So who has the oldest Daily Watcher?

[Sandy G]

Aww, man ! I remember the "Jiggling-keys" trick from when I was a kid...My grandad had a '68 Space Command in his office, & that was great jolly fun to make the TV turn on/off, change channels...I remember I could have had that set in '89 when he died, & they cleaned his office out, but in those days, I had nowhere to put it, & it needed a little "help" by then..But it was an extremely low-hours set, he only watched it when Something Big was going on...<grin>

[Bobby Brady]

Sandy,
What happened to your dad's set and what kind of work did he do to have an office with an expensive console TV in it?
Back in '89 I was also to uneducated to see much of the future.

[compucat]

It's not the oldest daily watcher depicted here but I think it rates honorable mention. I am currently watching my 1957 RCA Victor 8" portable. It is the version without the built in aerials or the tilt stand. I fully recapped it about five years ago and it is in pristine condition inside and out. It had obviously been well cared for. The CRT is strong and bright and it is like watching a new TV. I have it hooked to a VCR for all-channel reception. I plan to use it until I restore my Zenith color roundie.

[drh4683]

ha1156, Nice find! Glad you were able to save it. Just curious if yours has the plastic door like mine, or if it has the silver metal door. This set actually is the first table color set with remote control. Its the only year the logo on the bottom door says "COLOR TV (color emblem) ZENITH"

[ha1156w]

Mine doesn't have the badge, but it does have an AFC switch protruding through the door, near the UHF knob. I did finally do some more clue-searching and find out that the actual model number of mine was B6208-4 (huh?). The original model tag had faded so I assumed it was the same model as yours. I suppose it is in fact the later model. But my door is brown metal and woodgrained on the outside instead of silver, strange no? What year was this set really made? I'll get a picture up as soon as I'm able.

Originally Posted by drh4683

ha1156, Nice find! Glad you were able to save it. Just curious if yours has the plastic door like mine, or if it has the silver metal door. This set actually is the first table color set with remote control. Its the only year the logo on the bottom door says "COLOR TV (color emblem) ZENITH"

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by drh4683

ha1156, Nice find! Glad you were able to save it. Just curious if yours has the plastic door like mine, or if it has the silver metal door. THIS SET ACTUALLY IS THE FIRST TABLE COLOR SET WITH REMOTE CONTROL. Its the only year the logo on the bottom door says "COLOR TV (color emblem) ZENITH"

Admittedly off topic.
Maybe the first 25" Zenith color table w/remote. Although, I think, they produced a roundie table w/remote. RCA made the first color table model with remote. The 1958 CTC-7 "Whitmore" model.
Picture courtesy Ed Reitan's site.

http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/Galler...hitmore300.gif

-Steve D.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Let's see, I still watch a 1982 25" Zenith System 3 console but in my room, I have a circa 1966? B&W Sony VT-110 TV/Monitor that I run my Playstation on when I home home from work to unwind.

[kx250rider]

Yes, and there were early 60s Zenith roundie remote color sets in metal table model cabinets. But those were huge. Most of the ones of that type I used to work on had been bought as Built-Ins. There was one that they kept dragging out of the prop storage to use in The Rockford Files. The same black oriental 21" color roundie remote set showed up in several episodes, but in several different settings

Charles

[drh4683]

you guys are both correct regarding the first in remote sets. I should have been more specific, the set I have is zeniths first rectangular table set with remote.

ha1156, your set B6208 is from 1971 (the letter "B" designates the model year, in this case B is for 1971 models) Your set then would have the 14A9C50 chassis. I scanned the page out of my 1971 zenith product sales binder. The 1971 zenith products binder is the only one I have (about 2" thick) of nothing but color photos/specifications for every single product from zenith that year. You actually have the very last of this cabinet style. This styled of set was no longer available in '72.

[KentTeffeteller]

Hi,

My wife and I still use our 1962 Zenith Space Command Color Combo set. It's a roundie! Nice color even to this day! The remote still works!

[Carmine]

I don't think I've ever seen a combo/roundie Zenith set. Have any pictures?

Did you buy the set new?

[KentTeffeteller]

Hi Carmine,

I don't have any photos of it! We got it secondhand and restored it ourselves. The set belonged to a neighbor who bought it at G @ C TV in Knoxville, TN on 12-5-62. It cost $1,097 then new! The phono, AM, FM, and open reel recorder worked well. The TV had bad retrace lines and needed much work. The CRT tested 90% emissions! After recapping the set, replacing all substandard tubes and a convergence job, it gives us pleasure! The cabinet was super nice and needed no work. We overhauled the record changer, the open reel deck, and the stereo receiver while we restored the TV. We have another Zenith roundie combo we are restoring. It was made in 1964! Bought at the same dealer on February 13, 1964, my birth date! On this one, the TV and phono need work.

[Sandy G]

Troy- Too bad you don't have/can't realistically get a roundie...Think you'd love it...

[Aussie Bloke]

Maybe if I one day become a rich bugger I suppose I can import a roundie from the states and run it off a 240/115v converter transformer, and smooth motion convert some of my PAL DVDs to NTSC using AVISynth and view them on it. Would be cool to view some Aussie programs on a roundie such as The Footy Show, Paul Hogan Show, Neighbours, Countdown, Pizza, Norman Gunston Show, Rove Live etc...

Cheers
Troy

[Jeffhs]

The oldest TV in my apartment is my Zenith 19" Sentry 2 from 1995. Still works like new, great picture and all, although the paint is starting to wear off the cabinet in spots on top. The set may have 11 years on it, but in terms of actual usage, it's only four. The reason I say this is that I only used it as a daily watcher the first four years I had it; the last seven it's been sitting in my bedroom, being used only to back up the RCA CTC185 in my living room and to cross-check when the cable goes out or acts up. The fact that the Zenith was actively used only four years would likely explain why the set still works so well, although I would think the Sentry 2 model, being the little brother of the System 3 series, would have pretty much the same great picture and so forth the System 3's always had--and would last as long. I think that, the way my Sentry 2 is going now, it should last at least a few more years; in fact, I hope it does, as I intend to put it back into daily-watcher use when my CTC185 RCA eventually goes bad. The way the RCA has been running, however (seven years with only one very small repair and a fantastic picture on cable, VCR and DVD), I may not be putting that Sentry 2 into daily use again for some time.

I also had a Zenith Y121 12" b&w solid-state portable TV, bought new in 1978. The set went 22 years without one bit of trouble and was still going strong, original CRT and all, when I got rid of it in 2000 (no room in my apartment for three TVs). That set was my daily watcher for twenty-one of those years (replacing a 1969 Zenith 19" SC300 portable), until I moved here in 1999.

BTW, slightly OT, I wish that 1969 Zenith SC300 set would have worked longer than it did (I got it in 1977 as a trash-day find; it went bad the following year--horizontal output tube, hard-to-find 22-volt tube, went gassy and overbiased the AGC system, which in turn almost completely cut off the entire 3-stage IF strip, leaving me with a picture so weak it was unwatchable--and I bought the then-new Zenith solid-state 12" portable the next day). That SC300 set had an excellent picture for its age at the time, and the CRT, as far as I knew, was the original. Couldn't test the remote control functions, as the hand unit was missing (and I think the power tuning drive system may have been stripped or removed as well, as I could operate the tuner by hand with no resistance; there didn't seem to be a manual push button or bar on the front of the set to activate the power tuning either).

If I would have held on to that set, it would be a collectors' item today; not quite an antique, but a classic at 37 years. I suppose I could have found a replacement for the horizontal-output tube, but I wasn't in a position at the time to look all over town for new tubes; the only radio/TV parts store anywhere near my home at that time may not have even had tubes for a TV as old as that Zenith. Where I live now, I have to go to a TV shop in the next town south of here to get service on my solid-state sets; their technicians probably wouldn't know what they were looking at, however, if they saw the inside of a tube-powered set like my SC300, even though that shop has been in its same location since 1947. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw in an old electronics magazine years ago. Two technicians at a TV repair shop had just gotten a tube-powered TV in for repair, and they were stumped when they took the back off and saw all the tubes. One tech promptly turned to the other and said, point-blank, "What the hell is a vacuum tube?!"