Another thread led to the question of whether black & white sets were still being manufactured.

I'm sure we've all seen the little 5" sets that are sold at discount stores, but it seems (at least according to the listings on alibaba.com) that larger sets are still being made.

Here are some pictures (images are hosted on my webspace as I doubt they allow hotlinking) taken from the listings on alibaba.com (http://www.alibaba.com)...

A couple of 10" sets:

http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw10.jpg
http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw10-2.jpg

A couple of 14" sets, notice that one looks like it has a click tuner:

http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw14.jpg
http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw14-2.jpg

While it is showing a color image according to the listing it is a 17" B&W:

http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw17.jpg

Lastly these 2 oddities, 16:9 B&W? One is 7", the other 9". Someone is actually making 16:9 B&W CRTs!

http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw7wide.jpg
http://65c02.org/images/ak/bw9wide.jpg

There are also mentions of 19" remote sets, but no pictures.

Minimum quanities start at around 200 sets FOB China. No prices are quoted for these, but other listings for 14" color sets hover around US$30ea....

Anyone want to order some? :)

What will they think of next!

Aaaaaaagh!
Oh, I just looove those 16:9 mini B&W TV's. :D
I wonder what the minimum lot is on those. I know I'd buy one of them just for novelty value. :yes:

Thanks for pointing out alibaba.com-- it looks at least as entertaining as those web sites that sell various junk to flea-market vendors and "dollar-store" owners. :) I couldn't find those wide-screen B&W sets on the site, but I did see one other interesting B&W set; it's a 2" one that looks like a knock-off of the lollipop-tube Sony Watchman B&W sets. (In fact, in the picture it looks like someone Photoshop'ed the words "Watch man" on the front of it)

I found several listings for security monitors and door cams using those flat watchman style CRTs, so similar TV's aren't surprising. I just wish they'd post better pictures of the actual products. In the picture of the watchman clone they didn't even bother to remove all the color from the "on screen" image, but I guess actual screen shots are too much to ask. :(

Most of those larger sets seem to use the same manual electronic tuning as the discount 5" sets. Some of the larger sets and possibly the 16:9 sets seem to have the same auto tuning as most current sets. That click tuner on one of the 14" sets surprised me though. Someone must have a warehouse full of old click tuners as they can't be cheaper to manufacture.

I'll have to go scrounging through the crappy markets I usually avoid, maybe someone has those 16:9 sets...

Also, minimum order seems to be a container load. That works out at around 200/400 larger sets, depending on the type of container (I couldn't decipher those parts of the listing being largely ignorant of the specifics of shipping containers), but goes up to 1000+ for some of the smaller sets.

I can see a niche market for the 16x9 b&w sets - watching old b&w DVDs such as "A night to remember".

Even on good colour TVs with excellent convergence, b&w never looks the same as on a REAL b&w screen - at least to me. Maybe it's something to do both with convergence and the shadow mask/dot-stripe patterns?

I've noticed green/purple artifacts around B&W images on DVD. I don't see the same artifacts on tape or LD so I assume they are a product or the encoding process.

I wonder if it is possible to optimise the encoder settings for B&W content in order to at least minimise if not eliminate these artifacts. While it wouldn't help with commercial DVDs it may be an option if you have B&W content to burn.

Another option may be to connect your DVD player via S-video and disconnect the chroma line when watching B&W movies. That should elimate color artifacts.

I agree that B&W video looks best on a B&W set, but I doubt I'd want to watch a 9" set for long. I'd still buy one though.

I wonder if MPEG supports B/W? It would save some bits if there was no chroma information.

I have to admit that I prefer the way B/W looks on a color set. I think it's because I have never seen a B/W set that had perfect DC restoration and a well regulated power supply. They also usually have really light tinted screens that give poor contrast. I need to see a high quality B/W professional monitor. All the B/W sets I can think of were either really cheap, or made before the days of regulated power supplies and good DC restoration.

Those 16:9 black and white sets are really cool - they're just so unusual! I'd love to buy one - and it would also be pretty cool to have a modern, remote operated black and white set, but I can't imagine the amount of work it would be to organize a shipment from China - the quantities involved are just too huge. At my old job we shipped non-working computer monitors overseas by the container, and let me tell you, those containers are pretty big. We could fit _about_ 22 pallets on there, and with approximately 30 monitors per pallet (17"), plus loose monitors packed in the extra space, we could fit about 700 monitors on a container. Now, this was without packing material to speak of, and I don't know how many you could fit if they were all in boxes, but it would be a lot. And I don't want to think of how many thousand of those little 16:9 TV's would make a container...

-Ian

OK, found the website of the manufacturer of those little 11" 16:9 TV's - they show that a 20ft container holds 1784 of them, and a 40ft container will hold 4056. So... I'll buy two of 'em - now all we need to do is find people to buy the other 1782 tv's... Haven't found a distributor that carries these things, but that's definitely the way to go. Because I don't really feel like trying to sell them on eBay for the rest of my life...

-Ian

Interesting stuff...on that click tuner set, that doesn't look like it has stops for each UHF channel, and the VHF dial appears odd, too. Could just be the way I'm looking at it. I'm sure the vast majority of these get sold in third world backwaters where any tv is a luxury & $30 is an awful lot of money. They probably don't have very good reception in those places, so bw would work better anyway.

I have seen some of those drugstore 5" sets being sold with mail-in rebates where the final price was $9.95 or less. The wholesale cost of those things must be $5 each.

That 16:9 B/W TV is also mentioned here:

http://itrademarket.com/worldamax/181913

I wonder if MPEG supports B/W? It would save some bits if there was no chroma information.

I have to admit that I prefer the way B/W looks on a color set. I think it's because I have never seen a B/W set that had perfect DC restoration and a well regulated power supply. They also usually have really light tinted screens that give poor contrast. I need to see a high quality B/W professional monitor. All the B/W sets I can think of were either really cheap, or made before the days of regulated power supplies and good DC restoration.

I have a Conrac 14" b/w monitor which uses a 6080 tube for the B+ regulation and a 6BK4 for HV regulation, plus it has a cylindrically curved screen. It ought to provide about the best B/W picture attainable but is full of black beauty caps which I'll need to replace for it to work right.

Retrohacker: There's an 11" version of the 16:9 B&W? I could only find the 7" and the 9". Put me down for a couple, only 1780 to go :) Perhaps I should get down to the Caribean Gardens crap market I normally avoid and see if there are any to be found.

bgadow: The third world market makes sense. It would also explain why even the 17" model is listed as coming with a 12VDC power lead. That said I know a couple of dealers who ship containers loads of used electronics from Australia to Africa. One of them would buy dead color sets for AU$2-10, he supposedly had techs over there that would get them going for him. He even cleared out my shed of old (but not old enough to be interesting) TV chassis. Another guy still would pay a premium for pretty much anything that was 12VDC, especially PA amplifiers and multiband radios. If these guys can undercut the new $30 color sets and make a profit, how much can they be selling these B&W sets for?

andy: You've got me wondering how good B&W could get. Anyone tried running video through a scan doubler into say an Eizo Flexscan 6600 or similar hires B&W monitor? Or maybe sticking the dark tint CRT from a computer monitor into a video monitor? It's been so long since I've actually really watched a B&W TV (I always ended up with more monitors than TVs for some reason, even in my couldn't afford color days) that I'd forgotten about the poor regulation and contrast.

I've got some relatively useless B&W Mac monitors and some old multisync monitors that sync down to 15kHz, maybe I've just found a use for them.

it would also be pretty cool to have a modern, remote operated black and white set

I REALLY need to ask my folks if they still have their 1985 Philips 12inch b&w portable - it had 12 channels AND remote control - even with Standby IIRC :)

I'd love to get one of those l'il 16x9 b&ws as well - don't suppose they also support PAL?

An old multi resolution B/W monitor would make a nice B/W HDTV!

That 16:9 B/W TV is also mentioned here:

http://itrademarket.com/worldamax/181913

Thanks Andy! Say, maybe one of us should request a quote-- it looks like the shipping unit is just one carton (containing 9 TV's). ...Unless you have to have enough total cartons of this and other item(s) to make a complete container, that is. If the minimum really is only one carton, though, I bet we'd have enough interested people here to put together an order of at least 2 cartons without too much fuss. If you really do need to order a container-load, there is vague mention of "delivering samples with reasonable charges" on their company info page, so perhaps if nothing else we could place orders for a few units under the guise of requesting samples...

Interesting stuff...on that click tuner set, that doesn't look like it has stops for each UHF channel, and the VHF dial appears odd, too.


I noticed a set much like that about 10 years ago at a Montgomery Wards store. It appeared to be a one-time special purchase item, and was a no-name 12" B&W with click-stop VHF tuner but a continuous UHF tuner (covering to channel 69). At the time, I wondered about that mis-match in tuner types, given the FCC "equal access UHF" rule, but figured, eh, probably nobody even cares anymore.
:shrug:

I have seen some of those drugstore 5" sets being sold with mail-in rebates where the final price was $9.95 or less. The wholesale cost of those things must be $5 each.

Yeah, those things have gotten *really* cheap.
There must be at least two manufacturers of those things that I've seen in stores lately. A few months ago, I bought one at CompUSA for about $12 that had a built-in AM/FM radio; both the radio and TV tuners were separate but had 'direct' tuning (just a pair of knobs with numbers on it), with the radio tuner being a variable cap that rotates 180 degrees mounted one one side of the cabinet, and the varacator-type TV tuner being tuned by a variable capacitor that rotates 270 degrees (or whatever) on the other side of the cabinet. Ease of tuning wasn't too bad even on UHF, even though it covers to ch 83. The cabinet is very plain and cheaply made of black plastic, and (taking it apart) it appears that liberal use was made of a hot-glue gun to hold the internal wiring in place. :) Picture quality is fairly 'soft' and geometry isn't great either (and not really adjustable), and there's no DC restoration (you'd think in a TV that's mostly made up of IC's, they could have bothered to include at least a measly diode in the circuit for DC restoration...). However, the front end is almost *amazing*. It picks up every local channel here reasonably clearly on its little telescoping monopole antenna, which is more than I can say for just about any other TV I've seen, even with dipole rabbit ears. It has A/V input jacks, which seems a bit overkill for a little B&W set, but, hey, that's a pretty fancy feature compared with most small B&W TV's, so I won't complain..!
It came with a 12VDC car-cord, but no AC adapter, and for some reason the built-in battery holder takes 10 (yes, 10 -- not 8) size 'C' cells, though the DC power input is intended for 12 volts.

A week or so after getting that set, Best Buy had their little Sylvania-branded 5" B&W set on sale for $12.99, so I went over there to check it out in the store. The Sylvania looked much like some Coby-branded sets I've seen before, so it's probably the same manufacturer. It had slide-rule tuning, but it's misleading-- there's no "dial cord" or other gearing involved, so it's actually direct tuning with a linear indicator. Like the CompUSA "Norwood Micro" set, this one also had an AM/FM radio, but this time the tuning cap (for the radio) was evidently ganged together with the variable resistor (for the TV), so the TV tuner only uses 180 degrees of the tuning knob's travel. This made it really tough to tune UHF, especially since the knob also has a lot of friction and sticktion (in part due to being mechanically coupled to that slide-rule indicator), and the fact it covers up to channel 83. It also didn't seem to be nearly as sensitive as the CompUSA cheapie, and picture quality was no better. ...But it did have a white plastic case in a pearlized-like finish, and came with a few interchangable faceplates in different colors. (!) Fit and finish didn't look so good though. I think it came with both a DC car adapter and an AC adapter, and the internal battery holder was for 8 'D' cells, which makes more sense.

In any case, how in the world can *anyone* make money on a brand-new TV set (no matter how modest in size or performance) that sells for 12 bucks retail??

For that matter, I wonder how many buyers of these little portables realize that none of these TVs will be able to receive TV programs by antenna in the not-too-distant future..? :no:

For that matter, I wonder how many buyers of these little portables realize that none of these TVs will be able to receive TV programs by antenna in the not-too-distant future..? :no:

Last I heard, they're talking about killing analog NTSC Dec 31, 2008. Wonder, if I happen to be watching the ball drop (Times Square, NYC) on that New Year's Eve on an analog TV station, if at the very stroke of midnight they kill the transmitter, As soon as "2009" lights up I suddenly see snow (no reception). :scratch2:

Has anyone confirmed that these TVs are even NTSC with the US channel allocation?

The spec listings for these TVs mention world standard, but I don't know if that means that they are all world standard or that they can be ordered for any standard. Being B&W I wouldn't think that PAL/NTSC really comes into it, they should be able to sync to 50Hz or 60Hz equally well. They are probably continuosly tuned, so you should be able to get something even if there are some differences at the bottom or top of the band. They only thing I wouldn't be so sure about is the sound carrier.

A long time ago now a lot of Eizo Flexscan 6600 21" hires B&W monitors showed up on the surplus market here. I never bought one at the time as I couldn't think of a use for it, but they would have to be about the nicest B&W monitor I have ever seen. Unlike most of the other large B&W workstation monitors they actually produce a true greyscale image from an analog RGB input. I'd grab one now if I found one, not that I really need anymore large CRTs (still I feel these need to keep a stock of CRT monitors that will last my life out, I don't like LCD/Plasma displays).

Clinton electronics, Megascan, Dataray and probably others are still making high resolution (some models claim up to 3000 lines) 21" B&W monitors for medical imaging applications. Most are portrait displays, but being B&W sticking one on it's side shouldn't be a problem. I'd hate to ask for prices on these, but if they ever show up on the surplus market they should be reasonably cheap (after all, how many people want B&W CRT monitors these days).

I would expect those large medical monitors to start showing up on the surplus marker because they're being replaced with LCDs. You can get large monochrome LCDs for medial imaging now.

Some more new Chinese-made 14" and 17" B&W sets:

http://www.ceiec-fj.com/lucy/newpage6.htm
http://www.ceiec-fj.com/ceiec-fj/zheskming/tv14.htm
http://www.ceiec-fj.com/ceiec-fj/zheskming/tv17.htm

Note that some of these even have remote controls...

Some of these look like early-mid 70's sets! You would think they'd only be making the "modern" styled ones these days....

Isn't there some place in India where they are still making some English motorcycle from the 50s? Someone bought the entire plant, shipped it over and restarted production.

Maybe that's where these 70s style TVs are coming from. Someone took over an old factory and restarted production as if it was still 1978?

I guess the only way to tell would be to find one of these sets and have a look inside. Are they just 70s style or are they a complete 70s design?

Okay guys, were you looking for this?
http://itrademarket.com/worldamax/group+10411 :thmbsp: