View Full Version : Nowaday names don't mean much


oldtvman
02-16-2007, 06:10 PM
Go buy any piece of electronics today, and look at the name on the label RCA(Thompson consumer) Zenith(LG industries) and so on and so on.

Back in the day the name on the first color set you bought usually meant the difference between getting a decent piece of gear, or getting something of less quality. Re the Motorola color sets. I guess the point is when your restoring some of these beauties, keep in the some of the brand back then even working at optimum performance, couldn't hold a candle to the big boys.

stromberg6
02-16-2007, 06:31 PM
I'm waiting for some enterprising dolt to bring back the Stromberg-Carlson mark, which is now owned by Siemens of Germany. Can't wait to see what kind of crap will bear that name.
Anyone have a screen shot of a working K-1?
Kevin G.

Nikko75
02-16-2007, 07:06 PM
I auditioned a couple Bose HT systems over the years and I have to say, I do not understand what the big deal is.Where does this idiotic "prestige"come from?Their latest 2.1 HT actually hurt my ears, worse than my car's stock audio sytem. I just feel they give more effort into cosmetics than sonics. Were they ever a producer of good products, and if so have they changed hands?:confused:

colortrakker
02-16-2007, 08:04 PM
Go buy any piece of electronics today, and look at the name on the label RCA(Thompson consumer) Zenith(LG industries) and so on and so on.
With everyone supplying parts for everyone else's sets, and several brands being made on the same lines in China (that means you now, RCA), nobody can tell what they're buying just by the brand name.

jedo1507r
02-16-2007, 08:31 PM
Hmm, like the Sylvania and Emerson (to a point, Magnavox and Philips combos) brand on Funai's disposable video equipment. Same with the Sansui brand - which did have a stint in the '80s in selling "component"-style televisions, but quickly had Orion (sells Broksonic, World, Orion, Toshiba) take over that product line and rebranding them. Both manufacturers have nearly indistinguishable designs within their product line.

From what I know, Philips and Thomson have a joint operation factory in China, a recent Magnavox set sold at Wally-world had a Hitachi-[something] tube which does not have a bad picture, and is nearly flat; but the build quality was left to be desired - and wouldn't survive in an environment with mischievous children.

When Thomson made sets for the States in three brands many years back: GE, RCA, and ProScan; the sets were so similar, only the brand mark on the corner of the set could distinguish the difference. Of course, the remote control buttons were slightly different; RCA had the colorful scheme, GE had the gray scheme, and ProScan was all green.

And speaking of corporations, there are talks of Daimler selling Chrysler to GM...

Richard D
02-18-2007, 08:06 PM
Plus, I hate all the non-repairable surface mount devices now glued to the circuit boards. They may be fine in my laptop but not in products that have plenty of real estate in them and have high voltage or current switching loads. YES, I am old!
Richard.

doctorbongo
02-18-2007, 08:18 PM
Colortrakker pretty well hit it on the head. As soon as a company goes mass market, the odds of getting a piece of crap with unlimited features, each of which can go off the bubble at any given time, increases exponentially. Because they slapped the tag "Charger" on them didn't make those bogus 2.2L things Dodge put out in the 80s Chargers. And while I've always been a buy-American car guy, the reality is pretty much every company is an international consortium, they serve the consumer only in as far as they can get us to fork over our cash, and an American car or German car or Japanese car is likely filled with parts from, or assemble in, Mexico or Korea. Good luck discerning the supply chain for an RCA component these days.

peverett
02-18-2007, 09:47 PM
Does the company RCA even exist any more? It was my understanding that it is just a name owned by someone now. The previous owner was Phillips, but I am not sure who owns it now

Two my knowledge, there are only three of the major old line(pre WWII) electronic companies that still presently exist in independent form. These are Motorola, IBM, and GE. To my knowlege, Philco, RCA, Zenith, etc. are just names owned by other companies at present.

doctorbongo
02-18-2007, 10:03 PM
it's kind of a circular argument, or question, Everett.
yes, I saw some RCA dvd players in the GrossMassMarketRetailer's "audio-video" section, but as this thread points out, the RCA nametag on the units means virtually nothing. RCAs are being sold. I'd suspect the connection to the historic company is tenuous at best.

colortrakker
02-18-2007, 10:18 PM
Actually, RCA was owned by Thomson. Philips owned Magnavox, Sylvania and Philco.

GE, although their appliance and medical divisions are still self-owned, merged their consumer electronics division with RCA's in 1986 and sold the lot over to France. Thomson, in turn, has sold RCA to China's TCL.

Sad thing: the head of the Chinese company that absorbed RCA didn't even know who Nipper was.

bgadow
02-18-2007, 10:23 PM
Yeah, from what I have read the Chinese bought Thomson which owned RCA. I have a hard time thinking of any major American consumer electronics makers still kicking, aside from those mentioned. Of course, GE doesn't make electronics anymore and will seemingly license its name to anyone for a buck. There are some minor players still around. Wells-Gardner is still going-there was another smaller company which makes some sort of beacons for the military-Sentinel? Or maybe Sparton-I know they were still making car horns last I checked, a few years ago. (they made the horn in my 96 Dakota, for one)

I sure don't pay too much attention to brands on electronics these days. The only thing that might get a second look from me would be Panasonic/Toshiba/Hitachi. Everything else is just a little bit of ink sprayed on a plastic case.

As oldtvman points out, there sure WAS a difference at one time. Looking around the room I see 4 black & white portables from the mid-60s. GE, Philco, Setchell-Carlson, Zenith. The Philco makes everything else look like fine craftsmanship. The GE, as is typical, is built as cheap as they could figure out how. The other two, in comparison, could have been made on a different planet. Back when they were new I guess a lot of people didn't know the difference, or based their opinions on older gear those companies made. (you can get into a lot of debate over who built the better radio in the late 30s, Philco or Zenith-they certainly were close in quality back then) The only thing different now is that everything is junk. Brands do still sell sets which is why my father recently bought a new Sylvania (based on my experience with a "real" American made Sylvania built 17 years ago) and why my in-laws have replaced their RCA with a Magnavox, though they would have done just as well to have bought a ChangChong.

andy
02-18-2007, 10:37 PM
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peverett
02-18-2007, 10:55 PM
One that is still around that is a bit supprising is the Hoffman TV people(Easy Vision).

http://www.hoffmanvideo.com/aboutus.asp

Of course, they do not manufacture TVs anymore.

One of my radio friends said this about Philco:
"The quality fell out before the name went on" Fitting for the 1960s GE tvs also.

I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

One final comment is that a modern piece of consumer electonics equipment is just ike the cars mentioned by doctorbongo. The components come from all over, including the US, no matter where the company headquarters are.

jedo1507r
02-18-2007, 11:07 PM
You can scratch Toshiba off your list. All their TVs are just Orion (they made most of the stuff brnaded Emerson in the 80's and 90's) with the Toshiba name sprayed on.

Same goes for Panasonic. A couple of years back, some of low-end Panny-branded sets were also made by Orion. I had an Emerson portable made back in '87 with Matsushita tube and flyback. I continue to loathe today's Panasonic sets, since I worked at a hotel and tend to see them fail more often than even the disposable 27-inch Funai sets.

About those RCAs, I have a 9-inch portable back when the portables were made in Taiwan, around the mid-1980s equipped with a Toshiba tube - but it was not as prominent as the RCA brand on the label, just on the bottom right corner in small text.

ChrisW6ATV
02-19-2007, 02:36 AM
I have a hard time thinking of any major American consumer electronics makers still kicking...

Looking around the room I see 4 black & white portables from the mid-60s. GE, Philco, Setchell-Carlson, Zenith.
Setchell-Carlson changed its name to Audiotronics about 1980, and to Dotronix in the late 80's or early 1990's, and they still make video monitors, here in the USA:

www.dotronix.com

Their monitors are still used in airport video display systems around the country, for example. Several years ago, right after Zenith (the then last-existing U.S. consumer TV maker) was bought by LG, Dotronix briefly got some attention when they discussed selling consumer TV sets/monitors, but they never did release any that I am aware of.

Pete Deksnis
02-19-2007, 08:28 AM
One that is still around that is a bit surprising is the Hoffman TV people(Easy Vision). I checked the Hoffman website and came away with a chuckle. Check their timeline feature.

Carmine
02-19-2007, 10:48 AM
I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

Rather an unfair comparison don't you think? I should hope that reliability would improve as electronics moved to low-heat solid-state, ICs, and so forth. Actually, when you consider that the last of the "true" Zenith sets (Chromacolor/System 3) are in some cases over 30 y/o and still produce a sharp, clear picture that rivals or exceeds many new CRT sets, I would say the bar hasn't been moved very far.

If those same engineers were designing sets today, thirty-years later, we would already have compatible HDTV and for all I can guess, smell-o-vision!

Instead we have commodity-type sets that work pretty decent, but don't excel in quality, or advancing the state of the art.

Chad Hauris
02-19-2007, 12:24 PM
The state of the art has been advanced though with flat panel type sets, DLP, hard disk video recorders etc. 25 years ago these kind of sets were still just science fiction...even with their shortcomings there has been a lot of advances in TV technology and I do think they are continuing to improve them.

The thing about most modern electronics is that most of it does work very well and often for a long time before needing major repairs, however it is difficult/expensive to repair them due to cheaper construction, specialized custom-made parts, etc.

tgunner
02-19-2007, 01:22 PM
What would you rather have? A 60's style $400 new set that needs $50-100 repairs every 5 years to keep going, or a $250 modern set that goes 10-15 years without issues? I personally take the $250 one, even if it must be sent to the re-cycler after those 10-15 years.

Richard D
02-19-2007, 06:39 PM
A $250.00 modern TV that works for 10 to 15 years without issues? Maybe because I live in the lightning capitol of the US or Florida Power & Light is just sending spikey voltage jumps, but even with a $90.00 UPS to protect them I find most of the Recylcer / Throw away TV's I have tried in my and my family's homes do not work without issues for 5 years. I know we have to move foward, however it seems that it is harder and harder to buy real quality electronics any more. Large screen LCD's have pixel failures, DLP and others need $240.00 lamp replacements, and plasma had or has burn in issues. Bah Humbug.:scratch2:

bigolds98
02-19-2007, 10:37 PM
My friends and I talk about this all the time. There is nothing classic or good anymore. I remember when people bought RCA, Curtis Mathis, and Radio Flier wagons. The list is now endless, because they were American Icons and were known as a quality product. I saw a show on Wal-mart and how they have been the biggest destructor of the Made In America name. Anyway on that show they showed this TV company in China I think it was the Chin-Chin-Wang-chung TV company cranking out TV's the only difference was the stenciled on RCA, Sharp, Magnavox, and Colby names. The TV's were all the same. The bummer thing is I will pay more money for a quality item. I hate that the choices have been made for me buying cheap junk. Plus it angers me to no end seeing once great American company names. Ones associated with a quality product being reduced to a spray painted on decal. I hate those companies that sold out there heritage just to give the CEO a huge bonus. Leaving us consumers with cheap crap. That's why when I find old stuff in good condition I buy it up just to hold on to what was once good. Sorry for the venting.

andy
02-19-2007, 11:10 PM
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peverett
02-20-2007, 01:05 AM
Corporations are not generally good at adapting to the future. How many companies can you name that have been around for 75+ years? The only ones that come to mind in the electronics field are IBM, GE, Motorola, and possibly Hewlett Packard. What has happened in electronics is as the old corporations have died, new ones (TI-1947, Intel-1970, Apple-1977, AMD-1970s) develop to take their place. The complete list of recent corporations would be quite long. All of the above mentioned recently formed companies did develop new technology in the US. Some continue to do so. In fact, Motorola(an old line company) essentially developed the entire cellphone industry. The fact that the latest TV displays were not developed in the US does not indicate that innovation is dead here. In fact, I would propose that most of the HDTV specification and algorithms are from US sources.

Also remember that foreign corporations also stumble-look at how Sony is doing these days.

If you think that this lack of forsight is only in electronics, just remember Studebaker, American Motors, Packard, De Soto, Hudson, etc.

andy
02-20-2007, 01:57 AM
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ChrisW6ATV
02-20-2007, 03:33 AM
Unless we in the USA want protectionist laws, the changes in industries are almost always going to be due to consumer choices. How many of us really still buy most of our hardware, paint, and tools, for example, at a local hardware store rather than at Home Depot or Lowe's? The word most there was important, because if we make our big shopping trips to the "big-box" stores and just get the occasional screwdriver or couple of bolts at the neighborhood store, it is "our own fault" when the little store closes.

Did you know you can still buy gym shoes (or "sneakers"/"tennis shoes" depending on where you are) that are Made in USA? They are in many stores, too-they are New Balance brand. Now for the kicker: They cost about $100-$120 a pair for the US-made ones. New Balance also has its $30-$60/pair shoes, and they are made in China like all of Nike's shoes, and other brands. So, in a few cases at least, we still have the choice to "Buy American", but we have to be willing to pay for it.

Also, I do not understand the singling out of Wal-Mart for driving manufacturing out of the USA. Wal-Mart, as far as I know, has only truly been a huge force in U.S. retailing for maybe the past 15 or maybe 20 years (since it expanded from only rural areas into the cities and suburbs), but the shrinking of U.S. manufaturing has been constant and continuous for 40 years. (Remember Mattel "Hot Wheels" cars? They came out in 1967, and they were made in Hong Kong.) You can buy things like Sterilite plastic bins at Wal-Mart, and they are as American-made as a Hollywood movie.

bgadow
02-20-2007, 12:27 PM
As the thread proves, there are many sides to the story. Chris makes the good point about where you do most of your shopping. 20 years ago in our small town, most people, as they had for years, bought their groceries, their medicine, their hardware, cars & trucks, and yes, tv sets, here in town. The big-boxes were not yet convenient and so there was little reason to go to another town to go shopping since you could get everything here. One by one the small mom & pops closed because it was too easy to shop elsewhere. For one thing, hardly anybody works here anymore. It is now a bedroom community. It was heartbreaking to watch the local grocery store go out of business. Years ago you would go in there and they would have 2 or 3 checkout lanes open, 3 or 4 people deep, with carts loaded. In later years, after big new supermarkets had opened 10 minutes away in all directions, you would go in there and find one register open, and nobody ever had a cart full. This pushed them into a downward spiral as they could not afford to keep the shelves full, which turned away shoppers who couldn't find what they needed. I went in there the day they closed and tried to fill a basket with stuff just to help them out. There wasn't enough left to do it.

Well, I guess I'm straying too much here...Americans have never been good at buying American when American stuff cost more. (not in modern times, anyway) We gripe about plants closing but I would say a very tiny percentage of people pay attention to where something is made. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of effort to buy American...you may have to stop in every store in town. I have done such searches in the past for things like an electric can opener, a waffle iron, a telephone, a camera. The telephone was frustrating as the website said they were made in Mississippi but the one I got came from China. The camera? That was in the mid-90s and I must have looked at 100 cheap cameras to find that Keystone, on the shelf at a small Woolworths.

The consumer electronics industry has been through many cycles over the years. There was the telephone, the phonograph, the radio...in each case there were a few pioneers, then hundreds or thousands of companies popped up. The market culled out those with an inferior product, or poor business plans. Starting with radio, as time went on the market got saturated. After a time everyone had at least one radio so to stay in business you either had to convince them to buy something better as a replacement or sell them a second set. By the 40s the radio business might have collapsed down to only 3 or 4 makers but then along came television. A television was like a high-end radio and was an excellent profit maker. And they sold like hotcakes. TV was a shot in the arm for most radio makers, and many new companies jumped on the bandwagon. But by the mid/late 50s everyone who was going to have a TV had one. Again, the makers had to either offer up something new (bigger screens, modern styling, portables) or go out of business. The TV business started to suffer. Color TV would be the savior, but it would take some time to come. Many companies left the business. When color did become serious in the mid 60s it was, again, a shot in the arm for those who had managed to hang on. Eventually, though, the market was again saturated-there was almost nobody else left to sell a first color tv to. So, what was new and exciting? Solid state? Yeah, that brought a few sales. Modular chassis were not enough by themselves. Modern remote control sold some sets. But mostly the market needed to find "the next big thing". RCA thought it would be the CED. Zenith put a lot of effort into early HDTV, as I recall, but it ran out of steam. I think if HDTV had come along in the 80s it would have helped RCA/Zenith/GE/NAP continue to be real players for another decade. Instead they were just in the business of selling a commodity, something no more exciting or "new" than a can opener or a waffle iron or a cheap camera. By the time the technology was ready the American consumer electronics giants were all washed up. I remember that back in the 80s the owner of the local TV shop said that someday we would have flat tv sets that hung on the wall and sattelite dishes the size of serving plates. Well, he was exactly right. It just took too long to happen to save his business or the industry.

Carmine
02-20-2007, 01:29 PM
A couple points:

It appears to me that Zenith was probably one of the last holdouts still building a good, durable set, in the US at least into the late 70s. But by that time, TVs had begun the slide into commodity and consumer's weren't willing to pay the premium.

There of course was the famous (infamous) TV dumping case against the Japanese that was dragged out so long in court (in exchange for Japanese support of US policy) that every US-made TV company except Zenith and RCA was gone by the time it was ruled the Japanese were dumping.

That does not mean that ALL Japanese companies were dumping... There is a small article in a 1977 issue of Consumer Reports called "Why nobody's mad at Sony" Pretty much says that Sony was selling sets on quality, not price, so they weren't part of the dumping case. Naturally, CR takes the opinion that dumping is a "good" thing, because it means lower prices for consumers. (scumbags)

So they outsourced. First to Mexico, then to Asian countries. Quality went in the dumper, and the reputation began to slide. The tried to diversify into computers, but that went nowhere. Enter Gold Star to buy a good chunk of the company.

They pinned their hopes on a compatible HDTV system, as was required by the US government at that time. In the early 90s, under intense lobbying from foreign companies, the FCC's compatible requirement was dropped. Practically overnight, Zenith stock became worthless because nobody needed the patents on a compatible HDTV system.

Gold Star steps in and buys the remains. Their name in the US is junk, so they re-badge it under the Zenith brand. This buys them some time in the US market, and they re-enter as "LG". The LG products are better than the Gold Star, and the Zenith name is phased out.

Right? Wrong? :scratch2:

I also believe that Zenith was an early pioneer of flat-tubes, at least having them as early as '88, and those WERE good tubes, not the junk that came after '93. They did continue with a "rounder" 23" tube in the entry model sets. I remember seeing a lot of those in bars.

oldtvman
02-20-2007, 07:27 PM
One that is still around that is a bit supprising is the Hoffman TV people(Easy Vision).

http://www.hoffmanvideo.com/aboutus.asp

Of course, they do not manufacture TVs anymore.

One of my radio friends said this about Philco:
"The quality fell out before the name went on" Fitting for the 1960s GE tvs also.

I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

One final comment is that a modern piece of consumer electonics equipment is just ike the cars mentioned by doctorbongo. The components come from all over, including the US, no matter where the company headquarters are.


I have never questioned the reliability issue, but rather the difference between different manufacturers of color sets back in the 50's and 60's, of course any solid state device would run cooler than it's tube based counter-parts, but beyond that once you got past the RCA and Zenith brands back then both picture quality and set design were sometimes questionable.

Back then you could cover up everything but the picture and the color and tint controls and for the most part I could tell by the performance what kind of design it was ie: Zenith, Rca based technology or Magnavox and so on.

RVonse
02-20-2007, 10:06 PM
A couple points:


There of course was the famous (infamous) TV dumping case against the Japanese that was dragged out so long in court (in exchange for Japanese support of US policy) that every US-made TV company except Zenith and RCA was gone by the time it was ruled the Japanese were dumping.
For whatever reason since WWII, the Japanese seem to be far more sucessful at business than the American counterparts. First they successfully took over television electronics and now they have taken over the huge automobile industry that used to be the mainstay of America. All accomplished by a small nation with little or no natural resources to themselves.

A lot has happened since WWII and it hasn't been so good for the U.S I'm afraid. The U.S. should have made Japan the 51th state while we still had the chance.

peverett
02-20-2007, 11:15 PM
The Japanese success in electronics has been fleeting. The consumer business is moving to other countries, such as China, etc. The Japanese stuff never really caught on in the personal computer world either, .

In addition, in the semiconductor manufacturing world, the Japanese were always also-rans. The large fabs have always been in the US, Europe, and now Taiwan. The Japanese fabs have actually only supplied the internal Japanese markets, never catching the US companies in market share. .

Saying the US companies have not been successful in electronics since world war II is just not correct. Just look at Intel, Hewlett Packard, Dell(until recently), TI, and Apple. There are many others. US companies just have not been successful in consumer entertainment electronics. They have been quite successfull in some consumer electronics. An example is the cell phone-Motorola. In fact, there is not a Japanese name in the top three cellphone suppliers(Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung). In addtion, US companies continue to provide components to Japanese consumer electronics companies to this day. Components made in the US.

As far as cars, it is my belief that the US manufacturers are still reaping what they (both management and labor) sowed in the 1970s. I am old enough to to remember horror stories from all of the big 3(crankshaft on gasoline engine breaking in two at 20,000 miles-GM-only warrantied half the cost, pulley falling off on an almost new Chrysler product, transmission lines crushed by poor assembly-causing out of warranty transmission re-build at 40,000 miles-my 1978 Ford Mustang-I can list many others). People bought far better quality Japanese cars, had good experience, and never looked back. It does not matter at this point if the big 3 automobilie quality is close to or as good as the Japanese-people my age and their children(as recommended by the parents) buy Japanese, they have no reason to go back.

By the way-I have four Fords, including a 2006 model, so I am not biased toward Japanese cars.

andy
02-20-2007, 11:52 PM
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colorfixer
02-21-2007, 03:14 AM
I can remember the first time I saw a Zenith FTM CRT monitor at the UBC in 1988. The display was so flat it had the appearance of bowing inward!

I think I recall an article that indicated Zenith had issues with yields in making the FTM tube in regular television sizes like 20 and 26". I imagine that such a tube would weigh something akin to a comparable Wega or more.

I came across a new in box FTM monitor a while back. Every pot in the thing needed going over with Cailube, and it was filled with those pink painted hex screws... The picture is breathtaking, but like it was said, fixed frequency monitors were getting dated in '88. My first 20" VGA monitor was a NEC multisync XL. It still works, and at 1024x768. I find it interesting that the FTM tube still used a round dot trio mask/phosphor rather than stripes.

jshorva65
02-21-2007, 05:20 AM
A transcript of a speech given by a prominent official in the Chinese government in too public of a forum was leaked via the Internet some time ago, resulting in this official's loss of his title for having "let the cat out of the bag" about China's plans to conquer the West (starting with Amerrica) for its food production capabilities (land for farming and a population to enslave as at-gunpoint farm workers under Communism) and discussed plans of a massive bioweapon attack aimed at killing enough Americans to beat us into submission for conquest by China. Every one of those Chinese slave-manufactured products feeds the Communist military monster and finances its bioweapons laboratories, but many officials in our own government are wholly bought and paid for with campaign contributions from China laundered through other channels.

I have a still-working-like-new "Assembled in Greenville, TN" Magnavox 25" stereo monitor set with PIP in the small home theater setup in my living room. The thing is as old as my child, but the set is well maintained. I also have two "roundie" color sets in my personal collection along with many early postwar B/W sets. No plans of buying a new set any time soon here, even after conventional NTSC format is phased out as a broadcast standard. The quality of today's programming is so intolerably filled with anti-American propaganda that I don't even recall the last time I watched an entire program before turning off the set in disgust after enduring one too many racist stabs at my European heritage in the show's dialogue.

Yes, I drink beer from a bottle and watch partial NASCAR races just to keep track of the curreent leader. I also have two Technology degrees. I'm proud to be an intelligent AND educated REDNECK. lol Incidentally, "Redneck" is a reference to the "farmer's tan" which is a product of working outdoors ... NOT a reference to a predisposition to commit murder by lynching as some well-financed poverty pimps seem to insist.

My earliest "roundie" memories involved Sunday afternoons at my grandparents' house, three '66 Zenith color sets tuned to three different football games, and fried chicken made using my family's own secret recipe. I was also a huge fan of "Lost in Space" and recall watching syndicated reruns of the show's second and third season color episodes on one of those sets during other visits. As for my family having three '66 Zenith color sets in 1969-70, what can I say. We owned a trailer park. Grandma's brother owned a restaurant / bar in town, known for the same fried chicken recipe, and his three children each operated restaurant-only locations in the suburbs. I come from a long line of micro-entrepreneurs who fled Eastern Europe just before the descent of the Iron Curtain which trapped many devout Christians like my own ancestors who were not quite so fortunate as to realize that the 1905 attempt to overthrow the (not perfect, but far more merciful than the Bolsheviks) Czar would be repeated and thus begin to plan their escape to the religious freedom for which America was once known.

After I had moved 40 miles away to attend college in the 80's, the still-working sets got sold to tenants who couldn't afford new color sets because my grandparents weren't getting around as well and bought new Magnavox sets with remote control.

andy
02-21-2007, 12:51 PM
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peverett
02-21-2007, 09:05 PM
IBM may have sold their PC business, but they are one of the few companies developing high performance semiconductor processes at .045 u and below. Intel and TSMC (of Taiwan) being the others that I am aware of. This is a very expensive effort, so they are far from a name only. TI just recently gave their effort up.

Whirled One
02-21-2007, 09:40 PM
Unless we in the USA want protectionist laws, the changes in industries are almost always going to be due to consumer choices. How many of us really still buy most of our hardware, paint, and tools, for example, at a local hardware store rather than at Home Depot or Lowe's? The word most there was important, because if we make our big shopping trips to the "big-box" stores and just get the occasional screwdriver or couple of bolts at the neighborhood store, it is "our own fault" when the little store closes.

You're absolutely right. The reason why there are no American companies left that make TVs (or any number of other products) is because we really can't compete on price. Go back to the late-70's to 1980 era (about the last years there were several TV manufacturers in the USA), and look how expensive TVs actually were compared with today. According to the 1978 Admiral dealer catalog, the *cheapest* 19" color TV (a basic table model) had a list price of $399.95 and dealer net of $314.55. That's roughly $1240 and $975 in today's money according to the CPI Inflation Calculator. The cheapest 25" color TV (a console in simulated walnut) had a list price of $609.95 and net price of $494.25. That's about $1890 and $1530 respectively in 2007 dollars.

Today, you can walk into any discount chain store and buy a new 19" color TV (such as those typically made by Funai in China) for under $100. I don't think you can still buy an NTSC-only 25" or larger TV any longer, but when they were last still offered, they could be bought for as low as around $150. Anyway, using the 19" set as an example, if you went to the store and saw a Chinese-made 19" color TV for $100, and a USA-made 19" color TV next to it for $1200, which do you think most people would choose? ...Especially if the $100 TV had a full-function remote control, cable-ready tuner, A/V input jacks, closed-caption decoder-- all of which were lacking in the $1200 TV. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration-- obviously, today an American company could build a modern 19" color TV to retail for a *lot* less than $1200, but think about it-- how can anybody make money selling a (relatively) large CRT color TV set for under a hundred bucks?? After all, the dealer and the manufacturer have to make something on the deal, and there are lots of overhead costs (including shipping/transportation) that are included in the price of the TV that have nothing to do with the manufacturing itself. Even with the slim margins on electronics that mass-retailers generally work with, and even with factory-direct shipping to the retailer, that $100 TV set must have had to cost less than $60 to produce at the factory, including all materials, labor, rent/property, machining/tooling, and taxes. Yow!
That's why we don't make stuff like that in the USA any longer.

In consumer electronics, this trend really started with transistor radios in the early 1960's. Within just a few years, there were hardly any small transistor radios made in the USA. Who was going to buy an American-made transistor radio when you could buy a Japanese-made one for half the money, and worked about as well? The American manufacturers didn't mind either, since little transistor radios had quickly become such a low-profit-margin commodity anyway-- it was easier to make money with high-ticket items like color TVs anyway, and it's not like the Japanese companies were going to actually be able to build a decent big-screen color TV anytime soon, right? Now even Japan has lost that market to China and other nations.

Also, I do not understand the singling out of Wal-Mart for driving manufacturing out of the USA. Wal-Mart, as far as I know, has only truly been a huge force in U.S. retailing for maybe the past 15 or maybe 20 years (since it expanded from only rural areas into the cities and suburbs), but the shrinking of U.S. manufaturing has been constant and continuous for 40 years.

Exactly. Also, my experience has been that Wal-Mart has generally been much better than other mass-retailers at trying to carry American-made products when possible. I also collect cameras, and the last two American companies that still made consumer-grade cameras in the USA (aside from some disposable cameras) were Polaroid and Keystone. Polaroid gradually shifted production away from the USA and the UK, with some models starting out as USA- or UK- made but then shifting elsewhere over time. A big example was the preennial OneStep 600 in its various guises. I think it was during its run as the "OneStep 600 Flash Close-Up" when I started seeing it shift production locations, but perhaps it was the earlier "OneStep 600 Flash" model. Anyway, it started out appearing to be entirely USA-made (at least those for the USA market), but then I started noticing in the stores ones that were instead made in Mexico or China (I'm thinking there may have also been some Brazilian ones or something too). I started watching this more closely and noticed that pretty soon Wal-Marts were the only store that still generally had USA-made OneSteps, while Target and K-Mart and such had only the Mexican and Chinese ones. I believe the last USA-made Polaroid camera was the Captiva (and as far as I know, all Captivas were made in the USA), and Wal-Mart was by far the last of the big mass-marketers that continued to carry the Captiva even after it had ceased being much of a big seller. Wal-Mart was also the last big chain store that I saw consistently carrying the Keystone line of point-and-shoot cameras when they were still made in the USA. Then there was the time 5 or 6 years ago when I went out to get a toaster. Nothing fancy, just a plain-ol' pop-up toaster. I planned to buy a Toastmaster pretty much for 'historical' reasons, but also because I figured it was still made in USA. Went to Target, and aaaaaah-- what's this..? They had Toastmasters, but they were made in Mexico..? They also looked more 'curvy' and bulkier than the last Toastmaster toasters I had seen in a store. When did that change, I wondered. I checked all the other toasters, and they were all made in Mexico or China. Went to K-Mart, same thing. Went to Wal-Mart, and what do you know-- they had USA-made Toastmaster toasters. They also had USA-made Proctor-Silex toasters. ...And they weren't any more expensive than the Mexican and Chinese made ones at the other stores (though they had the more squared-off lines of an earlier generation of toasters). In fact, they had a nice end-cap display of the USA-made Toastmaster toasters with a free box of Pop-Tarts packed right in the box. ...Not a coupon for free Pop-Tarts, mind you, but an actual box of Pop-Tarts packed right with the toaster. ...And all for about ten bucks. [Would a tie-in like that even work out well if the toaster was built and packaged overseas..?] I checked Wal-Mart several months later, and sure enough, no more USA-made Toastmasters. I think they may have still had USA-made Proctor-Silex toasters, but nowadays I don't think any of them are made in USA, and the last time I noticed, Toastmaster toasters were all made in China. So apparently I now have one of the last USA-made Toastmaster toasters... Kinda sad, really.
Oh, and as far as I know, Wal-Mart was also one of the last mass-merchandisers that still consistently carried USA-made Westclox ("Big Ben") alarm clocks (which are now made in China), and Wahl electric shavers (I think they still make hair-cutting and other grooming equipment, but not shavers).

Anyway, this isn't supposed to really be a gripe/complaint about non-USA products or the sellers thereof-- it's all really a result of the world we live in today and the realities thereof...

dr.ido
02-21-2007, 09:59 PM
I think that AWA was one of the last if not the last company to manufacture TVs in Australia. For a while they were sticking there name on some cheap nasty Onwa sets while still manufacturing some higher end sets here. Not long after that they went to only rebadging Onwa crap (exactly the same sets that were also sold under the Masuda and Akai brands). On the last curbside collection collection I saw what had to be one of their last Australian made sets, a stereo 26" set with AV inputs in a full sized wood (well chipboard) console cabinet. I wanted to grab it, but it was simply too big for me to handle on my own. The AWA brand disappeared totally for a while, but has recently reappeared on the same silver plastic sets sold under many, many, different brand names. A while back I was looking through one of those chinese export sites. The quantity price (minimum a container load) on these sets starts at $30 for the 14" up to $60 for the 27" with whatever brand name you like on them.

I had one of those 14" Zenith monitors, but I never bothered to get it going. It wasn't worth it for 640x480. I wonder if they were at all related to the flat screen Idek monitors that came out at around the same time. They were the flattest screen monitors I owned until I got a Diamondtron when Gateway closed down. I had a couple of the MF-5150 15", they'd do 15-38kHz making them one of the best Amiga monitors. I remember lusting after the 21" version, but I never did find one. I think the 21" model would probably beat the Diamondtron in picture quality if it still had a good CRT.

I'm typing this on the Thinkpad 600X that is my daily driver (I still have my 310ED, 560X and a couple of 600Es). I've yet to actually lay my hands on a Lenovo Thinkpad, but something tells me they just won't feel the same. I use Thinkpads exclusively for the feel/action of the keyboard/trackpoint. I just can't stand the feel of other laptop keyboards or those rotten touch pad things. I've got a much faster Toshiba laptop sitting here doing nothing because I find it so awful to use.

Pete Deksnis
02-22-2007, 09:39 AM
...American manufacturers didn't mind either, since little transistor radios had quickly become such a low-profit-margin commodity anyway-- it was easier to make money with high-ticket items.I can confirm that. A GE public relations guy fixed that in my young Editor-head in the early seventies when he said "...sure, we can set up a line to make transistor radios at a profit. But why?"

andy
02-22-2007, 02:16 PM
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jedo1507r
02-22-2007, 05:57 PM
Whirled One, good thing you've brought up Polaroid Captiva cameras, the interesting part of the model's history was its tie-in on WGN's "Bozo Super Sunday" show in the early 1990s (I was little, so that's how I know). :D

dr.Ido, I had a friend with a "Sony" VCD player that resembled a Technics minisystem, didn't last too long - like most inexpensive video players. Turned out the same as you posted, a company had pallets of these things with the brand of your choice.

The infiltration of Chinese-imported RPTVs is an interesting thing. Back in 2003, Apex (known for their DVD players) sold some of their 46-inch 4:3 sets at/around $800 or so, but as far as I know the store that carried them had a couple of them in repair and seriously discouraged those models. Typically these RPTV sets are made either in Mexico (Thomson, Mitsubishi) or in the States (Philips, Sony). Of course, Apex has scaled down their presence, not sure but the company/distributor was in some legal trouble or something; or was that Cyberhome and the MPAA?

andy
02-22-2007, 06:56 PM
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bigolds98
02-23-2007, 12:05 AM
The last thing I am going to say on this subject is this. If you want to know the truth about Wal-mart and how they have cost the jobs of thousands of Americans I mean the jobs that pay paid a living wage not the the seven dollar and fifty cent an hour jobs that they create. Please read these books. "Take this Job and Ship it." By Senator Byron Dorgan. When I read this book it made me so mad I had a headache for a week. In it tells how Wal-Mart being the largest retailer in the World forces it's suppliers to charge less and less for there goods. Forcing once American made product companies to have no other choice but to close up shop here in the USA throwing people out of work and moving production to China. I still have not seen the benefit of any major savings on anything. One example and there are millions of examples. Is I bought a Hoover vacuum 3 years ago. It was made in Canton Ohio. I paid $100.00 dollars for it at Target. Since then the Hoover vacuum cleaner factory in Canton has closed the workers were making 20 dollars an hour and is now building them in China and Mexico. The same vacuum today made in China is still 100 dollars. The reason Hoover moved production to China and Mexico was that Wal-Mart wanted them to continue selling the vacuums at their stores but could not sell them to Wal-Mart at the lower price they wanted to pay for each vacuum. Hoover said No to Wal-mart. Well seeing that Wal-mart is the largest retailer/seller of Hoover vaccums Hoovers sales fell off so bad they had no choice to throw everone out of work and go to China/Mexico. This is just one Example. There is Radio Flier wagons, Etch-a-sketch and a billion more this has happend too. It also why wages have gone backwards not forwards in this country. Please read this book it is not just on Wal-Mart it is on how the Middle Class in this country is disapearing at an alarming rate and how corperate America runs the government. The other book is by Lou Dobbs called "War on the Middle Class". It is just as good. There was a Time when I shopped at Wal-Mart it is when Sam Walton was still alive and prided himself on having American made goods in his stores. When he died that all changed. I don't want to change peoples minds. I just want people to look at the big picture and make up their own minds.

So anyways now onto TV's. In the next couple of weeks I will be taking my CTC-5 "Wescott" into a TV repair guy that said he would work on it. All of my freinds can't wait to see it working again. I just hope it doesn't cost a fortune to get it working again. Sorry for the rant.

peverett
02-23-2007, 12:25 AM
Not too long ago I read a story about the demise of Cannon towls that echos what Andy and bigolds98 said about Wal Mart.

I have also read that 90+% of Costco and Target's employees have employer supplied health insurance, but less than 60% of Wal-Marts employees do. (Wal-Mart would rather us tax payers supply it through Medicaid, etc.) For the reasons mentioned above and by several other posters, I try to avoid shopping there.

dr.ido
02-23-2007, 09:29 AM
dr.Ido, I had a friend with a "Sony" VCD player that resembled a Technics minisystem, didn't last too long - like most inexpensive video players. Turned out the same as you posted, a company had pallets of these things with the brand of your choice.


Argh! I know exactly which player you're referring to. They were sold here with Sony and/or other labels on them (literally, I found one that was marked Sony on the front, but with some other house brand on the back). Both the S-video jack and the fuse holder on the back panel were purely cosmetic. Not only were they not connected, they didn't even have any metal contacts in them. The power supply was not fused. I wonder if any of them ever caught fire.

At least even the cheapest, nastiest, crappiest DVD players I've seen have an actual fuse on the primary side of the power supply.

Richard D
02-23-2007, 11:09 AM
I have found that some transformers in cheap electronics do have a primary fuse, it is located in the transformer under the cardboard covering the primary side. It is connected between the input wire and the begining of the windings. Sometimes if you are carefull you can cut the cardboard vertically with an Exacto blade and peel back the layers to get to the fuse. It can be a pain, but if you have a transformer with multi-tap secondarys that is impossible to find and it presents with the primary open, it's worth the look. All you have to lose is some time. Crown Power Amps do it right, they have the normal fuse holder on the rear panel, plus there is another one inside the amp, rated at 1 amp higher so when the road tech wraps a fuse with foil and makes it a zillion amp no-blow fuse, the amp has an internal backup.
Richard.

Captain Video
02-23-2007, 05:00 PM
A transcript of a speech given by a prominent official in the Chinese government in too public of a forum was leaked via the Internet some time ago, resulting in this official's loss of his title for having "let the cat out of the bag" about China's plans to conquer the West (starting with Amerrica) for its food production capabilities (land for farming and a population to enslave as at-gunpoint farm workers under Communism) and discussed plans of a massive bioweapon attack aimed at killing enough Americans to beat us into submission for conquest by China. Every one of those Chinese slave-manufactured products feeds the Communist military monster and finances its bioweapons laboratories, but many officials in our own government are wholly bought and paid for with campaign contributions from China laundered through other channels.



Every time I read a newspaper article marveling about the "amazing chinese economic growth" I feel extremely disgusted. It's easy to grow like that, exporting extremely cheap ( because they were built with slave/or extremelly underpaid labor ) no-quality and even fake products to the rest of the world, whose governants are on the payroll of the "Secret Government" that is really running this planet, a Secret Government who wants the flood of chinese goods all around the world...for what purpose, I still don't know, but clearly is not for the good of the citizens of this planet. It's not even good for the people of China, because the economic boom there is a result of exporting, not a result of creating a strong internal market. I've read that only 20% of the chinese population have a good standard of living, the other 80% are still living like in the sinister times of Mao Tse Tung.

My wife bought an MP3 player a few weeks ago. As I was distracted, looking at the other merchandise in the store, I didn't help her ( who has little knowledge of electronics ) on her buying. Big mistake. That blasted thing was "Made in China" , and, as you can imagine, it was a piece of crap. Never worked right. We tried to send it to an authorized technician, only to find out that no one was repairing these things anymore. The only authorized tech that could do it, had just quit working with that brand. Luckily, the store agreed to exchange that MP3 for other products, and we were able to made a very good deal, giving them that awful chinese piece of junk, and taking home in exchange some nice dishes for the kitchen, some nice big glasses to drink soda and a few titles on DVD, including Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. However, the store was not completely honest, as they put that MP3 for sale again, hoping to deceive some other poor fool...

I believe that people should vote for politicians who are in favor of protectionism. All this "international free trade" system seems to be doing more harm than good. In America, it's destroying the middle class; here in Brazil, which have always been a country with big social problems, it's destroying the few pockets of prosperity that used to exist here. We had the biggest toy factory of Latin America, "Brinquedos Estrela" ( "Star Toys" ) founded in 1937 by Jewish immigrants. For decades, they produced quality and high-quality toys at affordable prices, and paid decent wages to their workers. Then, in 1990, the new government decided that Brazil should embark on all this globalization-free-trade nonsense, and opened all the gates to widespread, uncontrolled, low taxation imports, and that factory was literally crushed. They survived, but are no longer the giant they used to be. Most of the toys they sell today under their brand are in fact chinese made toys rebadged with the old "Estrela" logo. They became more an importer than a real factory. Other smaller toy companies were not so lucky and closed for good. Today, you see a lot of cheap low quality chinese made toys in the hands of our children, and when I mean cheap I really mean cheap, they can be bought for almost nothing. In a country that desperately needs the creation of jobs, such policies should be considered treason. On a final note, that Jewish family is no longer the owner of the factory. They sold it years ago, after the devastation made in their business by the chinese imports. A friend of mine, who, like myself, is a TV collector, entered their mansion a short time ago, because they were making a huge garage sale. Everything in that huge house ( according to him it resembled Scarlet O'Hara mansion from the movie "Gone With the Wind" ) was for sale. He was able to score a 1954 Dumont TV set, that they bought new in a trip to the USA in 1954. It probably is the only Dumont television set in Brazil, because unlike other companies like GE or Admiral, Dumont never had a factory or import representative in Brazil.

Richard D
02-23-2007, 05:59 PM
I just got back from the local Sears store, I looked at the Craftsman lawn equipment and all were made in China. The Diehard battery chargers were from Mexico. The Craftsman generators were from China, so much for the Craftsman name. The only item I could find made in the USA was the Diehard automotive battery, the smaller ones for lawn tractors and such were from Mexico

jshorva65
02-24-2007, 06:03 AM
The cheap, inferior products branded with once-reputable names are just the tip of the iceberg. American industry has been systematically dismantled by Corporate oligarchs who are working toward enslaving all of America under the rule of a scandalously wealthy elite, which (despite its false "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability" motto) is the true nature of Communism.

Kruschev's "We will bury you!" threat from the 1950s was only a part of a longer series of threats which have since shown themselves to be almost prophetic. Kruschev knew that he had planted an army of Communists here who would slowly indoctrinate Americans to embrace Communism without ever realizing they were doing so, and the indoctrination would be accomplished through the schools, media, and churches which he had instructed his brainwashing experts to infiltrate and use to preach Communism disguised as expansion of freedom. What he actually said was "We will bury you! Your children are being spoon fed Socialism, and one day your grandchildren will live under Communism!"

One of the "planks" which Moses M. Levy (better known by his pen name, Karl Marx) stated must be at the foundation of Communism was the elimination of the middle class. NAFTA, GATT, and many other programs enacted by our corrupt giovernment, along with the "amnesty" and "guest worker" proposals which will flood the country with a new peasant underclass whose gang affiliations, savage violence, and flagrant disregard of the rule of law will ultimately turn their "peaceful demonstrations for amnesty" into Bolshevik Revolution USA whether granted amnesty or not.

Trashing the names of once-great American manufacturers by those names' being asociated with inferior, disposable products is a bit of "adding insult to injury" as our nation is being softened up for its destruction.

Proving the greatness of America's former industries by showing that American products at 50 and 60 years old can still be restored to working order with a little effort is one of my motivations for restoring vintage electronics.

Captain Video
02-24-2007, 07:11 PM
One of the idols of the communists is an Italian named Antonio Gramsci, who always said that the way to turn a society into a communist regime was not by means of violent revolution, but by slow cultural indoctrination. I observed that all around the world there's a lot of people who are following this guy's agenda.