ebay: "last gasp" RCA console on legs
 

This has nothing to do with me or anyone I know; but, here's an '83 RCA colortrak console on legs. Actually, I didn't know RCA made any consoles on legs this late in the game. I think the newest RCA console that I've seen on legs was a mid '70's XL100. I suppose these were marketed for the "old timers" who still liked the old look.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1983-Tel...item3a60a0271a

I think I might've posted this set on here a few weeks back. I thought it was late-1970's until I saw "1983" on the Ebay page.

Low Boy style. Pretty ugly and cardboardy...

CTC-120 - wasn't there something special about that chassis?

The CTC120 was used in a billion different XL100 and colortrak models from the early to mid '80's. It was a good chassis that didn't give a whole lot of problems. The CTC121 was the higher end chassis that was used n the colortrak 2000 sets.

Except for the pedestal base, the set looks just like the one in our house from the end of 1981 to just a few years ago (long after I moved out in 1989)

I bet my parents probably wish they could have found this set when they bought theirs - they had to settle for a pedestal model that was not too much wider then this one, but we still had to prop up the left side of the set with a book to even it out with the corner of the fireplace mantle on the right (it replaced a B&W Emerson that had legs and fit fine).

Oddly enough, having a 25" TV set meant having a console almost right up to 1983. Through the 1970's, the consolettes with legs began to disappear, as even the 25" sets that had no radio nor phonograph were getting big speakers and fancy trim that made them almost as wife as the combos! By about 1980, there were far fewer people with TV sets 19" or larger than there were in the 1960's (then again, in the late 1970's, a huge portion of the population in the US were young adults without children). The 19" color ruled around this time.

IIRC, it was RCA that introduced a new line of 25" color TVs in a chromed plastic cube. They also had another new feature - A/V inputs.
The transition from consoles to "BPCs" happened with lightning speed!

One question for all those out there: What exactly makes a TV set a "lowboy"?