Time after time I would go on service calls in the early 's on color sets and it was evident that most customers had little skill in both setting up picture controls as well as having an acceptable signal source. I would see pink faces, bright green gray scale, ghosting and any number of problems that were common back then. I'm sure most dealers didn't tell customers that those sets needed periodic attention.

These problems were pretty consistent up until the manufacturers stepped in and added things like auto deguassing, vir, and pretty made the sets fool proof some for most people they were able to achieve reasonable results.

To me a lot of these problems contributed to the opinion that color tv's were not able to produce a good color picture and color was not ready for prime time. I'm sure if any of us would have been a color customer in the 50's or early 60's we could have shown some pretty jaw dropping pictures.

i saw plenty of jaw dropping pictures back in the service days.from the early 15 inch roundies to the 21 inch,23v and 25v sets.i remember the first zenith color roundie.a knockout picture!then came the chromacolors and sylvania gt sets.this was the pinnacle era in my opinion.customers would fiddle with everything.most of our service calls were just simple adjustments.once we replaced a crt in a table model set.when it was delivered,we immediatly got a call back.the picture was upside down.i went back with a tech and we flipped the whole set over.she was quite pleased until she realized that it wasnt right.tech straightened it all out by turning the yoke and setting it up again.customer was laughing like crazy over our little joke.she never forgot and told this story to everybody she knew

I used to freak out people and customers by turning the picture upside down or mirror image simply by reversing the deflection yoke leads on early roundie color sets. Of course the yokes had plug in connectors back then.

My Mom had the opinion that color tv was not good for you, would kill you if you sat too
close, and generally just was not ready for home use. I use to always watch color in awe
at Sears like most folks back then.... I don't know if they all had B&W, but back in the
early 70's lots of people stood there watching tv in the store, for an hour or more....

Well we didn't get a color set till '76 it was a 15" sears set made by Sanyo. One button
color, AFT, cruise, automatic PS and radials.... It worked flawlessly for over 14 years.
it was also our first transistor set.... Mom use to want to unplug it at night because
it came on instantly....

In those years before our first color set, once in a while I would bring home a color
floor model, fix it, and keep it in the patio where we would watch it for a few hours now and then.

My first one had a not too bright 23EGP22, and I still thought it had quite a good
picture, and I also found that even with no auto color the set did not need regular
fiddln' with to have a really good picture for weeks on end, and from channel to channel...
I think the fiddlers had more trouble than those who did not fiddle.....
And a properly set up tv did have a really good picture....


.

i saw plenty of jaw dropping pictures back in the service days.from the early 15 inch roundies to the 21 inch,23v and 25v sets.i remember the first zenith color roundie.a knockout picture!then came the chromacolors and sylvania gt sets.this was the pinnacle era in my opinion.customers would fiddle with everything.most of our service calls were just simple adjustments.once we replaced a crt in a table model set.when it was delivered,we immediatly got a call back.the picture was upside down.i went back with a tech and we flipped the whole set over.she was quite pleased until she realized that it wasnt right.tech straightened it all out by turning the yoke and setting it up again.customer was laughing like crazy over our little joke.she never forgot and told this story to everybody she knew


Better then that change the yellow yoke leads and make the lettering show up in reverse.

...

I remember going over to a friends house in '72...they still had a B&W set. His dad said his MIL had a color set and the picture "was simply just awful!". We later went over to the grandmother's house...she was watching a game show...and the picture, indeed, was dreadful. I asked her "if I may, can I adjust your set for you, please?" "Oh, yes!"
I turned the contrast way down, adjusted the color, adjusted the antenna rotor and fine tuning and made a 100% improvement on the picture. She was delighted. I later told the dad to go over and check the picture out. He bought a new color set later that year.

I remember reading in one of the Sam's books advising TV repair sales and service people, when delivering and setting up a new color TV, to include the children of the house when telling the customer how to adjust the set. As kids usually remembered better.

Better then that change the yellow yoke leads and make the lettering show up in reverse.

Those were the blue and red leads.
Years ago, there was some firm selling kits, to make a large screen projection set from a 13" portable color set. The instructions stated that yoke leads, on both the horizontal and vertical coils.
I saw one built, it didn't impress me. :sigh:

When ever we delivered a new color set we would take the time to show the new owner how to set up for a normal picture. Unfortunately sometimes it went in one ear and out the other. It really wasn't until they started adding auto chroma controls that even the technically challenged were able to receive and acceptable picture.

I don't think much has changed. Most people seem to leave their modern TVs set to the factory defaults (usually much too much contrast with too much color). The only difference is that the signals are very consistent, and there are no knobs to bump, so you don't see purple/green faces.


No it hasn't, when Hd started to take off customers would hear buzz words like 720, 1080 and contrast ratio having little or no clue as to what those were and how it pertained to them. Sometimes I just gave up because your never going to convince some know-it-alls. I had two guys get mad at me because Sony didn't produce contrast ratios on their sets.

So much of a set's setup is subjective - I know several people that have colorblindness - not the usual kind, but a form where their "rods and cones" ain't where they should be. They like the yellow or green picture that most of us would want to adjust away. With the wide variance of how we all perceive color, I imagine that we'd all set them up to a different picture.

I was the kid on service calls that held the mirror - dad would adjust grayscale from the back of the set, so I didn't see how it was done at a young age - I got the skills much later. Dad set them up kinda bluish - I was told I set them up more purplish. The customers would always praise the way dad left the set, and he instructed many a kid on how to set up the color and tint/hue/chromix/fleshtone controls. It seems many of the older customers were technophobes and wanted their kid to be the one making the adjustments.

Convergence and purity setup made so much more difference than gray scale, at least to me. You always had the customer's set with the bad degaussing nickel, with the pinkish patches in the sky. Fix the degaussing, give the nickel a blast of Freez-Mist, and turn the set back on. Customers were amazed at the difference. We had labels made that went on the TV power cord that read something like "if the set is moved to another location and the colors aren't right, give us a call" - Dad would get a service call outta that to reset the purity.

HDTV? Yeah, mine stayed on the default/reset settings for a while, until I read the manual. 13 pages of instruction on how to setup a custom picture and save the profile. Still more about the Movie/Dynamic/Action/Sport features that had to be understood. I wish there was a way to set the mode by channel - two or three channels have color saturation beyond 100%, and I find I have to back off on the color on those channels. I use the dynamic setting for most viewing, and the movie mode for Blurays/DVDs. Probably all wrong, but I like it, so it works for me!

Cheers,

oh give me good old sliders or knobs any day... the digital tvs seem such a pain to adjust... mine needs to be adjusted for PAL and NTSC black levels.. and since it has settins for each input (HDMI coposite etc I use them to manage this) but crazy

I had an elderly Aunt that had what seem to remember as an early Sony trinitron. After a few years it has drifted a bit and badly needed some small touch up adjustments for color and tint. The flesh was getting a little purple and the color saturation was getting a little strong.

But she absolutely refused to let me touch it. She treated the front panel user controls as sacred and insisted they must be left where they were originally. She would only touch the volume and channel controls. The set stayed that way until the day she died.

Did RCA manufacture their own color TV cabinets in the 50's and 60's, or did they ship them out to furniture manufactures such as Drexel, Thomasville?

I don't have any first-hand knowledge but I believe the cabinets were made by RCA. I have seen an old RCA promotional film on Youtube that showed various steps in TV manufacturing, including cabinetmaking and finishing. I don't recall the date of the film; the cabinet styles seemed typical of the mid- to late 1950s.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Kind of a long shot, but RCA did acquired a complete cabinet division when they bought Victor. Victor made their "furniture". Perhaps at one time the Camden facilities were used to produce cabinets for many products, including TV receivers. :scratch2:
Kevin