Just happy to see color tv

[oldtvman]

I remember many service calls in the mid to late 60's when color was taking it's place in the American scenary. I would go to homes and see the most god-awful pictures one could imagine.

Until the advent of auto-color and auto kine bias, most people would set in front of color set with one demod not working, pink gray scale, rainbow pictures that need degaussed. I guess in this crowd if you came to any of your homes in the late 50's or 60's that wouldn't be a problem.

[andy]

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[bgadow]

The technology of the seventies really brought color tv up to snuff. A good Zenith or RCA from the mid-70s was nearly foolproof compared to the typical 60s model. When I started dragging home old tube sets in the early 90s I didn't know the finer points of purity & grayscale, or even convergence. Naturally I got to see some really horrible pictures. Mostly I remember just real muddy, "blah" color...basically it was like watching a monochrome set except the single color was "rainbow stew". Yep, some people didn't know any better and just lived with it. It took awhile before I realized just what an old set was capable of.

Yes, some people still have out-of-whack sets, though these days it seems more likely to be a maladjusted tint or color control. Watching that, for most of us, would be like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. But I guess to the average person it doesn't even register. The only truly bad picture I have seen on a modern set belongs to my neighbor, an elderly lady with a 90s Zenith. Nothing I can do to that set will make the picture any less miserable, thanks to the shoddy picture tube.