I acquired this tv not too long ago and have been having the toughest time finding anything about it. The casing says that it's a Zenith Space Command, made in 1981. It appears to be a projection tv, but I can't find a model number or a serial number.

I took some pictures so that maybe some of you can recognize what it is and help me out. (I had to take the top off so I could move it around)

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24936


http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24935

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24937


If this is not the right forum, please direct me to the right one. Thanks!

I've seen quite a few of those, but not for a while. Im not 100% sure from the pictures, but I think thats the model that lowers into the cabinet when it is off, and a lid folds fowrard to cover the top. Its driven by screw gears on each side. WATCH YOUR FINGERS!
The last time I worked on one, it had a cracked flyback, and Zenith said the part had been discontinued for a long time. It IS projection. I never cared for the picture they made, even when I sold them 25 years ago. The CRTs are air cooled, so they can't be pushed as bright as the liquid cooled ones. The convergence was pretty primative even by the standards of 10 years ago. I guess a lot of them were like that back then. The cabinet was nice. Heavy. Takes 4 NFL linebackers to move it. It might make an interesting project, but it's going to be hard to find parts for it.
One common failure was poor "grey scale" caused by open resistors on the little pc board on the hv block. 150k I think. Or maybe it was 1.5 Meg. I don't remember. I should, I replaced a ton of them way back when. If I can dig up a possible model number I'll post it.

That's commonly called "The Zenith Erector". Not an official name, but it was because as Geoff says, the screen collapses and rises from the buffet cabinet. There's an extra button on the remote to work the screen. They are really interesting, and as far as I know, this TV and the DuMont Westminster of 1946 are the only TVs to do this. The one in the photo appears to be missing the cabinet lid assembly, probably because the mechanism failed.

They are, unfortunately, just about the worst chassis and DEFINITELY the worst projection CRTs ever made :( . Rotten picture from the day they came out of the factory. And if the terrible chassis isn't enough, then you have to deal with a timing belt that gets all fouled up, causing the screen to come up crooked and get jammed. You have to put the 300-lb TV up on stacks of phone books, crawl under it, and reset the timing belt and gears! But for collector value, I guess it has something.

Charles

I remember seeing a Zenith TV something like the one in this thread some years ago, in a TV shop in my hometown; hideaway screen and all. This was also around 1981 or perhaps '80. Never saw the set in operation, but it was the only example I ever saw, until now, of the model under discussion here. That model must have been very limited production; that or else the poor picture drove away potential buyers. I would almost be tempted to say that this design was even more short-lived than the Zoom and Space Phone features of some Zenith console TVs of the same era, but won't as I really don't know how many of the projection sets with the retractable screen were made.

As was mentioned by others they were a true p.o.s.Probably the worst thing Zenith put out.The belts would get out of time and jam.I had to turn over a few of them.They blanked out the picture if the screen wasn't all the way up.Had a few with the motor control boards damaged by lightning.Most I worked on I unplugged the motor.The customer didn't care to put the screen up and down.They just wanted it to work.They were air cooled tubes and used a 3 mirror system so the picure never was very good.Way more to keep clean than a regular projection and boy did dirt deteriorate the picture on these.They would get poor greyscale due to the resistors opening on the little pc board with the G2 controls on it.The convergence was primitive on these and was tough to get very good.They used custom CRTs with angle faceplates.The following model without the motor and different gel coupled tubes wasn't any better,Those tubes were short lived and often would get phosphor burns due to circuit failures,mainly open resistors on that little PC board.Those sets had huge deep cabinets.The first Zenith projections with really decent pictures were the digital series.They used normal liquid cooled tubes and convergence similar to other brands.But they were troublesome in their own ways.Mainly failures of the HV bleeder blocks would cause runaway HV and cut the necks of the tubes and had high failure rates of the HV board.

The Zenith TV being discussed here is a prime example of what happens when too many "bells and whistles" are put on anything. The more extraneous features that are put on anything, be it a TV set or anything else, the more there is to go wrong; that is, the bells and whistles may work very well when the device (TV, etc.) is new, but a few years later the frills start going wrong even though the device itself may still work quite well. I think JCFitz was wise in disconnecting the motors in these sets when the drive mechanism that raised/lowered the screen went bad. I believe his customers were happier with the sets as well with the screens locked in the upright position. One less thing to go haywire in the future.

Mention was also made in this thread of a Zenith projection set with a cracked flyback transformer that was not and has not been available from Zenith for some time. After 25 years, I'm not surprised. I'm guessing this flyback could have been custom-designed for the Zenith "Erector" TV, and so was not available anywhere except from Zenith itself. The part is probably NLA (no longer available) by now if it has been discontinued by the company.

It was also mentioned that the Zenith in this thread was perhaps the worst television receiver design the company ever came up with. For their pre-GoldStar-era televisions this may well be true, but Zenith dropped the ball in the '40s in the worst way as well when they came out with a little four-tube AM radio which was built on a bakelite chassis. As I understand it, these radios worked well enough when they worked but were a royal pain in the you-know-where when they required service. IIRC from what I have read on the Internet about this radio, the chassis was mounted upside down (!) in the cabinet as well. As well-known for quality as Zenith was in that era (and until the '70s when they started using PC boards in radios and circuit modules in televisions), I am amazed they would dare put out such a troublesome product. I don't like condemning Zenith products (I am a Zenith radio collector specializing in antique-vintage sets and have owned several Zenith televisions, including a 1995 Sentry 2 table model I still have that still works very well), but when they designed that 4-tube radio with the inverted bakelite chassis, and 40 years later coming out with a projection TV having a retractable screen that was more trouble than it was worth when the drive belt slipped and/or other things went awry with the drive mechanism, I have to wonder. How could a company founded in the early 1900s (1918, to be exact) make such mistakes--two in 82 years--that would cost them money in repairs, callbacks and the like? Seems to me that the Zenith "Erector" TV may have had more than its share of callbacks to repair the screw drive that raised/lowered the screen. The first time this happened, the set owners would get off easy as they could have the problem repaired under warranty, but if I were a betting man (I'm not), I would bet that the second time this problem occurred, after the warranty expired, the owners simply had the screens locked in the upright position and the motor drive permanently disabled. The TV worked just as well without this mechanism as with it.

As to the weight of the Zenith "Erector" TV (300+ pounds), I'm not surprised that it takes several very strong people to move it.

What goes around comes around; we have come full-circle as far as heavy TVs go. Today's large-screen CRT sets weigh upwards of 150 pounds as well (one recent-vintage Zenith 32" table model I saw in an ad weighed some 200 pounds plus if it weighed an ounce), and large-screen projection sets aren't exactly featherweights either. Don't forget the console TVs of the 1950s through the '70s; these TVs were in wood cabinets and weighed probably 100 pounds if not more. The combo sets with AM/FM radio/phono (tube type with a heavy power transformer) were likely even heavier yet. Even the solid-state consoles by Zenith, Magnavox, et al. of the 1960s-'70s weren't exactly light. The bulk of these sets' weight, aside from the cabinet (which in most 1950s-60s sets was made of very heavy wood), was and is to this day the CRT; the larger the screen, the larger and heavier the tube will be, even though the TV chassis itself in today's sets is just a large PC board.

What goes around comes around; we have come full-circle as far as heavy TVs go. Today's large-screen CRT sets weigh upwards of 150 pounds as well (one recent-vintage Zenith 32" table model I saw in an ad weighed some 200 pounds plus if it weighed an ounce), and large-screen projection sets aren't exactly featherweights either. Don't forget the console TVs of the 1950s through the '70s; these TVs were in wood cabinets and weighed probably 100 pounds if not more. The combo sets with AM/FM radio/phono (tube type with a heavy power transformer) were likely even heavier yet. Even the solid-state consoles by Zenith, Magnavox, et al. of the 1960s-'70s weren't exactly light. The bulk of these sets' weight, aside from the cabinet (which in most 1950s-60s sets was made of very heavy wood), was and is to this day the CRT; the larger the screen, the larger and heavier the tube will be, even though the TV chassis itself in today's sets is just a large PC board.

The newer flat face tubes are much heavier than the old tube with the rounded fronts.The glass is much thicker in the front. Sony Wegas are the heaviest of all.Sony Trinitron tubes have always been heavy but the new ones are heavier.The 36 inch Wega weighs upwards of 250 ponds.They even had a 40 inch Wega that was 400 pounds.They no longer make that one.I don't know how that compares in weight to the older 40 inch Mitsubishi tube they made in the 90s.Thakfully I've never been involved in moving a 40 inch tube set but I've had a hold of 1 side of the 36" Wega more times than I cared to.