Black and White and Red-- LED channel display..!

[Whirled One]

Originally Posted by Kiwick

Here are some pics

The chassis has 5 tubes, one each in the horizontal oscillator, in the horizontal output and damper circuits (the HV rectifier is a solid state diode), in the vertical output and in the audio power amplifier
...

...Yow! That's really an interesting mix of design choices..! A tube-hybrid set-- in 1983..! with electronic (varactor) tuning..! *and* Nixie tube channel indicators... *and* it's B&W... Amazing..!

Not only does it seem very surprising that anyone would have still been making tube-hybrid TVs as late at 1983, but the use of Nixies seems especially surprising-- LED readouts would have been a lot cheaper in 1983-- Nixie tubes were pretty expensive, and quickly lost favor in the 1970's after LEDs dramatically came down in price. I don't think any production USA-made TV ever had Nixie tubes, though I do have an old magazine (I think it may have been an issue of Radio-Electronics) with a picture of an RCA "concept" multi-screen TV that used Nixie-tube indicators for various functions.

[Carmine]

Thanks Kiwick... Another reason I like this forum. Intersting stuff!

[Kiwick]

Originally Posted by Whirled One

...Yow! That's really an interesting mix of design choices..! A tube-hybrid set-- in 1983..! with electronic (varactor) tuning..! *and* Nixie tube channel indicators... *and* it's B&W... Amazing..!

Not only does it seem very surprising that anyone would have still been making tube-hybrid TVs as late at 1983, but the use of Nixies seems especially surprising-- LED readouts would have been a lot cheaper in 1983-- Nixie tubes were pretty expensive, and quickly lost favor in the 1970's after LEDs dramatically came down in price. I don't think any production USA-made TV ever had Nixie tubes, though I do have an old magazine (I think it may have been an issue of Radio-Electronics) with a picture of an RCA "concept" multi-screen TV that used Nixie-tube indicators for various functions.

Some European TV makers (Grundig, Telefunken...) used nixie tube displays in their 70s sets, while Philips used a 7-segment nixie driven with a diode encoder circuit (a large PCB with tens of discrete diodes on it)

Althought nixies were obsolete in 1983, they were also dirt cheap as were the obsolete ICs needed to drive them...

For the same reason they dragged this (extremely reliable) early 70s hybrid chassis design well into the 80s...to cut on R&D costs, and back then, tubes made in Poland and Yugoslavia were still cheaper than power transistors and ICs anyway.

Keep in mind that in the early 80s B/W sets were still the way to go for most Italians, especially in poor rural areas.

Francesco