Thinking about a rare Zenith prob'ly nobody has/wants

[Whirled One]

I've seen both the 19" and 12" versions of the Zenith digital-tuning B&W portables show up occasionally at thrift stores and such. They're not *real* common, but not super rare either. They have direct-access keypads, but I don't think any of them ever had remote control or cable-ready tuners.

About a month ago at a local "junk" store I saw a recently-made 12" B&W set that had (amazingly enough) on-screen digital tuning display, CATV tuning capability, on-screen menus (!), and A/V input jacks. Yes, it was a B&W set. Really! I even lugged it to a nearby outlet and plugged it in to verify the existence of the menus and everything. I've never seen one like *that* before. It did not have remote control capability, nor a closed-caption decoder, but otherwise looked a lot like a typical modern 13" color set, and the cabinet was made of transparent plastic. I don't remember the brand name (it was some no-name brand as I recall), but I think the sticker on the back indicated it was made in the year 2000. Weird!

Speaking of "new" B&W TVs, has anyone noticed that many of those cheap little 5" portables nowadays have resumed having UHF tuners that have coverage up to channel 83? Seemed like in the late 1980's, all of the TV manufacturers reduced the coverage of their UHF tuners to only receive channels 14 through 69. I assumed this was due to the "upper" UHF channels being re-assigned; part of this was for the then-new cellular telephone service (the old FM analog celluar band). [Oddly, the FCC also banned the sale of radio receivers (such as scanning radios) in the USA that covered the cellular band, even though practically every American household already had a device that could receive analog FM audio in the celluar band-- namely, a television set.] Anyway, while analog cellular is pretty much obsolete now, I wonder why any manufacturers would bother changing their UHF tuners over again to cover channels 70-83 (it's not like there are any actual broadcast stations there anymore), or if that's even allowed? (Does the FCC even care anymore, or was the no-UHF-tuners-over-channel-69 thing a voluntary guideline rather than a mandate?) On a related topic, once analog TV goes off the air, I suppose that will mark the end of the small, cheap, battery-powered TV set. Or new B&W TVs in general, for that matter. I guess I'm having some difficulty imagining a 5" widescreen B&W HDTV...
[Seriously, though, I wonder how long it will be before someone introduces a 5" LCD portable HDTV similar in style to those portable DVD players.]


In regards to last-gasp B&W consoles, yeah, I've always wondered about that myself. Zenith had 'em until at least 1979, and I've got a 1978 Admiral dealer catalog that still listed two models of them. Attached is a picture of one. Granted, they were still significantly less expensive than a color console, but I'm amazed that anyone would have still bought a brand-new B&W console in the late 70's...