Why even in 1976-1982 color tv where still expensive for people from USA?
 

Why even in 1976-1982 color tv where still expensive for people from USA?
I've read (even around here) that some people could only afford a color set only after 1976, and some get one only in 1978-1982 + a 2nd color set was expensive for a lot of pepople. Where price so big? Did it count that most people from U.S.A. had to invest in car so there where less money left for an tv set?

It was just a more expensive technology than a B&W set.

Realistically, most people bought color at that time, only the very poor, or old people (who didn't want color, for whatever reason). As a 2nd set, B&W was good for the kids or the kitchen, though. Lot of those little tv/radio B&W sets were sold for that purpose.

If I recall, 1976 was the point where color set sales in the US exceeded 50% of all TV sales. But remember that there were already multiple TV households, and also, the US was going through economic headaches at the time too - money was tight in the 70's.

You also had households like my parents, where the main TV was a color set, but the color crapped out on it due to whatever (bad tube? We never did get it fixed), but we kept it till it died anyway.

According to wikipedia the year color sales exceeded monochrome was in 1972. I thought it was during the color boom of '67, but was wrong too.

One could potentially obtain a used color set cheaper than a comparable new monochrome set by the early to mid 60's, the catch being it probably needed work, and once fixed would cost some money to maintain unless you knew enough to fix it yourself. By the late 60's one could probably find a working used color set cheaper than a comparable new monochrome set.

Tube color sets did tend to have noticeably lower reliability than tube monochrome. Many thrifty TV owners/families avoided color till solid state because they did not want to pay for maintenance....There were adds my several makers trying to convince monochrome buyers that their new chassis was as reliable as monochrome.

You couldn't buy a job into the 1980's and if you did it was minimum wage which I think was a little over $3/hr. Gas was very high compared to wages too. I cant remember for sure what year it got better but I think about 1983.

Also you dont miss what you never had, and those with B&W did not miss color as they never had one. I think we had 3 working B&W's before we got a color, a 1982 RCA.

My parents lived paycheck to paycheck in the early 70's; as a baby we lived in an old farmhouse that cost them $40/month rent. They had a new color console TV. Many of their friends & relatives were in the same boat. But my grandfather? Heck, he could have bought not the color TV but the whole store, real estate and all. His set, into the early 80's, was a 15" b/w. One year for Christmas my grandmother received a new electric dryer as a gift from all her children, so she wouldn't have to use the clothesline. He made her return it because it would use too much electric. Some folks, you see, are just plain cheap!

In 1981-86, I recall unpacking & delivering RCA XL/Colortrak 19", Magnavox T809's and GE 10AC's to folks in their 70s-80s, who only had BW sets. Of course most were already on cable in the town.

Most of the Sony buyers were the more affluent folks, who specifically bought small-screen color for "the den" never the living room, as they were way too high-brow for thier TV to be so obvious.

Go look thought the old store catalogs at http://www.wishbookweb.com/the-catalogs/ and look at the TVs.They were not cheap then .$495 bucks for a console maybe $350 for a 19 inch set was common then.

Some 19 inch sets out of Sears 1977 Wishbook.

http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1977_Sears_Wishbook/#626

1980 JCP catalog

http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1980_J...s_Catalog/#564


From the money site below : A set valued at $500 bucks in 1978 to todays value is $1,480.00 to $3,950.00. A good size flat screen for that kind of money you could get today.

https://www.measuringworth.com/uscom...ativevalue.php

Alittle off topic but a treat .How many bedrooms had these plastered over the walls.Yours truly did.LOL. OK stop drooling over your keyboards,Smartphones or Ipads.LOL..................................... .

http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1977_Sears_Wishbook/#374

Something went askew when you tried to copy the catalog links so I fixed 'em up for ya. :thmbsp: Hey, my '74 Sanyo has a remote like the one in the '77 catalog.

Lol, TRITE! That's nowhere near my ideal, and besides, I'm no Ashton Kutcher. Actually that would be a lot worse, she was born several years before my mom.

TVs used to be considered expensive, growing up in a middle class family, we only had one TV, and it was nearly 20 years old before it was retired. Also, there was a group of people who had only ever had black and white, and wanted the new one to be the same. I heard the justification that black and white is cheaper to repair, well into the 80s.

Thanks Jon for fixing the links.

But couldn't you get an black and white set as the 2nd tv in the house?

In Romania in the '90's tv's where expensive (color ones). But you wished you could have more and good ones. No you can have, but most of the programs are unwatcheble (= pice of crap).

I remember in early 1983, we were looking for a new color TV console. We went to Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh (A local department store, my grandfather worked for them fixing appliances, they were later bought out by Macy's and then that store was closed a few years ago) and we were looking at a 1983 model Zenith System 3 for $650. It had a keypad for channel changing but a knob for volume. I did spot one for $550 and it had remote control and was able ready, the reason for the $100 discount was it was a 1982 model they wanted to clear out so we bought it. As many know here, I still us it to this very day and in fact, it is on now.

Yes. In mid '70's a cheap 12" B&W could be had for <$80. A Zenith
was about $110.
Color started at $200 for a GE 10/11" portacolor or $270 for an
18/19" GE. Most homes had a console color in the living room &
a B&W bedroom set that got carried around. By the 80's small colors
took over the adult places & the kids had 12" B&W's. Soon most
kids had color too !
B&W sets faded away starting with the big ones leaving only 12" & under.
Most were for battery use etc.

Not only Romania but we suffered with crap TV but since our TV
was not government ( except PBS) there was some very good shows also.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I think the issue isn't about "why were they so expensive back then but why are they so cheap today" Case in point: If you purchase a big box store HDTV today and it fails within the guarantee period, The factory will ship you a new set vs fixing your old set. The only way this can be profitable is if the cost to build a new set is cheaper that the cost of fixing it in the home market. The only way this can happen is through the "dark magic" for foreign currency exchange where 1 hour of labor of a person in China is only worth a small fraction of a hour of labor from someone from the EU or USA.
Just my opinion,

I was thinking about the way some prices constantly increase while others remain dormant or drop, with none of this indexed for inflation. Cars have continously risen in cost but then, look at how much you get! A new Chevrolet of the mid-30's might be outdone in options by the average golf cart these days. Meanwhile, Sears is running a radio ad this week for a $269 washing machine. Sure, you can spend a lot more, but at the bottom end washers & dryers have been stagnant for a l-o-n-g time. Continous cost-cutting, & then finding at last that even big, bulky things like major appliances can be shipped around the world cheap enough to build them in China.

My dad was too cheap (frugal) to even buy a TV and grandma took pity on us after JFK's death in 1963 (and we were unable to watch the funeral proceedings), and bought us a Zenith 18" BW TV. I kept that set alive until 1974, when I finally "gave up" and told dad he was on his own. He splurged and bought a 25" Magnavox solid state console model, and I took the broken Zenith back to college with me, where I found a reasonably-priced TV shop that fixed it. Kept that old Zenith until '78 when I moved. One reason we didn't get color TV earlier was that we lived in a marginal signal area, and legend had it that color wouldn't "work" unless you had a pristine signal. The Magnavox worked fine on our attic antenna and lasted until the early 90's.

Interesting thread... Here in England it'd be the early/mid 1970's when colour TV's started to become popular, a lot were rented, some with a 50 pence coin meter on the back or side. My parents bought a Sony 18 inches colour set in 72 or 73, they got a free Elizabetan T12 B/W TV free. (I've still got it) The Sony cost just over 200 pounds, you can buy a new flat screen TV from Aldi for 179 pounds (about 210 dollars) today. Last time I saw a B/W as someones main TV would be early 80's. A thing putting a lot of people off colour TV was the more expensive colour TV licence, it was (still is) about 3 times the cost of a B/W one...

Is the color licence only for one set, as many people have more than one TV.
I know, the TV licence subsidizes BBC programing.
Some people might disagree with me but the BBC has some excellent programing. PBS shows much of their best. :thmbsp:

LOL! Friends of mine had a 19" Sony....they thought 25" consoles were tacky and vulgar. :D

I grew up exactly like that, ours was a 20" Sony, first in the den, then the basement. I still feel like there's something a little wrong about the Panasonic plasma in my living room!

The Sony consoles are heavy buggers too, anyone collecting those should try to get hold of an engine hoist, especially if they get hold of a KV-3000.

The Freelings were up to their necks in Sony sets, and even their neighbors had one. Their respective living room sets also had the most unique ability to be able to respond to Zenith Space Command 600Z clickers.

I guess we were trashy, we had a GE console in the living room!

There are probably many different answers to your question.

1) From 1973 to 1982, there were many changes in the economy in the USA, and many homes/families did not have extra money to choose color TV after they paid for food, rent, and other expenses. (Yes, many times a car was needed, but many families such as mine did not have a car, either.)

2) Even in the 1970s, color TV sets often needed repairs more often than most other home possessions, or people believed that they needed repairs often, so many people kept their black-and-white sets because of fear of repair costs. This fear would stop many people from buying a used color TV and instead buy a new B&W TV set again.

3) This comment is valid also:
Even portable color TV sets were "big" compared to black-and-white sets with the same size screen, so a color TV would be more conspicuous and many people did not like that.

In my family, we never had a color TV set together, but my mother and her sister's family joined money and bought a new Hitachi 19-inch color set for my grandmother (their mother) in 1974 for US$420. My brother bought a 19-inch Sony in 1977 when he was 20 years old for US$490, then I bought my own 19-inch Sony in 1979 when I was 19 years old, for US$450.

The TV licence covers a house/apt & you can have as many TV's as you want, we have 5 TV's = 3 colour & 2 B/W, one from 1972. You need a licence to watch or record any live TV & watch BBC i-player catch up service. You can watch ITV, channel's 4 & 5 catch up services & you tube/online films with no licence though..

I recall a visit to Great Britain in the late 70's, maybe there were only BB1,2 and ITV. The UHF Yagi antenna mountings varied with the odd chimneys and building structures yet were all pretty consistent. The different bands of UHF had their own specific antenna but all looked similar.

I was given by this one innkeeper an indoor, set top UHF antenna "Labgear", zig-zag helical with a 72 ohm push-on connector. It works as good as any other non-amplified indoor UHF I've tried, even with ATSC.

Yes the 1970's/80's UHF antennas all seemed to look the same, some were a bit longer in the few weak signal areas. When digital terrestrial TV fired up in the late 1990's/2000's the sales people would tell buyers their old antennas would no longer work & millions of people bought new ones. (including my in-laws, I was annoyed when I found out they'd paid 225 pounds for a new so called digital antenna) & now there are lots of antennas with 4 to 6 reflectors, a dipole & up to 10 X shaped directors. My old loft antenna works perfect on digital TV but the digital sales lady tried her best to get me to have a new antenna.

In 1982 a new channel called channel 4 fired up, although it didn't transmit on VHF channel 4, (BBC1 was on there till 1985) in my area it was confusingly on channels UHF 31 & 54. In 1997 channel 5 fired up, that was on UHF 37 from 2 distant TX's that interfered with each other, a year later it fired up on the local TX's on 34 & 35. We thought it was great to have 5 channels after so long with only 3. Now we have about 50 odd on digital freeview...

IMHO:
The Freelings were subject to creative product placement with Sony and the producers. ET also was the subject of creative product placement with Reese, Atari, Texas Instruments, and Kuwahara (bikes).

Natch, and even a Sony U-Matic was brought in to record the paranormal activity.