Motorola Quasar "televiewer" motel (?) TV

[radiotvnut]

I brought this set back from SC and it was in a room where the roof leaked and the ceiling caved in; however, I think it will clean up fairly well. At first, we thought this may have been a hospital set, since the UHF tuner was blocked and the VHF antennas have plugs over where they would have been. When I got this home, I found some indications that this was not a hospital TV. Looking at this set closer; there is no motorized tuner, no pillow speaker plug, and no 3 wire power cord. I don't know when hospital TV's started to be made with 3 wire power cords; but, I've had hospital sets as far back as the early '70's and all of them had 3 wire power cords. These conditions likely mean that this set was not used in a hospital. This set has a UHF tuner; but, it is covered by a plate on the front of the set. The only thing I can come up with is that this TV was a motel set as I've seen plenty of motel sets with blocked off UHF tuners.

As far as the TV itself, it is an 18" color TV that uses the 5 tube hybrid TS929 chassis. I'm guessing that this is one of the last Motorola tube sets from around '73-'74. I've not attempted to power it up; but, the CRT test good. I also noticed that it has a bunch of ERO caps; which, are likely bad.

How was the picture on these sets when they were working right?

[sampson159]

seen more than a few of those sets in my life.pictures are pretty good.on par with the magnavox and admiral sets of that vintage.not bad performers at all!

[bgadow]

I ended up with one with that chassis; the crt was a Westinghouse and as dead as they come. I really wanted to save the set, as anything Motorola is kinda neat to me, but it had seen some weather and it had major HV problems, so I tossed it. Mine had a sticker which made me think it was made during the Motorola/Matsushita transistion-I think this one is slightly older.

[mwplefty]

It looks like the VHF terminals in the back use both 300-ohm screws and a 75-ohm output.

[Red Raster]

I had one of those TS 929s along time ago, the biggest problem i had was the multi function power switch it had two mechanical switch assys and eight terminals.it got real ugly when one of the switch assys had a mechanical failure and fried the damper tube. it was stuck on while the other turned off. And yes the Motorola crt was bright,great contrast and razor sharp, definatly a cut above RCAs CTC55, another crappy product that caused as much grief as my 1982 k car with 2.6liter engine.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by Red Raster

...another crappy product that caused as much grief as my 1982 k car with 2.6liter engine.

Wow - I can definitely relate to that correlation!

[dieseljeep]

According to code date on the yoke, that set is a 1971 model. The CRT is a low focus voltage one. They were generally hard to focus as they older. Still a better set than the RCA refered to. P.S. The 2.6L engine was a Mitsubishi.

[quasarjoe]

I have 4 of the TS-929 sets - 18" & 19". Picture wise, by the time 3 of them got to me, the picture tubes were definitely showing their age. With a little effort, I could still coax a nice picture out of them. Just hard to get rid of the strongest gun showing up in the white highlights. The forth set has a strong picture tube and an excellent picture!

Your TV looks to have a high voltage rectifier tube? That would make it one of the early 929's. Later sets had the solid state rectifier. I have tons of parts for these sets, so if you need anything to get it working just let me know.

I have a classified ad on this site right now, for several complete sets - 18", 19" portables and 23" & 25" consoles. All are Motorola Quasars. [email protected]

[kx250rider]

Seen a million of those in the 80s. There was a broker in Los Angeles called "Griffee's House of Portables", which bought out large motel TV lots, and shined them up and put a guarantee.......... Until somebody sued and got them stopped since many of them didn't have UHF, and it was illegal to sell a TV to the public without it. However, those Quasars had a cover plate over the UHF tuner shaft, and there was actually a working UHF tuner inside, minus the knob.

Charles

Charles

[AUdubon5425]

Found an obscure reference to these sets in an ad for a hotel/restaurant/hospital/bar supply house, from 1971 or 1972. Said they were the distributors for Motorola commercial color TV - new Quasar Televiewer.

Link to newspaper ad