New Zealand made TV sets - Videokarma.org TV - Video

Glenz75 · #1 12-21-2009, 08:24 PM

Hi all, mainly come here to read about everyones TV stories and restoration projects and thought I'd post up some of my sets. These were all made in New Zealand.
The first lot of photos are my current project which is a 1964 Majestic 23 inch black and white. Its a 'work in progress', main problem being the line discriminator sync diodes were leaky giving poor horizontal sync and lack of vertical height caused by a weak valve. Some other valves in the video section have been replaced also, and theres still come caps/resistors to change. It gives a better picture now that it did originally and luckily the crt is ok.

The rest of the photos are just other sets in my collection all Philips and Pye black and whites, all 1960's.
Photo 4 in the next thread is and early colour set made by Philips circa 1974.

Enjoy.

Glen

Glenz75 · #2 12-21-2009, 08:32 PM

And here are the rest of the photos from the previous post...

jr_tech · #3 12-21-2009, 09:00 PM

Wow! Thanks for posting, These are cool looking sets

That flip out chassis looks like it would be easy to work on.

Were the CRTs made in New Zealand also? I noticed one CRT manufactured in Beaverton Oregon.

jr

Carmine · #4 12-21-2009, 09:22 PM

That's cool.. I like seeing vintage sets from exotic lands.

Glenz75 · #5 12-21-2009, 09:51 PM

Hi, thanks for the comment. Most of the CRTs were made here as fas as I know. The set I'm currently working on, if thats symbol you can half see on the right hand side on the back of the tube thats actually the AWA symbol which is Australian, so that tube may have come from Australia,as both our TV systems are PAL and 625 line.

G.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Wow! Thanks for posting, These are cool looking sets

That flip out chassis looks like it would be easy to work on.

Were the CRTs made in New Zealand also? I noticed one CRT manufactured in Beaverton Oregon.

jr

Glenz75 · #6 12-21-2009, 09:54 PM

Thanks!

I like seeing exotic sets too! I have never seen a colour set with tubes in it or anything older than 1960 as thats when TV first got going here in NZ and we only got colour in 1974!!
I love those early roundies and your 50's and 60's colour sets, they look great. Would like to see some of them in the flesh someday

G

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carmine

That's cool.. I like seeing vintage sets from exotic lands.

bgadow · #7 12-21-2009, 10:36 PM

I really enjoy seeing the Australian and New Zealand sets. Very much like ours...and yet very different. I think the chassis mounting is interesting on that Majestic. Looks like on table models it would have wrapped around the crt but since they had room they let it sit down bottom. Neat.

The Philips color sets are interesting to me because the cabinet style looks old fashioned compared to the set it contains. Different tastes in different countries, I guess.

Who owned Majestic when that set was made? I've seen the name on some Grundig sets. It seemed to have gotten traded around a bit after the old Grigbsy-Grunow company collapsed in the 1930s. One of the retired TV shop owners I know told me that the first sets he sold (probably in '54) were Majestic brand. Not sure who made them here.

Glenz75 · #8 12-22-2009, 12:34 AM

Hi Bryan,thanks for the comments.

Majestic was just a brand name that a company called Dominion TV and Radio in New Zealand used, which back then made tvs/radios/record players for the market. All of our brand names were probably borrowed from overseas sets. Some other brand names that were used on NZ TV's were Bell, Pye, Thorn, Ultimate, Dreco, Astor, Murphy, Fleetwood, Singer, Admiral, Lotus, Deep Image, Sanyo just to name a few, mostly taken from English brands.

G.

*zenithfan1* · #9 12-22-2009, 04:15 PM

They had some really cool looking sets in New Zealand, they look like a pleasure to work on too. Thanks for sharing!

Telecolor 3007 · #10 12-25-2009, 04:34 PM

Dind't know that in New Zeeland they made tv sets. The design of "Majestic" resembles of that of the Romanian tv's from the late '60's and '70's.

Sandy G · #11 12-25-2009, 08:30 PM

I wouldn't have thought that NZ had a large enuff population base to support a native electronics industry, let alone one as extensive as yours appeared to be...I guess the isolation worked FOR you in that respect...Interesting.

wa2ise · #12 12-25-2009, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I wouldn't have thought that NZ had a large enuff population base to support a native electronics industry, let alone one as extensive as yours appeared to be.

I was thinking this same thing too. Were some of these TVs exported to, say, Australia or elsewhere? That would fatten up the market.

AndrewM · #13 12-26-2009, 04:06 PM

In Australia we had our own well developed electronics industry so New Zealand did not get much of a chance to export here. I expect most if not all of the colour TV sets on the New Zealand market were based on chassis designed overseas. Is this correct Glen?

Glenz75 · #14 12-27-2009, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewM

In Australia we had our own well developed electronics industry so New Zealand did not get much of a chance to export here. I expect most if not all of the colour TV sets on the New Zealand market were based on chassis designed overseas. Is this correct Glen?

Hi Andrew, you are correct there, going from my knowledge about NZ set designs bearing in mind I wasn't even alive when the first Tvs were being made here (I'm 34) most of our sets were copied from an overseas chassis, especially Philips which were copied from Dutch sets.

Sanyo was manufactured here under lisence from Sanyo in Japan and NEC I believe was too. Pye probably was copied from the UK, I know Thorn here definetly was, I remember an old TV tech telling me how he moved to NZ for a better life and to get away from the early solid state troublesome colour Thorn sets he was servicing in the UK and he got here and they followed him! The same sets that gave him grief were being copied and manfactured here in NZ!

I laughed when he told me this. Poor fella

The early black and white set designs were probably home-grown but I'm not too sure about that.
We did have one brand that was based on a Philips kitset colour TV, these were named "Bell" and they were the most unreliable colour sets ever made in NZ. I had rescued many of these from the dumps mainly for the picture tubes as they fitted other models. I never managed to get one of these Bells going but heard stories from other TV techs about how the line output stage would burn up and catch fire, and if no one was around at the time, well you know the rest!!!

But overall most of our TV's were pretty good and there are still a few out there happily chugging away.,....like in my rumpus room!

G.

AndrewM · #15 12-27-2009, 03:50 PM

Thanks for your info on the NZ brands Glen. I'm currently collecting information on early Australian colour TV brands and the chassis used and it is useful to have the NZ perspective given how close the two countries are.

The Philips K9 console is particularly interesting as the sliders move sideways whereas all the Australian sets had up and down sliders.

We had the same early Thorns here as well but they are extremely rare sets. I'm still trying to find a Thorn 4000 chassis for a set in my collection thats incomplete.

Your NZ Pye's are probably UK designed. It would be interesting to know which chassis was used. The Australian Pye's are unique as the chassis was designed here. It is one of only three brands that used an Australian designed chassis.