Color tv sets in Cuba
 

As far as I know, in 1959 in Cuba, a few month before the victory of the revolution, color tv was introduced. Anyone haves any ideea what sets they exported there?

Odds are RCA or a clone. Zenith wasnt in color yet. RCA was
a huge company & had everything to do it from content ( NBC )
though the TV. In the CRT days 40% to 50% of TV's were split
between Zenith & RCA evenly. Zenith always sold a few more
both color & B&W. Big rivalry.

73 Zeno:smoke:

LFOD !

Admiral had a big presence there! Possibly, other firms that sold re-badged RCA's were also sold there. The sets were sold before the US put a trade restriction on Cuba. They sold Soviet-built sets a little later. It looked like they were all B/W.
IDK if they went digital yet. They're still NTSC. :scratch2:

I think by 59 the only ones left who built the color set that bore their name were RCA and Motorola. Pretty sure the other brands took a hiatus until around 1963.
IIRC 58 was a recession and there may have been leftover 58 colors sold in 59.

In my mom's basement is the remains of our first color TV - 1959 Admiral with the RCA built CTC11 (definitely not a clone). Unfortunately, the chassis was used elsewhere and the tube is strangely missing (it went soft which is why we replaced it with a '77 XL-100) - maybe dad needed a suitable dud/core for credit on a broken neck replacement.

I wonder if there were enough vacuum tubes left there to keep any running as long as the jugs held out.

John

There is a surprising amount and detail of information about both early TV in general and color in particular in Cuba available online, though all of it is in Spanish.

Some high points:

- RCA owned the market there, though Admiral, Philco, and Zenith were very active marketing and selling sets

- color broadcasts began on March 19, 1958 on Channel 12. It was the second color station in the world outside the US.

- RCA basically owned all parts of the TV industry in Cuba: they built the equipment, set the standards, content, etc. It was NTSC of course. In those days there was nothing else. I would assume they were RCA sets used for watching.

- NBC set up an affiliate there called Televisión Habanera that broadcast American programming in English along with locally-produced Spanish-language programming. They launched the channel with a special edition of the Jack Paar show live from Havana.

- There is a low-quality capture of another special broadcast of the Steve Allen show on Havana TV here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epvLDIOVpFY

- There is a great picture of a priest blessing the RCA color transmitter in the linked blog post

- Telecolor, the NTSC broadcaster went bust and disappeared from the air about the time everything else went to hell in the country.

- Color TV didn't return to Cuba until 1975, using NEC equipment broadcasting NTSC.

There is a massive, well-written blog post here: http://elblogdepedrazaginori.blogspo...gia-y-sus.html

And some additional information about how SECAM lost to NTSC here: https://cinecubanolapupilainsomne.wo...lsa-efemeride/

I don't know if the revolution is a victory! The Castro regime did improve life for a percentage of the population, but the wealthier population bailed out.
The movie, "Godfather II" had a rather historically correct segment of the Castro regime take-over.

Wait, Zenith Sold color TVs in Cuba in 1958?!..
If so, this peaks my interest, hard.
I have to wonder what the design of those sets were and why they didn't offer them in the USA.
It's well known among collectors in the US that Zenith did a tremendous amount of technical development on color up to 1954 and built a variety of prototypes demonstration sets (they were also involved in medical closed circuit field sequential color before this), but did not sell any sets to the public in the USA before the 1961 (62 model year) 29JC20.
If they did sell color sets in Cuba I have to wonder what chassis they were...Left over 1954 43M20 demonstration sets, an early version of the 29JC20, or something completely different?...Say an in-between design or maybe they had consumerized a medical closed circuit color set. As I understand it 1958 is when medical closed circuit color which had existed as field sequential since the late 40s transitioned to NTSC...I don't know when Zenith got out of medical color, but if they stayed in until the late 50s they may have had a production medical market NTSC chassis to modify.

Can you point to where anything says that Zenith sold color sets in Cuba in 1958? I think you misread or are jumping to conclusions.

Zenith certainly never sold any demo chassis to the public anywhere. Those test sets were built strictly as lab chassis so that whole sections could be replaced by one-off experimental designs. The ones that survived are probably similar but different from each other in details, and certainly would not have gone into even limited production.

Also, as far as I know, Zenith had nothing to do with the NTSC medical systems; I believe their involvement stopped with the field-sequential monitors.

The only prototype Zenith color set I heard of is the one in John Folsom's possession! I understand, it was bought from a Zenith design engineer.
It also had a Zenith prototype 15" round CRT! :scratch2:

No, the Zenith, Admiral and Philco sets were pre-color, and flooded into the market right after broadcasting started. There a few ads in that blog post - they're US B&W sets. It doesn't specifically mention any color receiver brands, but RCA had their grubby hands all over everything by then thus my assumption that they would have been the only receivers available.

All the publicity seems to be identical to the stuff I have seen that Zenith used in Spain around the same time, though by the time color broadcast started here they were selling their lobotomized NTSC sets that worked with PAL broadcasts.

Did you ever hear about TV Marti? It was the TV version of Radio Marti. It was an experiment to broadcast to Cuba from a balloon. It was on the air from 3 to 6 am.
Unfortunately it came to an end when the tether broke loose. I understand most of the equipment (built by Harris) was salvaged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-0e3ba74ce888/

Oh yeah, that was another fun waste of taxpayer dollars…

Hi all!

believe it or not, I have an old add-folder from a TV shop from Cuba.
It is signed with name and adress of the shop in Havana.
Just the adds of Color TVs made me wondering.......:scratch2:

Have to check, where it is.....:worried:

Regards,
TV-collector :stupid:

Well, scan them and post those ads.
I'm surprised Cuba didn't go with SECAM as other Communist bloc countries did at the time. It would only be too easy to rig an antenna and watch Miami only 90 miles away (and across water)!
AM radio is alive and well here. There are 4 AM talk stations here that talk about politics all day! And private short wave stations have popped up all over the country.