Am I crazy to collect these?

[RaymondLeggs]

I wonder if any color Mini TV sets were made?

[Sandy G]

Oh, yeah...I've seen 'em in 1.5", 2.75", 3.75", 5", 5.5",7", 8" & 9"...

[Eric H]

Got these recently, the yellow and turquoise sets are absolutely mint in the original boxes, the turquoise one has never even been removed from the plastic and the seller said it was still wrapped in Christmas paper when they found it!

The other three are used, the pink one is very pink!

The 5" set on the left in the last picture arrived from Canada with the evacuation tip broken off the CRT, arced like crazy inside the tube when I turned it on, luckily I had a junker set with a good one, luckier still all that arcing didn't blow out the IC, replaced the tube and it works fine.

[MunkeyQ]

I have one of the white Made In China ones which I use to test video recorders. It's really handy to just pick it up and plop it down wherever you need it... Unfortunately it's not sensitive enough to pick up any stations at all with its whip antenna where I live.

I also bought one of the first hand-held LCD TV's with an STN screen. Cost: £2 including shipping. It looked cute so I bid for it - and best of all, it can somehow get every station with its diddy whip. So far I've added a jack for an external antenna.

Is there a simple way to hack a composite video in into those Chinese sets?

[Eric H]

Originally Posted by MunkeyQ

Is there a simple way to hack a composite video in into those Chinese sets?

I'm not sure what the Euro versions of these are like but most of mine have a Composite video jack on them, a few also have an Audio jack.
I think the idea was to use them for baby monitors or for security cameras where sound wasn't so important.

The boxes for yellow and turquoise sets above say they work on 525 or 625 line video, don't see a switch to change it so I guess it's automatic?

[fsjonsey]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

A regular customer dropped in one of the 5" in TV/CD boomboxes I mentioned earlier for repair today. I took some pics of it in pieces. I'll post another pic when I get it back together, but I've had enough of it tonight. It's quite cramped in side and actually quite difficult to get apart. The unit doesn't use the most common version of this chassis that I see. It's the karaoke version and they replaced the TV tuner with a camera so you can see how stupid you look when your using it. If I'd known this thing was showing up I would have bought a simliar model at last nights auction to make my life easier.



I removed the CRT for a better look.





There is lots of hot glue and masking tape in this thing.



This chassis is different to the one I usually see in these type of things. Rather than use the 5in TV chassis as is they have designed a different chassis that also hold the power supply and stereo amplifier for the built in speakers. Other versions have the amplifier on the CD player PCB and just use the common TV chassis as is. Those versions use an external plug pack as there is no room in the case for a mains transformer. There are numerous bad electrolytic capacitors, they seem to the most common problem in cheap chinese electronics.

Id still love to see a homebrew tube chassis driving one of those.

[MunkeyQ]

Originally Posted by Eric H

I'm not sure what the Euro versions of these are like but most of mine have a Composite video jack on them, a few also have an Audio jack.
I think the idea was to use them for baby monitors or for security cameras where sound wasn't so important.

The boxes for yellow and turquoise sets above say they work on 525 or 625 line video, don't see a switch to change it so I guess it's automatic?

Ah, the ones sold over here only have a 3.5mm plug for an external antenna (they give you an adaptor) and a headphone socket. I didn't know that there were so many slight variations - you should take a photo of your whole collection of baby TVs together.

[dr.ido]

Most of the recent-ish ones I see have audio and video inputs. I'm in Australia with 625 line PAL, so surely there out there in the UK too. The older ones only have the 3.5mm antenna socket.

I picked up a Panasonic 5" TV clock radio at last Friday's auction (no pics yet). It would be the oldest and biggest 5" set I've seen in a while with screw terminals for the external antenna and a VHF only tuner.

I went down there today to pick up a rear projection set one of the vendors dropped off for repair and saw a little 1.5" amongst the stuff for tomorrows auction. If I get down there in time tomorrow I'll try and grab it along with another of those TV/karaoke/boomboxes. The one pictured above was a write-off. After fixing the power supply the CD mech turned out to be bad, for what it's owner is willing to pay I'd rather just buy him another one. They are not fun to work on.