Up untill late '60's, color tv sets in U.S.A. wheren't sold in very big numbers. By late '60's they becamed more common and in the '70's allmost everyone had a color tv set (people with more money even had two).
In the '70's, the adevent of in-line color picture tubes (C.R.T.'s) did helped among other things (solid-state sets, printed circuited boards) in getting tv sets cheaper, so more affordable.
They where more easy to adjust and I think more easely to be manufactured.

Some time after it's development, in-line CRT's dropped the price: less adjustments at factory. But, at same time, IC's entering the marketing. Normally IC's reduced the number of required adjustments, including coils.
Soon the SAW filters entered the market. Less adjusments yet.

All of this had high initial costs, and initial issues to solve, but the long run payed off.

For many years after the introduction of the basic 18 inch rectangular table model, engineers/manufacturers managed to reduce the real cost of these sets in opposition to inflation, so there were a series of years where the consumer dollar price remained roughly constant at about $300.

By the way, technical papers on new technologies for TVs always talked about reducing "complexity" and never the word "cost." Anti-trust laws prohibit companies from discussing costs with each other, and corporate lawyers made sure the word was not used even in public technical papers where the implication of reduced cost was obvious to all and therefore not possibly a collusion of some sort between private parties.

The first in line sets were more $$. They were RCA, Sony Sylvania, & GE.
The GE was an exception, it was built to be cheap & not give a great pix.
just make it work.
If you look at Zenith real CRT advances cost more at first.
Roundy, rectangle, black matrix, in line, EFL & FTM.
All of them cost more than the previous generation sets that overlapped.

Zeno:smoke:

Some people had multiple color sets in the 50s...I recently bought a lot of sets at a farm auction in Illinois, and they had interesting brand loyalty...All 3 monochrome TVs were GE and they had 4 different color RCAs: A high end late production CTC-7 Southbridge console, a low end metal table model CTC-9 (they must have had a great year or 2 around 1959 to afford 2 color TVs within a year or 2 of each other), a late 60s CTC-38 and and a late 60s early 70s TV stereo combo...The TV chassis and mask were gone but the remote chassis/tuners and the remote hand unit and complete stereo remaied.

GE introduced inline with the Portacolor in 1965 and it did help reduce cost. Most makes didn't start adopting inline until around 1976 and even then many continued with Deltagun until as late as 1980.

Probably you wanted to say they countiuned with delta untill 1980.

The one-gun CRTs used by RCA were in certain 15" and 19" models by early 70s. As I recall, these were all solid state sets called Accucolor or Argosy and later XL-100. Larger sizes were still delta until about 1980, when one-gun seemed to be more common.

About the same time, RCA sold a few color TVs that were hybrid and had tubes, those were delta gun or inline like porto-color?.

Weren't Zenith System 3 one-gun CRT's ?

RCA 14, 18, & 19" hybrids all deltas. Last 25" tube type were deltas mostly tubes. Last I remember were CTC 38 & CTC 39.

Zeno:smoke:

The one-gun CRTs used by RCA were in certain 15" and 19" models by early 70s. As I recall, these were all solid state sets called Accucolor or Argosy and later XL-100. Larger sizes were still delta until about 1980, when one-gun seemed to be more common.

About the same time, RCA sold a few color TVs that were hybrid and had tubes, those were delta gun or inline like porto-color?.

Weren't Zenith System 3 one-gun CRT's ?

Interesting...This summer I had a fully solid state 19" deltagun RCA with a phone pad digital tuner with LED 7-segment channel display that looked to be late 70s early 80s...

RCA built delta CRT's // to in lines. One delta was a very boxy 19",
the other was in 19" & 25". Last deltas & last modular chassii from RCA
with a very short run, they were rare.

Zenith S3 CRT's were in line EFL jugs that had 3 focus grids. Probably
the brightest CRT out there. A few of them could light up Fenway Park
for a night game ! EFL's came out in H-line high end 17" & 19" sets.
Eventually they came in 13, 17, 19, 23, & 25 inch. The H & J used
a modded CC2 chassis.
Zeno

Focus in a standard definition CRT can be too good. When the EFL tubes came out, the focus was so sharp that the beam would saturate the green phosphor (and the blue to some extent, I think) and turn the whites pinkish. When the focus was best overall, this would occur in a blurry circular area halfway between the center and the edges. The effect would move in or out as the best focus was adjusted to be center or edge. This got nicknamed "the toilet seat problem," because the affected area looked about the same shape. I was not part of the group looking at the problem, and don't know what was done to fix it either temporarily or permanently.

But why did they used 'till late delta picture tubes?

Because at each stage along the manufacturing chain, it was better to sell remaining stock at a low price than to scrap the parts and get nothing.

Didn't thought of that.