What is it with 1990's Zenith televisions?

[MRX37]

From my experience 25 and 27 inch tubes in 90's Zenith's are junk. They get tired too quickly.

Interesting bit there about using a Mitsubishi CRT in a Zenith. I'd try something similar, but I don't mess with the high voltage parts. I know certain capacitors are supposed to be discharged, but I don't have the proper tools or knowledge to attempt that. My field is computers. Every now and then I get lucky and fix a TV or two, but I stay away from the high voltage parts inside a TV.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Danger Boy

this is my third Zenith tube TV in 23 years.. and they all have been great TV sets. Only had one problem with my first one.. and it wasn't a CRT problem. it was a relay switch problem. fixed for $7
my current HDTV is Zenith too.. great picture. My next TV in a couple years may be Zenith too, not sure yet. but for me. i still have my first one in the spare bedroom 27" that just won't die.

Speaking of TV's that refuse to die: I have a 19" Zenith Sentry 2 which was new 12 years ago. Still works great; haven't had to have one bit of work done on it yet, and the CRT is as good as new too. My 19" RCA CTC185 has seven years on it and still works as well as the day I bought it; the only problem I've had with it in all that time was a couple of instances of the RF port for the antenna/cable breaking off the tuner PC board. One of the techs at a local TV shop told me several years ago the jungle IC had a problem, but I'll be darned if I can notice it if it is in fact defective. The CTC185 and the Zenith are connected to cable (I have never used either set on an antenna since I've been here, almost eight years), so maybe the signal is so strong the jungle IC problem, if there is one, doesn't show up so readily.

Sometimes you get lucky with Zeniths, and get one that will work for years without problems. My Sentry 2 was made during the time frame when the company was having all sorts of problems with CRT failures (mid-1990s), but the set worked the first day I had it and has been working very well ever since, though I don't use it much these days.

Score displays in bowling alleys with automatic scoring systems are driven extremely hard, sometimes 24/7 (I'm sure there are a few 24-hour bowling centers in this country), so I'm not surprised that the monitors go bad so frequently. In bowling centers that shut down in the evening, the situation may be worse since the monitors are turned off at night and back on when the lanes would reopen the next morning; the thermal shock to the CRTs' filaments often burns them open or causes heater-cathode shorts, etc. if the tubes are a few years old. This can happen no matter what brand of CRT is in the display unit, but those which have Zenith CRTs are more likely to develop serious problems after a year or two, not unlike Zenith TVs (not the least of which could be destruction of the entire video chain when the tube shorts--and the tubes will short sooner rather than later; this was the nature of Zenith CRTs of the mid-to-late 1990s, and it wouldn't surprise me if the high failure rate of these CRTs and the damage they caused to the sets in which they were installed, leading to one or more callbacks, could have been one of many reasons Zenith eventually went bankrupt in the nineties--the company just couldn't afford to be repairing these TVs for the same problem over and over and over again under warranty).

[andy]

The bowling alley I mentioned ran the monitor 24/7 even though they weren't open 24/7. They were closed one day that I went and I could see rasters on some of the monitors through the windows with all the lights out.

[bgadow]

When I met my wife she was boarding with an older lady who I remember would always be sitting in the living room watching Lawrence Welk. She had a 90s Zenith console; the major defect it had was a total lack of pincushion correction. There may have also been convergence issues. The other set I have experience with belongs to the sweet old lady next door-a later 90s 20" Zenith. The picture is the worst I've seen on any late model set. I've tinkered with it to try and improve things but there really isn't much you can do. Totally washed out and muddy. She really doesn't seem to mind, though. Funny, she has a nice 27" GE (RCA) in the front room which she never uses, and it works fine. And in the back is a 19" GE (pre-RCA) which is great as well. But she likes the remote on this Zenith, and is used to it, so that's what she watches!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by bgadow

When I met my wife she was boarding with an older lady who I remember would always be sitting in the living room watching Lawrence Welk. She had a 90s Zenith console; the major defect it had was a total lack of pincushion correction. There may have also been convergence issues. The other set I have experience with belongs to the sweet old lady next door-a later 90s 20" Zenith. The picture is the worst I've seen on any late model set. I've tinkered with it to try and improve things but there really isn't much you can do. Totally washed out and muddy. She really doesn't seem to mind, though. Funny, she has a nice 27" GE (RCA) in the front room which she never uses, and it works fine. And in the back is a 19" GE (pre-RCA) which is great as well. But she likes the remote on this Zenith, and is used to it, so that's what she watches!

Some people just don't care what their TV picture looks like, as long as it's there. I saw a 19" Portland TV about 20 years ago with about the worst color picture I have ever seen in my life (colors were all wrong, and I thought I saw the tint control set fully CCW or CW), but the family that owned it didn't seem to care. When color TV was still fairly new in the '60s, technicians would often go on service calls for TV pictures with no color only to find that the fine-tuning control was set incorrectly. A simple twist of the wrist changed the black-and-white picture to full color, often to the amazement of the set owner. Some people watched color shows in b&w on their fantastically expensive (in those days) color TVs for years, unaware that a simple fine-tuning adjustment would restore the color in the blink of an eye.

Today's color sets, however, are almost foolproof and almost always work right out of the shipping box (no setup, convergence, etc. required--just connect the antenna or cable, plug it in, turn it on, do a channel scan and you're good to go). My own RCA CTC-185, for example, is fully automatic as far as video processing is concerned, thanks to the jungle IC; because of this (and the set's automatic fine tuning system, which doesn't even have a menu option on the set's main control menu to enable or disable it, is excellent as well), this set is set-and-forget television at its best, IMHO. I don't think I've had to adjust the on-screen picture controls more than once or twice, if that often, in the nearly eight years I've owned the TV. I don't know if my set has automatic color tracking or not, but even if it doesn't the picture is still very good, even for a set almost eight years old that is used quite a bit (I watch TV a lot, both cable and DVD/VHS).

BTW, hmmm. It's interesting to me why your neighbor prefers the royally messed-up picture on her Zenith TV to the most likely better picture she must get on her other sets. It seems to me, from your description of the picture, as if the CRT in the Zenith set is about shot. How long has your neighbor had this TV, and how much does she use it? This sounds like another case of a junk Zenith CRT; the tubes in their 1990s-vintage sets historically don't last more than a year or two, three at the outside. The fact that the tube in your neighbor's TV makes any kind of picture at all seems amazing to me if the set is more than a couple of years old. Given the short lifespan of most Zenith CRTs these days, I'd guess the tube is going to go West any day now.

[MRX37]

When I see a picture tube that bad, Zenith or otherwise, I usually go by the "It could last a week or a year."

I've been right in both cases. One tube gave out 6 days after I said that, while another went on for 10 months.

[JohnAdams]

I have a 93 Zenith AVI in daily use. 32", don't know who made the tube. Great, just wish I had sprung for the 36". Set was one of the first zeniths that I recall having a full service menu you could bring up on screen. Seems to have 100's of adjustments you can make. I got selected in 1996 or 1997 to be part of the AC Nielsen computerized survey. They wired each TV and had a small computer that would call home each night and report what you watched. They saved the Zenith for last. Took 2 nights to run all cables and then they found out the Zenith was digital and could not be monitored.

[andy]

Zenith never made CRTs bigger than 27", so the CRT in your 32" should be fine. You might be able to figure out who made it by looking for the EIA code.

People like to blame LG for the quality problems, but I have to blame Zenith. By the 90's their CRT technology was hopelessly out of date. They never made big CRTs and they never made CRTs with flatter screens. Even RCA was making CRTs that were almost completely flat in the mid 80's.

[MRX37]

Zenith didn't make picture tubes bigger then 27 inches?

I will keep this in mind just in case I find a 32 or 36 inch Zenith.

[mr_fixer]

I think Zenith shot a major portion of their 80's and 90's R&D budget on HDTV and computers. I think they tried hard but nothing made a real return on their investment, Computers, Heathkit, or HDTV. None of it paid off in a long term profit.
And when that happens, the bean counters tinker with the products to see if they can save a buck here, 50 cents there. cheaper grade of materials, etc.

[JohnAdams]

Originally Posted by andy

Zenith never made CRTs bigger than 27", so the CRT in your 32" should be fine. You might be able to figure out who made it by looking for the EIA code..

I hope I never have to find the EIA code to see who made the tube. This mother takes two men with strong backs to get it down from where it sits. Only way I will know EIA code is if it quits. Only thing I ever had to do was replace one main module when it was about 3 years old. I didn't have it on a surge protector then, but added one after. This is the only series of Zeniths I have seen with a split motherboard with several smaller modules. I can't remember if it was the main power or the sweep module now. I have a 27" twin to it that needs a CRT driver board and it should make a nice tv for the bedroom, if I ever find someone with a module or I take the time to send mine to PTS or someone to be rebuilt.

[bgadow]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

How long has your neighbor had this TV, and how much does she use it? This sounds like another case of a junk Zenith CRT; the tubes in their 1990s-vintage sets historically don't last more than a year or two, three at the outside. The fact that the tube in your neighbor's TV makes any kind of picture at all seems amazing to me if the set is more than a couple of years old. Given the short lifespan of most Zenith CRTs these days, I'd guess the tube is going to go West any day now.

That set is probably 9 years old now, and sees use about 8-10 hours a day, 7days a week! I did see another bad picture lately. That was on a late 90s (or newer) GE 20". It looked like the GE color sets of my youth! Muddy, washed out, blurry. I suspect some of that had to do with misadjusted controls.

[sssmokin99]

My contribution to the TV that won't die list: A Quasar 19" purchased in August of 1979. All that we ever have done to it is to periodically clean the tuner contacts. Sitting next to a 3 year old Panasonic 20" flat crt, it looks pretty darn good, except for overscanning a bit. I know this is after Matsushita purchased Quasar from Moto, but it was built in the Illinois plant. Receipt says it cost $300

[dr.ido]

I've often wondered what's in some of those commerical monitors. The monitors used in some train stations here for timetable information ran 24/7/365 and rarely died. Other than screen burn from the static text display most of oldest ones still had a sharp bright picture (can't say anyting about color, all they ever displayed was yellow text on a blue background). The few times I did see one that was dead or had a bad picture it was usually one of the newer ones. They're probably still going (I haven't rode the train for a couple of years).

In the late 90s the TAB closed a lot of their standalone betting shops in favor of TAB facilities in bars. A huge number of 21" Orion TVs that were used for displaying race information hit the used market. Most of them had screenburn, but most of the ones I saw still had a decent picture. Some store bought the lot and sold them varying prices depending on how bad the screenburn was. The worst of them sold for $25, an unheard of price for a working color TV at the time. I still find them occasionally today and they're still working.

[site123a]

Someone give me a 1994 SM2568S Zenith back in 2002. The picture has a green/yellow tint and it also makes a weird oscillating whine.