Just wondering what this is as opposed to cable-ready tuning. I don't hear of a lot of sets with the former.

In the 70s and 80s most sets antenna inputs were spade terminals. This was true even when some sets in the 70s had solid state digital tuning. My original take on "cable ready" has always been that when sets started coming with the socket to accept coaxial cable mounted on the back, then they were cable ready.

I think this vagueness sold a lot of sets and retired a lot of otherwise perfectly usable sets because people thought that you needed a "cable ready" set in order to hook up to cable. All you needed was one of the handy little RF transformers hooked to your spade connector screws and you would have been "cable ready."

ANY set will hook to cable and now there are no tuning limitations within the set its self as that is all dictated by the provider and sent thought their box sitting on your set. NOW, I do believe that the really modern sets can somehow work without the box, but normally there was an identification card with the cable/satellite boxes. I'm sure that there is some digital magic to take care of that problem though. Anyway, I hope that this explains some of your question.

Tubejunke is on frequency with his answer.:yes:

This is assuming unscrambled NTSC
Regular tuners would get 2-13 CATV & some CATV on UHF
but the numbers were different on UHF.

RAT tuners came both ways. Zenith B&W's with RAT & some
others also were NOT true cable ready. By the mid 80's
almost every set was "cable ready" except the few
cheapo sets with style old tuners.

IMHO a true cable ready set has to tune some or all of the
CATV channels that DO NOT coincide with regular 2-83 channels.
You can spot them by the switches such as TV-CATV or
TV-HRC-IRC etc. Keep in mind CATV uses additional "bands" not
covered by the old 2-83 tuners.

Newer sets do everything through the menus & some detect
AIR or CATV during autoprograming. But at that point
the TV's arent so kool anymore.........

73 Zeno:smoke:

IMHO a true cable ready set has to tune some or all of the
CATV channels that DO NOT coincide with regular 2-83 channels.
You can spot them by the switches such as TV-CATV or
TV-HRC-IRC etc. Keep in mind CATV uses additional "bands" not
covered by the old 2-83 tuners.

73 Zeno:smoke:
Super band, hyper band and ultra band right? Thanks to both of you for the info. I had been wondering why at least three of my sets out of the five have a normal/cable switch, the Trinitron having its switch on the front next to the color controls. My XL-100 has this switch, but will also auto-program.

Our early '80's 19" Magnavox with a cable ready RAT would only go up to channel 36 when in CATV mode. That was fine until the cable company added channels above 36. For those channels, we used the VCR to tune the higher channels.

Years ago, I had a 19" Sylvania color hospital TV with a motorized single knob varactor tuner. Behind the control door, there was a switch to select between air and midband cable channels. This set had 6 or 8 positions above channel 13 that could be tuned to whatever channel was desired. When the switch was set to air, these positions tuned the standard UHF over-the-air channels. When set to midband, it tuned the midband cable channels.

I've seen some cheap sets (Emerson, Goldstar, etc) that had a 14-position varactor tuner that boasted something like "110 channel cable compatible". Of course, one couldn't tune in all channels at once. One had to decide what 14 channels they wanted to watch the most and set the tuner for those channels. These sets generally had a pushbutton for each channel position, along with a band select lever and thumbwheel tuning control for each channel position that was used to program the desired channel in each position.

I remember the Zenith TV's that had both cable ready and non-cable ready RAT's. The cable ready ones had green LED readouts and the non-cable ready ones had red LED readouts.

At present, I have a '79 RCA 19" colortrak that has a non-remote, non-cable ready RAT with red LED readout.

The oldest TV I've seen that had a RAT that would receive all unscrambled NTSC cable channels up to '36 was a '79 Zenith system 3. I think RCA made some TV's during the mid '70's that were "cable ready" by mid '70's standards. I think they had a single knob varactor tuner that would tune OTA VHF-UHF, as well as the midband cable channels.

I suppose the early 80s Magnavox was a step down from the Star System, I saw a remote test video in which a '77 Star System T995-02 chassis console went to channel 99.

The info about the hospital TV, that sheds some more light on how the tuner worked in the '78 Zenith I saw demonstrated. Wide range of channels available, but only a few could be tuned in without a lot of adjustments on the TV itself.

My '85 Sharp VCR has a 12-position varactor tuner and boasts "105 channels". The buttons are labeled 2-13. I did notice a 3-position switch for each available channel setting, now I know what they're for. That VCR's a keeper for sure, acquired on the day of my mom's life-saving surgery. Didn't want to be at ground zero with nothing to do and not knowing the outcome, so I just tried to go about my business and went in later.

I'll bet your '79 RCA looks a lot like my '82. I have seen ads from around then. Mine has a woodgrain finish where the outermost silver trim is on any similar set I've seen, power, channel and volume buttons behind the door on the right side, and a square lens that is slightly taller than it is wide, displaying the channel number of course and the Nipper dog logo. No RAT keypad.

Is there something about the Star System that I'm missing? Seems to me that it's fully cable-ready. Well, up to channel 99 anyway.

I've seen those late '70's STAR Maggies. They tuned channels 2-83 for standard VHF/UHF and channels 84-99 covered the cable midband channels. By the time our set was made, I think they had dropped the STAR designation. Our set used either the 19C1 or C2 chassis; which, was a dual-board chassis (power supply/horizontal deflection module and signal module). The C3's and later were all single board.

The three position switch selects between VHF-LO band (2-6), VHF-HI (7-13), and UHF (14-83). Some models would allow tuning of some cable channels on the V-hi and U positions.

"Cable ready" had many meanings; but, my definition of a "cable ready" TV is one that the cable can be directly connected to and the set will receive all available non-scrambled cable channels at any given time. In today's world of digital cable, it really doesn't matter what kind of set you have because you'll likely need their cable box in order to receive most channels.

The three position switch selects between VHF-LO band (2-6), VHF-HI (7-13), and UHF (14-83). Some models would allow tuning of some cable channels on the V-hi and U positions.
You're sure about that in regards to my Sharp VCR? That doesn't cover its boasting 105 channels. I had heard of super, hyper and ultra band before, which cover more channels.

It even still has the little tool for adjusting these switches clipped inside the front panel. Sweet.