http://65c02.org/images/ak/tvgraveyard1.jpg

A whole pile of TVs found near the construction site of the new Eastlink freeway (hence the earthmoving equipment in the background). The TVs are on the other side of the fence from the bulldozers, safe for now.

They are almost all 14" sets from the mid 80s to early 90s. There are a few older sets from the late 70s to early 80s. Nothing earth shattering. Most of the sets have cut mains cords, otherwise most of these are intact. Unlike the last TV graveyard where the sets were literally thrown in a pile and many were intentionally smashed.

http://65c02.org/images/ak/tvgraveyard2.jpg

These are some of the sets that I picked up. I won't be keeping the generic black cased portables. If they are working or only need trivial repairs they will be passed onto others. Many of the others are National Quintrex sets. I first noticed the pair of TC-1408Rs. I like the style of the case and they have an AV input (unusal on a set this old). Then I found the 1402, 1404, 1405 and 1407. I figured I may as well take them all. There's a Sharp Linytron. Only yesterday I was dumping on Linytrons in another thread for being ugly, but this one is kind of cute. A couple of sets I grabbed are not pictured. A little multisystem Sony. It's a generic black cased set, but a nice one. A noname little silver set unremarkable other than it stood out as being a lot newer than the rest of the sets (new enough to have both component and S-video inputs). It also has a weird little submarine game built in.

I may go back for a few of the Philips sets. I think at least some of those were made here in Australia.

Now, only if I could find a graveyard like that--nurse 'em back to health.

I see a Commodore 1701, or 1702 monitor in there. They make nice video monitors (S-video with the right cable) and have some value to Commodore fans. I think I got about $50 for the last one I sold.

I have one I've been trying to give away, but I don't want to ship it. About time I put it on freecycle again. I used it for years hooked up to a vcr; as good a color as anything I've had.

It's a beat up 1701. I may grab it next time. They aren't worth that much around here though. I've gotten $40 at most for the last few 1084 monitors I've sold and the 1084 is a much nicer monitor. That said, I won't ship them. They are too big to go through Auspost.

So far I've fixed 3 of the sets I picked up. A Sony, the Hinari (wtf? the newest set of the lot), and a Philips. It was a real WTF! moment when I opened the Philiips. Aside from it being about the dirtiest set I've worked on recently there was this:

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

Someone has replaced the power switch with a standard light switch complete with paint from the doorway it was removed from. Ok, someone used what they had on hand, but it's flopping around loose in case. There is no way to get at this switch when the back is on, so why bother? If a suitable replacement switch couldn't be found why not just bridge it out and turn the set off at the outlet...

http://65c02.org/images/ak/tvgraveyard1.jpg


http://65c02.org/images/ak/tvgraveyard2.jpg
There's a Sharp Linytron. Only yesterday I was dumping on Linytrons in another thread for being ugly, but this one is kind of cute.

I wouldn't sell the Sharp Linytrons short. A friend of mine has a 13" Linytron portable that served him well for many years, until he inherited his family's 25" RCA GuidePlus TV; the Linytron had a great picture on cable when he was actively using it. His was a small, cute-looking portable, a black cube but cute nevertheless. The last I heard, the Linytron was in a closet in his bedroom, unused (he is probably saving it to use in case his RCA set goes bad).

BTW, I believe the Linytron line was the first of Sharp's color TVs to use an inline CRT, with an aperture grille and vertical phosphors, rather than a conventional shadow mask and phosphor dots arranged in triads. The latter is the U.S. industry standard today for color CRTs. If so, it's just as well, as I think the inline tubes produce much sharper and brighter pictures than the delta-gun tubes did. I chalk that up as well to the fact that today's CRTs are made with dark-tinted screens, which also improve picture contrast and color rendition. I also believe RCA/Thomson finally got it right as far as the CRTs in their sets are concerned. I cannot speak for other Thomson sets, but I am sure they got it dead-on right in my 1999 CTC-185. Bought that set new almost seven years ago; the picture is still as sharp and clear (on the set's original CRT) as the day I installed the TV. :yes: As well, the CRT in my 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 19" TV is still original and still works great. :yes: I don't use the set much (in fact, it hasn't been used as a daily watcher since 1999) ; maybe that's why the tube and everything else in it is still going strong. I mention the Zenith because that company has had problems with the CRTs in its sets manufactured between 1993-1997. Mine was made in Mexico in 1995. I read in a post here some time ago that this was because the Mexican-built Zenith sets used a better grade of CRTs than the later models built after Zenith was bought out by LG/Goldstar.

It's a beat up 1701. I may grab it next time. They aren't worth that much around here though. I've gotten $40 at most for the last few 1084 monitors I've sold and the 1084 is a much nicer monitor. That said, I won't ship them. They are too big to go through Auspost.

So far I've fixed 3 of the sets I picked up. A Sony, the Hinari (wtf? the newest set of the lot), and a Philips. It was a real WTF! moment when I opened the Philiips. Aside from it being about the dirtiest set I've worked on recently there was this:

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

Someone has replaced the power switch with a standard light switch complete with paint from the doorway it was removed from. Ok, someone used what they had on hand, but it's flopping around loose in case. There is no way to get at this switch when the back is on, so why bother? If a suitable replacement switch couldn't be found why not just bridge it out and turn the set off at the outlet...


Or better yet, replace that light switch with something smaller, drill a hole in the side of the cabinet and mount the switch there (with today's black-plastic cube sets, I doubt if the switch would spoil their appearance; these things aren't much to look at anyhow when off, unless they are built into or set into an entertainment center cabinet).

The light switch was loose inside the cabinet and inaccessible with the back cover on? Good grief, why did they put a switch in in the first place? Go figure. :dunno:

Jeff, I can vouch for the made in Mexico Zeniths - I owned a 1985-or-so 13" portable color Zenith which had a brilliant picture, simply amazing, and it would never die! I gave it to a relative out in Jersey and it still works quite well, they tell me. I distinctly remember it being made in Mexico, and was a knob-tuner without remote.

Quite strange... In the picture (left side) it seems there are a couple of typical european Philips portable tvs... :yes:

There were quite a few of the Philips sets there, but by the time I got back the whole lot had been cleaned up. A pity as I actually would have liked a couple of those Philips sets.

Philips are the most common European sets here, but I also find Grundig, Loewe, Blaupunkt. Philips actually made some console sets locally, but I don't recall if they made portables here as well.

I also used to see quite a few Telefunken, Normende, Saba and Decca sets. Most of these sets disappeared earlier than sets of other brands. For some reason very few places around here would repair these sets, especially Normende. As such these sets were dumped when others sets of the same age were still worth repairing. I was too young and knew too little to be trusted with a color TV back then.

These days the Telefunken name has been sold and is stuck on generic cheap nasty boomboxes and crappy LCD TVs.

Here in Italy Telefunken,Saba,Nordmende and Loewe along with Philips and Grundig were the most popular brands during 70's and 80's. Telefunken,Saba and Nordmende have been then sold to Thomson and their brands almost discontinued now. Telefunken were my favorite especially those from late 70's to mid 80's. They used to do really dependable sets.Nordmende sets too were very reliable and they made some of the fanciest tvs of that era. Did you ever seen their big "four screen" color tv? My first color tv it's a Telefunken from 1977 and it still works great. The Nordmende and Telefunken brands here in Italy are now stitched to cheap turkish LCD. Too bad great brands ended that way... :no:

A big "4 screen" TV? As in 4 CRTs like a little video wall? That would be cool. I can't recall a model number, but there was one particular 26" Normende in a white wooden case that showed up around here. Any other Normende was far rarer. Around here Normende sets had a reputation for being unreliable, but I don't know if it was actually deserved or not. Perhaps they were simply different and the techs here didn't know how to repair them properly, I've never worked on one myself.

As for brand names I often see the same pieces of silver plastic crap with different brand names stuck on them. Wharfedale, Acoustic Research and Telefunken on crappy LCD TVs. Sansui and Luxman on crappy surround amps. Sony on crappy VCD players. Surely at least some of these marks have been applied without permission. The "Sony" VCD players has to be the worst. They had an S-video jack and a fuse holder on the back panel, but neither were connected (yep, no mains fuse at all).

I found this picture on the ebay site. This is the early kind of the four screen Nordmende tv. There is another model similar but with inline 20 ax tube and full remote control and with tre 3 squarer b/w screens. I saw one of these in a shop in early 80s and I must admit it impressed me for being so huge. It also featured an infrared earphone, on off timer with lcd clock on the ultrasonic remote control. It was available in yellow,light green,white and grey. Another fancy Nde model was the one mounted on a pedestal incorporating a woofer and having the tweeter and midrange speakers mounted on two doors at sides of the screen. These doors could be turned so to close the screen. I think a friend of mine still has one of these. Do european tvs sold in your country have the scart (also named peritel) socket to connect av devices? Do you also have american brands (such zenith) in Australia?

I agree with the statement about Zenith tubes being bad from '93 to '97 with one exception: I started seeing a lot of failures around 1990. Lots of heater to cathode shorts.
I had one customer with a late 80s 27 inch console that I replaced the CRT in 3 times. (extended warranty paid for it) The last one was installed in about 1995, and the set got tossed about 3 or 4 years after that. It took almost a year to get Zenith to pay me for doing the work.

So it has 4 tuners to watch a different channel on each CRT? Sounds like a very special and expensive set that few people would have paid the extra money for. I doubt there are many still around.

Most, but not all European TVs found here have the SCART socket. That's one of the reasons that I am attracted to them. Using the RGB input gets the best possible picture out of my games consoles and old home computers. Even some of the Japanese sets sold here were actually European models. European model Sony's have SCART sockets with RGB inputs, where most other Sony's have composite and S-video at best (well, later models have component, but they're too new for me).

Some others have the cutouts on the back panel for the SCART socket, but no socket is installed. In some of these it's easy enough to install the missing SCART socket, but in others that section of the PCB is missing. Others have RCA sockets for composite video molded into a lump of plastic that fits in the SCART socket cutout.

Some earlier Philips sets had a multipin DIN connector that was wired as an RGB input, but I don't know if that was some kind of pre-SCART standard or something only Philips did.

American sets weren't sold here probably simply because American manufacturers didn't make PAL sets. Occasionally you'll find one that someone brought over with their personal effects without realising they couldn't be used here. There was also an American military base in northen South Australia where evidently everything was American (American cars driven on the wrong side of the road, 120V mains, NTSC, etc), but that has since closed.

I've never seen anything Zenith here other than a couple of NTSC video monitors.

I found a recent RCA 14" set the other day, but it was actually made by Thomson and wasn't really any different to any other 14" set.

I would love to see the first color sets that hit Europe. Were the first color sets there round screens?
Thanks

I would love to see the first color sets that hit Europe. Were the first color sets there round screens?
Thanks

I seem to remember hearing that there were roundie color sets in Europe. Early versions of PAL sets made by Phillips.

http://www.oldtechnology.net/
http://www.oldtechnology.net/k4.html

There are probably other examples out there.

David

Was the Philips K4 a production set that was sold to the public? I've seen mentions of it on various sites and they all (including the one linked above) say it is an experimental set. I'd love to see one up close sometime, but I doubt any every came out here.

Was the Philips K4 a production set that was sold to the public? I've seen mentions of it on various sites and they all (including the one linked above) say it is an experimental set. I'd love to see one up close sometime, but I doubt any every came out here.

I'm not sure. It might be worth shooting that question over to the guy who runs the web site I linked to. He might know better. I'd be surprised if at least some sets with round tubes weren't made available to the public, perhaps just not the K4.

David

Was the Philips K4 a production set that was sold to the public? I've seen mentions of it on various sites and they all (including the one linked above) say it is an experimental set. I'd love to see one up close sometime, but I doubt any every came out here.
As far as I know, the Philips K4 was not sold to the public. When colour television starts in Europe in 1967, the actual Philips colour tv sets use the K6 chassis. The K4 was exported to Canada. Some of the remainig sets were fitted with a PAL decoder and were given to Philips engineers and workers. But they were not sold to the public.
No colour roundie was offered in Europe.

Eckhard

Here in Italy the very first color tvs were mainly american sets adapted to our B/G 625 50Hz standard. Despite the fact that color was introduced only in 1976 there already were several color televisions around (It's a mystere why one should buy a color tv when no color transmissions were available...). In my area there were many Zenith (also roundies ) since there was a firm here in Florence that used to import and modify those early sets. Also other american brands (such Admiral,Philco,Emerson ) were imported and then modified. Many of the early color tv customers had multistandard Pal/Secam sets from Philips as the only color programs available during sixties were coming from the neighbour Corsica (France) or Monte Carlo. Most popular early color tv sets around were from Philips (K6/K7/K8/KM1), Telefunken (709/710 chassis). Most of all these were long gone when regular Pal color broadcasting started (too bad...) During late 70s and all 80s many american brands sold the use of their mark to italian factories so we had plenty of italian tvs badged with american names (philco,emerson,dumont,admiral).Some of these still survive...