Couple of other semi-interesting things about this set:
- There are no video-related controls on the front or the side of this TV. Even the Black Level control (which Zenith used in place of "Brightness" controls on their TVs for a while) and contrast control are on the back. Aside from the channel selector, the only control on the front panel is the off-on-volume control. I don't think I've ever seen a 1980's 12" B&W portable that didn't at least have the brightness control-- if not the contrast and/or vertical hold control-- in some readily accessible location. On the 19" set(s) with this tuner, the Black Level control *is* on the front panel though.
- As some of you may already know, in most respects, the electronic tuner in this thing is about as no-frills as it could be. It's not cable-ready, there's no remote, and there's no channel skip or memory of any kind (it always resets to channel 2 when first powered on). However, it does have one kinda oddball feature, namely manually-adjustable fine-tuning. This is something I'd never have known without the service manual. Here's how it works. The direct-entry keypad requires you to always input two digits to select a channel, which eliminates the need for an "Enter" key. Also this means that no valid channel number entry starts with the digit "9", since the highest channel number you can tune is UHF channel 83, and channel 9 would be entered as "09" instead. So what happens if you try to enter a "9" as the first digit..? It goes into "fine tune" mode, that's what. When the tuner is in "fine tune" mode (denoted by showing a "-F" on the two-digit LED display), you can use the up/down channel keys to adjust the fine tuning on the current channel in discrete (but still crystal controlled) increments. The service manual says this is to allow you to improve tuning of sources that may have slightly off-frequency signals, like video games and home computers. That sounds kinda nice, doesn't it? Well, it's not as nice as it sounds though, because the tuner has no memory whatsoever for any of your "custom" fine-tune settings. If you adjust the fine-tuning on, say, channel 3, then switch to channel 4, and then go back to channel 3, guess what? You'll find that the tuning has been reset to its "normal" crystal-controlled frequency. ...And of course, powering the set off will also cause your custom "fine-tune" setting to get lost as well.
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Originally Posted by dr.ido
Amazing. I love the idea of a B&W with digital tuning and/or OSD display, but I've never seen one.
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Funny you should say that.
I don't think I've ever posted about this, but some time ago I got an RCA SecureView 12" B&W "prison" TV at a hamfest. [The seller had several of these he had bought in a lot, and he said they were from a prision. This was the only B&W one he had though (or at least had brought with him to the hamfest).] Anyway, as you can see, it's a modern B&W TV with OSD. It's also cable-ready. It doesn't have remote capability, but then it wouldn't if it was indeed used in jail cells. See the attached images.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dr.ido
The 14" color version of this set was used in various ads for the Tandy Color Computer, but the brand of the set was intentionally obscured in the ads. I never saw such a set and now I know why, Zenith was never sold here.
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Assuming those ads used the same photos they used in the USA, that was actually a Radio Shack -branded TV, and they did indeed offer those sets for sale at Radio Shack stores in the USA. I doubt they sold very many of them though; they weren't particularly competively priced, as I recall, and I don't remember them being on sale very often. I would guess those TVs were mostly there to provide a means of displaying/demonstrating the TRS-80 ColorComputers in the stores without having to resort to using a non-RS-private-label product to do so. Plus, it'd provide another nice "sellable" SKU. At that time, Radio Shack stores didn't carry TVs, so they wouldn't have had anything else to demo the Color Computer with. I don't know who made those Radio Shack TVs, but it wasn't Zenith. I'll admit that the model you're referring to does kinda resemble a color version of that 12" B&W Zenith with digital tuning though..!