed them down.

Zenith also was the company that developed MTS stereo broadcasting for television as well as the HDTV standard for broadcasting in the U.S. before LG acquired them.

My sister told me my parents bought a VCR shortly before they both passed. She said that they unboxed it and put it on top of the television but could never
figure out how to connect it or use it. I was married at the time living across the country from them and didn't get home very often. Had I known, I probably would have made the trip to hook it up for them.

I started seeing Sony sets in the late 70's and early 80's. They did get a great picture. I do remember someone having a 19" Sony color set and the screen was somewhat of a cylindrical shape. I thought that was odd.

Does anyone remember those far out looking ultra modern Zenith and RCA sets that came out in the early 80's? Both were full sized consoles that looked like something out of the future? The Zenith sat on a pedestal and was silver and somewhat crescent shaped.

Here is a photo of an RCA 2000 set from 1969. Notice how those black bars stick out quite a way between the screen and the speakers? I wonder why they did that?

 

[whirlcool]

Does anyone know anyone who has ever had a Curtes-Mathis television? I remember them advertising in the early 80's with the tag line "The most expensive television made, and darned well worth it". They were pretty well made with supposedly a bunch of them still in use today. They were made in Texas.

The link leads to a Curtes Mathis website. They show some of their models and one even turned on. Looks like a pretty nice picture.

http://curtismathes.webs.com/

 

[whirlcool]

And here is a photo of that Zenith futuristic television I was talking about. A friend of our family had one. They said that they recently got cable and asked if I could hook the box up for them. The picture was quite dim. The reason was that the entire television was encased in brown smoke residue from the people that lived there smoking! One time when we were there I took a bottle of windex and cleaned the set up. The people who lived there couldn't figure out why I wanted to do that and my parents were horrified. But the set looked like new again! I must have gone through and entire roll of paper towels!

 

[lordkenmore]

I remember the Homart name. The house I grew up in was partly updated in the 60s, and the people who lived there then were evidently Sears addicts. It appeared everything they bought was Sears. I can't remember what products had that name--it's been so long--but I do remember seeing it.

I think Silvertone was used for musical instruments in addition to TV and radio.

 

[drewz]

Allen,

 

Here is a photo of an RCA 2000 set from 1969. Notice how those black bars stick out quite a way between the screen and the speakers? I wonder why they did that?

 

Those two black bars were closing panels which when closed made the entire front of the set black, ultra modern, model 2000, only 2000 made a collectors item now I guess?  This set was part of a big promotion for RCA, if I am correct they also cost $$$

 

[passatdoc]

@whirlcool/allen

When my parents replaced the Hitachi with the Mitsubishi, I was in charge of the purchase. My parents had to go out of town, so they left me with the credit card and said to buy whatever I felt was best (hey, I was a second year medical student by then, I guess that qualified me to select a tv----NOT!). The store from which I ultimately purchased was a dealer for both Mitsubishi (then, a rare brand) and also Curtes Mathis. The latter were significantly more expensive than Mitsubishi, which itself was priced higher than Sony or Panasonic or Zenith or RCA. My parents' budget was more or less "under $500" which I followed by selecting the 19" Mitsubishi. The 21" model was like two hundred dollars more. Supposedly at the time, Mitsubishi was the most expensive mass-produced tv in the USA at the time, with Curtes Mathis being a high end, limited-production model.

 

[112561]

Zenith had the Avanti, which was an all white cabinet on its own sculpted base, and the fancy curved tv they had showed up in the community church thrift store in Jensen Beach months ago! I couldn't get it for some stupid reason.

We moved in here with a '52 Philco, on a hideous swivel table. Then Daddy got a Philco console with twin speakers and Cool Chassis, no UHF on it until he bought a top of set converter. Then we could see CBS! Next one was a GE console in an attractive Danish style cabinet. I walked into the house one day in '78, and the tv had a color picture! It was a new Zenith in a metal cabinet, on a plastic Danish modern base. Next was the '84 Space Command, which would only come on a few years later when it felt like it. Daddy was gone by '87, the tv lasted until '96 when Mom got tired of waiting for the Zenith to come on. She got a new RCA stereo Colortrak XS console with quite a few features for a modestly priced set. Convergeance went out on it, and it sits awaiting its fate. A 1971 Total Automatic Color Magnavox armoire sits in its place, I bought it for the Astro-Sonic, and I watch tv on a nine inch Zenith in a Vanilla cabinet. Have many little color and b&w sets now.

Briefly, I actually owned the first color set in this house, a metal table RCA, from the owner of the gay bar in Fort Pierce, about two years before the living room Zenith. After I sold that, I got a swell Zenith 19 inch Space Command with the mechanical tuning. It had a hideous pic in the store, and I tuned it in before I took it. The guy would have charged more than $50 for it if HE had figured out how to get the picture fixed. Then, the '87 13 inch Zenith remote, and much later, an '87 19 inch table Zenith stereo. Then, the ultra modern '79 System 3 table set. On and on......

(not the Avanti, curved Zenith on base)

 

[norgeway]

Du Mont Color

I had a beautiful DuMont color set that I let a friend talk me out of, Ive kicked myself ever since, It was a 21 inch round tube with 4 speaker Hi Fi sound, It uses a RCA tube and chassis, as did a lot of the older color sets.

 

[cadman]

I know we have some TV collectors on the forum...

Who I'll probably bore, but thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

The RCA 2000 certainly IS a collector's item. It was RCA's first all solid state set, but also the first that I'm aware of to have digital memory for VHF stations, brightness, color, etc. An amazingly complicated feat...for $2000 in 1969!

For those who don't know, Dumont was the Cadillac of televisions. I'm fortunate to own one and it's built like the proverbial tank. When set prices started to come down and manufacturers found new ways to cut corners, Dumont fell on hard times. Emerson bought them out in the late 50's and you can tell a distinct difference in Emerson made Dumonts by appearance alone. When I was a kid, a local thrift store had a round-screen color Dumont radio/phono combo that was every bit of 8' long. 5 bucks was the price. Try as we might, there was no way that my mom, the clerk and I could even get one end off the ground! I got the money handed back to me and told to take what I wanted off it. If you think that's a shame, you should hear the time I had to gut a mint condition Zenith black-laquer chinese cabinet color Hi-Fi Space Command set because a lady had just bought it for the cabinet half an hour prior at that same store for 50 bucks and was going to have the insides "smashed up". The CRT and all came home intact with me that time.

There were still a couple companies making consoles and large screen B&W sets in the early 80's, but not many. I have a 23" Zenith table model from that era in a steel w/woodgrain cabinet. An odd duck. I read recently that Sylvania had at least one console from that period. -Cory

 

[bwoods]

Wow, what memeories!

My family's first color TV what bought in November, 1964. It was a beautiful Italian walnut wood console (which was a work of art in itself), with speakers on both sides and a gold gallery rail on the top, back of the cabinet. It has a UHF channel selector on it, our previous BW Admiral did not have UHF. Although it did not matter as we had no UHF stations in town, at that time.

The first show we watched on it was Hanna-Barbera's, "Johnny Quest." Beautiful color picture...crystal clear. Some of you, who are as old as I, may remember that Sylvania was advertising its color picture tube with "rare earth red phosphors."

Remember the ad? It was in many magazines and showed a photograph of a picture of a Red Delicious Apple on a competitor's color TV and a picture of the apple of the Sylvania. The Sylvania's apple was bright, natural red. The competitiors looked a darker, more muddy type red.

The set always had a wonderful, detailed picture, when it worked. It was frequented with almost continual problems. We didn't have it quite a year. Tubes burnt out, on-off switch went bad, etc. My dad gave the dealer such a hard time, they gave us an allowance on a brand new 1966 model Sylvania, with rectangular picture tube, which had just come into the showroom. They had just introduced the 1966 models and this was Sylvanias firt rectangular tube set. I believe Motorola had just introduced theirs about a year earlier.

This second Sylvania, also in a beautiful double speaker cabinet, lasted two years and the main transformer windings overheated, scorched and smoked out living room.

My Parents replaced it with a gigantic Magnavox Home Theatre, with a built instereo phonograph and AM/FM radio. (First FM radio we ever had). It was still a tube set. But proved reliable, and lasted until 1983, when my parents replaced it with a GE console. This lasted 11 years, and was still working, but the picture tube had visibly dimmed over 11 years and they finally replaced it, instead of putting a new CRT in (unfortunately).

Below is a picture of my GE stereo TV, which I purchased in 1985. It still is my daily driver and has never been repaired. A testimony to the longevity of GE electronics (just like in my 25 year old GSD2800 dishwasher.)

The picture looks a little washed out, but doesn't look that way in person. It is the flash from the camera.

 

[cycla-fabric]

I can remember when we got our first color tv, it was a 1966 Motorola color set with the rectangular tube and 21" screen. I remember my parents liked the set as the tube offered a larger viewing area than the round picture tubes of the other sets. That was a good set and had good color picture. That set lasted until 1975 it was needing a lot of repairs near the end. Our next set was an RCA XL-100 with the 25" screen and it was on a swivel base with a black glass top, it was a smart looking set. But the picture on it wasn't the best, lacked sharpness to it. I was trying to steer my folks to get a Philco instead as the picture on it was better. The RCA lasted until 1991 and it just died. The next and current color tv which is still going strong is an RCA 27" Colortrack TOL series which for some reason the model was only made for 1 year and then discontinued for some reason. Oh well the set performs well as it is used daily. I am sure when this goes, a flat screen will be the next step. This was a good topic, loved looking at the old ads, as it brings back memories.

Doug

 

[whirlcool]

In 1964 both Zenith and RCA had "select" models with rectangular screens. I believe they were 25 inches. They still offered the oval screen sets too.

I saw a few Philco tv's for sale, usually at larger appliance stores. But while I had seen some homes with Philco B&W sets, I never saw anyone with a Philco color set.

And what I REALLY remember was the partitioned off special "viewing rooms" for color TV's in larger appliance stores. They were like a room within a store. Very low level lighting with the color sets they were selling inside and turned on. When you opened the doors to enter you were hit with all the ozone smell from the operating sets inside. The salespeople made sure all the sets were properly adjusted. I could have spent hours in there. I think most of these rooms were gone by 1973 or so.

Wasn't it 64' or 65' when the FCC mandated television sets come with a UHF tuner?
I remember my mom won a 19" B&W GE portable TV around 1963 and it didn't have a UHF tuner. At the time the only UHF station in Chicago was channel 26 and what they ran on the air most of the time was bull fighting from Mexico. When I installed our first rooftop antenna when the first Zenith set came along we could then get channel 22, the CBS affiliate from South Bend, IN.

 

[passatdoc]

@Allen/whirlcool: I remember seeing ads for tv's in early to mid-60s boasting "82 channel reception", as if this were a major selling point/extra bonus. I.e. until mid-60s, people didn't take 82 channels for granted, it was a selling point on sets so equipped.

We had a 13" inch Admiral portable B&W, must have been bought c. 1963, and it had 82 channels with UHF. Our school lacked a tv, and when there was an important tv broadcast (say, a space launch), I would often lug the tv to school so our class could watch. It couldn't have weighed that much if a second grader could lug it three blocks to school and back.

Our White Front department store (discount retailer mainly on the west coast, went belly up early 1970s) had a viewing room like you described, but it was not enclosed. There were walls on three sides, but this was a huge warehouse style building and the walls didn't reach all the way to the ceiling, they were simply tall enough to block light from lateral sources. As an "open air" viewing room, there was no ozone odor.

 

[whirlcool]

The rooms I am describing were two sides in a corner of a room and two dark glass tinted walls towards the sales floor with a glass door for access. The room also had a ceiling covering it that was lower than the ceiling of the store. It was very dim in there with the only light source being rather dim wall washing lights. Usually there was an air vent bringing in fresh air in the back of the room, but the heat from the tube television sets still made it rather hot in there.

I assume the room was dark to bring out the color on the screens. "Look dear, look how BRIGHT RED her dress is!".

I also saw one of these viewing rooms in the back of the store. They cut out the wall and walled in a section of the back room so you had a flat glass wall facing the showroom.

Another thing, the tv manufacturers really worked on the cabinetry of those sets. They were real wood (in most cases) and carefully finished. I wonder how many people made their purchase decision on how good the cabinet of the set was?

 

[paulg]

Totally agree with Whirlcool

He nailed Chicago's popularity list.
Our first color TV was a 1967 Motorola rectangular. We got it in 1975 only because friends knew I liked fixing TVs. It didn't work.
I couldn't fix it so we had it fixed. After that I fixed it many times but it generally had a pretty crappy pix.
After that I fixed up whatever I could find. We were not a wealthy family. We had RCA, Packard-Bell, Zenith. I'd put a tube in them, get them going for a few years than dump it when something better came along.
I went through two Westinghouse colors. Hard to find. Worked well though.

Sears color TVs in the 1960s were made by WARWICK in Chicago. I knew a bunch of people who had them. Later Sanyo. Warwick (a relative of Pacific-Mercury) was also known for making Thomas Organs (again Sears).
Montgomery Ward TVs were generally made by Hoffman aka Cortron. When Admiral bought Cortron/Hoffman in about 1970, the TVs were sourced by them.
In Chicago I came across a surprising amount of Olympics. They were decent, basic sets.

Yes, B-Woods' GE TV is one of those never-fail designs. Love it. I think the only thing I ever saw go bad on those sets (PC chassis?) was a capacitor in the vertical output (pix shrinks). Other than that they run and run and run and run.

 

[whirlcool]

The Olympic set my parents had came from Polk Bros.

For those outside of Chicago Polk Bros was a quasi appliance store that was large (on N.Central Ave they bought up a bunch of car dealerships and turned the dealer show rooms into appliance show rooms, one building held kitchen appliances, another building furniture, another building washer/dryers, laundry equipment, etc.) they were a forerunner of discounted selling. They bought goods from the manufacturers usually directly by the tens of truckloads thereby passing the distributor (& ticking them off too) and passing the savings onto the customer. Polk Bros lasted all the way up to 1992. They carried just about every major brand appliance you could think of(except Magnavox).

They saw Circuit City & Best Buy coming and wondered how they could compete. So after a fire that burned most of their inventory records they shut down and took the $382 million dollars that they had and set up the Polk Bros foundation which helps inner city kids with educational pursuits.

By 1960 over 80% of the Chicago population had at least one item they purchased at Polk Bros from 1935 to 1960. An amazing feat.

As a footnote they did build a computer center in the middle of their distribution center store. A modern IBM 370 System, I think it was a 168 model. It was in a glass room in the middle of the sales floor. But the owners of the chain (always family held) only put employee payroll on the system and for inventory control of the 17 store chain still used the old tub & index card system.
The family really didn't trust computers that much and when the fire burned down the distribution center (not that old anyway) the computer and all inventory records were destroyed as well. As much as their insurance company tried to help them out recovering their losses, they just could not come up with the proper amount of inventory that was in the warehouse at the time. The loss due to this was around $30 million dollars or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polk_Brothers

 

[whirlcool]

The Olympic set my parents had came from Polk Bros.

For those outside of Chicago Polk Bros was a quasi appliance store that was large (on N.Central Ave they bought up a bunch of car dealerships and turned the dealer show rooms into appliance show rooms, one building held kitchen appliances, another building furniture, another building washer/dryers, laundry equipment, etc.) they were a forerunner of discounted selling. They bought goods from the manufacturers usually directly by the tens of truckloads thereby passing the distributor (& ticking them off too) and passing the savings onto the customer. Polk Bros lasted all the way up to 1992. They carried just about every major brand appliance you could think of(except Magnavox).

They saw Circuit City & Best Buy coming and wondered how they could compete. So after a fire that burned most of their inventory records they shut down and took the $382 million dollars that they had and set up the Polk Bros foundation which helps inner city kids with educational pursuits.

By 1960 over 80% of the Chicago population had at least one item they purchased at Polk Bros from 1935 to 1960. An amazing feat.

As a footnote they did build a computer center in the middle of their distribution center store. A modern IBM 370 System, I think it was a 168 model. It was in a glass room in the middle of the sales floor. But the owners of the chain (always family held) only put employee payroll on the system and for inventory control of the 17 store chain still used the old tub & index card system.
The family really didn't trust computers that much and when the fire burned down the distribution center (not that old anyway) the computer and all inventory records were destroyed as well. As much as their insurance company tried to help them out recovering their losses, they just could not come up with the proper amount of inventory that was in the warehouse at the time. The loss due to this was around $30 million dollars or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polk_Brothers

 

[philr]

Joe, the RCA 2000 did also cost 2000$!
I'd kill to get one of these! (OK, maybe I'd kill a fly or something like that!)

Seriously,
I've been wanting one like this since I saw it in an ad in an old LIFE magazine (I collected them when I was a kid, the ads in these LIFE magazines probably caused my addiction to Frigidaire appliances too!)

In the last few days I have been searching (again) for an early RCA TV set with a remote control. There's an old 19" RCA color TV in a local ad but it's a portable set without a remote, and it's priced above what I want to pay for a portable tube TV.

Open the link to see one with the doors closed!

http://www.atomicindy.com/2009/04/mid-century-modern-renovation-weekend.html

 

[nanook]

Great Memories and Info from All

There was no question that Zenith made the best (mechanical) TV tuner. Their Super Gold Video Guard Tuner could run circles around the competition. And Zenith's reputation for reliablity was well-deserved. But for all the hoopla surrounding "hand wired chassis" vs. printed circuit boards, hand wiring had their set of issues too and as pcb technology matured along with transistors, was able to beat hand wiring for reliablity, etc. An unfortunate mistake Zenith made was deciding to design their own color demodulation circuit, rather than licensing one from RCA - as other manufacturers did. And as such the color redition of Zenith color TV's was always inferior to almost all others. Too bad, as in other respects their sets were quite nice.

 

[jetcone]

Wow

I remember seeing that RCA 2000 come out and thinking it was so futuristic! Like out of "2001 A Space Odyssey" all white design.

I wished we could have owned one too. We had just bought our first color set in 1968, an RCA and it had the best color I have ever seen, even to this day. Vivid. The Tonight Show was the most colorful program I remember from back then.

 

Our neighbors had the first color set in the neighborhood,it was a Zenith. In our area it was Zenith, RCA, and then neck and neck was Sears and GE since we lived in a GE town. Mom didn't like the sound on either the GE or the Sears,to tinny she would say. So we got an RCA for the sound. That set lasted until I went off to college and then they got one with remote controls.

I still have the cabinet, Dad turned it into a storage cabinet when it died.

 

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

DaveAMKrayoGuy's G&G's A/V:

I think one of the last TV sets I remember seeing my grandparents own was a fairly large-screen Panasonic, though it was a table top model complete w/ the rabbit ears & it was a Black & White, replacing a much smaller B&W, which might have been an Admiral or a Zenith!

Naturally, they were very much a lot more used to TV being black & white as opposed to color more than the rest of us, and this was in the late '70's so I don't think they have ever owned another television set since...!

There was even a jack on the side of the set for an ear-plug, which they let me try w/ a plug normally used for their transistor radio; an AM-only, no less! Although Gramps listened to some multi-band one-speaker "boom-box" of its time, capable of Police (maybe like a police scanner) & even short-wave broadcasts, along w/ the standard AM & FM settings, and a few more I'm probably forgetting; it ran on "D" Batteries as well as AC & probably also featured a jack for that ear-piece, too!

-- Dave

 

[tolivac]

When I look at the advertisements for these TV's I also think of the TRANSMITTERS that broadcast to them-that is my work.RCA was the biggest maker of VHF and UHF TV transmitters and radio transmiiters as well.Next is Harris-Gates-Now its primarily Harris.RCA has gone goodby.DuMont built transmitters in their earlier days-never worked on a DuMont transmitter.Used to have one of their BW TV's-great set.In a TV transmitter site-you hear the roar of the transmitter blowers.Visual stages in a TV transmitter run VERY HOT so high speed blowers needed to cool the tubes and their cavitys.You smell faint hot metal-again the hot transmitter parts.And in the winter-some of that transmitter heat is used to heat the building-feels so good on very cold days or nights!Now--solid state stages in transmitters replace tubes-they run cooler-but you still have the blowers to keep them cool.Just not as loud.Digital transmitters still have some tubes--Klystrodes.These are hybrids-a tetrode tube and a Klystron.They are very efficient-but expensive-and they require X-Ray sheilding because of the high voltages.37Kv!I do have some old RCA,Gates and Harris supply catalogs-same with other manufactuerews of broadcast gear.And a collection of transmitting tubes.A few of these tubes came from TV transmitters and their radiators show evidence of the heat.When you watch the meters on a visual stage of an analog transmitter-they go high when the transmitter is sending a dark or black picture-max modulation and power.Its especially entertaining with transmitters running on lo band channels(analog)they used internal anode glass tubes-the anode would glow bright red or orange during the dark scenes-you could tell right away by lookimng at the transmitter! and some had mercury vapor rectifiers for the power supplies-the rectifiers glowed bright blue-white during dark picture-miss those days!

 

[bwoods]

Those are nice (and cool) memories, Rex. That would be exciting work!

Speaking of X-rays, remember in 1966/67 when it was discovered that General Electric TV's were giving off X-rays? If I recall, it was a misaligned anode in GE's high voltage rectifier tube (before the days of solid state rectifiers being commonly used in home tvs.)

It caused quite a stir among the public. It was the first time most people realized that, even properly operating color TV's, produced "soft" x-rays from the face of the CRT. This knowlege was a by-product of the news about GE tv actually producing a stream pf hard rays from the side of the set where the high voltage rectifier was.

Even my seven grade teacher was talking to my class about this. I don't remember the purpose of her talk, but she was probably warning us not to sit too close to the tv.

 

[whirlcool]

The link at the bottom of reply #1 of this thread takes you to an article where GE color tv sales dropped after the radiation scare and the government made the manufacturers put in a circuit that would blank the screen & sound if the voltage got too high. That was to prevent this from happening again.

I always liked the Zenith pictures. I thought the colors were "cooler" than the RCA sets which had "warmer" color rendition.

There is a guy in Villa Park, IL (a western suburb of Chicago) that has been selling console televisions on Ebay for quite some time. These sets are usually in primo condition and go for rather low prices. Plus some of his proceeds go to a local animal shelter.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RCA-27-Colo...470?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e9f3eba6

 

[ptcruiser51]

RCA 2000

A neighbor of mine had one of these. He said the black bars on either side of the screen were for window glare or too much lighting in the room. Come to think of it, most people had the lights shut off when watching TV. Even back in the 50s with the dim picture tubes. Hence the invention of "TV Lamps". Don't get me started, I still have and use one!

 

[westie2]

Our area it was RCA's then Zenith from early on.  We had a Hoffman black and white set from 1952 that was going strong when in 1957 we got our first color RCA.  We had a cousin that had appliance store that my folks got the Hoffman from and the RCA.  We had a tall outside tower with the rotor on it installed when we got eh first tv as our closest stations were 90 to 150 miles away.  Since we were about the first in the area to have color we always had  a housefull over when a color program came on.  The RCA had to be degaussed every month or so and sometimes for the snow conditions of the screen we had just black and white instead of color.  The Hoffman went to my mothers mother.  I got a Sweet 16 RCA on a stand in 1962 for Christmas.  The RCA color set was replaced in 1966 with a Zenith set and the color was great on it that set died about 1994 and was replaced by another RCA.  My folks also got a couple of RCAs for the kithen and their bedroom at that time.  These are still working.  After we moved my mother here I got her a Sony tube flat screen to fit in the space in her livingroom.

 

Myfirst color was a old Sylvania my wife and I got free from a lady she taught with in Houston in 1973 up until them used the Sweet 16.  In early 1978 the color set went out and we went to Foley's warehouse on Gulf Freeway really looking for the Sony  19 inch tricon sets but the salesman showed us the Sharp and also the guts of each tv to show us that they both had the 3 gun tube and thqt at that time Sharp made both tubes and the sharp was 1/2 the price of the Sony.  That set lasted us until 1995 and about 6 family moves.  We bougth another Sharp 30 inch and it is still working.  Last year our kids got us a 47 inch Vizio flat panel.  10 years ago we bought a 19' Westinghouse for our bedroom and still going strong.

 

[whirlcool]

How many people had to upgrade their antenna system when they got their first color tv? The antenna on our house got a great B&W signal but it was woefully inadequate for color. Lots of snow, ghosting,etc. Finally we had a perfect picture. Our house was slightly lower than the adjoining houses and the TV signal used to bounce from both of them before hitting our antenna.

I learned a lot about antenna design then. I learned what each kind of element does, ghost rejection, reflectivity, frequency length etc. [this post was last edited: 11/10/2011-15:14]

 

[westie2]

Yes we had to get a super good antenna with the RCA and then a bigger better one for the Zenith one they got.  Right after that time I was married and had moved to town and had cable we got 9 stations then Oklahoma City 3 stations, Lawton 1 station, Witchita Falla 2 station and Amarillo, TX 2 stations.  All were ABC, CBS, NBC just different news and weather and on Friday nights late different programs same onSundays. 

 

[rp2813]

One of our neighbors had a mid-60's Curtis Mathes console and I was not at all impressed.  In the mid-80's I was living in a household with a CM set of later vintage and it was a hot mess, with a quivering tilted picture that was irritating to watch.

 

Our first color set was a cheap Webcor 13" from White Front, purchased around 1969 or 1970 when my dad had finished converting our attached garage and workshop into a family room/laundry room/bathroom complex.  The Webcor was stolen, along with a smaller GE Porta-Color that I won in a raffle, over Labor Day weekend 1972 when our house was burglarized.  The Webcor was replaced by a Sanyo of the same size.  It rendered a fairly crisp picture and good color.  All of those sets got their signal from an early TV-era VHF-only "Double Yaggi" stacked antenna.  Eventually I talked my dad into buying a new "color TV" antenna with UHF capability from Radio Shack.  It's still up on the roof today.

 

In 1977 I splurged (because my parents never did) and bought a 17" Sony Trinitron.  It displaced the Sanyo, which had tuner issues that became annoying.  My mom had the Sony running almost all day long for many years and it later followed me from place to place, lasting almost 30 years before it started turning everything pink but the resolution, brightness and high contrast were still excellent up until then.