New Zealand made TV sets

[Glenz75]

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]

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

[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

[Carmine]

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

[Glenz75]

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

Originally Posted by Carmine

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

[Glenz75]

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.

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

[bgadow]

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]

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.

[Tom_Ryan]

Originally Posted by Glenz75

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.

Here's another possible link to NZ and the Majestic brand. There's a lot of fascinating history behind all of this. In 1920's Canadian inventor Edward "Ted" Rogers, the owner of Rogers Vacuum Tube Company, developed the world's first alternating current radio tube. Rogers looked for additional investors and agreed to a merger with the Majestic Corporation of Chicago. The Canadian government approved the merger and granted Rogers a radio license for the broadcast band with call sign CFRB in early 1927. The new company with manufacturing headquarters in Toronto, Canada, was called Rogers Majestic Corporation Limited. Their main task was to mass produce the First Rogers Batteryless radio. The merger completed in 1928.

For us vintage TV collectors, it's worth noting that in 1931, the Canadian Government also granted Edward Rogers the first television broadcasting license in Canada.

Rogers passed away in 1939, at the age of 39. It's sad news and yet, think what more he may have accomplished if he had lived! Since Canada's constitution was not repatriated until 1981, prior to this Canada, a Commonwealth country, was officially a Dominion of Great Britain, the "Crown". Countries part of the Commonwealth also have special trade relationships. Canadian Business and Patent law would trace back to British Law; which, if I understand correctly, would make it possible for another dominion, like New Zealand, to license the Rogers or Majestic brand names. Although I'm sure of the legal implications, the appearance of these brands in NZ make sense given their relation ship with the Crown.

[Glenz75]

Originally Posted by Tom_Ryan

Here's another possible link to NZ and the Majestic brand. There's a lot of fascinating history behind all of this. In 1920's Canadian inventor Edward "Ted" Rogers, the owner of Rogers Vacuum Tube Company, developed the world's first alternating current radio tube. Rogers looked for additional investors and agreed to a merger with the Majestic Corporation of Chicago. The Canadian government approved the merger and granted Rogers a radio license for the broadcast band with call sign CFRB in early 1927. The new company with manufacturing headquarters in Toronto, Canada, was called Rogers Majestic Corporation Limited. Their main task was to mass produce the First Rogers Batteryless radio. The merger completed in 1928.

For us vintage TV collectors, it's worth noting that in 1931, the Canadian Government also granted Edward Rogers the first television broadcasting license in Canada.

Rogers passed away in 1939, at the age of 39. It's sad news and yet, think what more he may have accomplished if he had lived! Since Canada's constitution was not repatriated until 1981, prior to this Canada, a Commonwealth country, was officially a Dominion of Great Britain, the "Crown". Countries part of the Commonwealth also have special trade relationships. Canadian Business and Patent law would trace back to British Law; which, if I understand correctly, would make it possible for another dominion, like New Zealand, to license the Rogers or Majestic brand names. Although I'm sure of the legal implications, the appearance of these brands in NZ make sense given their relation ship with the Crown.

You could be right here, very interesting, thanks for posting this up

[zenithfan1]

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

[Telecolor 3007]

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]

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]

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]

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?