Quote:
Originally Posted by julianburke
Contrary to popular belief, Zenith did build a quality set BUT that's not the main reason they built them like that. They were expensive and labor intensive to manufacture because they were too cheap to upgrade their facilities! They did too little to late to upgrade and this is the main reason they went out of business sooner than they should have. Zenith always shouted "QUALITY AND HAND BUILT" but no one else was doing this in the competitive market. Julian
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This was mentioned before, and I don't know if I buy it. Seems to me that Zenith didn't skimp on the R&D money, afterall they gave us a lot of great radio innovations, ever-smaller & better hearing aids, and in the TV world:
Wireless Remote Control
Phone-o-vison (ok, that didn't catch on)
Chromacolor CRTs
Stereo TV (I think)
...didn't they also have a "better" color demod circuit?
And when they finally went to PC boards, the chassis were still tanks.
They were also the number 2 set maker, so being as how they must have been pretty profitable, I'm sure they could have gone to PC boards and made even more cash by cheapening the sets and laying-off a lot of solderers!