This is something we've never done before.....let's hear your thoughts on the best AND worst televisions ever made....be they color or B&W.....get as verbose as you like :D

Here's my thoughts on the most and least reliable:

Best color TV: Zenith Chromacolor
Worst color TV: Emerson products of the mid 90s :mad:

Best B&W: Zenith's mid-60s offerings, RCA "sweet sixteen" portables
Worst B&W: Philco Predicta

Yeah I know the emerson I bought for our home was a piece of shit... I'm a woman what do I know about TV's. :D

For the best ever color sets I would have to pick the Sony Trinitron, from the late 60's on till at least the early 90's they set the standard for picture quality that everyone else tried to match but really couldn't till the patent ran out on the Trinitron CRT.
I would single out their XBR line as particularly good.

Hard to argue with the Zenith B&W sets of the 60's, superb build quality, great pictures and frankly I don't think anyone was really trying to build a better B&W TV at that late date.

the little RCA 8" portables from 56-57 are also amazing sets, not so much for the picture quality which is average at best but from an engineering standpoint they are a work of art!
They are a transformer powered, well built, quality TV in a very small package for the time!

The competing General Electrics of the time are junk (but cute junk) by comparison. Obviously aimed at different market segments.

Worst color set, gee there are so many, GE made a particularly nasty set in the 60's, (not a roundie) it used the "KD" chassis as I recall. I actually fixed one up for my Grandmother in the 70's, poor thing must have gone half blind trying to watch that dim crappy thing.

The Predicta is certaintly a nightmare to work on at least, and the bad CRT's... :puke:

Someone will probably mention Muntz in this thread :D I have no first-hand experience with them so I can't comment.

Hard to argue with the above. On color, my Zenith experience, both roundie and later, has been darned good, at least up through the Chromacolor sets. I can agree on the 60s GE sets-are old family set was, I think, a KE chassis and was actually pretty good, but I've had a couple that were a little older and they were just dismal. One I had as a kid and I finally begged for a bw set to replace it because the picture was so bad.

On bw sets, I have not had a 60s Zenith although have heard many say they were tops. Generally I've found good performance from Admirals and earlier Philcos but I just can't get a Philco from the mid to late 50s (Predicta especially) to give me what I consider a good picture.

I can only respond with the sets I have worked on or have in my collection.

BEST TUBE COLOR:

Zenith (round and rectangular). These have worked well after, and even before servicing. The pictures, to me, are slightly dimmer than their RCA counterparts. I want more.

RCA (round). Good performers, despite the shitty PC boards. I feel the pics on RCA roundies blow away the crap on the market today.

BEST SOLID STATE OR HYBRID COLOR:

Sylvania D series (hybrid).

RCA XL 100 (first generation)

Zenith Chromacolor (first generation)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

RCA tube rectangular color. If it weren't for the fact that the CRT's died early, these would be in the best catagory.

Zenith hybrid and SS. If it weren't for the safety caps going bad and the contacts on the modules being a bitch to keep clean, they would be in the other catagory.

WORST TUBE COLOR:

Anything made by GE. The only thing GE is good for is light bulbs.

RCA series string portables. I never could get them working like their transformer counterparts.

WORST SOLID STATE OR HYBRID COLOR:

All the new stuff.

GE, pre RCA rape and pillage.

Most of the Japanese makes, until now.

BEST TUBE BW:

Andrea. I feel the restoration of my CVL-16 turned out nice. It is a very watchable set.

Any Zenith from the porthole days to the end of the 1960's.

RCA

Admiral made a lot of nice sets (just scored one)

Philco (excluding the Predicta and before Ford bought them)

WORST TUBE BW:

GE, although I wouldn't mind having one for my collection.

I have a Sylvania (SAMS set 500) that I'm not impressed with.

WORST BW SOLID STATE:

I have none to list since I haven't had many for too long.


There are others I have but didn't list, since they are not restored and I have no feelings either way yet.

Worst color TV: Emerson products of the mid 90s

Those are not true Emersons. Some Asian outfit bought the Emerson name and slaps it on stuff from China and such places. True Emersons came from Jersey City NJ.

I have a Motorola portable B&W that sucks. Awful horizontal sync circuits.

I had an RCA CTC101. That model had the infimious intergrated flyback transformer (high voltage winding was in sections, with diodes between sections). Aside from that, it was a good set.

The Sony XBR 200 series 27" and 32" were the best consumer TV's I have ever seen.

Yep. I think the Sony Trinitrons were & are the best of the color sets-especially when they first came out. Their little 5" B&Ws were pretty good, too, I had one from Xmas '63 til the summer of '69. The WORST TV in my view, had to be a Sears color blivvit they marketed in the mid '60s. Thing would sometimes go kerflooey B4 the serviceman got out of sight. We had one of the 1st Portacolors & it was a good reliable performer, if not the best picture. -Sandy G.

Not sure what your criteria are, Tim :-) Video? Color? Ruggedness? Design? Elegance (electronically, I mean)?

My father is a retired TV repairman. I can tell you his favorites were the RCA CTC-16 and CTC-25 chassis.

Basically whatever stands out in your mind that you'd like to share :)

in my experiance from the time frame of working in my Uncles shop (late 70's to mid 80's) Best early tube color sets were Zenith and RCA. Worst were GE and Motorola tube sets. They had a lousy picture and were a pain in the ass to work on. Best early solid state was Zenith and Sylvania GT-matic's. Worst:Early RCA XL-100's weren't very good performers, along with the Motorola "works in a drawer" On those Motorola's the panels were expensive and they never had an outstanding picture. One of the worst sets we carried new on the sales floor were the early 80's GE with "VIR" Good pictures, but those pieces of crap would break on the sales floor! As a consumer now, I would have to say on new sets, that Apex are pure junk, and I don't know what is going on with Sony, but I returned my Wega after a week!

Originally posted by Big Dave

Anything made by GE. The only thing GE is good for is light bulbs.



I think General Electric makes damn good toaster-ovens also! When it comes to televisions, I always thought GE's were pretty low on the food chain and would never buy one. Although, I have to stand up for one in particular. My grandparents have a GE color console that's nearly 20 years old, and it surprisingly still is like brand new. Makes a great picture and has been completely trouble free. I guess this one was an exception.

The Zenith tube and hybrid B&W portables of the 60's/early70's are great. i have one that I've been watching for years. Other than cleaning out the dust, I haven't done a thing to it. Still has all the Zenith tubes in it.

Interesting reading here, quite a variety of views. Anyway, here is my pick for best and worst based on experience from approximately the mid to late 80's.

Best solid state I've repaired: Would have to be an early 70's Sony I repaired about 8 or 9 years ago. I replaced the horizontal SCR and power supply regulator and gave the CRT a light rejuvenation. After that it played like a million dollars! Awesome color and excellent sharpness. The guy has had it since it was new and he said that was the first service ever needed on it. I talk to him once in a while and he said that set is still going strong.

Worst solid state I've worked on: I think that would have to be one of those GE's with the griplet solder connections. The first shop I worked at we used to get truck loads of those. They played good once they were fixed though.

Best tube set I have worked on: Maybe I am a little partial to Zenith but the "boat anchor" metal cabinet tube Zeniths I have fixed all seem to have an outstanding picture and color. Apparently, they are very durable too. Once in a great while I still run across one and repairs are usually quite simple like a HO tube or damper.

Worst tube set: I have worked on a few of those wood coffin looking table model Magnavox tube sets. Generally good color and picture but the sets I have worked on seem to have numerous bad solder connections. One I can remember having to spend an hour or two just soldering cold solder connections on the PC board.

Jeff

I think the proof is in the trash.

What I'm saying is, about the only color tube-type sets that I still see on trash day are Zeniths. More than once, I've brought them home, plugged 'em in, and they work. More than likely they were just tossed because somebody got sick of tripping over them. Same holds true for Zenith B&W sets.

The rugged steel chassis and console-style power transformer made their Chromacolor I & II color sets far from portable, but once you put them down, the pictures are often better than the chinese garbage that's 25-30 years newer.

When I used to fix sets as a kid, (I'm no expert, just good enough to swap parts, solder, etc.) the most frequent fault was cracked PC boards. Even though Zenith eventually switched to PC boards, they still framed the modules in steel. Others simply relied on the strength of the actual PC board, and of course we know what a disaster that idea often was.

I will give Sony their props for the Trinitron, but in terms of physical appearance, their sets were about as stylish as a 1980 Datsun. They had a cluttered look, more like they were a collection of parts, rather than anything that was "styled". For this reason, no matter how good they may have performed, they'll probably never be collectable. In fact, I think their biggest impact was probably their "halo effect" on the Asian electronics industry. (I know the proper term would be Japanese, but let's be honest, most Americans see no difference in cultures/prodcuts from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, etc.)

Sony products rightly deserved their good reputations, but other poorly designed brands from the 70s/80s (Hitachi, Gold Star, among many) churned out some real crap, but were able to ride the reputation of Sony in much the same way as people think of all Japanese cars as reliable (because of Toyota) while forgetting that terrible engines nearly bankrupted Mazda in the early 70s. (Would have, if not for an infusion of cash from Ford.)

I will say that my (formerly my parents) 1990 27" Zenith has been an excellent performer since new, with only one service done a few months ago (Power supply caps from Capt' Moody). Picture is still excellent after a decade of daily use. I do believe that this was likely the end of the line for Zenith quality however, as my parents recommended Zenith sets for two relatives in the mid-90s. Both of these had failed CRTs by 2000.

Captain Moody recently gave me a rather unremarkable '77 19" Chromacolor. Nothing too interesting about this entry-level-color set beyond its excellent picture. I kinda don't know what to do with it??? I was thinking this might be the one to keep in a bomb shelter with some canned food, flashlights and a shotgun. With this TV and a 318 Mopar, I could probably ride out the next 50 years without parts.
:rolleyes:

From experience, the best tvs ever built, including outstanding picture quality is anywhere from 1960-1973 zenith b/w sets, in perticular, those with metal cabinets. I have run across hundreds of these sets, and I cant pick everyone of them up, as I would be completely jammed here! but you know, those sets ALWAYS work, and most of the time, PERFECT! Those zenith b/w sets have the most razor sharp picture. For you big sony triniton fans, they are like watching a trinitron without color!
Color sets, obviously more problems to deal with, none (even zeniths) are as reliable as those zenith b/w sets.

I hate solid state sets, so I'll only talk about tube/ hybrid sets, as most of those have excellent picture to begin with.
RCA Victor color tv has outstanding picture, vivid colors, but unfortunatly, no built anything close to a zenith. Zenith however, best TVs built, great pictures, but rca tends to beat them out on the color quality and color saturation.
Just as an interesting note, as much as zeniths are built so well, I always thought they could have done a better job with the "feel" of the VHF tuner, some tend to feel weak and flimsy (age and usage is considered here) but rca tuners always felt better to me, a nicer solid "klunk" like the ctc16, 19, 27 for example. The UHF tuners in zeniths are nowhere near as good as rca, unless the zenith had "gyro" UHF tuner.
Sensitivity is better in RCA, thanks to the 6DS4 low noise triode nuvistor used as the rf amp.
RCA will be critisized for using the lousy 6GH8 which is nothing but trouble. Zeniths tend to be pretty good with tubes, unless its a 6JU8 quad diode in color sets.

Basically, the best picture of all the sets in my collection go to my 1972 zenith 20CC50 20" table set with steel cabinet construction. Outstanding picture quality, excellent color tones. This tv is my daily watcher, and has been since april of 03. This zenith has none of the other complaints I mentioned , it has a turret tuner, gyro drive UHF (quick smooth UHF tuning, on a flywheel). illuminated dials. I would say it would be hard to beat the picture on this tv with anything else of the tube type/hybrid sets.

When I was doing tv repair 20 years ago, The most common junk sets were the cheap japanese tube portables.
The customers would never go for repairs on them or they would be beyond economical repair and we would have to toss them out.
The RCA and Magnavox sets that came in with lots of hours on them were pretty much toast. I remember when replacing tubes sometimes the board would break from the slight pressure of plugging the tube in.
Remember, These tv's were already 10 and 15 years old and actually gave great service for being used everyday.
The sony sets had a super picture when new, But went downhill pretty quick on the crt emission, Not to mention the scr issues with them.
Zenith sets in my opinion were built for the long run. Even 36 years later after minor repairs they still perform great! If you have one of their sets with the "super gold video guard tuner" all you need to do on that after three decades is wipe the contacts clean! Zenith to me is the winner on longevity.
My favorite however, is the much hated "works in a drawer" sets by Motorola. Yes, Many were tossed but if repaired and set up properly last for years. Don't forget, Their last models had a switching power supply starting in '72 which was quite advanced at the time and most tv guys back then did not understand them and did not want to deal with them repair wise.
Now practically all sets use them.

Oops!! Major omission on my part. Got distracted at lunch today while I was typing my last post. From about 1989 to approx 1994 I did some work for a Magnavox dealer/servicer. Anyone here ever repair a late 80's to early 90's Magnavox rear projection TV? From a reliability standpoint those things had to be the WORST EVER electronics I've worked on. The power supply module and the deflection module in those sets had tons of metal stake feed thru connections to connect the copper traces on the top and bottom sides of the PC board. Just about every one of the feed thru connections would fail. These sets were going out right and left before the warranty ever run out. Some of them that were out of warranty had already been serviced several times. Can you imagine how upset customers were after paying $1,000 to as much as $2,500 for one of these projections sets only to have it break down every time you turned around? The replacement boards weren't cheap either. They sold for around $150 to $175 each. I usually got stuck doing the service calls on these sets, so many times I had to face the wrath of an upset customer. We lost some good customers because of those junky things. After awhile, the owner was giving irate customers the number to Philips headquarters to direct their complaints to. I know Philips ate quite a few of those modules for our customers just to smooth things over. I think it took 2 or 3 years or maybe more before Philips finally redesigned the modules of it's projection TVs to have a single sided circuit board. The Magnavox C6 chassis with the failure of those square blue caps that would burn a hole in the circuit board and also the C6,C7,C8 and C9 chassis that would have a cascade failure in the switch mode power supply were pretty bad too.

Geez I've never posted in the TV forum before but here's my .02. My favourite TV is the 36" flatscreen Panasonic in my livingroom and my most hated TV is the 10 yr old JVC 29" in my basement. It has these stupid vertical lines on the top of the screen which are the reason I have the above mentioned Panny upstairs. My 20" flatscreen Zenith in the bedroom probably has the best picture of any TV in my house though.

I must say, I don't understand the lore of the old TV's. I can remember what my parents RCA XL100 looked like and that set couldn't hold a candle to any of my newer sets.

Mike

As far as myself and family, We watch a Panasonic flat screen upstairs and a 1997 36" RCA in the game room downstairs.
I most likely collect the old sets because I used to repair them and liked how they were easily serviceable. In my office downstairs, I switch off as to what "oldie" I use. Right now it is a 1966 Zenith roundie I got from Kam with a new crt, It has an excellent picture, Just no remote and osd. For my use, Simpler is better!

ProAC Fan,
You might want to check the electrolytics in the vertical section of your JVC. Japanese sets seem to have a problem with electrolytic caps drying out and causing problems.

Jeff

Thanks punk rock dude and if I had the slightest clue as to what the hell that was I would do that.


Mike

The tube-powered Zeniths I had 30+ years ago (trash-day finds) were great, in my opinion. From my K-2739, a 23-inch b&w console from 1963, to my Zenith SC300 19" b&w portable (1969), every Zenith I've ever owned has been trouble-free and worked great from the moment I turned them on after bringing them home. The K2739 Zenith needed all new tubes, but it was worth it, as the first time I switched it on after installing the last new tube, it worked very well. Very nice picture on rabbit ears on all three VHF channels from Cleveland, and even better when I used the attic antenna. The SC300 portable, which I found in the trash in my hometown in 1977, worked well as soon as I plugged it in and turned it on, and continued to do so for a year until the horizontal-output tube went gassy. Couldn't find a replacement, so I put the set in my basement and bought a new Zenith 12" solid-state portable. That little guy lasted me 22 years, worked like a champ all that time, and never once required service! The detent mechanism of the UHF channel selector broke and jammed on one channel as well after a few years, but that's not why I got rid of the TV; in fact, I used it as a computer monitor for about five years after getting my first color set (a Zenith, followed by another varactor-tuned 13-incher of the same make) in the early '80s. I'd still have the 12" b&w today, but when I moved to my apartment in 1999, I kept the set a year, then threw it out. The reason was I already had (and still have) two color sets in the apartment; there is no more room for other TVs, as my place is very small.

Speaking of early RCA TVs with many years on them (as one person mentioned earlier in this thread), I can relate to the PC-board problems these sets would develop after a few years and lots of viewing time. I had a 1964 Sears-Silvertone roundie in the early '70s (you guessed it, another trash day find) which worked quite well after a couple of minor repairs. However, in 1973, I had to replace the video output tube (6AW8). The replacement had a pin that was bent ever so slightly, so I had trouble getting it into the socket. I pressed down on the tube and, about ten seconds later, heard a sickening crunch as the tube socket broke out of the board and fell to the bottom of the set.

I brought out a 1961 Philco b&w 19-inch portable, put it atop the (now ruined) color set, and used it the next two years until I moved back to my hometown. However, when I bought my first new color set in 1979 (again, a solid-state 13" Zenith), I kept my hands out of it. I replaced it with a Zenith 13" varactor-tuned portable some two years later (because I wanted a set with electronic tuning--my first 13" Zenith was still working at the time) and put the first one in the basement. Kept my hands out of the backs of both TVs, as I know next to nothing about solid-state TV repair (like Carmine, I am no TV repair expert; I limited my servicing activities to tube swapping and minor component replacement in my tube-powered sets, and stayed strictly out of the three solid-state sets I owned). As a result, both solid-state color sets ran for years with no problems whatsoever.

I don't have either of those small sets anymore, as they were put out for the trash before I moved. :( Too bad, because both sets worked, and well, at the time. However, I had no say in the matter. If anyone wants to know exactly why those two perfectly good sets were discarded, please send me a PM and I'll explain the whole thing.

As far as Thomson-built RCA TV sets are concerned, IMO, they will work trouble-free for years once the OB tuner problems are corrected. My 1999 XL-100, which I purchased new, is a case in point. Had some problems with the tuner in the beginning, but after those were corrected the set gave absolutely no trouble and hasn't yet. I use it a lot, especially in the winter (it's my daily watcher) and like its automatic picture-correction circuits (auto color, black stretch, black lock, etc.) as well. This set has a beautiful picture on cable (antennas don't work well in the small town where I live--too far [45 miles] away from the transmitters of the seven Cleveland TV stations) and works well with my VCR as well. Now that the OB tuner problems have been corrected, this set works every bit as well as my Zeniths (and a few older RCAs I had) ever did. I expect it to last a long time now.

BTW, the CRT issues in the RCAs seem to have been corrected as well. I was looking at some earlier posts here on AK yesterday, and read one from a member who seemed to think that the quality of RCA CRTs actually improved when the company was sold to Thomson. If this is in fact true, I believe it. The dark-tint CRTs in today's RCAs and Zeniths (the latter, when Zenith was still an American company based in Chicago, used these tubes in their Chromacolor II sets of 1970s vintage, but the quality of those tubes went down the drain in a hurry when GS bought out Zenith and moved the company offshore) produce much better pictures (blacker blacks, whiter whites, better colors) than their predecessors with gray or green faceplates. I'd use a dark-tint tube to replace an older one any day in the year, provided the electrical characteristics (and screen sizes, of course) of the tubes were identical.

you forgot the ones on the convergence board!
if one of the supply voltages was lost that board goes off like july 4th fireworks.
and lets not forget the coolant that leaks,goes cloudy from bugs living in it,or turns to jello.


Originally posted by PUNK ROCK DUDE
Oops!! Major omission on my part. Got distracted at lunch today while I was typing my last post. From about 1989 to approx 1994 I did some work for a Magnavox dealer/servicer. Anyone here ever repair a late 80's to early 90's Magnavox rear projection TV? From a reliability standpoint those things had to be the WORST EVER electronics I've worked on. The power supply module and the deflection module in those sets had tons of metal stake feed thru connections to connect the copper traces on the top and bottom sides of the PC board. Just about every one of the feed thru connections would fail. These sets were going out right and left before the warranty ever run out. Some of them that were out of warranty had already been serviced several times. Can you imagine how upset customers were after paying $1,000 to as much as $2,500 for one of these projections sets only to have it break down every time you turned around? The replacement boards weren't cheap either. They sold for around $150 to $175 each. I usually got stuck doing the service calls on these sets, so many times I had to face the wrath of an upset customer. We lost some good customers because of those junky things. After awhile, the owner was giving irate customers the number to Philips headquarters to direct their complaints to. I know Philips ate quite a few of those modules for our customers just to smooth things over. I think it took 2 or 3 years or maybe more before Philips finally redesigned the modules of it's projection TVs to have a single sided circuit board. The Magnavox C6 chassis with the failure of those square blue caps that would burn a hole in the circuit board and also the C6,C7,C8 and C9 chassis that would have a cascade failure in the switch mode power supply were pretty bad too.