[Jeffhs]

I like that antique white RCA roundie console, but I have no room for anything that big in my very small apartment (not to mention antique white wouldn't match my furniture, even if I had the room). I have two TVs here, my RCA XL-100 19" which is my main set in the living room, and a Zenith Sentry 2 19" in my bedroom. The Zenith set works, but I don't use it much (except as a backup for the RCA). Both sets have remotes and are on cable (I live in a fringe area for Cleveland TV).

I also like those light-through channel selector knobs on the RCA console. I have had a liking for TVs with illuminated channel selector windows or knobs for as long as I can remember (about 30-some years ago, I had a 1963 Zenith 23-inch B&W console with a SpotLite channel selector knob). The Spotlite dials looked nice on Zenith TVs and other manufacturers' sets as well, but getting to the pilot light that illuminates the numerals so they project to the screen at the front of the knob can be a real problem. I think most set owners didn't even bother trying to replace the lamp when it eventually failed, or if they did have it replaced, they waited until something major went wrong with the set and had a service technician replace the bulb.

I like to think the OSD channel and time displays on all new and recent vintage color sets and cable converters are a modern replacement for those great old light-through dials. The nice thing about OSDs, IMO, is that, as I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there is no pilot light to go bad and need replacing every so often, depending on how much the set is used, of course.