This ain't your grandfather's Motorola!

[Charlie]

After 30 years, looks like Motorola is getting back into television! Here's an interesting article on it. They even mention late-40's Golden View sets.

http://www.vonage.com/corporate/pres...R=2003_12_29_3

[Jeffhs]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Charlie
[B]After 30 years, looks like Motorola is getting back into television!



What goes around comes around. Now, I wonder how many other old TV manufacturers like Packard-Bell, Philco, et al. will start coming out of the woodwork with their own newly designed HDTVs and projection sets.

[Jeffhs]

[B][QUOTE]Originally posted by Charlie
After 30 years, looks like Motorola is getting back into television!



What goes around comes around. Now, I wonder how many other old TV manufacturers like Packard-Bell, Philco, et al. will start coming out of the woodwork with their own newly designed HDTVs and projection sets.

[Chad Hauris]

I would think P-B and Philco could not do the same thing as unlike Motorola, these companies really do not exist anymore...it would have to be someone else licensing the name.

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by Chad Hauris
I would think P-B and Philco could not do the same thing as unlike Motorola, these companies really do not exist anymore...it would have to be someone else licensing the name.

Packard-Bell may be out of business as far as home entertainment goes; however, if the company is still making home computers, I think they could very easily design an HDTV tuner for PCs as other companies have done in the past. Also, PB might very well start making its own flat-panel TVs eventually, as has Gateway.

[Chad Hauris]

I have seen that Packard Bell is still in existance as a nameplate of NEC but there is no relationship at all that I can see back to the original Packard-Bell. P-B was a division of Teledyne for some time and then shut down altogether in around 1975...just like so many other things, the name is all that remains.

With Motorola it seems different as the company apparently has never been bought out or shut down to be acquired by another owner or revived as a name-only brand.

[Steve D.]

Jeff,
Could you possibly mean Hewlett-Packard in your reference to the home computer company? Also, you can add Westinghouse to the list of old tv brands that is introducing a new line
of digital/plasma tv receivers. This may be a separate company producing the sets under license from Westinghouse. They will use the old slogan "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse" in their ads.

[Chad Hauris]

It also seems like something unusual went on with HP...I think somehow their test/lab equipment division is now called "Agilent Technologies"...and ever notice how the latest H-P computers just say HP, and don't have the name "Hewlett-Packard".

The HP Oscilloscope and freq. counter I have are built like a tank...the modern computer stuff that just says HP is pretty flimsy. I also recall either Mr. Hewlett or Mr. Packard or one of their descendants suing the company over something recently.

[Jeffhs]

Chad,

You are absolutely correct as to Hewlett-Packard's not using its full name on its equipment any longer. I have a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion MX70 monitor on my computer which only has "hp pavilion mx70" below the CRT, and a small badge with "hp" directly above the tube.

I just looked at the instruction manual for this monitor, and, yup, you guessed it, it also has only "hp invent" on the front cover. In fact, the only places in the manual the company's full name is mentioned is the first page preceding the table of contents--in the mailing address and the copyright notice, and also in its disclaimer on the same page. There is also another copyright notice on the back cover which states "Copyright (c) Hewlett-Packard Company 2002." However, every place else in this manual, the company's name is shortened to "hp" or HP.

[andy]

You also have to remember that the good part of hp is now known as Agilent. The hp brand only applies to cheap computers and crappy printers. The only good products that still have the hp brand are a few of their high end business printers. It's funny that hp's side business of computers ended up taking their own brand away from them.