My flea market friend picked up a 27" '93 Zenith "new horizons" motel set out of the trash. It has the standard 75 ohm coax input, a theft alarm jack, and RCA inputs. Much to my surprise, the TV actually produces a very watchable picture; but, I can't get it off of channel 3. The menu buttons on the set are locked. I have a Zenith universal remote that will bring up the menu; but, it won't let me autoprogram the channels. When I try to enter the channels via the remote keypad, the TV goes back to channel 3. I tried to access a service menu by pressing 9-8-7-6-enter on the remote; but, that did nothing. I'm guessing this is one of those sets that requires a special remote to program the set. I ran into that with two Magnavox sets once. I had to track down someone at one of the local motels to program the sets for me.

Does anyone know a way I can program this Zenith without spending a bunch of money on a special remote?

...

I fixed it. I forgot that the menu button had to be pressed and held until the menu disappeared before entering 9-8-7-6-enter. Once I got into the service menu, I turned off the front keypad lock and the channel lock. It now works like any other TV. I did check the CRT just for fun. The red reads in the low end of the "good" range and the blue and green read "on the fence" between good and bad. I decided not to rejuvenate the tube since it made a watchable picture since rejuvenation often makes these tubes worse.

Yep, what is it with red? That Zenith I sold awhile back, I had to turn the red gun up to its maximum output, and still red was a bit weak.

Heh. Hotel mode. A buddy of mine told me a story about pranking an appliance shop by putting all the Zenith sets in Hotel mode to default to some weird channel and a high volume level. Most salesmen would probably not know how to take it out of hotel mode.