The worst color tv?
 

I'm sure most everyone who frequents these forums agrees that the solid-state horizontal chassis Zenith Chromacolors were the best vintage color TVs. What vintage color TVs were the worst design, worst quality, hardest to repair, etc.?? Let's hear your thoughts.

Well, I did some work on a 1976 Quasar (panasonic)? 25" console that had nothing but flyback and HOT trouble, I used to work at a TV repair here in Sacramento. We had 3 of these all with the same issues. Mine seemed to be consistant.
As for current CRT sets, im not knocking down Sony, but the 2000 to 03 series KV36XBR450 seems troublesome in the standby circuit and flyback cold solder taking out the HOT and general bad board soldering plauges that set too. Iv'e repaired mine roughly 10 times now.

I can't remember the model but a Phillips 36 inch CRT set made around 2000 would lose it's flyback and around 30 other parts. The automatic brightness control line was tied into the jungle IC and when the flyback went, it tore the chassis up. I fixed a couple and wouldn't take any more in.
That was about the worst I remember. I'll probably think of others later.:thumbsdn:

Back around 1981, RCA had the CTC101 chassis with the infamous integrated flyback transformer. The concept of having the high voltage rectifier diodes in the same casing with the flyback was new then, And they split up the high voltage winding into 6 segments, and there were to be 6 diodes, but they cheaped out and used only 3. Problem was that the dynamic AC voltage around pairs of joined windings got too great, and caused the plastic to break down, frying the flyback and the HOT. ouch.

Every time I pull a sams folder I see all these random brands, Coronado, Starlite, Supre-Macy on and on. I never see any of these sets anywhere. Is that because they were all junk?
Also never seem to see many Packer Bell or Curtis Mathis style sets.

On the newer stuff...once Thompson got ahold of RCA the quality went south.

Coronado was the store brand for Gambles-Skogmo. The town where I grew up in Nebraska had a Gambles store, so there were lots of Coronado TVs and appliances to be found around the area. I don't remember who actually OEMed the TVs, ...they weren't terrible... but just average quality I would say.

Easy - ask yourself how many vintage GE color sets you see these days. They sold more than just the Porta-Color....

As far as older sets; GE made some junk. Mainly the YM, EM, and EC sets. The YM sets always had bad flybacks and the EM/EC chassis sets were a pain to work on and were full of those "griplets" that gave so much trouble. Really, the first solid state GE color chassis that was decent was the "PC" chassis. I wasn't too crazy about their tube type color sets, either. The main ones I remember, besides the porta-color's, were the C1 and KD chassis sets.

As far as newer sets, the one with the lousiest picture that I've seen was a 19" Chinese made Durabrand set from Wal-Mart. I've seen several of these and the picture was always muddy and washed out. I don't care for the newer RCA and Philips TV's. These are very cheap made and the RCA's eat flybacks more often than the old tube type CTC38's. I think I'd take a Funai or Orion over a modern RCA.

I think Wells-Gardner made a good many Coronado TV's.

The later model tube Magnavox (before they went completely SS) sets were just horrible for solder joint issues and physical design. Especially the portables...

1993-97 Zenith 27 inch TV's.

2001 and newer JVC 27" TV's.

Apex CRT sets. N'uf said.

When I think of every color tv I ever had (even curb finds I only held onto for a few days):

1991 RCA
1988 Goldstar
1988 Goldstar
1988 Hiatchi
1988 Sony
1988 Toshiba
1986 Zenith
1985 RCA
1984 Zenith
1983 Supre-Macy
1983 Zenith
1982 Zenith
1981 RCA
1980 Zenith
1978 RCA
1978 Sony
1976 Sharp
1976 Hitachi
1975 RCA
1975 RCA
1975 Zenith
1975 Zenith
1972 GE
1971 Curtis-Mathes
1971 Zenith
1968 GE
1968 Viking
1968 Zenith
1967 Magnavox
1967 Zenith
1965 Magnavox
1965 RCA
1965 Zenith
1963 Philco
1960 RCA

The only ones that stand out as consistently having problems are the tube Magnavoxes (both had bad flybacks).

Old ones: GE CE/C2 chassis. This was their 18-19" hybrid. Nearly impossible to work on, cheap cheap cheap. I have seen a watchable picture on one of these, but it took some work. You can judge a lot about a set by pulling the Sams and seeing what shape it is in. I have one Photofact in particular that is ripped, taped, worn, coffee stained, and covered with all sorts of notations. It is for this GE chassis.

Among modern sets, I think of the TV in the local pizza place. They had some BPC from the 90s but when NTSC went away they replaced it with this SPC Wally World special. Worst color I've seen since the last time I turned on an old GE...

I think most of the reason those minor names don't show up these days is because they never sold well to begin with. They might have done well in a certain local area. There were plenty of small towns where one of the only places to buy a TV might have been a Western Auto or a Sears catalog store, something like that. But in the nation as a whole, it was the big names that sold big.

The absolute worst color TV was the Olympic 910, 19 inch TV, of the mid 60s. It was unreliable, unrepairable and worked terrible out of the box. Three of three. It produced a pathetic pale picture and had so little gain that when the antenna was removed, it had no snow or noise. The dull grey image looked like someone removed the IF tubes. The printed circuit would evaporate if you tried to replace a part. It came with a bag of parts to make it work, but that didn't help either. It probably put color back 3 years. I doubt any exist today.
Anyone who had ever seen an Olympic 910 would not need to contemplate the worst color TV. It is the hands down champion; or as we are told, the debate is over.