Quote:
Originally Posted by AlanInSitges
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.
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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.