1978 Magnavox 25" Star System, Lost my Video - Page 3 - Videokarma.org TV - Video

Bill R · #31 08-19-2007, 07:47 PM

I guess they used the star name for the top of the line sets then past 1978. The star system was actually the tunning system name. After 1978 they used "Videomatic/Touch Tune" for the direct acess tunning sets. It was sometime in the early 80s that they were bought by philips. By 1984 the Magnavox, Philco, and Sylvania sets all used the same chassis. I don't think Magnavox chassis numbers ran in order. For example the t815 chassis came out after the t995 chassis and used the new inline tube in 1979. The t997 and t998 numbers came out before the t995. The t997 wasn't a color set. The t956, which was a hybrid chassis, was out in 1972, just before the t995. Looking through the service manuals it looks like the star system ran from 1974 through 1978. I know that "Total Automatic Color" was used on the late 60's sets, but I think they used it again in the 80's or 90's. I think the t809 and t815 chassis were the last of the real Magnavox color chassis since they were 1979 into the early 80's.

Bill R

Carmine · #32 08-20-2007, 07:27 PM

Thanks for posting that picture... I love seeing old sets in use in nice houses as the "regular" TV. That's all I'll ever have... TV sucks anyways, so the damn thing might as well look cool when it's off!

Randy Bassham · #33 08-21-2007, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpgasque

Bill, that's just how this set works. The channel numbers appear on the screen and then shrink in size till they are gone. The clock will appear in the lower left cornner when the channels are displayed, but will just disappear, not shrink.

I was told by a service tech that this technology was known as the "Random Access Tunning System" at Magnavox. It truly is random since you key in the channel you want without going through all the ones inbetween. When it came time to market it however, Magnavox decided not to call it the "RATS" system, but turned it around to make it the "STAR" system. Good move. With this system, there is no building a favorite channel list as we do today (adding or deleting channels). As a result, there is no "Up" or "Down" channel button. You must key in each 2 digit channel yourself. The Star System was without a doubt the first of its kind TV.

It was my first color TV I ever bought. I had gotten a good job and wanted to replace the 13" BW with the best there was ($875 at the time). It has moved from the southeast to the west coast, to new england and back south with me. It outlasted two wives and many cars. I won't let it go until I do!

I attended Magnavox training when the new Star system was introduced and the Acronym for the system stood for Selective Tuning At Random, the RATS story is accurate I heard it at that seminar from the Factory Service Rep that was putting on the seminar. He said Engineering was fine with Random Access Tuning, but Marketing had a problem with it for some reason

The early sets that had electronic tuning were great when using off air signals but I ran into problems on small MATV and Cable systems if they weren't too careful about getting the frequencies dead on when they changed stations to another channel. With mechanical tuners it was easy enough to crank the fine tuning but these sets relied on AFC to keep them on the channel and some of the systems were too far off frequency for the AFC to pull in. There were some factory mods you could do to increase the range. I had one set that would show a picture if you tuned down but not if you tuned up to a particular channel on a really sloppy MATV system at a local resort.

Magnavox put the star system in quite a few sets, I've got a 19 " set that has the T991 chassis, it's in a very plain presswood cabinet wrapped in vinyl to look like wood that has the Star system.

Somewhere around here I've got the book that I used to carry with the instructions on how to program the 3 lever system, these had a ni-cad battery on the circuit board to hold the memory, they also had a single AA cell in a holder screwed down to the tuner chassis. When both failed the customer had to reprogram when ever the power failed. To program it you have to think of a circle like a pie, then you visualize each slice, now.......One lever selects a slice, the second lever assigns a channel number to that slice, the last lever assigns a frequency to that slice......Simple, Huh.....NO I don't know what kind of pie......

Bill R · #34 08-22-2007, 10:01 AM

Randy, wasn't the 3 lever system used on the "touch tune" sets that came out after the original star tunning system in 1979? The only one I have seen was on a set of that vintage with the then new inline crt. When I bought my star set the 79 models had just shipped, and I could have had either the 78 model or the new 79 model. I chose the 78 model so mine will be one of the last production runs I think. I didn't like the picture on the newer set as well.

Bill R

Randy Bassham · #35 08-22-2007, 08:09 PM

Bill, The 3 lever and later the 1 lever tuning systems were introduced after the original Star system. I can't remember just when, IIRC the original Star system came out around 1975 and originally was put on the T995 chassis on 25" and T991 for 19" higher end sets. Truth be told the Star sets were a bit troublesome, and very expensive to manufacturer with a separate chassis with I think 3 plugged in panels, they came out with the 3 lever as a cheaper alternative and later the 1 lever. There were also some sets that had a knob tuner but all it did was select different potentiometers to change the voltages on varicaps there were also other contacts on the switch to change bands from vhf low to vhf hi and UHF. I quit working on TV full time in December 1979 but did some contract work for a dealer in 1980-1983.