[bgadow]

An amazing amount of stuff being covered in this thread!

TV Audio: I would much rather be listening to my 25MC33 or CTC-5 then to one of those new black box tv's, no matter that they are stereo. Who cares, with those crappy speakers?

Zenith: Seems like I've seen mexican Zenith stuff from the 70s-maybe just the modules were made there? Seems like they were sourcing radios & b/w tvs by the mid-70s from Taiwan mostly; one Zenith radio I have from that time period was made by GoldStar so I guess it was a longstanding relationship. Towards the end there really couldn't have been much left to do in an American Tv plant, just assembling the chassis (imported from Mexico or Asia) the crt (maybe still American made) and the cabinet (likely made by another company) I'd guess that it was only the cost of shipping the heavy crt's around the world that kept many companies here as long as they were. (I gather that there are still a number of companies making new crt's in the USA)

There was an interesting history of Admiral in Radio Age a year or so ago and it made light of the troubles they had making their own color picture tubes; they never did get them right, apparently. It would be interesting to get the whole story on that one. I recall that through the 80s and early 90s whenever Consumer Reports tested tv's they mentioned a greenish cast to the pictures of Zeniths. I remember comparing them in Sears or other stores and kind of wanting the Zeniths to make the best picture but they were always the worst of the bunch. The only later model set I saw in daily use belonged to the woman my wife used to board with. The color was okay but the pincushion circuit must have been totally dead.

And as for the root of this thread: maybe the "compactron" was just used in a short run, maybe an experiment or a way to use up some stock, or just used at the end of the run?

Another note: today I stopped by the local freight salvage store. Sometimes he will have some older items in there (maybe selling for a friend) and today he has a clean System 3 Space Command console w/Zoom. $99.99. There was a time when I would have bought it but have to save room for other things.