Bentley Portable

[jeyurkon]

I picked up one of the nearly free 5" Bentley portables on eBay.

Three of the pots were frozen, but freed up with a lot of force. Once free they seem to stay free.

It has a fairly decent image. It's a little off-center.

It has no DC restoration.

Now, what to do with it?

John

[radiotvnut]

A friend of mine has one of these that he bought years ago at a yard sale for a buck or two. Then, he had to buy a wall wart to run it on AC. He had it in his work shop, connected to analog cable via a 3.5mm to "F" connector adapter.

I also seem to remember them selling new for $50 (or less) back in the mid-late '80's.

The last one I saw for sale was at the SA, about a week before the DTV transition, and they wanted $25 for it. Had it been $2.50, I would have bought it. It's that sort of crazy "out of touch with reality" pricing that keeps me out of that store.

I have a few 5" sets that I never use; but, I'm still hanging on to them since they are an important part of TV history. At least I can still use them with a DTV converter or analog cable (until they do away with that). One day, I'm going to obtain one or two of the small handheld TV's.

[DaveWM]

Originally Posted by jeyurkon

I picked up one of the nearly free 5" Bentley portables on eBay.

Three of the pots were frozen, but freed up with a lot of force. Once free they seem to stay free.

It has a fairly decent image. It's a little off-center.

It has no DC restoration.

Now, what to do with it?

John

convert it to color with a color wheel!!!

[dieseljeep]

About 25 or 30 years ago they were giving those away for looking at a time-share vacation properties. They didn't come with a power supply. Instead there was a form packed in the box where you could order a wall-wart and battery pack for $30.00 . A real rip-off.

[jeyurkon]

Yeah, I don't have the wall wart. I ran it off of D cells. I think I paid $8 for it. Shipping was more...

Color wheel sounds like a great idea! A small screen should make it much easier to deal with the mechanical aspects.

[leadlike]

Now you need to find the crummy Bentley super 8 projector that looks identical to your set. Those things loved to shred film. As far as I know, it is the only projector modeled to look like a portable tv.

[radiotvnut]

Somewhere around here, there is a portable slide viewer that looks like a portable TV. My Mother bought it, sometime in the '80's, so she could view old family slides without having to pull out the slide projector and screen.

[Chad Hauris]

I remember seeing these for sale second hand a lot at the flea market in the 1980's...they couldn't have been that old then.

[Sandy G]

These MAY be a curiousity someday, as the Madman Muntz sets are today-"What are the barest minimum & cheapest of parts you can make a TV with & still have some measure of commercial viability ?"

[bgadow]

I picked one up at the recycling center. It was very clean and worked like new, but I had a hard time giving it away. I think, over the years, I've seen more of the film viewers than the TV sets.

[AUdubon5425]

My Father won one of those in a sales contest - I remember we took it to the beach (or something) and it ate up the batteries within an hour. I don't think it saw any use after that.

[Eric H]

I wish I had known you wanted one, I passed up a few of them this last year.

A color wheel using a small set like this would be cool but how about even smaller, say a color wheel from a DLP set and a 1.5" Panasonic B&W or even a micro sized Viewfinder CRT from a Camcorder.

It might be a little tough to find the Sync circuits on those little sets.

I also thought a Mechanical TV made from an old Hard Drive would be interesting, you could even make it Color by using three LED's, way beyond my capabilities however.

[Sandy G]

Makes you wonder when you compare one of those "Last-Gasp" 5" sets to a quality 5 incher like one of the Sony 5-303 series-The Sony weighs about umpteen times as much...

[ChrisW6ATV]

Unfortunately, the little B&W Sonys and Panasonics have no DC restoration, either. I find that to be much more of a problem with actually watching a small TV set than not having color.