What brand do you think made the best Japanesee tv sets?

[dr.ido]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

for dr.ido: The 21" sept. 1988 made "Hitachi" that I saw works without the oroginal remote.

It's probably from just before they started to remove the front panel controls. I've had quite a few early 90s Hitachis that had nothing more than power, channel and volume controls on the front panel. Without the remote it is impossible to adjust color/contrast/brightness, select the AV input or set the tuning. Hitachi also seemed to use lots of different remotes. I've got at least 3 Hitachi remotes in my big box of remote controls and none of them have worked on the last couple of Hitachi sets I've had.

It gets annoying when most of the sets that I find do not come with their remotes. For whatever reason some of the junk dealers here never remember to bring the remotes. One week they'll have a van full of TVs, VCRs, DVD players, audio gear, but not a single remote control. Then later they'll bring a van full of furniture and a shopping bag full of orhpan remotes.

Sony is the opposite. I can grab almost any Sony remote and it will operate almost any late 80s-90s (and maybe newer, I haven't found any yet) Sony TV. I was testing a Sony TV I repaired one day when I noticed that the remote was also adjusting my Profeel cube monitor on the other side of the room. Until that day I didn't even know that monitor had a remote control (I had assumed that as it had a control in socket it was intended to be controlled by the source it was connected to).

Why aren't NEC, Mitsubishi, Orion, and Funai in the list? They are Japanese brands.

Orion is a Japanese brand? I'd always though they were Chinese/Taiwanese. When did they stop manufacturing in Japan? For some reason pretty much every Orion set I see here is came out of a betting shop and has 15+ years of race information burnt into the CRT. Other than the weak CRT the usually still work, so they're reliable.

I've seen a lot of Funai VCRs, but never a Funai TV.

[Nakdoc]

Proton was Taiwan made , but it was by far the best.
NEC was second....Pioneer monitors were OEM NEC.

[waltchan]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

Orion is a Japanese brand? I'd always though they were Chinese/Taiwanese. When did they stop manufacturing in Japan? For some reason pretty much every Orion set I see here is came out of a betting shop and has 15+ years of race information burnt into the CRT. Other than the weak CRT the usually still work, so they're reliable.

Yes it is. Last year Orion stopped making products in Japan was in 1990 for the Emerson VCRs and TV combos, and then 1998 completely. They are all made in Thailand now. Orion now makes Toshiba CRT tube TVs, Toshiba DVD/VCR combos, Toshiba LCD TVs sized 23" and under, Toshiba plasma TVs, Sharp LCD TVs sized 32" and under, and Onkyo and Pioneer DVD players.

[mr_fixer]

Back in the mid 80's was my heyday of "home TV repair days" and Sony became my most hated brand. Mostly it had proprietary transistors that only came from Sony at ridiculous prices. I once found a beautiful 17" Trintron for Free that would work for about 15 mins then shut off. I traced it down to the Horz. output transistor. I checked with my local elect. distributer and it was $106 for that 1 part! I threw that Sony into the trash. The second Sony i was given was a 13 trini that had a remote, it worked perfectly, but the remote was missing. This tv was one of the first digital tuning and the set would remember or delete stations by a preset system. somehow you could remove stations by using the tv control panel but you could only add them by using the remote. there was no reset button inside or outside to clear the presets. Somehow someone deleted all stations on it and then lost the remote. i tried unplugging it and waited a week but it didn't work. after these 2 Sony quirks I vowed to never touched another Sony again. I still to this day have never owned another Sony anything!
Logan

[andy]

You actually don't need a special remote to add channels on those Sonys. Any remote that will let you type in the channel number will work. Just go to each channel you want to add and then press the add button on the TV. The few sets I saw with all the channels deleted needed to have the EEPROM that stores the settings replaced. Sometimes they would get forgetful and you'd gradually lose channels. I consider Sony's system to be a huge advantage over those TVs that lost all the settings when they were unplugged.

The ones that were a problem had the add/delete buttons on the remote. Then you needed an original Sony remote with those buttons.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by mr_fixer

Back in the mid 80's was my heyday of "home TV repair days" and Sony became my most hated brand. Mostly it had proprietary transistors that only came from Sony at ridiculous prices. I once found a beautiful 17" Trintron for Free that would work for about 15 mins then shut off. I traced it down to the Horz. output transistor. I checked with my local elect. distributer and it was $106 for that 1 part! I threw that Sony into the trash. The second Sony i was given was a 13 trini that had a remote, it worked perfectly, but the remote was missing. This tv was one of the first digital tuning and the set would remember or delete stations by a preset system. somehow you could remove stations by using the tv control panel but you could only add them by using the remote. there was no reset button inside or outside to clear the presets. Somehow someone deleted all stations on it and then lost the remote. i tried unplugging it and waited a week but it didn't work. after these 2 Sony quirks I vowed to never touched another Sony again. I still to this day have never owned another Sony anything!
Logan

Most of the TV shops around here wouldn't touch a Sony with a ten foot pole because of the same reasons you stated. $106 for a HOT is (unprintable)! One TV repair friend of mine thinks Sony is an overpriced, over rated brand that is no better than any other brand. I've got a mid '80's 19" basic mono Trinitron that was given to me by one of those repair shops that didn't work on Sony's. It was a lightning damaged set and it only got the diodes, fuse, and a resistor. I've been watching it for 4-5 years; but, I will not invest much $$ in it if it goes out. I used to find a lot of Sony's when I was a teenager. Some I fixed; but, most got scrapped because of expensive parts or bad CRT's. About a year ago; a guy at my church asked me to look at his 36" WEGA flat screen. The flyback was toast and a new one was well over $200. Oh, and it was on backorder for several months. I convinced the guy to buy a new set and made him remove his piece of junk from my property.

[mr_fixer]

Originally Posted by andy

The ones that were a problem had the add/delete buttons on the remote. Then you needed an original Sony remote with those buttons.

I think that was the case with this TV, I had another Sony remote that worked but wouldn't talk to this TV. I only dread to think what a new remote cost for that set.
Thats why I only collect Zenith, Durable, Fixable, Affordable, Great Picture and Beautiful Styling!
Although I am partial to several Panasonic mini B&W TVs from the 60's Logan

[Fran604g]

I can't attest to some of the others, but, I bought a Mitsubishi in 1990 (not cheap) and the color is still amazing. One of the buying points was the contrast of the white to color, it was brilliant, and when compared to other sets at the time, it made their white look blue. It still functions perfectly allthough the brightness has faded some, foretelling the demise of a great TV.

[andy]

Originally Posted by mr_fixer

Thats why I only collect Zenith, Durable, Fixable, Affordable, Great Picture and Beautiful Styling!
Although I am partial to several Panasonic mini B&W TVs from the 60's Logan

Zenith had their problems in the mid 80's too. Does anyone remember when they used a flat membrane keypad on the control door? I don't think I ever saw one of these with a keypad that still worked. Often some buttons would stop working and sometimes they would intermittently short. I had a 20" that would change to channel 7 on its own until I disconnected the keypad. The channel add/delete buttons were on the keypad, so I had to add every channel before I disconnected it. Then there were the sets with the chromatic button on the door keypad. If it was turned on before the keypad failed, there was no way to adjust the color even though the color buttons were on the set itself and still worked.

[mr_fixer]

Sorry about the confusion, the Sony TV's i worked on in the 80's were made in the late 70's or earlier. The Mid-80's was the beginning of the end for all home electronic repair, Most everything was starting to be sold cheap, be outdated in 4 years, and never be repaired except for VCRs which had to cleaned and idler wheels replaced. Logan

[jedo1507r]

I've had a bad experience with Sony sets - failed CRTs. I've had one that had a red cast, I've also seen a 26-incher with a green cast, as well as the various Trinitron monitors everywhere I see. Oddly the one I picked from the dump recently had a good CRT, but a pincushioning issue - which was manageable.

Sanyo, Funai and Orion sets last a good while without issues - except they're blander in case design. Except for that one time I saw an early-90s Emerson that won't turn off. Pressing the power button just shows the OSD, then pressing it again makes the OSD disappear. I had an U.S.-assembled NEC set from the late 80s with dry joints near the tuner audio output, which was the reason a neighbor of mine curbed it - but image quality was not bad.

I do like Zenith sets, they've got character as well as insane features like the Space Phone. Attach a visual caller ID display thingy to the telly and you won't have to leave your seat.

[wajobu]

I know that Sony will likely "take" this poll as they make very nice TVs (we have one), but I must say that the Panasonic electronic products that I have had over the years (VCRs, Radios, TVs) have done quite well.

In 1985, after an inherited TV died horribly, I purchased a little 12 inch portable Panasonic color TV at the now defunct Caldor's here in CT. I think that I paid $140 for it. It had a good clear color picture, it was cheap, and I could carry it out the door...done deal.

Since 1985, this little Panasonic has been dropped twice, moved numerous times and the picture is STILL as good as the day I bought it 22 years ago (I even used it for a while as a color "monitor" with my venerable Commodore 64 computer ). Knock on wood, I have never spent another penny on it. I have always used "bunny-ears" with it and it has a strong little tuner.

[dr.ido]

Originally Posted by mr_fixer

Back in the mid 80's was my heyday of "home TV repair days" and Sony became my most hated brand. Mostly it had proprietary transistors that only came from Sony at ridiculous prices. I once found a beautiful 17" Trintron for Free that would work for about 15 mins then shut off. I traced it down to the Horz. output transistor. I checked with my local elect. distributer and it was $106 for that 1 part! I threw that Sony into the trash. The second Sony i was given was a 13 trini that had a remote, it worked perfectly, but the remote was missing. This tv was one of the first digital tuning and the set would remember or delete stations by a preset system. somehow you could remove stations by using the tv control panel but you could only add them by using the remote. there was no reset button inside or outside to clear the presets. Somehow someone deleted all stations on it and then lost the remote. i tried unplugging it and waited a week but it didn't work. after these 2 Sony quirks I vowed to never touched another Sony again. I still to this day have never owned another Sony anything!
Logan

The sets you are referring to a are probably older than the ones that I usually encounter, but I haven't found Sony sets to be any more fussy about their horizontal output transistors than any other set. The rule here is to fix sets using parts available from junk chassis (which usually come from sets with bad CRTs, bad flybacks or some other part that I didn't have on hand). For the most part it simply isn't worth ordering parts anymore. Any set that needs a horizontal output transistor usually leaves with something different than what it came in with. I have one 14" Sony set that has a problem remembering presets sitting in the to-be-junked-next-time-I-clean-up pile, but I'm pretty sure the problem is with the microcontroller IC (it's a non remote set) and for a 14" set it's not worth spending anymore time on it.

[lotusstp]

I used to be an AV supervisor for school districts in the Rochester Area... I voted for JVC because they were always rock solid reliable. Their VCRs were always top notch! Does anyone remember the ultra high end Super VHS VCR JVC (with flying erase heads!) that came out with in the late 80's/early 90's? As a previous poster mentioned, Sony quality went downhill during the early 90's when a lot of manufacturing shifted to Mexico.

When I sold TV's (in the late 80's to the early 90's) I didn't much care for NEC products; Sharp and Sanyo (Fisher) products were cheaper, lower end products just above the quality of Goldstar (now LG) and Samsung.

As far as the major non-Japanese brands went, Phillips line (Magnavox and Sylvania incl.) were fairly mediocre, RCA was, well, RCA and Zenith was well on it's way to becoming an LG brand. Goldstar was in the midst of climbing out of the low end cellar, and steadily improving it's product. As far as the low end went, Daewoo and Funai were starting to be seen more often in Lechmere's "door buster" ads.

I never sold the Emerson/Orion products, nor did I deal with Sampo, Samsung et. al. Our competitors (Kmart, WalMart, Sears) sold those products. I could see the coming shift in the market; I crossed over to the public sector in the early 90's, happy to be finally out of retail.

I still own a couple of Panasonic TVs; I've always found them to be adequate performers but lacking in features (my 32" lacks a built in degaussing element, a constant source of annoyance).

The last Tube I bought was a Toshiba 24", very nice. Still love the Sony picture, but feel, like BOSE, you pay a bit more for the "mystique" of Sony than they're actually worth.
Our main TV watching is done on a Phillips 37" LCD 1080i. On the Cable Company's HD Channels (TW Rochester), the picture is drop dead gorgeous.

And yes, I'd vote for Mitsubishi to be included on the list. My church has a 35" Mitsubishi that is still going strong (forget the model, it's the floor standing model in a spiffy oak cabinet); it must be 20 years old!

[lotusstp]

For a brief time @ Lechmere (1987 till 1988) we sold a low end version of Zenith under a different brand name (Capeheart?). They had the same membrane buttons, with the same issues.

Originally Posted by andy

Zenith had their problems in the mid 80's too. Does anyone remember when they used a flat membrane keypad on the control door? I don't think I ever saw one of these with a keypad that still worked. Often some buttons would stop working and sometimes they would intermittently short...