It's getting ridiculous.$29 DVD players and vcrs.Fixed a bigscreen for a guy and they had a new 27" Sylvania flat tube tv they bought as a spare for $91 brand new.And the kicker was I got a call from a friend who saw a 51" Magnavox High Definition tv for $699 in Walmart last night. :jawdrop:
The days of anyone getting a tv repaired are numbered.And I'm a tv repairman. :tears: And these tvs aren't built to last.Trouble is it's getting harder to dispose of electronics too.I think we're gonna see a glut of illegally dumped tvs on the side of the road in a few years.You can't hardly give away used tvs,thrift shops are getting picky about what tvs they'll take and the difficulty of disposing of them is going to be a problem.

I can't believe it either. It seemed that prices for TV sets remained fairly constant until the '90s. During the 1970s, a 12 inch black and white cost the better part of a hundred dollars and that wasn't cheap in those days. I think those of us who value TV sets as more than mere appliances should find, fix and use all the vintage sets we want as someday parts for new sets may not even be offered rendering them almost unserviceable. The vintage sets may not have all the modern features but they still do what they were meant to do - receive and display television broadcasts. I value build quality and long term serviceability over bells and whistles any day. Long live the tube.

I value build quality and long term serviceability over bells and whistles any day.

Welcome to the minority, my friend

I'm afraid we're only seeing the very start of what's going to be a much bigger problem in the not too distant future. With the coming of HDTV and the shutting off of the analog VHF/UHF signals there's going to be a flood of "obsolete" sets headed for the trash. Put the blame where you want but it appears to me we're being told we can't use our old NTSC sets and on top of that we're going to have problems getting rid of them. There will be converters to use the old sets but most people that just think of their TV's as appliances won't want to mess with a converter just for their little TV that sits on the kitchen counter. I live out in a rural area and we already have a huge problem with people from the city coming out on our gravel roads and dumping all sorts of unwanted items from appliances to tires, and in a county that is lucky to have one Sheriff's deputy patroling in the evening they are just too busy handling domestic calls and etc. to do anything about the junk strewn all along the backroads. This county has a lot of national forest land and last week I drove through one and spotted about a hundred tires all neatly stacked about 50 ft from the road. What I wonder is if we can't get rid of them what does the county or forest service do with them when they clean up the mess. I fear this is only going to get worse. BTW I got out of TV repair when I saw the first 19" Color sets sell for under $300.00 in 1978. I'd seen what the cheap imports did to the office machine business ie. electronic calculator prices in the early to mid 70's that basically turned them into throwaway items. One of the very few calls I got right was figureing out it was going to happen to TV fairly soon and I needed to find another way to make a living because consumer electronics servicing was going away in the future. I got busy and got my FCC license and went into two way radio and large transmitter servicing, it's a little more difficult to just pitch a transmitter that costs $60,000+. A couple of years ago I went to an SBA auction of a TV shop, there was a couple of almost new Sencore pieces of test equipment for servicing VCR's, they were hi-dollar items in the thousand of dollars. It's hard to justify test equipment costing mega bucks to service an item that can be simply replaced for less than $50. Just my $0.02 worth....

When I lived in Berkeley a few years ago, they used to have a 'dump all you want day'. And I would go around the night before the stuff was collected picking up all the TVs. Of all those TVs which was usually around 10 or so about 2/3 of them would work. Most of them would be working 21-25" ss color sets 15-25 years old. Once I picked up a 71 Zenith color hybrid in working order, a few system III consoles (one person with a 25" system 3 console even gave me some free lamps and helped me carry it just to get rid of it - and it worked great). I couldn't beleive that people would just dump perfectly good TVs. Basically I think people put a value of about -2$ on most used TVs working or not, unless they are either look really old, or really new. Mabye this is because the new stuff is so cheap. The one positive thing that comes of this is that good quality late model tube sets and early solid state sets do go cheap.

I certainly think that the older stuff was just built better, and much easier to service, TV, cars, most things. I'm going to be watching my old TVs and driving my old cars my whole life, because I like them better, and I can just keep fixing them. If maintained and adjusted properly they will often perform better than their newer counterparts and certainly last longer.

Long live the tube. :thmbsp:

btw I just got a tv given to me by a guy went to service his new HD Sony 34" .He took the tv out of the box and they left it in the test mode at the factory.Easy fix.Before I left he offered me the old tv he had put out on the porch.Said it had some slight color bleeding and it was time to upgrade.The tv he gave me was a 1993 Mitsubishi 31" with the remote. :banana:
I plugged it in after I got it in my house and I could hardly see what he was talking about.The color and contrast were cranked a little high and after adjustment the picture is fantastic. :) I need to find out why the one video input is stuck on S video.I'm guessing it has a switch in the S video plug that switches between composite and S video and it's dirty but the tuner input looks great.I also gotta open it up and bypass that pesky PIP module.Surprising this one is still not affecting the main video path as they usually do when the surface mount electrolytic caps leak and corode the board.But it will eventually.And I'll check the chassis over.Early 90's Mitsubishi tvs were known for leaking electrolytic caps but otherwise they're great quality sets.The picture tubes are far superior to early and mid 90's Sony tvs and especially Zenith tvs.It takes a lot of hours to use up the emission on a Mitsubishi tube and a bad flyback is rare.

I wish I had kept my mid-seventies RCA 15" B&W portable. It was a tube chassis in a walnut grain case that sat on a metal and woodgrain roll cart. Had good sensitivity and a dandy picture to boot. But back then I was a fool and fell for every new face that came around. It seemed I was always selling off good stuff for the latest and greatest new crap. :no:

Like the area Randy is from, we have lots of back roads which are already littered with old mattresses, couches, washing machines, tires, etc. I've seen a few tv sets in the ditches and expect to see more. Right now in most of the local counties you can still dump these legally for free at the landfill but most folks don't want to deal with the drive & limited hours. I had not seen any tv sets at the local collection site for a couple years but today I spotted something so pulled in for a closer look. They were closed until Wednesday so I don't know what I would have done if I had actually wanted what they had. Turned out to be 2 sets, one an older rear projection set & the other a solid state particle board box. This will get interesting in a few years-what will we-meaning us nuts on this forum-save from the ditches & alleyways, and what will we leave behind? There is going to be some good hardware out there for the taking.

in the early eightys rca would give you a 12" b&w tv with the purchase of selected color consoles. you would not believe how many sales that generated for me. times sure have changed

Today ALONE, our shared dumpster (about 8 homes), had a 35" JVC, and a 25" Sharp in it! Both battered, but both would have been valuable used sets 10 years ago. Despite the new law in CA that makes it an arrestable offense to dump any TV, computer, or cellphone in the trash, I see them all the time. It has been "illegal" to dump this stuff here for a long time, but until this year it was only enforced on businesses (not private citizens).

You know what will be VERY VERY VERY rare, and maybe more collectable in 30 years than a CT-100 is now? I say the early 13" Funai VCR-TV combos. Millions and millions sold, everybody had one just about, and now they're just about all gone! Imagine when the UCLA Film, Television & Radio Archives is looking for a CTC-197 table model and can't find one?

Same goes for vintage cars. The newer cars with their computers and plastic bumpers are disappearing as soon as they get to be 10 years old. There are plenty of Model A Fords, '57 Chevys, and other 50 to 80 year-old cars all over the place still. But how many 1980 vintage cars do you see on the road? Think that one over..... I bet that 50 years from now, a '95 Pontiac sedan will be more of a head-turner at a car show than a Model A!!!!

Charles

I am a pretty good collector of TV's but I have passed on some of the CTC-177's etc. that I have seen junked. I am more reluctant to take on a set which may have difficult to fix problems and is just plain not fun to work on!

I do see a fair amount of cars from around 1980 (1977-1982) on the road...for the most part these are still the carbureted RWD V8 or straight six where you can change out even the whole engine easily and keep it going. Now for the mid-late 80's to the early 90's cars, these seem to be the ones that are more scarce.
I do agree though that the modern day TV's, cars, etc. are worthy of preservation too.

Here in my area there is already a big problem with t.v.s being dumped. There are no repairmen in this area anymore, so they end up on the sides of rural roads. there is a road about 3 miles from my house with a deep ravine on one side and there must be at least 100 sets down on the bottom. There are 2 thrift stores here, though they don't take t.v.s anymore. There is a good side to the thrift store situation though, one of the stores does take older sets and then they call me, since they don't think anyone else would want them they let me have them for free! I just scored 3 nice Admiral sets this weekend from them, a 21" b/w console on a swivel stand from 1959, a mid-'60's color console, and a 12" portable from the mid-'60's, and the b/w console works fine now after replacing 1 tube.


Dumont-First with the finest in television.

in CA the fee has changed from being charged when disposing to WHEN buying a tv set. :scratch2: I beleive, TV shops charge a fee or used to. This shows how disposable TVs now are. Most recyclers won't bother trying to sell or part sets, too many, no market. Not a old tv in sight rarely.

:tears:

As much as I love finding electronics at the side of the road, I have to agree with laws requiring electronics to be disposed of properly. If people want disposible electronics, then they have to be willing to pay for proper disposal.

One good thing about these laws is that vintage TVs are more likely to be saved and sold at yard sales, or donated rather than thrown away. I've found some great stuff at the side of the road, but I probably miss 99% of it.

You know what will be VERY VERY VERY rare, and maybe more collectable in 30 years than a CT-100 is now? I say the early 13" Funai VCR-TV combos. Millions and millions sold, everybody had one just about, and now they're just about all gone! Imagine when the UCLA Film, Television & Radio Archives is looking for a CTC-197 table model and can't find one?

Same goes for vintage cars. The newer cars with their computers and plastic bumpers are disappearing as soon as they get to be 10 years old. There are plenty of Model A Fords, '57 Chevys, and other 50 to 80 year-old cars all over the place still. But how many 1980 vintage cars do you see on the road? Think that one over..... I bet that 50 years from now, a '95 Pontiac sedan will be more of a head-turner at a car show than a Model A!!!!

Charles

I think the store in town still has a Zenith (Funai) combo with a faded price tag of about $300. I think it dates from '92.

Yes, there are some 80s cars that are getting pretty rare. I'm charged with trying to find parts for many of them. Some tough examples: an 86 Skyhawk hatchback, checked coast to coast with no parts available. I recently bought the very last NOS rear side marker for a 76 Ranchero. Yesterday a woman was in needing a tailight for her 89 Grand Marquis. Nothing new out there for these & used are getting scarce.

Future collector cars: 2 door Cutlass Cieras or Buick Centurys; Eagle Premiers; Lincoln Versailles; Chevy Beretta; Dodge Daytonas. Hey, I didn't say I would buy them!

@ WalMart today : Symphonic 23" Flat Screen TV, front Av inputs, Closed captioning, sleep timer, blah blah blah....$89.00. They must have had 15 of them on pallets.

Ralphs Market: Kumho DVD Player $19 with $50 of groceries!

Charles

Don't forget that you can buy a portable CD player for less than the cost of most CDs.

And I just saw a "no name" dvd player in a sale paper for $16! Boy, that one should last forever! I remember my flea market friend selling a mid-late '80's 25" Sears (Sanyo) set with stereo sound and A/V jacks about 7 or 8 years ago for $175. Me and him were talking about that the other day and we agreed he'd be lucky to get $50 for such a set today (and that would be after it sat there for six months). People today would rather have modern looking sets with all the features than an older set that's going to keep going and going like the Energizer bunny.

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

Yes, that's very true. My brother-in-law is very tight and they've gone through about 3 or 4 $24.99 DVD players of different brands in the past year. I think one was bad right out of the box and the others didn't last very long before they started showing out. He thinks he's saving money; but, he really isn't. If he'd spend a little more on a better quality unit, he'd probably get at least 2 or 3 years of service out of it. That would be better than buying several $24.99 DVD players over a year's time. I made the mistake of buying one of those $39 all plastic Emerson VCR's a couple of years ago. It lasted about 3 months before it started stopping on it's own and eating tapes. I spent about $25 more on a JVC and have not had any more problems.

It's gotten to the point where all people see is: CHEAP PRICE!!! In reality, it's like the saying "you get what you pay for."

I've been wondering. How many all tube sets do you think are still in daily use by non collectors? There have to be a few still floating around out there among the general public? Do you think any of them will show up after the analog cutoff?

I think most of the problems with DVD players are due to bad filter caps on the SMPS secondary, i have fixed a few this way, there are 2 or 3 1000 or 1500 mfd caps, usually 10 to 16 v, if they go bad they will allow high frequency SMPS ripple to reach the digital circuits and cause them to malfunction.

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

Strangely, my experience has been the opposite. I have/had various Pioneer/Panasonic/Philips DVD players that are fussy about what discs they will read. When they fail completely it's usually the laser or spindle motor and they aren't interchangable between models.

I find plently of dead no name cheap players, but they are usually easy repairs (the most common fault would probably be the capacitors in the power supply). The parts are usually interchangable between models as while there are countless "brands" the parts inside are usually the same.

Most of the cheap noname CRT TV's I find are easy repairs. Though more recently I've started to see more of them with bad CRTs, so I guess the manufacturers have found some more corners that can be cut.

After wrestling with a friends LCD set I'm still not sure if I've found the fault or not. I do know that I don't want to see that set ever again. I'd rather work on the cheapest/nastiest CRT set than these things.

I had a friend who worked for Bendix for awhile, they make braking systems & such, he said after demand drops below "X" units a year for some electronics board used in an automotive computer system, not only do they quit making it, they toss the tooling & parts...He said that certain cars built after '85 or so will be virtually unrepairable when some little board in 'em somewhere dies...

Fortunately for at least owners of some of these cars the parts that actually fail aren't the unobtainable custom parts. I have repaired several Mitsubishi ECUs (used in the Patrol, Magna and others). Like so many other things it is bad capacitors that cause problems.

Dry joints, bad realys and the burnt tracks that they cause are also common and relatively easy to repair. As more cars equipped with this stuff reach the age that these parts start to fail it may be worth coming to an arrangement with the local mechanic. With the companies the sell "reconditioned" ECUs charging around $400 + changeover there's more money in fixing them than there is in fixing TVs.

Ralphs Market: Kumho DVD Player $19 with $50 of groceries!


Heeheehee! He said Kumho! :D

veg

Fortunately for at least owners of some of these cars the parts that actually fail aren't the unobtainable custom parts. I have repaired several Mitsubishi ECUs (used in the Patrol, Magna and others). Like so many other things it is bad capacitors that cause problems.

Dry joints, bad realys and the burnt tracks that they cause are also common and relatively easy to repair. As more cars equipped with this stuff reach the age that these parts start to fail it may be worth coming to an arrangement with the local mechanic. With the companies the sell "reconditioned" ECUs charging around $400 + changeover there's more money in fixing them than there is in fixing TVs.

So, does this mean that there should be an AK-offshoot? "ECUKARMA.ORG"

I can see it now....

"Wow man, I just re-capped my car's computer, it runs WAY better now!"

awesome.

Actually, I could see a solution making itself available at some point--there are already aftermarket engine control units....used for performance type apps, but I don't see why something like tihs couldn't be done to keep a vehicle going...it would be nice to be able to get 10-15, even 20 years out of my thunderbird....there's already a LOT of unavalilable parts though :( and the car is only 13 years old....

As for TV sets...where do you guys get these great deals on used awesome TV sets? I can't find anything decent--well, decent, yes, but not what I want. All I ask is that my set is color and has composite video in...component would be NICE but it's not necessary.

Friend of mine gave me a circa 1984 13" color set...haven't even plugged it in, why? I don't watch broadcast TV, and I can't stand the picture quality that coax brings for things like laserdisc.

Another friend gave me (okay it was site unseen, or else I wouldn't have taken it) circa 1988 Montgomery Wards color set-aboot a 20" or so...it works fabulous, has L/R RCA AUDIO OUT, however only has coax in for video...hooked the LD up to it, and while it wasn't bad, it could've been better...

Don't want to sound ungreatfull here...just wihs I could get a deal on a set that I could actually plug stuff into...without one of those converter boxes.

Heeheehee! He said Kumho! :D

veg
I laughed at that, but for a different reason: Kumho is more famous for making tires than DVD players.

Here's one brand we won't be hearing from for a while:

http://www.cyberhome.com/

Here's one brand we won't be hearing from for a while:

http://www.cyberhome.com/

LOL. I have one of those.

For dvd players lately I've been using dvd/vhs combos with broken vcrs but working dvd players that I've got for free. The good thing about the broken vcr dvd/vhs combos is that even if the vcr doesn't work, you still get a working tuner, and that can double as a uhf converter for your vhf only sets.

Slightly OT; but, there's something that's now harder to get rid of than used TV's: microwave ovens. About ten years ago; a friend of mine couldn't keep a microwave and he could usually get his price. He's got a couple right now that he's had for several years that he can't get $20 each for.

As far as VCR's go; I try to keep a few broken ones around just to use as a tuner. They will make a non cable ready set cable ready and a non UHF set able to receive UHF. I've also used them with newer sets with with A/V jacks and bad tuners. Of course, that will all come to a stop on 2/17/09. That's not far off when you think about it.

I have a CyberHome CH-DVD300 DVD player (Christmas gift in 2005) that still works well. The only thing I don't like about it is that it only works with its own remote. Can't get it to work at all with my AllForOne universal, but then again there was a warning on the company's web site when the player was new that these units will not work with any kind of universal remote. :no: I don't know if it will work, either, with the Philips learning remote, but I can't afford something like that right now so I may never know. My next DVD player may well be a combination VHS/DVD dubbing deck, or else an established brand of standalone DVD player such as Toshiba. The combo dubbing decks (off brands like Emerson, et al.) are selling for fairly cheap prices now, so I'll be better off getting an entirely new unit than having my current DVD player repaired when it eventually goes belly up. Like everything else these days, it will probably, even likely cost more to have mine repaired than it would to get a complete new system with a factory warranty. I ran into just this kind of problem when the cassette decks went bad in my Aiwa bookshelf stereo. Took it to a local TV repair shop, only to find out the repairs would probably cost close to what I paid for the unit when it was new, then seven years earlier. I finally gave up and bought a used Radio Shack stereo cassette deck online (John Kendall's Vintage Electronics, www.vintage-electronics.com) for $20, not including shipping. I connected this late-1970s vintage deck to the MD input of my stereo system, and it worked. I now have a cassette deck in my stereo once again, for a fraction of what it would have cost me to have the decks in the system repaired. I did this as well with a Zenith stereo system I had in the '80s. The single cassette player went bad after perhaps 15 years of hard use, so I found an older cassette deck on the curb in my old neighborhood and connected the deck to the aux input. Again, it worked, and saved me money on repair charges. The RS deck doesn't have auto-reverse or full-logic as did the decks built into my stereo, but the older deck works well with the system, which is really all that matters to me.

Too many older stereo systems, TV/VCR combos, etc. are put out for the trash every week because their largely non-technical owners do not think of using external devices to replace the built-in ones when the latter eventually wear out (but the rest of the unit still has plenty of life left in it). If more people did this, we would see far fewer newer units on curbs and eventually in landfills after only a few years.

For dvd players lately I've been using dvd/vhs combos with broken vcrs but working dvd players that I've got for free. The good thing about the broken vcr dvd/vhs combos is that even if the vcr doesnt' work, you still get a working tuner, and that can double as a uhf converter for your vhf only sets.

Since all new DVD recorders, VCRs and televisions must be equipped with ATSC (digital) tuners, if you have one of these you won't need a digital set-top for non-scrambled digital cable. This type of unit can replace your standalone DVD player and analog VCR as well, reducing the number of cables and interconnects you more than likely have in your current system. This will become important after February 2009 when analog VCRs become obsolete by virtue of their 70- or 55-channel NTSC tuners, if you have an older TV that works well and don't want to lease a digital set-top from the cable company. Of course, older VCRs will still be useful for many years after the cutoff date for time-shifting (recording in analog format, of course, using a set-top ahead of the deck for channel tuning) and viewing your old VHS tapes--if you haven't already dubbed the latter onto DVDs.

LOL. I have one of those.

We may never hear from CyberHome again under that exact name, since the company is now out of business--its domain name is currently for sale.

For current owners of CyberHome DVDs, myself included, the fact that the company is now history means the units are, of course, no longer supported; once they fail, unless it is something relatively simple such as a bad capacitor, most if not all these players will wind up in the trash and, ultimately, in a landfill. As with almost everything else these days, as I have said here many times before, it is not cost-effective to have these players repaired--the repairs will cost at least as much if not more than a brand-new unit. The fact that many devices today, not only DVD players, do not seem to last much longer than the warranty, however, is another story.

I have a CyberHome CH-DVD300 DVD player (Christmas gift in 2005) that still works well. The only thing I don't like about it is that it only works with its own remote. Can't get it to work at all with my AllForOne universal, but then again there was a warning on the company's web site when the player was new that these units will not work with any kind of universal remote.

They work with my $10 Philips univeral. It even has codes for it. Any learning remote should work with it.

On the subject of cheap-o DVD players...no, I would not buy one...just not worth it, IMO...something I've noticed would be the portable DVD players, with the little LCD on them...remember when those first came out? It made more sense to just buy a laptop computer with a DVD drive, and watch DVD's, among other things, on that. No more...those are now cheap throw-away items as well.

I do wonder how long my 5 disc sony DVD player will last...bought it new in 2006, so, I've had it almost two years...we shall see...

A lot of the name brand DVD players are just as bad (if not worse) than the no-name players. More and more of them are made by the same companies that make the throw away players.

I bought a Philips player from a thrift store a few months ago. Inside it reminded me of a $10 clock radio. It had cheap crowded boards and nothing remotely Philips. Even though it worked, it was so full of bugs that it was basucally unusable. I ended up throwing it away, rather than re-donating it, to prevent anyone else from wasting money on it.

Very true. There is a certain DVD mechanism and matching decoder board that was VERY popular with many different manufacturers. I have found the same drive and decoder board in players from many different brands. It almost seems that most of the name brands (and a few off brands) who doesn't make their own drives (Pioneer/Panasonic/Sony) used it at some point. It was used by Rowa, Philips, Grundig, Marantz, Harman Kardon, Loewe, Yamaha and possibly others I haven't seen. The more expensive units sometimes got a better power supply and analog board, but the rest is tha same and the remote from one will work on another.

On a couple of occasions I've stripped the drive out of the cheap Rowa or Philips version to fix one with a more expensive label on it.

At least this makes for cheap and easy repairs, unlike most of the Pioneer/Panasonic/Sony players that find their way here.

Here is a really good page about Cyberhome and other DVD player/recorder repair:
http://www.drx9000repair.netfirms.com/

That was some good information. I may have to examine the P/S in the next throw away model I find. About the only thing I've done to a DVD player is replace blown fuses and shorted rectifier diodes. I just never was too interested in repairing them because they were so cheap. BTW, my flea market friend just sold an early '90's 27" Magnavox with stereo sound, external speaker connections, and all sorts of A/V jacks for $30 working! You could tell the CRT was showing it's age a little; but, it still made a decent picture. He said the buyer tried to get him to go lower; but, he refused. In the early '90's, a good 19" B&W tube type would bring $35 without much effort. I think the days of making any real money real fast on ordinary TV's is over.

I've given away a couple 25" color table model sets in the last month. Decent shape, worked fine, and it took me several tries to find a taker. Still I can't find a home for the nice late 80s RCA console I have. Great picture. If it's here too much longer I'll have to drag it over to the Goodwill.

Slightly OT; but, there's something that's now harder to get rid of than used TV's: microwave ovens. About ten years ago; a friend of mine couldn't keep a microwave and he could usually get his price. He's got a couple right now that he's had for several years that he can't get $20 each for.

You know, though, while it seems like you can hardly even give away an old microwave oven anymore, someday some people may think of early microwave ovens the way we think of early color TVs. I still encounter late-70's microwave ovens (usually Amana Radaranges from the RR-8 through RR-10 series) fairly regularly, but anything much older than that seems to be pretty rare. A few weeks ago, I found a 1971 Sears Kenmore (made by Toshiba, as it turns out, and apparently the first year Sears offered microwave ovens) at a thrift store, and that is by far the earliest microwave oven I can recall ever sighting "in the wild". [It's pretty neat, but I'm still looking for an Amana RR-1 or RR-2 though..!] Granted, microwave ovens didn't become really popular until the late-70s/early-80's, but at least the *cookbooks* that came with many of the earlier models have survived in fair quanities; apparently people tended to keep the cookbook around even after they got rid of the oven itself.

You know, though, while it seems like you can hardly even give away an old microwave oven anymore, someday some people may think of early microwave ovens the way we think of early color TVs. I still encounter late-70's microwave ovens (usually Amana Radaranges from the RR-8 through RR-10 series) fairly regularly, but anything much older than that seems to be pretty rare. A few weeks ago, I found a 1971 Sears Kenmore (made by Toshiba, as it turns out, and apparently the first year Sears offered microwave ovens) at a thrift store, and that is by far the earliest microwave oven I can recall ever sighting "in the wild". [It's pretty neat, but I'm still looking for an Amana RR-1 or RR-2 though..!] Granted, microwave ovens didn't become really popular until the late-70s/early-80's, but at least the *cookbooks* that came with many of the earlier models have survived in fair quanities; apparently people tended to keep the cookbook around even after they got rid of the oven itself.

Not to change the subject, but Whirled One, is there anything to watch for if you come across one of these old ones to indicate if it is in worthwhile buying condition? I saw a huge chrome-faced one (two feet wide or so) a while back, but left it due to not being able to tell if it was functioning or not (short of plugging it in and seeing if it powered up). It looked nice, though.

I thought I would share this. A couple of months ago, I bought a Panasonic DVD-RP56 player BRAND NEW in the box for $28.00 shipped off Ebay. It was made in Japan, in June 2001, about a year or two before DVD players went cheap. I was the only bidder. Has progressive scan, a nice big flourescent display, and a jog/shuttle dial. It sold for about $240 in 2001. I was going to settle for a used one, and got lucky.:thmbsp:

Not to change the subject, but Whirled One, is there anything to watch for if you come across one of these old ones to indicate if it is in worthwhile buying condition? I saw a huge chrome-faced one (two feet wide or so) a while back, but left it due to not being able to tell if it was functioning or not (short of plugging it in and seeing if it powered up). It looked nice, though.

These old microwaves seem to be very reliable. I just picked up an Amana RR-9 from 1976 or so that was basically working fine. The only thing I did to it was glue down a few loose transformer laminations that were causing a loud buzz when the HV was on. That's the most major repair I've had to do to one of these apart from obvious things like damaged door trim, or cosmetic damage. Even ones that were too dirty and scratched to use still worked fine.

Back on the subject of cheap TV sets: The cheapest new-in-box televisions I have seen to date are those little 5" battery/AC-operated sets with AM/FM radio which can be found at Big Lots, etc. for as little as $11.99 (the ones I've seen at Big Lots are branded Sylvania, but in reality are probably, even likely, rebadged offshore-made units). Of course, these little things aren't worth repairing when they eventually go bad, not to mention they will be worse than useless when TV goes 100-percent digital just over a year from now. Who wants to tether a 5" battery-powered TV, which is meant to be portable, to an AC-powered external set-top box and cable or an external antenna? The dodge will no doubt work (the image may even be sharper due to the small screen, albeit in monochrome and letterbox format), but in my mind it defeats the purpose of portable televisions, which are designed to be movable with ease from point A to point B.

The electronics business is even more convoluted than you would imagine. There exist companies like Jabil Circuit in Tampa Bay FL that essentially contract with other companies (ones that hold the brand names) to supply TVs and such to get sold at Wally World. And Jabil contracts with places in China to get the stuff made. SO that's essentially 4 layers to the system, but it's likely that, once things are going, that the Chinese factory ships directly to Wally World.