Color TV brand popularity - 1960's

[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.

 

 

 

[goatfarmer]

Our first color TV was a brand I haven't seen mentioned, a MUNTZ console. It was the early 70's, and my dad bought it, he was always getting "deals" on something. It lasted into the 80's, not bad for 4 kids spinning the tuner quickly.

 

I still have a Curtis Mathes, it has a great picture.

 

[whirlcool]

When I was a kid I remember seeing Muntz B&W televisions, I wasn't aware that they made a color tv.
Muntz, headed by used car salesman Madman Muntz was a crazy character. He specialized in crazy television commericals for car dealerships. He even owned his own car company for awhile in the early 50's.
In Chicago in the late 50's there was a company that had pay TV. The way it worked was you "bought" a receiver from this company (a Muntz TV) and on the back of the set there was a coin box. When you wanted to watch TV, you dropped a coin in the set and it turned on for a specified amount of time. Want more? You dropped in more coins. This was the way you paid for your set. Eventually the guy who came by to pick up the "payments" would take the box off of your set and tell you that you have finished paying for it.
The way Muntz worked, he would buy a name brand television and look at the insides of how it was built. Then he would reverse engineer the set using cheaper components and usually streamlining the circuitry so it would be cheaper to produce.
According to people of the era, he was quite something else!

 

[rp2813]

Muntz

I've seen pictures of a Muntz TV chassis and compared to their contemporaries, there is almost nothing to them.  To say Muntz streamlined the circuitry is quite an understatement!

 

[passatdoc]

There was an initiative on the 1964 California ballot to ban pay television. I don't know if it was sponsored by retailers or what not, but the initiative passed and pay tv disappeared from California. I do remember seeing pay tv in a few motel rooms as a very young child when we went on road trips.

I remember the brand name Muntz. Never knew anyone who had one, but it was heavily advertized in the newspapers. Thanks for the interesting histories.

 

[whirlcool]

I saw this today, from around 1970-1 or so. It looked interesting, has anyone actually seen one in operation? It certainly would end the running to the set to adjust the color or tint. For the past 20 years or so once you adjust the color, it's set for years!

 

[whirlcool]

and....

I had never heard of it before.... Did any other manufacturer use it?

 

[passatdoc]

I do remember the ads for VIR or "broadcaster controlled color". Never actually saw such a tv in operation.

 

[whirlcool]

and....

I had never heard of it before.... Did any other manufacturer use it?

 

[westie2]

Yes saw this in Dallas at Tichies Department store at North Park Mall.  We were visiting my sister and she was looking for a color set at that time.  The salesman did a manual adjustment and turned the auto thing on it took a few seconds and bam! great color.  She bought a 25" in early american to match her living room funiture.  It wan't to long until all the major companies had this VIR or as it is now autoset.

 

[whirlcool]

Or you could do as Motorola did in 1964, scare your customers into buying your set.

 

[jetcone]

Wow sparked a memory

I forgot about the GE radiation scare!

 

<span>But when we got our 1968 RCA</span>from Two Guys, <span>Dad went up into the attic and installed a big antenna we bought along with it ! I helped him snake it down thru the basement and up to the wall behind the new RCA!  And Mom helped align the thing from downstairs watching the set, while we turned the antenna in the attic!!</span>

 

<span>!! Forgotten all about that!</span>

We watched the Moon Landings live on that TV!

 

 

 

[bwoods]

Allen,

My GE console, picture in a post above has VIR II. I have had several GE's that had it. It was GE patent.

The wa I understand it, networks sent out a signal "hidden" between frames of the broadcast picture, that allowed local stations to adjust their equipment with proper color saturation, hueing, etc. GE's locked into this signal and adjust its own controls (internally)so the color value (and I think a few others) of the picture matched the broadcasts studio's values. There is a switch on the set to turn the VIR on and off.

When it came out, in the late seventies, there was an article, in one of the science magazines (might have been Popular Science) on the new system. In demonstrating the TV for the author, a GE engineer had a normal picture on the screen. He then went over to the set and randomly turned all the dials on the front and created an unwatchable picture.

After he did this, he then pushed the VIR button. The author said for a moment the set looked like it was figting with itself as the pictured, rolled, flutter and changed color as the set "read" the VIR signal and adjusted its own controls. In a couple of seconds he said a beautiful, perfect color picture then appeared on the screen.

The only problem. Not all broadcast have VIR signals. Stations showing local originated broadcast are not using VIR signals, so the set reverts back to the front panel controls and whatever you have them set for. Mine has a red light on the control panel that tells when the set has sensed a VIR signal.

As far as the Muntz TV, the story I have heard is that Muntz got started by taking an RCA chassis and taking out each component that the set would work without, literally piece by piece. So you got a set with the absolute bare bones circuity.

I only saw one Muntz TV. My neighbors had it, and it was a color console with the round picture tube ("roundie"). I remember watching it once, it has an unstable picture that jumped and I could hear faint crackling sound every time the picture jumped and bloomed in brightness.

I remember seeing Muntz ads, but I don't recall them ever having one with a rectangular color picture tube. This was in the late sixties and that's probably about the time they got out of the business. I guess Muntz quality (or lack of) was common knowledge back then, as my dad always said they were a piece of junk.

 

[nanook]

Muntz Wasn't the Only One...

That sounds like something Earl Muntz would do. LOL.  But in actuality that story is usually attributed to RCA.  The engineers would design "proper" circuits and then the "bean counters" would force them to remove components until the level of picture degredation was such that someone would finally declare it "enough".  I'm sure that practice was hardly limited to RCA or Muntz.  After all, when there're profits to be made and you're selling millions of units...

 

[tolivac]

X-Rays and TVs-the X-Rays from the screen on the pix tube are to little to worry about-even if you were close to the set or screen.The screenplates of modern color tubes-even old "round jugs" were made of leaded glass-this blocked the X-Rays.The sides or bell of the tube may not be leaded glass-so minor concern there.Yes-the major X-Ray emittors were the HV rectifier tube and the HV shunt regulator tube.these ran at the 18-27KV HV supply for the pix tube anode.So you could get X-Rays from these tubes.They were usually located in a lead foil sheilded HV "Cage"and some of those tubes had lead foil wrapped around the tube body.It was a good precaution not to be sitting against the side of the set where the HV supply tubes were.
At work face X-Ray hazards at work.One of our transmitters has a modulator tube that has 30Kv DC at 10Amp on it.So you stay away from the modulator cabinet when the transmitter is on.Some of the vacuum capacitors can generate X-Rays from the HV DC and RF voltages on them.I am not glowing in the dark yet-I know the possible X-Ray sources here and stay away from them.UHF TV transmitters that use Klystron and Klystrode tubes are considered X-Ray hazards-US made transmitters have to have X-Ray certification labels on them showing the X-Ray emitting areas and X-Ray sheilding.One type of 50Kw AM transmitter had this certification,too.Generally any power tube used in transmitters that operates with a plate voltage of 15Kv and above-take the X-Ray precautions.Put the cabinet panels and all sheilding back in place before operation.And the cabinet veiwing windows are leaded glass or plexiglass to block the X-Rays.
"VITS" was used by TV stations starting in like the early 70's to monitor their signal and equipment-essentually replaced the test patterns.And since the VITS were transmitted-Vertical Interval Test Signal-the users set could use these signals to self adjust the set's colors.You can see the VITS in those days if you rolled the picture using the vert hold to see the frame "bar" the VITS were inside this.That was a good way to see if a station was using them.

 

[cadman]

Muntz

I've got an interesting round-screen B&W Muntz console that showed up recently but I haven't opened it up to see what tricks were employed. It's kind of unusal to see any Muntz sets outside of large metro areas because part of the 'cost reduction' process was also to eliminate IF stages. All fine and good if you're in a big city near the transmitters, but go rural and suddenly you can't pick up squat.

 

[whirlcool]

And as early as 1967 we started to see the beginning of color television imports from Japan as evidenced by this 1967 Panasonic ad. This ad addressed peoples fear about the reliability of color tv. At the time, nobody even considered Japan as an economic threat.

 

[whirlcool]

and for the even more nervous (1967)

you have this advert. BTW the writing in this ad seriously reminds me of the type of language used in 1960's VW adverts. I wonder if it was the same ad agency?)

 

[whirlcool]

Going back to VIR signals....

Is this something that was only exclusive to GE sets or did other manufacturers adopt it too? On the later GE sets I don't see any mention of VIR. But I did find this, perfect to your western wear.
I know on our later Zenith sets there was an AutoColor button. The manual for the set said when pressed, it would return the television settings back to the factory settings. Usually when I pressed it, very little happened.

 

[bwoods]

No, as Rex said, x-ray emissions from color tv (with CRT's) certainly pose no health risk. Most all of the studies I have read indicate a typical individual receives only 1 millirem (now called millisieverts) a year. Much less than background radiation.

Alpha and beta radiation are stopped by small thicknesses of most materials. The leaded glass in a Cathode Ray Tube would indeed be opaque to them. What is being pr9oduced in a CRT are actually radiation, and if you have solid lead or extremely thick glass in the tube, yes the X-Ray radiation (which behave in a similar manner to very low evergy gamma radiation)can penetrate glass envelope and the bonded glass front of a crt in a measurable amount. However, the radiation is greatly attentuated and the X-rays are considered "soft" and are absorbed into the air within a few inches of the tube face.

So there is certainly nothing to worry about, like Rex says. A coast to coast flight in an airplane gives about 4 times that amount. Radon gas from basements, crawlspace is a far greater threat. Living withing a few miles of a coal fired power plan can give several times that amount due the the naturally occuring radon gas (trapped in the coal) that is released from the power plant when combustion of the coal occurs.

So I would not worry one bit about radiation, for those of you still using a CRT televsion, . To the best of my knowledge, ther are no x-ray emissions for LCD/LED sets as you are not flinging high velocity electrons at a metal shadow mask.