Let's have a hall of shame for the worst color sets ever made. In my book the Motorola with the 23EGP22 wins, hands down... unbilievable junk. Nothing else even comes close. Helped me pay a lot of bills, though.

I would say the late 60's GE color sets. The color reproduction was never good on them. Either the fleshtones were green or purple and no way to really get them right. The grass was always green and sky was always blue but the fleshtones sucked. They always had HV and focus troubles of some sort. Dont forget the high pitch noise they always had comming from the flybacks. I could hear a GE flyback a hundred feet away. They had the capability to make a nice quality set but chose not to. I guess thats why you dont see many of them surviving to now. The one that Dwight just got was the first one i have seen in at least 15 years.
-Tony

They never lasted very long, and you could NOT rejuv them-- they would fade back down right befiore your eyes.(i'm referring to the big sony tube"26", with the DUAL anode coaxial connector, for hv, and convergence)

Zenith CRT's around 1993! Really bad CRT's. I have a 1969 GE color set...got the chassis working but CRT is shorted!
There is also CTC-177 but I think that once the solder joints are repaired they are OK.

No, it has to be that godawful POS Sears set from the early '60s. AS I've said, sometimes the thing would take a dump before the repair guy got out of our driveway good. I don't know who made it, but I think it was made in Japan, & this was before they'd figured out how to make color sets very well.-Sandy G.

magnavox and zenith projection tv,s looking at a zenith now on my bench.
pure shi##y crap. :puke:

My boss at the time absolutely HATED anything Motorola especially their color sets! He passed them on to me to try and repair.
I guess the reason I have so many now is more nostalgia than anything.
I have to say that the GE tube stuff pretty much sucked though with a so-so picture and brittle pc boards after a few years.
Coronado and westinghouse of the era were junk too.

most tube sets that weren't RCA or Zenith seemed to be pretty crappy. RCA's CTC-38 chassis was crap. It's like they decided to go "on the cheap" at the end of the tubed chassis run.

GE sets from the later 1960s all seem to be pretty poor with cheap CRTs and cheap construction.

I have some Motorola B&W sets from 1965 and before. These seem ok with metal chassis ,etc. They went cheap about 1965 and the later stuff does not seem to be built well.

Captain Moody, Yes!!! Coronado's were terrible, but don't forget the crap you could get at your local Western Auto! (True Tone)

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Originally posted by Chad Hauris
Zenith CRT's around 1993! Really bad CRT's. I have a 1969 GE color set...got the chassis working but CRT is shorted!
There is also CTC-177 but I think that once the solder joints are repaired they are OK.

I have a 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 which still works, and an RCA CTC185 half as old but still works as well (after one repair and the ground points around the tuner having been resoldered). Both sets have their original CRTs; the Zenith has never been serviced, and was used quite a bit from 1995-99.

Originally posted by jstout66
Captain Moody, Yes!!! Coronado's were terrible, but don't forget the crap you could get at your local Western Auto! (True Tone)

I wouldn't say all Truetone/Western Auto television sets were junk. I have an aunt and uncle who had a WA Truetone 21" console in the '50s; the set lasted through that decade and into the next one, then they got a Sylvania console and gave the old Truetone to me. I had the TT set from about 1970 until 1972; it worked well for me after changing a tube or two.

I know this is supposed to be more of a vintage thread but I gotta vent my spleen.

Zenith CRTs from the early 90s were absolute POS. I've seen more wonky guns on Zeniths than any other brand. That might just be me. OTOH I have a 32" Zenith from about that time frame in my room. Horrible color but for some reason I can mentally tune it out.

How about any recent JVC 32" sets? I just tossed one out last week that had a PCB that was paper thin and negligible framework around it. Both 32" JVCs that have come my way had fatal PCB cracks that killed 'em. Spent way too much time trying to salvage one only to realize it wasn't worth saving.

I bought this terrible Korean? set, a 19" Sampo...it was a rebuilt and cheep (guess why?), bled like a hemophiliac and eventually died of a dangerous HV arcing problem that forced it's retirement.

Oddly enough, I saw a $600 HDTV set doing the same bleeding in digital mode. White all over the place.

Wal-Mart wants almost 3500 bucks for a Sanyo 42" HDTV monitor...that's a used car price and NO TUNER! It's a great set but Hell, no tuner??? PAH!

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I recall seeing an HDTV set several months ago at Wal-mart and the picture was crooked! like the yoke was turned crooked.
Don't remember what make it was but this doesn't seem a sign of good quality control on an expensive set of whatever brand it was.

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i have three catagories of the worst tvs made.
1. vintage (sixties) motorola. the quality of the compontents used in their sets was absolutely abysmal. they were extremely hard to service. their picture was not good, even when they were new.

2.hybrids & solid state. sears silvertone, admiral, general electric. actually any one that used compactron tubes AND printed circuit board chassis.

3. ALL late model korean, chinese, taiwanese sets, including zenith.

the BEST tv ever made was setchel carlson.

Am curious, how do you define "best"? Did Setchel Carlson ever build any color sets? What of Dumont? I thought they were the Cadillac of TVs....at least B&W sets. Of the 60's era, I think that the hand wired Zeniths are right at the top even though they can be a pain at times to dig thru the layers of wiring to work on.

Anthony

I have seen photofacts for a Setchell Carson color set...appears to be high quality with hand wired metal chassis modules and test points on rear for horizontal output or regulator current. The Dumont color sets I believe were made in the 60's by Emerson or whoever owned the Dumont name...they don't seem to be the same quality as the '50s Dumont b/w sets.

I had a Setchell roundie I had to give away in one of my many moves through the years, It was built very well and yet quite light for a console, The chassis was aluminium as well as the modules.
Real easy to remove them too, just two thumbscrews.
Wish I had it back...

When did SC stop production? What years did they make color sets? Feeble minds want to know.

Anthony

Here is the recent thread with a pic of a great Setchell rect. color set.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30144&page=1&pp=15

I read, I think, that they gave up the business about 69/70.

Am curious, how do you define "best"? Did Setchel Carlson ever build any color sets? What of Dumont? I thought they were the Cadillac of TVs....at least B&W sets. Of the 60's era, I think that the hand wired Zeniths are right at the top even though they can be a pain at times to dig thru the layers of wiring to work on.

Anthony

yes, setchell carlson did build colors sets. i have a 1963 "roundie" that i use as a daily watcher.
the reason i say they are the best is because of the quality of the compontents that they used, the circuitry & the chassis design.
they used simple tried & true circuit designs that utilized very common tubes (every SC set that i know of has at least four 6AU6s). they used high quality resistors & capacitors. they used good phenolic tube sockets. they also lasted a long time before needing service.
due to the conservative design of the circuitry, tubes had a very long life span, if fact, if you find a SC set, chances are good that most of the original tubes will still be in it. it would most likely have a weak / bad picture tube. these sets were known to outlive three picture tube replacements.

the SC "roundie" that i own, i aquired it off of a trash pile about 5 years ago. around that time, i had a NOS 21fjp22 that i installed in it. the only other work i done on that set was replace a electrolytic capacitor underneath the horizontal output module & replace the H.O. tube. i have been using it on a daily basis since then, even to this day.

"yes, setchell carlson did build colors sets. i have a 1963 "roundie" that i use as a daily watcher."

Can we see some chassis and exterior pics? Pleeeeaaaase? I find any non-RCA or RCA-clone roundie to be very interesting!! :thmbsp:

Thanks for the info Robert1......am with Carmine, I'd love to see some pix too.....the more obscure color sets are most interesting!

Anthony (enjoys ANY pasta)

Heres a scan i got off of an Ebay auction from a few years back. Its of a 1963 SC roundie with the unitized chassis. I used to have the scan of the inside but its now long gone after a computer crash. I apologize for the logo as the seller created this not me but at least it proves SC color roundies did exist. If i recall right, this one sold for $300 as it was fully restored with a nos crt.
-Tony

She's got her hand right about where it would be on his...Damn, I got a dirty mind !! Wonder if anybody back in good ol' antebellum 1963 caught that, too ?!? Nice lookin' roundie, BTW..Of course, I think they're ALL nice lookin'.-Sandy G.

That's subliminal advertising which is saying that you'll turn on all the wimmin folk if you buy this here teevee, you big stud muffin you.

Anthony

Yeah, but look how ghastly white she is...looks like a zombie....Hey ! Wonder if a Pittsburgh kid named George Romero saw this ad, & got him to thinkin'....-Sandy G.

Picture of my Setchell Carlson rectangular CVT modular set.

polaraman

Man, that guy is as clean as a hound's tooth !!-Sandy G.

Thanks for the info Robert1......am with Carmine, I'd love to see some pix too.....the more obscure color sets are most interesting!

Anthony (enjoys ANY pasta)

i will try to get a picture of it while it is playing as soon as i get replacement batteries for my old casio digital camera.

i can tell you one thing, that setchall carlson is a great set.

Heres a scan i got off of an Ebay auction from a few years back. Its of a 1963 SC roundie with the unitized chassis. I used to have the scan of the inside but its now long gone after a computer crash. I apologize for the logo as the seller created this not me but at least it proves SC color roundies did exist. If i recall right, this one sold for $300 as it was fully restored with a nos crt.
-Tony

my sc roundie has a different style cabinet, however, the control layout is exactly the same.
another thing i like to mention is that you should see the audio module that these use.. talk about real high fidelity.
here is the tube layout.

two 6GK6's PP output
one 12AX7 driver
two 6AU6 if amps
one 6AL5 ratio detector.

i also have extra modules for this set too.
i will try to get a picture of it later on

I've got an SC portable (B&W). A dream to work on - pop the modules out and everything's easy to get to :)

The chassis on them stays nice cause it's aluminum. Very nice sets. I wouldn't mind an SC roundie.

Interesting how they were big on 'modules' before everyone else....

Oh yeah, my portable, I restored it and it's beautiful. No AGC control though and it overloads on my house antenna signal. Need to get an attenuator :P But a great set - I used it nearly 24/7 around 9/11 and it never let me down. Oh yeah, and an epoxy sealed flyback, not the crappy wax everyone else used.

Worst TV? By far was a mid to late 80's Goldstar. It took 3 of them to live past its one year warranty. Last one died at 13 months. Biggest piece of crap i've ever bought.

Motorola hybrids.
Magnavox tube sets "the ones that used PC boards"
Sylvania 80s sets
Garbage Electric anything
Panasonic portable tube sets
Westinghouse tube sets.
Many Zenith sets from the mid 80s to late 90s They need to reverse
thier slogan to "The name goes on before the quality goes in"

My vote goes to the Magnzvos line of the early 70s. There was nothing good about the color quality on these sets. My parents bought a 19-inch tabletop Magnavox with a simulated Maple Early American finish. It came with its own matching wood grain table. The damn thing was both blurry and incapable of reproduing anything close to an accurate color picture. It had some feature that added a brownish sepia tint to the color, and the same brownish hue to black and white. IGH. Truly terrible.

I worked for a Magnacrap dealer between '70 & '73 while in college. I remember one year Magnacrap was at the top of the heap in Consumers Report. Sold a ton of sets. About 1,995 pounds worth came back for warranty work. Not as difficult to work on as the 23EGP based Motorolas, but still a POS. They were a big help in paying my tuition.

>>Garbage Electric anything>>

Hey the little GE Porta-a-Color I picked up at an antique store for 60 bucks looks and performs like new, I'm proud of this little humble, all-tube set. It's the first version that they made 39 years ago ('66) Certainly as good a picture as a new set of the same screen size made today (that all last about a year and then blow up). I have done absolutely nothing to the set, worked like a charm when I took it home. I just watched Everybody Loves Raymond on it 3 days ago! : )

I have 5 or 6 of the Portacolors, some of which work well. I have not yet investigated the ones that do not. These seem to last pretty well with the only weakness that I have found being carbon tracking in some of the controls on the back. Some of these have 700 volts of boost voltage applied.

When the carbon tracking was cleaned out, these sets began working well.

However, that being said, I also have some early GE B&W portables that look very neat, but were very poorly made. All tubes, including the hot horizontal output and damper were mounted on the PC board. These become charcoal and I have only found a couple that I could even hope to restore.

Contrast this to the B&W Zeniths of the era with all tubes on a metal chassis. These are usually fairly easy to get working very well. Overall, GE quality was very poor in the 1960s compared to Zenith or RCA. I would say the the Portacolors are the exception, not the rule.

Re: Magnavox...I have several Magnavox color sets from '66-'68, all work great except some have weak CRT's. Only problems have been bad resistors in 6BK4 circuit and a disintegrated tube socket due to heat...otherwise seem to be well designed. Maybe are the ones that you had trouble with different chassis?
My sets do have the "chromatone" feature that you mention.

I started repairing televisions for a shop in my home town in 1977 when I was still a teen, most already were 7-12 years old when they came in and saw LOTS of use as the people in my area were mostly middle class with only one color set.
This was a good indicator of which ones would last the longest. Of course Zenith held up the best with RCA following, RCA had that common problem with the power resistor heat buildup under the chassis causing the terminal strip and nearby wires becoming brittle then falling off.
Motorolas were decent too, just not too many techs understood them.
GE sets would get real bad with many hours of use, with the previously mentioned pc board problems.
Magnavox had the brittle board problem also, sometimes you would go to put a new tube in and away it would crumble!
As with automobiles, most tv manufacturers had their best and worst models,
I have repaired a lot of televisions in my time and can say that I really didn't mind working on any of them because that is what I was supposed to do...repair them, not spend time bitching about their inherent weaknesses.
I enjoyed going to work every day and dealing with the customers, handling calls and most of all getting those sets working again!

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I've had quite a bit of contact with a local repair shop over the last 10 years, or so. They've had a number of techs over the years and one of the biggest problems I saw was the attitude some of them had. I would often hear that set X was junk and not even worth looking at. Sometime they would start on something just KNOWING it wasn't going to be repairable and would give it a high estimate. I would take home a lot of these sets and more often than not, it was a minor problem.


Couple of things come to mind.
Either they didnt want to piss with it and just get the customer
for a checkout charge. Or thier a dealer and wanted to sell them
a new set.

Couple of things come to mind.
Either they didnt want to piss with it and just get the customer
for a checkout charge. Or thier a dealer and wanted to sell them
a new set.

You're probably right, but the irony of the situation is that it's the exact opposite when it comes to new car dealers, they make FAR more money on warranty work and general repairs than the sale of the car...you'd never know it by their shoddy backshops though!

Anthony

Exactly Andy,
I had a young tech that I hired on and he was full of attitude! Pretty soon he started hating almost every brand and giving them the "B.E.R."(beyond economical repair)tag.
One day I went through two of the sets that he said were "BER" and found bad solder on one and a bad cap in the scan supply on the other! Needless to say I had a talk with him the next day..
That kind of stupidity can make a shop that strictly services electronics go out of business fast, not to mention it is unfair to the customer who is most likely trying to save money by repairing their old set.
Granted, If the tv was on it's last legs with a weak crt and assorted problems I would never try to nurse it along just for a buck.
In my shop we not only repaired them we also replaced any common problem parts, cleaned them inside and out and replaced any missing doors, etc. So they were more remanufactured than repaired and this worked very well along with the 90 day warranty I gave.

they make FAR more money on warranty work and general repairs than the sale of the car

That may be true when it comes to cars. However I speak from
experience when I say that warranty work in consumer electronics
and appliances much of the time is a joke. In most cases the company
will only pay you a fixed amount regardless of the time spent. So
you might make out ok if your looking at a simple repair. If thats not
the case then you can start loosing money real quick depending on
what you run into. In general the process of running a warranty through
the system from start to finish is kind of a PITA within itself. Its necessary
though if you plan to work on units for a new dealer. Just have to take
the good with the bad.

As far as warranty work, When we were a Zenith authorized dealer/service center in the 80's it wasn't a whole lot of fun and you wouldn't get rich either!
Glen is right about the time alotted for a specific repair and the small amount you would get. A tech had to be really good and quick to make just a little money.

Let's face it guys, if nothing ever failed, we would have been out of a job.

Very true, but there are definitely some sets that are more of a pain to deal with than others......same thing applies to cars. One of the reasons the more expensive cars cost more labor-wise is not because that's what the market will bear, but because they are horribly designed from a repair viewpoint....often needing several "layers" of things removed to get to the problem.

In my book there's no excuse for this. Often times things are designed solely for ease of assembly without a thought given to servicing. The hardest design is the simplest one.

Anthony

I can relate with HVAC. Bryant's residential furnaces use glowplugs for igniting the gas. In the 80% units, they aren't too bad to replace. In the 90% (single and two stage) they are a bitch to get at. It takes longer to get it out and put it back in than it does to actually replace the part.

Unless the part(s) are under warranty, I always leave them with the client. I have replaced a few glow plugs. After the furnace is back up and running, I always show the client where the plug failed. In all cases, i show the client the problem. I did this when i did TV repair in the 80's (I was in my teens). To me, showing the client the problem and why I did what I did is the most important thing.

i never saw a good picture on any motorola color set the red's were always orange and detail was non-existant. I guess that's why so many old people liked them because of the soft picture.

Early Zenith color portables are a bit soft, but I think that's the 15LP22 tube in them. Or mine just needs a rebuild :(

I know roundies can be fun to get rebuilt - what about early generation rectangulars?

Zenith CRT's around 1993! Really bad CRT's. I have a 1969 GE color set...got the chassis working but CRT is shorted!
There is also CTC-177 but I think that once the solder joints are repaired they are OK.

I delt with an Zenith CRT in a Philips with a Tiwanese chassis & as useual the CRT is always crook, The CRT in that one was made in '93.

Were these CRT's made by Rauland?

Magnavox went to shit just before the sale to Phillips. I've seen many that had 1/4 watt resistors where a 1/2 watt was specified. This is the last of the hybrids, and the first solid-states. Oh yeah, the module connectors used to fry too.

I had a Magnovox (or a Sylvania maybe) that was a rock, 27 incher bought in 1988 and lasted 15 years and still had a like new picture and never broke. Was even built in Tennessee. When I gave it away for an HDTV last year it still worked perfectly.

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Couple of things come to mind.
Either they didnt want to piss with it and just get the customer
for a checkout charge. Or thier a dealer and wanted to sell them
a new set.

For a short time, I worked for a place in Milwaukee called Ken Mueller TV on 92nd St, off Capitol. It's gone now. This would have been around 1988 or so.

I kept the floor clean, did deliveries, mowed the grass, did a little sales, very entry level. That crooked old jackass used to make me put on a lab coat with a Zenith logo and pretend I was a tech and go to little old ladies' houses and tell them a line of bullshit to make them buy a new TV. Needless to say, I didn't work there long, and remember vaguely calling him a crooked old fock in front of customers when I stormed out.

Ahhh.....the privileges of youth....

Yeah. The Phillips built Maggies were tough sets. Once the soldering was done....

I soldered a bunch of them.

I saw fires in more than one of the first console Maggie solid states. Now, the 1960's console color chassis were great. Rarely did more than a tube or 2, and an occasion flyback to one. Then, replacement flybacks became very hard to get. Then I started trashing some of the prettiest cabinets you have ever seen...

I remember a wave of Sylvanias that were burning resistors galore in the video sections. D12's I think. I know of a couple of early 1960's GE roundies that are still running. They need some work, but basically look good for over 40 year old TV's One of them was on a maintenance agreement until 1979.

The pre-Philips magnavox solid states seem to have a lot of trouble with the modules. Every one of these I have worked on has had intermittents on the modules.
The Greeneville? Tennessee built N.A.P. magnavox sets do seem to be high quality...we repaired one recently at the shop that just had a bad cap, found it with the ESR meter and it has a great picture again. My parents bought one in about 91 and it is still going great.
It seems like the Mag sets went to pot at the time they started branding them "Philips-Magnavox"...these seem like el-cheapo sets from what I've seen, like they are Funai's or something.

In the mid 90's Phillips moved chassis design from the Knoxville office to Singapore, went down hill with the move and were designed with COST as the driving factor.

Unless the part(s) are under warranty, I always leave them with the client. I have replaced a few glow plugs. After the furnace is back up and running, I always show the client where the plug failed. In all cases, i show the client the problem. I did this when i did TV repair in the 80's (I was in my teens). To me, showing the client the problem and why I did what I did is the most important thing.

I run a small auto repair shop with a couple friends and we make a habit of doing the same thing. Doesnt matter how big or small the part is we keep it to give the customer the option of seeing it. I find that people are more willing to pay the bill, especially the diagnostic fee, if they can hold the source of the problem in their hand. Plus theres no way they can say that you 'didnt do anything' . Especially it the part is hidden in the engine. Even if its just a tuneup, i keep every part till the customer says throw it out.
And from my end on the electronics repair end of it, i brought a TV in for service not too long ago and the small, out-of-the-way-hidden-down-a-one way-road repair shop kept the defective part for my TV (cracked HV boot arcing) to show me exaty what failed. Let me tell you i will definatly go back to them again because they cared enough about my satisfaction to do that for me!

Sorry its off topic, i just had to add my comment :D

It seems like the Mag sets went to pot at the time they started branding them "Philips-Magnavox"...these seem like el-cheapo sets from what I've seen, like they are Funai's or something.
Some of the Magnavox TVCR/DVD combos you see in stores ARE Funai. They've taken over Sylvania completely.

I LOVED working on the Panasonic-built Magnavox VCR's. When Funai took over, I stopped doing repairs on them. Phillips sets are no better than anyone else anymore. Thats too bad, too, because, if I owned a company, I would want my product to be of quality, and NOT just getting by. It was a sad day when the accountants took over the manufacturing process.

Off the soapbox.

Around 1981, I would buy Sampo flybacks by the case. The county jail had a load of them. They rarely had other problems, at least for me.

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My vote for worst is the Magnavox T952-T971 hybrid portables. One huge PC board, slide controls and a knack for melting a hole in the back cover next to the horizontal output tube. That piece of junk came out around 1973 and we had a 100% failure rate during warranty period. On top of that it weighed a ton and had a small plastic handle that was prone to break.....

I've heard that Philips made their own VCRs for the European market. I've seen a few from around 1990 that used Panasonic mechanisms and Philips electronics. The ironic part is that most VCRs are made by Funai now. It's funny how crap took over the market where quality only cost a little more.

I dunno who makes the transpot in my 1999 Philips VHS, but the picture quality is still excellent now. The Philips incidentally was a replacement for a top-of-the-line Panasonic from the previous year that had rave reviews. I had two of them in series and both were problematic - the Philips has been fine :)

My next TV will probably actually be either a Philips or Toshiba as well - UK spec Sonys are now not so competitive.

90% of today's sets.
The "Teleolcolor" with Romanian components and Polish color CRT's.
The Soviet colour sets - better they the Soviet CRT's (luckly, "Elcrom" could be fitted with "GoldStar" picture tubes

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I really do not miss working on VCR's...it seems like VCR's are fortunately finally are starting to quit being used. I really enjoy old electronics but I somehow have very little nostalgia for VCR's. (except for maybe the old mechanical Beta and 3/4")...VHS units always seemed to have all of those complicated mechanisms with cheap plastic parts, tons of belts and stuff, bad caps, tape oxide shedding.

I agree with Randy's opinion of the Magnavox 952. It was unreliable and poorly made. I still have some slide controls in stock.

But I must vote the Olympic 910 color TV for the all time worst.

The circuit boards were so bad that the material disappeared without even attempting to solder. It needed so many jumpers that it looked hand wired when it left the shop. It came with a bag of parts just to make it work. Once installed, the picture quality was so bad that customers brought them in for service when they were operating up to Olympic standards. The gain was so poor that when the antenna was removed there was no snow or white noise, just a dim glow on the CRT. They never had enough brightness and forget contrast. The picture was a pale washed out blur that looked like you were viewing through an oily piece of paper. When you were finished fixing it, it looked like you hadn't started.

Who is surprised that Olympic was one of the early TV fatalities?

Don

A cow-orker had a phillips maggie that was 'made in the US' according to the back panel. not a bad set, it toasted a horz transistor after a storm once, I fixed it, $5 for the transistor and a few lunch breaks and it's running gain for who knows how long but it's running. Looks better than the RCA CTC-187 that another cow-orker brought in to me.

Anyone know what the common problems are on the 187? It's totally dead and they'd like it to not be. Sounded like it was acting up in the micro area - classic Thompson bad soldering I guess? Where do i start looking? Power supply? Micro? Circuit City?

I love V.C.R.'s!.

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I've noticed the modern JVC, GE, and RCA sets are total garbage. The GE tops at the worst, RCA and JVC sets next. In the US, these sets are either assembled in mexico or china it seems, and the design is just so poor. The CRTs look like crap. The sets I've liked are toshiba flat screens and sony wegas, which have beautiful sharp pictures.

Here in Italy good television sets are long gone! The only maker of high quality tv sets that also sells tvs here is Bang and Olufsen.Another good one is Loewe.Best european brands (Telefunken,Saba,Nordmende,Grundig,Itt Schaub Lorenz...)are long gone. Unfortunately almost every brand (cheap or less cheap) is turning to plasma and lcd technology! What a shame! How can people prefer such products that at the best produce a rather poor picture compared to picture tube based sets?Is it fancy design enough to justify paying thousands euro to buy an lcd or plasma television?

Unfortunately almost every brand (cheap or less cheap) is turning to plasma and lcd technology! What a shame! How can people prefer such products that at the best produce a rather poor picture compared to picture tube based sets?Is it fancy design enough to justify paying thousands euro to buy an lcd or plasma television?

I've got three old 21" round color sets and love them to death but I'd have to be smoking something potent and illegal to agree that any of them even come close to a really nice bright 60" plasma set with 3000:1 contrast showing an HDTV program and at eye level on the wall instead of on the floor. Or even standard definition program for that matter. I'd even pick my 51" crt-based projection set over the roundies if it comes to what I would want to watch a couple of hours of tv on a night, sorry. (And at least it still has real picture tubes in it! : ) I mean it's just like my Victrola, I love that thing too and it's really cool playing my acoustic records on it all day but I'm not going to say it sounds better than my hi-fi with 5.1 sound. But I use the Victrola a ton more than my tvs since I don't have to worry about frying a flyback ; ) ..Frenchy

Not vintage but I think the absolute worst are the newer Philips tvs some of them still branded Magnavox.Just had a 32" in only a year old with a bad flyback.At least they did one thing right.The flyback was putting an excessive amount of voltage on the ABL line due to the shorted internal rectifiers but they had a protection device rated at 35 volts on that line to ground.It is similar to the line device in some tvs that usually fails shorted.Otherwise this voltage would have went directly into the jungle(tv on a chip) ic and fried it.On this particular set it is a surface mount device with lots of pins.No picnic to change.The flyback was really cheap.Less than $20 bucks which was surprisinng for an OEM flyback but the whole set is made cheap.The master G2 adjustment is critical on this set as these sets shutdown if it's not right.What a pain turning it back on again til you get it right.IMO the picture was crap on this set as it was lacking in contrast and sharpness.The color tracked very poorly from channel to channel and just a crappy picture.But this is normal for these sets as I've seen several.Had a Walmart special Sanyo sitting beside it and the Sanyo blew the Magnavox away.What junk!

I've got three old 21" round color sets and love them to death but I'd have to be smoking something potent and illegal to agree that any of them even come close to a really nice bright 60" plasma set with 3000:1 contrast showing an HDTV program and at eye level on the wall instead of on the floor. Or even standard definition program for that matter. I'd even pick my 51" crt-based projection set over the roundies if it comes to what I would want to watch a couple of hours of tv on a night, sorry. (And at least it still has real picture tubes in it! : ) I mean it's just like my Victrola, I love that thing too and it's really cool playing my acoustic records on it all day but I'm not going to say it sounds better than my hi-fi with 5.1 sound. But I use the Victrola a ton more than my tvs since I don't have to worry about frying a flyback ; ) ..Frenchy

I think you are comparing apples to oranges here. :) NTSC monitors and TVs can display only so much picture information. Plasma displays are higher resolution with better contrast, but they can display more picture information than a NTSC set. Compare a really nice NTSC set of today to a roundie. There shouldn't be much difference.

And don't most color roundies contain a 3.59MHz crystal in their chroma oscillators? My Felton with a CTC9 chassis does. I know it's not much of a difference from NTSC's 3.58MHz, but maybe that could limit color reproduction, I really don't know. Can I replace the 3.59MHz crystal in my CTC9 with a 3.58MHz HC49/U crystal? Will that give me better color or is it just a waste of my time?

Jonathan

I've got three old 21" round color sets and love them to death but I'd have to be smoking something potent and illegal to agree that any of them even come close to a really nice bright 60" plasma set with 3000:1 contrast showing an HDTV program and at eye level on the wall instead of on the floor.

I didn't compared 30 or more years ago tv to lcd and plasma. I compared modern crt televisions to plasma and lcd. The difference is quite obvious if you have the chance to see an lcd and a picture tube type television at the same time, receiving the same signal. The lcd doesn't give the same quality at all! Perhaps in your country you have perfect tv signal or high definition ( anyway I don't remember having seen any tv with astonishing picture during my trip in u.s.a...) but also with a good digital signal ,in my opinion you can't compare a good picture tube based (recent) tv to a plasma or lcd! sorry!

A CRT of the same resolution as the LCD will give a better picture than a crappy LCD.

<rant>LCD TVs contain an LCD panel that can only display one resolution. If you watch 480p on an LCD at 1024x768, the 480p signal is upscaled to LCD resolution. It's pretty much the same with plasma TVs. If it's not a 1080i signal, then an LCD or plasma will look like crap. With CRT,you get a clarity you get nowhere else. The sharpest, clearest, and brightest pictures I've seen have only been on CRTs. I realize everyone loves the lightness and smallness of plasma and LCD, but they won't give you the sharpest picture. And with most properly aligned color roundies, the picture quality is just as good as any decent NTSC TV of today.</rant>

Jonathan

Fair enough I would not really say there's a great difference between a modern CRT set and a roundie other than a lot of the picture carved off by the roundies. Except of course when watching a DVD or something like that and you get twice the horizontal lines displayed or something like that.
I agree LCDs are at the bottom of the tv heap, but shouldn't the newest plasmas be pretty comparable to even a very good CRT? Seems like basically the same idea, a panel made of fixed phosphor-type pixels, except on a plasma, sharpness and convergence are both essentially perfect since there is no concerns about 3 different beams and how sharp each is. Maybe I would not have thought this when plasmas first came out but with the brightness and contrast going thru the roof on them lately, I think I'd pick one over a same-sized and priced CRT. (Low priced plasma, right!) I'd really like to hear an explanation of why a plasma would not have as 'sharp' a picture as a crt if it had the same # of fixed pixels (like CRT dots) except they are individually controlled with no convergence or beam alignment/spot size issues. Is there an issue as far as the ratio of black space between the CRT dots and between the plasma pixels? What is the contrast ratio of the best CRTs that are still made?
As far as standard def looking like crap on a plasma or LCD, to me that is a much more a byproduct of the picture being blown up to 50 or 60 inches vs. a 36 inch CRT. You're talking about making the picture 3 to 4 times the size so of course 'Gilligan's Island' eventually looks like garbage. If it wasn't for HDTV resolution, no way would I have sprung the $ for a set bigger than the CRTs I've owned.

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This is what I LOVE about this place;We have the "smarts" here enuff to have a complicated thing like CRTS Vs Plasma Vs. LCDs explained so even an old dummy like me could understand it-You'll NEVER hear a sales guy "'splain" it that way w/so much clarity...Doubt that many of 'em would know, anyhow...-Sandy G.

<<They also can't do continuous tones of brightness. You'll notice that continuous light to dark shades show up as bands of brightness.>>

So is that due to what you said about the difficulty in dimming the plasma dots compared to a CRT, or just that they aren't using enough brightness resolution when they are driven? I.e. even if you multiplied the resolution of the plasma's driver system by 100, the plasma dots are just not capable of showing that resolution anyway? Can you still see those bands when they are displaying HD? I never looked close enough to notice.

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One big design problem I've seen with plasmas especially is their use of COF(chip on film) ics.The actual drive ics for the plasma panel are mounted on the ribbon cables going to the panel.If one should fail they are not replaceable and the panel must be replaced.Usually causes vertical lines or horizontal lines in the picture.If they short they can shut the whole set down.None of the boards in Plasmas are component level repairable making them expensive to repair and have to get the propietary boards from the manufacturer.A lot of times they'll only sell the parts to a factory authorized repair center.Same with the boards in LCDs.The lamp is expensive in the DLPs and LCD projectors and short lived.Depending on use and on-off cylces I've seen a year or so on average.A lot fail long before a year is up.They advertise 2 years.Also Plasmas are power hogs.Look at the wattage rating on a Plasma.Some of them exceed the wattage of an old tube type color console.

I have an RCA (Thomson) CTC-185A7 19" set, bought new almost six years ago when I moved here. The set has worked just wonderfully all that time, with only a slight problem a few months after purchase (the RF connector for antenna/cable snapped off the tuner PC board). Other than that, the set works extremely well on cable (antennas don't work well in this area :no: ). The auto color circuits work very well also, as I have not had to adjust the onscreen color controls in months. It is for these reasons I intend to keep this set fully as long as it works as well as it does. Digital? Doesn't bother me. I use the set with a cable box now, so if I still have this set when everything goes all-digital, all I'll have to do is call the cable company and have them put in a HD-capable box--if the one I'm using now won't handle the new channels, that is.

I agree with the posters here who have said that plasmas and LCDs, particularly the former, still have bugs which must be worked out. I was particularly interested in one post, in which the writer said some LCDs now are built with some of the video ICs actually incorporated in a cable which requires the entire panel to be replaced if those ICs go bad. The projection lamps in DLPs and other projection HDTV sets are something else yet again. These lamps can open after only a year or two, depending entirely on how much the set is used, and are expensive as all get-out to replace (I saw one for an RCA/Thomson projection set listed for something like $400). Compare this with standard TV CRTs. If you get a good one in a modern analog set, it can last years. (The CRT in my set is the original and still looks as good as the day I purchased the TV; I had a Zenith b&w solid-state 12" portable that was still making a great picture on its original CRT, after 22 years, and I also have a 10-year-old Zenith Sentry 2, original CRT and fantastic picture.)

There are still problems with image burn-in in plasmas. I was browsing ebay earlier this evening and saw a listing for an RCA or Zenith 27" CRT set, in which the seller mentioned the burn-in problem with plasmas and that the CRT set he was selling could last another 25 years without the tube burning out or burning up the screen. Some day, plasma panels will have a similar reliability record (with the panel lasting up to, say, ten years or so; I wouldn't expect a plasma or LCD to last anywhere near 25 years), but the current technology is still new enough that it has bugs in it yet. Perhaps when all TV is digital in 2009 (or whenever; I read recently where some Washington bigwigs are trying to move the deadline up to late 2006 or 2007) this may change for the better, but for the time being we are stuck with what's currently available. Compare today's plasma sets with the first CRT televisions 55+ years ago. Back then, the idea of sending pictures over the air was new, and the technology to receive those images was primitive by today's standards. The same thing can be said for today's plasma/LCD TVs. The technology is still very new and has more than a few bugs (heck, even some TV stations are having problems with their digital signals; for example, several stations in Cleveland are transmitting poor-quality, on-again off-again DTV signals because of problems with the transmitters and so forth), so it is not realistic, IMHO, to come to the conclusion that digital or HDTV has "arrived" yet. Far from it. In five years, maybe, but for now the technology is still evolving, so we have to tolerate the bugs in the current system. Speaking for myself, I won't even think of getting a flat-panel plasma or LCD TV until they work as well as and are as reliable as any good CRT set.

IMHO, the FCC really jumped the gun on HDTV and DTV. Hey look, the standard was hammered out in '98. Well, video codecs, processors, etc have advanced lightyears since then. We're stuck with a 1998 standard though. At least NTSC left some wiggle room, and NTSC was better than could be achived practically in the 50's anyway.

Do any NTSC TVs today even come with full I/Q demod, or NTSC correct phosphors? The former should be a no brainer - it's just another few transistors on a chip. The latter? Aren't there tinted phosphors that can get you there, too?

Actually, didn't RCA's colortrak have I/Q, along with some Panasonics?

IMHO, the FCC really jumped the gun on HDTV and DTV. Hey look, the standard was hammered out in '98.


Actually the FCC almost went with an analog style HDTV system. Something like the Japanese MUSE HD system. Then some company announced that they could do an all digital system with compression that would make an HDTV signal fit in a 6MHz TV channel. The FCC said "Great, do some refinements, field test it and make it good, and we'll do it, an all digital HDTV standard". About the only real arguement was about the transport stream modulation onto the TV channel, 8VSB or COFDM. COFDM is a little better with ghosting, but with its 2000 or 8000 subcarriers, severe clipping in transmitters and intermod in receivers is a big problem. If all 8000 subcarriers decide to turn completely on full ampliitude at the same time, you'd have a huge power spike to try to transmit or receive without overload.

With my over the air HDTV reception and quality, the ONLY complaint I have is when networks add those stupid subchannels. It almost exclusively affects 1080i main channels quality, you start to get pixelization, sometimes not even on fast motion. Here in Los Angeles area it's NBC which is 1080i and one stupid weather subchannel. Other night on Conan, they had Dolly Parton on, and just her slightly moving around and her large amount of hair made pixelization around her chin and neck that looked awful. Jeez NBC who were the forerunners of color can't even show someone sitting in a chair talking and no camera movement without it degrading?? Also it may be a problem of them not broadcasting using the full 19mbs or something but I have no idea how to measure it. But they are by far the worst out here. Otherwise CBS, ABC etc look great out here and to me HDTV looks incredible unless they screw it up and don't give a damn like NBC L.A. Really hard to believe the people there just accept this lousy quality, sometimes NTSC would look BETTER! The TWO subchannels have almost no effect on ABC out here which is 720p. CBS is superb, 1080i and no stinking subs. I'm using a 51 inch crt-based projection Hitachi.

It's the old 'It's digital, it's a computer, it's perfect' syndrome. Just like most CDs are done like crap these days because, hey, it's digital, it's perfect....

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It's the old 'It's digital, it's a computer, it's perfect' syndrome. Just like most CDs are done like crap these days because, hey, it's digital, it's perfect....

Or ads for satellite tv I hear constantly where the guy asks the announcer - "with digial quality?". Yup. Lousy quality! Yeah you lose the static and shadows but get pixelization and artifacts.

With my over the air HDTV reception and quality, the ONLY complaint CBS is superb, 1080i and no stinking subs.
Same here on the east coast. WCBS New York: no subs. But the WB channel has a 1080i sub on its 1080i main channel. I don't/won't watch it out of spite. :D

But the WB channel has a 1080i sub on its 1080i main channel. I don't/won't watch it out of spite.

Not watching the WB out of spite is the same as "not" poking your eye with a stick because you hate trees. I don't even have a digital TV, yet I have no problem ignoring the WB! :D

Back in 1988 I won an RCA Dimensia 27" floor model console in a contest (I could never have had to been able to justify buying it as I was in the process of restoring 2! CT-100's at the time, John Folsom now owns one of those 2). The Dimensia had wide I and Q demod on chip! Upon completion of the first CT, I parked it next to the Dimensia with a parallel RF feed. The similarities in the color reproduction was nothing short of amazing. The only plusses to the Dim. other than acreage was overall brightness and HV regulation. Even the signal sens. was comperable. I played that Dimensia brutally until '03 when the crt started to slide! Not too shabby. I still have it in queue waiting for rebuild. One of my all time worst offenders of the faith candidates is the RCA CTC-18x family. I quit counting how many of them I've had to do the tuner ground resolder routine (along with Bad regulator darlingtons, regulator ic's, up in smoke yokes, HOT's, and oh yes, EEproms!) I'll still fish them out of dumpsters, but only if they are near the top with no soured milk or other grossities stuck to them.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot that a friend of mine ( he's still a friend in spite of this) knowing my reluctance to throw away anything tv related, gave me a '67 vintage Motorola 21" rect. tube floor model. Since then I've only seen one other rect. 21" floor model and that was an RCA XL-100 and that was a pretty decent set. This set had a Channel Master CRT in it in good shape and the cabinet was mint. Thats all I have good to say about it as far as my initial assesment goes. Aside from half the tubes in it testing marginal, the horizontal output tube was cracked and the flyback melted (then I got to looking at the Sams for it and noticed their novel 1! tube based color demod circuit and how it resembled the one that was used in the Magnacrap tube chassis - the one with the push pull focus control - and neeeever looked good to me). Anyway, I thought about risking censure by the collecting community and going ahead and making a bookcase or a bonfire out of it. Then it dawned on me, the entire front mask assembly was identical to a TS-919 gen 1 Quasar table top set I had "restored" and was very fond of except for it's scratched up contact paper on steel cabinet. They even both had the tint control (like the maggie chromatune control) and the convergence paanels were in the same place behind the speaker! Needless to say, I have the only floor model 21" Quasar I've ever laid eyeballs on and it is a sweet little set (the ho-made back cover looks a little cheesy but it keeps the cat alive). If anybody has a better use for one of these abomin-ola's, let me know.

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Same here on the east coast. WCBS New York: no subs. But the WB channel has a 1080i sub on its 1080i main channel. I don't/won't watch it out of spite. :D
I don't beleive anyone is doing a 1080i sub on top of a 1080i main - what you are probably seeing is the same as what WGN (WB channel in Chicago) is doing - two program table entries for the same video, perhaps with Spanish audio on the second entry when available.

Yeah, thats my set. flattest crt I had seen up till that time and a multi-funtion remote that will still control most RCA products(even my Proscan vcr). I did have the typical scan rectifier board solder problems and the ex - XYL snatched ant. 1 coax connector out of the tuner can, but with a little weller and 90/10, I WON! Wow, what a contrast to those mid 90's CTC-18x dumpster dunnage sets , huh?

That Dimensia IQ demod design was ingenious in that they found a way to make an I channel delay line with only one IC pin (plus one external transistor). As an analog IC designer, I thought that was one of the neatest tricks I ever saw. Essentially, they tied the input of the delay line to ground, then drove the delay line output and what would normally be the delay line ground up and down with the input "I" baseband voltage. They then used the same driving pin to sense the output current!

Despite my admiration for the IC design, When I tested one of those sets for chroma resolution (working at Zenith), it was essentially no better than the R-Y/B-Y sets. The I channel high frequencies were quite attenuated. It appeared that there was too much phase distortion in the IF to allow the I channel high frequencies to be boosted to a useful level. I went through some effort to design a better IF for a possible wideband design myself, but concluded that the NTSC got away with their system design partly because tests were done on small screens. My basic conclusion was that NTSC needed a more symmetrical Q filter in the transmitter - it should have traps on the upper and lower edge that match the 4.5 MHz sound trap (+/- 900 kHz from the chroma carrier). If the Q sidebands transmitted would be sharply curtailed beyond +/- 500 kHz, there could be no quadrature crosstalk from Q into I, and it would behave like the NTSC intended - but NTSC Q filter specs were too broad, and any reasonable IF would show quadrature distortion and therefore the I response could not be boosted to the theoretical value. I proved this by modifying the filters in an NTSC encoder -and when we saw how well it worked, we gave up trying to design an I/Q set, since there was no way to go back and modify every encoder out there.

Gee, it's a shame I don't live near the Illinois area Old Tv nut, I would really love to pick your brain more intensely! An old friend of mine who just recently passed was a long time employee and xmtr super for our local CBS afilliate. When I got eat up with the vintage color bug in the 80's, we talked at lenght about the challenge of getting a color signal through those old RCA 25kw coffee cans and on the air. Seems as though there was an issue with dfferential phase distortion that reeked havoc with satisfactory hue reproduction and that it was more apparent on I/Q sets. BTW, was RCA the only man. to try and reintroduce I/Q demods in the 80's and didn't this coincide with their introduction of real comb filters? Shame they didn't have those in "54. Sorry if I'm off thread topic.

what you are probably seeing is the same as what WGN (WB channel in Chicago) is doing - two program table entries for the same video, perhaps with Spanish audio on the second entry when available.
Well, okay, that means it isn’t a bad as it looks. And you’re right about the Spanish audio — but I’m still not watching the WB!

Here’s what I misinterpreted.

In the NYC reception area, WPIX channel 11 is the NTSC WB over-the-air signal. UHF channel 33 is the actual ATSC broadcast channel for the WB. (To reduce confusion, the actual broadcast channel doesn’t appear; it is replaced with the NTSC channel designation with a -n to indicate the individual, or sub, channels.)

As you can see in these screen shots taken last night, the channel 11-1 WPIX-DT image shows an icon for Dolby digital 5.1 as opposed to the channel 11-2 image with its icon for Dolby digital stereo (sometimes in Spanish).

It’s the same 16:9 1080i HD video; just the audio changes. I feel better about the technical thing, but I’m still not watching the WB! :no:

May I add that once Thomson took over, RCA went so down hill that I never bother with their products again. It's a shame they took them over and went with cheap designs, parts, and manufactoring. I do like most of their directv receivers and HDTV receivers, but that it pretty much it.

old_tv_nut, you know so much. I want to be an engineer like you doing analog designs. :)

Pete, what kind of HD receiver is that?

Thanks.

Jonathan

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I miss the days when there were still independent channels like WPIX 11. I used to watch that channel a lot as a kid, but I can't remember the last time I watched them (since they went WB).

It's quite a shame now, but modern tv stations and programming is going down the toilet. :(

Jonathan

Don't forget about the infromercials, seems like theres more and more stations are running them where other programs used to be. I can remember one day when all of the local stations with the exception of PBS, where running them. Then I click over to some some low power independent station coming in from who knows where, very poor reception in and out. Channel 11 I think. Was running I love Lucy.

I have figgered out a way to put the infomercial blitzkrieg to use. It is a sigal to me to turn off the silicon sandman an go crawl in the back of an old Zenith or under the hood of my Z-28.

It's quite a shame now, but modern tv stations and programming is going down the toilet. :( Jonathan
Exactly. Much in the same way of radio. The only thing I listen to anymore is my local NPR station on FM and as far as TV goes, it's more miss than hit there.

Pete, what kind of HD receiver is that?

circa 2003, 52-inch projection w/built-in ATSC tuner, RCA HD52W140

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Gee, it's a shame I don't live near the Illinois area Old Tv nut, I would really love to pick your brain more intensely! An old friend of mine who just recently passed was a long time employee and xmtr super for our local CBS afilliate. When I got eat up with the vintage color bug in the 80's, we talked at lenght about the challenge of getting a color signal through those old RCA 25kw coffee cans and on the air. Seems as though there was an issue with dfferential phase distortion that reeked havoc with satisfactory hue reproduction and that it was more apparent on I/Q sets. BTW, was RCA the only man. to try and reintroduce I/Q demods in the 80's and didn't this coincide with their introduction of real comb filters? Shame they didn't have those in "54. Sorry if I'm off thread topic.


There are three kinds of phase distoriton that can happen in an NTSC transmitter. The "indcidental phase distortion" is a non-linear effect where the chroma phase is changed according to the luma it's riding on - so bright parts of a face get a different hue compared to the shadows. Then there are two linear distoritions: if the tramsmitter doesn't have a flat frequency response, it will roll off the upper chroma sidebands - this makes the Q sidebands non-symmentrical, causing crosstalk into the I channel of an I/Q set. The receiver IF can do the same thing. I think that's part of what I was seeing in the receiver. Third, the transmitter can have a poor phase response near the band edge (due to sound diplexer), which causes color transients (edges) to be wrong. Probably some of that in the receiver too. NTSC specifies the group delay response of the transmitter be precorrected to match the NTSC committee's idea of what a receiver IF would do. (Called a "Friedendall" precorrection filter after the guy who managed to design a workable one.) PAL does not use a precorrection, and lets any phase (hue) distortion be cancelled by the alternating phase.

As far as comb filters, reasonable ones came in in the mid 60's with the invention fo the glass delay line for PAL, so this wasn't really tied to the abortive I/Q revival.

Sounds like that incidental phase distortion must be similar to IM distortion in audio. I bet that I've seen this in older sets and thought it was localized purity problems due to mask doming on strong beam current on bright fleshtones. NTSC color transmission fascinates me as much now as it did 20 years ago. I,ve met a lot of good bench techs that really don't fully understand color transmission and reception but are competant none the less. I'm just a restless inquiring mind I reckon. One of my pet projects that I've already taken one stab at is a homebrew matrix adder similar to the one in a CT-100 that I want to apply after a Zenith Beam demod. section just to see what improvement it would have over the typical 60's crt matrix. I've got a copy of the schematic for 15" Zenith set and it appears that is what they were doing there. I'm hoping for an all tube circuit that will come close to those tight black levels and improved gamma that I see on those first gen. chromacolor sets. If that works out, maybe add driven clamps for DC restoration ( I,m gettin a little carried away now..). Anyway, it seems to me that the luma/chroma area of a color set has to have some complexity for a good picture. It seem to me that the "simple" one tube approach in those old Motorola's an Maggies just didn't cut the mustard to my eyes. They should have stuck with cloning RCA's ( i'll still keep em around, space permitting).

In the "conflict" CRT vs Plasma/LCD: I think the peoples want LCD/Plasma tv's because for 2 BIG reasons:
- 1. The LCD/Plasma tv's and monitors are friendly with your eyes (for eg., if you stay too much with yout eyes in the fornt of an old CRT tv, your eyes will hurt you after a time)
- 2.They are space saving
Well, the big problem with the LCD/Plasma tv's and monitors is that the image haves lower qualty than at an CRT tv/monitor (I only watch normal television, not HDTV, maybe in HDTV the image provided by the LCD/Plasma tv's is better; I saw an 16:9 17"? monitor conected to an "Apple" computer that provided an image way above than that provided by CRT's monitors-well that moniutor cost unleas $1000); and another problem with the LCD/Plasma tv's/momitors is that of the side wiew: if you stay to much on the left or on the right side of the screen you risk to see nothing.
I have a question: there is an adapter that allows you to conect an roudie to HDTV?

I have a 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 which still works, and an RCA CTC185 half as old but still works as well (after one repair and the ground points around the tuner having been resoldered). Both sets have their original CRTs; the Zenith has never been serviced, and was used quite a bit from 1995-99.


I've got a 1995 Zenith 19" Sentry 2 also. Been my main TV the entire almost 11 years now. Never had a problem with it. Been used TONS. No problems.

I don't beleive anyone is doing a 1080i sub on top of a 1080i main - what you are probably seeing is the same as what WGN (WB channel in Chicago) is doing - two program table entries for the same video, perhaps with Spanish audio on the second entry when available.

Los Angeles channel 5 WB (KTLA) does the same thing, I was told this does not use any more bandwidth than one main channel since it's the same data. It's an excellent digital channel out here, they zoom in on almost everything fully or nearly fully so not much in the way of annoying black or grey side bars, only channel in LA that does that. They really do a good job at it too as I never seem to notice stuff getting chopped off vertically, maybe they zoom a little and stretch a little, but it looks great. Don't know if it's WB doing it or KTLA.

I have a question: there is an adapter that allows you to conect an roudie to HDTV?


My Hitachi HDTV has video or RF outputs but you have to have the TV on to use them, but yes I can just run that into a video/audio box that converts to RF, or right from the RF out to the antenna of any of my old tvs. Probably applies to any of the hdtv standalone tuners I would think, but not sure.

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I don't know whether I was just lucky or what, but my RCA CTC-185, bought new six years ago, still works great; excellent picture on cable, and still has the original CRT. The color controls are rock-stable as well (I haven't had to readjust them in months). Only had one repair done on this set to date; that was for an RF port that snapped off the tuner PC board about two or three months after I purchased the TV. The tech who repaired the set also told me the jungle IC had some sort of problem, but if it does it wasn't then and is not now noticeable in the picture at this point--at least I don't see it.

BTW, what type of color control circuitry did the later RCAs use after ColorTrak? I understand their newest CRT sets have a system they call Advanced Color-View, but I am interested in the color control systems used in RCA sets made from 1999 until ACV came in. Was the pre-ACV system a spinoff of or a modified version of ColorTrak? Whatever it is, as I said above, even the pre-Advanced Color View system was great, as I haven't had to adjust the onscreen color controls on my set in months, maybe closer to a year as I write this. Just turn the set on, get the channel I want, and enjoy the show. No more fiddling with color controls that won't stay put. :yes: Now, if only the programming on the major networks was better than it is (!), I'd really enjoy watching TV. Oh well. That's why I have a DVD player and a VCR. When there's nothing interesting on regular TV, I just put in a DVD (from Netflix) or one of my old VHS tapes of any one of many older (1950s-'70s and certain '80s-'90s) programs. :yes:

My RCA set works great with both DVD and VCR as well. Some day I'll break down and get a new square-corner flat-screen TV, but as long as my RCA works as well as it does, I intend to keep it until it dies, or until the picture gets so dim I can't see it. My barber just bought a new Philips 20" square-corner stereo TV for his shop; it replaced a 22-year-old Philco color set (with detented UHF tuning; that set must have been closer to 30 or more years old). The CRT in the Philco must have been getting dim for some time, as he tells me it eventually became so dark the picture was unwatchable. I don't think the Philips is a Philips-Magnavox, as the molded-in nameplate at the base of the CRT mask just says Philips. Which reminds me. Are Philips TVs any better or worse than Philips-Magnavox, or are they basically the same set, with the same reliability issues and other problems as when Philips took over Magnavox in the late '80s or '90s? I was very sorry to see Magnavox quality go downhill as it did once Philips got hold of it :no: , as this was for years my second-favorite brand of TV, next to Zenith. Never owned a Magnavox TV myself, but I have relatives who had a Maggie 3-way console for many years and had good service from it. I would love to have a similar Maggie or Zenith console (I like the looks of those older cabinets as well), but I simply don't have the room anymore :no: since I moved to a small apartment from a three-bedroom house with a basement late in 1999.

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I know it's been awhile since anyone brought this up; but, I need to submit an entry. This may not actually be the worst; but, those '80's Panasonic/Quasar "Dynacrap" sets rank pretty high on my "hate" list.

I used to find these during the '90's. Most of them had bad flybacks, weak CRT's, and 10,237 bad solder connections. The most common flyback to go bad in these was the TLF14423F used in 25" sets that were often sold under the GE brand.

The TV shop gave me a nice looking '86 15" Quasar with remote and A/V jacks. The flyback was blown apart and the HOT was shorted. Since the CRT was still good (miracle), I decided to order a generic flyback. Got the set going with no OSD and many obvious loose connections. It seems like the more I soldered on it, the worse it got. The PC board was really cooked in the power supply area. I then realized that the tuner was not receiving several channels. I finally got enough and pulled the chassis for spare parts and tossed the rest! This set reminded me why I hated Quasar/Panasonic sets of the '80's.

Note to self: The next Quasar that comes in with a bad flyback, just throw it in the dumpster!

Zenith TV's 25" to 27" made in the 1990's

I think we all know this, but the CRT's in these TV's are junk. They'd last for maybe two years tops.

Brand new RCA flat screen CRT standard definition TV's

Color bleeding right there in the store.

Zenith TV's 25" to 27" made in the 1990's

I think we all know this, but the CRT's in these TV's are junk. They'd last for maybe two years tops.

Brand new RCA flat screen CRT standard definition TV's

Color bleeding right there in the store.

...And the flybacks don't last in the newer RCA's.

Another one on the top of my list are Durabrand sets. I've never seen one with a decent picture.

MRX37 you are so right about the Flat tube RCA's.. My friend has a 2001 model with built-in dvd player and he asked me to ''come and check out his tv's settings." I adjusted as much as I could, but the only way to get rid of the bleeding was to turn everything down so much that it looked terrible. He said he rarely even watches it!