[Jeffhs]

Beachboy's post brought back memories for me.

Even VIR-II must not have caught on as GE had hoped, since the company eventually dropped the feature altogether by perhaps the mid-1980s. One of my great-uncles, who worked for GE (in their lighting division in the Cleveland area) in the '50s through about the '80s (IIRC), bought a color portable TV with VIR around 1980-81 or thereabouts (I'm guessing). The set had a good picture, but I honestly don't know if my great-uncle even knew the VIR feature was on his TV. This seemed to happen quite often with automatic color correction features such as GE's VIR, Zenith's Color Sentry, Magnavox's Chromatone, et al.; the switch to activate the system was on the TV, of course, but since most set owners didn't seem to notice it (that switch was often behind a trap door on the front panel or some other out-of-the-way spot), in many cases the switch remained in the off position for the life of the set.