I got an Avanti

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

I'm not sure what you're talking about. With the remote switch on, the front panel buttons still work (like on any TV). I have never known a TV that disables the controls on the set. The inclusion of a remote on/off switch was mostly a carryover from the old days when the remote chassis used a lot of power. Also, ultrasonic remotes can misbehave under certain conditions, so it's not a bad idea to be able to disable it.

Ooops! My bad. I must have been thinking about Zenith or RCA console TVs with "direct address" tuning (one of which was mentioned in a thread here some time ago); these had no controls whatsoever on the set itself (they were all on the remote), so if anything were to happen to the controller, the viewer was out of luck.

You are correct as to the occasional malfunctions of ultrasonic remotes. There are cases on record where these systems have been activated by such things as jingling keys, a dog's ID tags bouncing against each other, etc., causing the TV to switch on or change channels in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep; a defeat switch for the remote receiver would eliminate this possibility by disabling it entirely. I can just picture a family having gone to bed after watching a movie (or the late news) on their Zenith Space Command TV, only to be awakened at 2 a. m. by either a test pattern tone or an announcer reading the station's sign off, simply because the family dog had walked in front of the set and activated the remote receiver with its tags.

Zenith's Flash-Matic, introduced in certain models of their high-end sets in 1955 and only lasting a year in the product lineup, was the company's first attempt at wireless remote control of a television receiver. The system worked after a fashion, but had at least one very serious flaw: if stray light of any kind hit one or more of the photocells at each corner of the CRT mask, the television would literally go wild.

It is little wonder (and a blessing, in a way) that the Flash-Matic system was discontinued and did not return the following year--or ever again. The company had better luck with its ultrasonic SC remotes that followed, and better yet when IR (infrared) remote signaling became the industry standard; after all, an IR remote system cannot be falsely triggered by stray ambient light or by incidental sounds in a room such as dog tags, ice cubes clinking in glasses, or even the set's own horizontal oscillator being off frequency ever so slightly. The last sometimes caused random, unpredictable triggering of ultrasonic remote systems; harmonics of the 15.75kHz horizontal oscillator frequency would be interpreted (or misinterpreted, if you wish) by early SC remote receivers as control signals. The television would change channels, mute and unmute the sound, etc. for no apparent reason; this more often than not left the family baffled as to why their set, which worked perfectly well in all other respects, was acting so strangely.