tv beta guy
05-23-2006, 10:19 PM
*delurks* :)
Lots of interesting new TV scores from everyone lately.
I just had a nice score over the weekend. My one supervisor from my previous job sent me an email last week about this Zenith color console his mother-in-law wants to get rid of. It was mine for free.
I'm kind of excited as this is my first Zenith Chromacolor II. Now I see why everyone says how good those picture tubes are. 23", from August 1977. A little newer than what I was hoping for when he first told me about it, but still a pretty awesome TV. This is the first console I've had in 8 years as well.
I spent a couple hours Saturday working on it. It was barely watchable when I got it. Picture kept glitching, very out of focus, convergence needing realigned, background levels needed set, vertical height was shrunk, etc.
I reseated every module in the TV, which took care of the majority of the problems. Then I had to touch up all the vertical size, convergence, greyscale, and focus.
One thing is, when I first turned it on, it wasn't very bright. Focus was marginal. I adjusted focus, and I got it to its proper position, which still wasn't very sharp. After letting the TV play all day, the tube woke up and got nice and bright and sharp.
All that's currently wrong with it is the pilot lamp behind the tuner is burned out, and when you turn the Color Sentry button on, it dims the picture almost all the way on the contrast. For now I'll just leave it that feature off until I get another chance to work on it.
She also had all the paperwork, including the original tags that were on the front of the TV, and all the manuals and tuner number inserts. If anyone is interested in seeing those, I can put them up online, but I left the pictures full resolution and put them into a pdf file, so it is rather large.
Also, while fooling around, I had my camera out and recorded it. I was playing mostly early-mid 80s commercials I put on DVD from Beta most of the day, and some other odd stuff. Video (http://home.comcast.net/~tv_beta_guy/zenith2.avi) The first part of the video was when I had my laptop hooked to the TV. It was this subtitled Japanese anime Kaiketsu Zorori I downloaded. I left it in this video as it really shows how good of a picture this set has. The latter part was recorded around Christmas of '86 on CBS I had on Beta.
Lots of interesting new TV scores from everyone lately.
I just had a nice score over the weekend. My one supervisor from my previous job sent me an email last week about this Zenith color console his mother-in-law wants to get rid of. It was mine for free.
I'm kind of excited as this is my first Zenith Chromacolor II. Now I see why everyone says how good those picture tubes are. 23", from August 1977. A little newer than what I was hoping for when he first told me about it, but still a pretty awesome TV. This is the first console I've had in 8 years as well.
I spent a couple hours Saturday working on it. It was barely watchable when I got it. Picture kept glitching, very out of focus, convergence needing realigned, background levels needed set, vertical height was shrunk, etc.
I reseated every module in the TV, which took care of the majority of the problems. Then I had to touch up all the vertical size, convergence, greyscale, and focus.
One thing is, when I first turned it on, it wasn't very bright. Focus was marginal. I adjusted focus, and I got it to its proper position, which still wasn't very sharp. After letting the TV play all day, the tube woke up and got nice and bright and sharp.
All that's currently wrong with it is the pilot lamp behind the tuner is burned out, and when you turn the Color Sentry button on, it dims the picture almost all the way on the contrast. For now I'll just leave it that feature off until I get another chance to work on it.
She also had all the paperwork, including the original tags that were on the front of the TV, and all the manuals and tuner number inserts. If anyone is interested in seeing those, I can put them up online, but I left the pictures full resolution and put them into a pdf file, so it is rather large.
Also, while fooling around, I had my camera out and recorded it. I was playing mostly early-mid 80s commercials I put on DVD from Beta most of the day, and some other odd stuff. Video (http://home.comcast.net/~tv_beta_guy/zenith2.avi) The first part of the video was when I had my laptop hooked to the TV. It was this subtitled Japanese anime Kaiketsu Zorori I downloaded. I left it in this video as it really shows how good of a picture this set has. The latter part was recorded around Christmas of '86 on CBS I had on Beta.