Zenith Color Console (1990)

[dishdude]

Zenith started hemorrhaging money in the early 80's due to competition from Japan. The Japanese were selling TVs here for less than it cost to manufacture them and could so because it was being subsidized by the Japanese government. Zenith survived by selling off different business units - PCs, cable boxes, etc.

By 1991, they were really hurting and Goldstar bailed them out and then became a majority shareholder in 1995 when Zenith couldn't repay their debt.

Zenith bet and invested heavily on HDTV and held a number of patents that turned out to be worthless. Even though they developed 8VSB, they were never able to enforce the patents. Zenith also did a lot of investment around internet cable modems.

They also invested a lot into modernizing their CRT production in the 90's and never were able to get the machinery operating correctly.

[JohnCT]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

They did have a few plasma TVs just before they went out of business; however, I'm sure they would have done very well, as I said, with LCD flat panels.

Zenith was under LG's ownership and any flat display with Zenith's logo on it was directly sourced from LG. Even Zenith's CRT HD projectors were LG, although I recall a few sourced from Hitachi, but that's another story.

Now, whether Zenith's engineering helped LG Korea at all I have no idea.

John