Thinking about a rare Zenith prob'ly nobody has/wants

[kx250rider]

I remember seeing a run of unusual Zenith 19" B&W sets from the mid 80s that had CATV tuning, and direct access remote same as the SysIII. There was also a non-remote version that had direct-access CATV tuning with a 0-9 keyboard on the set. These would be the very last big B&W sets too, I think. RCA & Quasar also had a 19" B&W into the 80s, but theirs were nonremote and had a click tuner.

Has anybody seen one lately? Definitely no antique, but I delare it is RARE. Don't get me wrong; I don't want one. Just wondering if any are around.

Charles

[colortrakker]

I forget who it was, but one of our younger members (MaxM? Retro Hacker?) posted pics here of the one he found a while ago. I think his is a 13" with no remote, but it's the same basic idea.

[Chad Hauris]

I have one of the 12" or 13" digital tuning b/w Zenith sets...it has a manual on off volume control, no remote. I don't think it can do CATV tuning though, there is no switch for "cable/normal".

[blue_lateral]

I worked at a Zenith dealer for a little while in those days. Yes, we had a whole row of portable B/W, and yes I think the big ones had electronic tuning. In fact, I think I remember unpacking a B/W *console* during the system 3 days.

John

[David Roper]

I remember leafing through a brochure for some TV manufacturer (can't remember the brand) back in 1979 when my folks were mulling over their next TV purchase. If I recall correctly, two styles of black & white console were shown--both stamped "DISCONTINUED". I can think of two family aquaintances who bought their first color TV sets in this same approximate time frame. Aunt Serene had held out for many years, buying a number of successive black & white sets after her first early glimpse of "green faces" soured her on the whole concept of color TV. There were probably enough holdouts for that reason (and their more attractive price) to make black & white consoles marketable into the late 70s. My folks settled on a 19" Sony trinitron.

[Chad Hauris]

I can remember when the difference in price was enough to make the b/w set a more attractive option...my parents bought a b/w 13" Magnavox for the kitchen and it seemed like it was around 79.95 in 1987 whereas a color portable still would have been in the $250 range...now these days a 13" color set at Wal-mart can be bought for $59.95.

[vintagecollect]

Now all someone need to do is find one of those last B/W consoles that were discontinued. If they made only limited or few, would be a very rare set.

[bgadow]

JCFitz just gave me some Zenith factory manuals for those 80s bw sets, including the digital tuned ones. I remember about 1984 +/- I had a tv in my room but it was this terrible late 60s GE with cataracts & terrible color & a broken UHF tuner. I went to the TV shop in town & I recall they had a 13" Zenith bw portable with a battery pack that was expensive; but also a 19" Zenith BW that was new but looked like it could have been out of the 60s. I think the price was something like $179 but Mr. Evey said he would take $129. I lobbied hard for my parents to buy this for me but instead I got a 12" Midland from Western Auto. That TV was around $79; a few years later I paid that same amount for a used Portacolor. Weird to see prices drop so much.

[maxm]

I don't have any of those later big screen or electronic tuning Zeniths, though I did see one of those 13" sets in a resale store a while back.
I also remember seeing a GE "Performance Television" Black and White set that I believe was from the late 70s or early 80s and had about a 19" screen. I didn't see an exact date, but it was Solid State, had a "click" UHF tuner, and an early 80s "look" to it. Maybe somebody out there knows when GE made this line of "Performace" sets, I have seen color ones too. This could have been one of their last large screen B&W sets.

[Chad Hauris]

The Performance line was in the late 70's and early 80's...I have one of the Portacolor-type solid state color 10" sets plus a 27" console with VIR. also have seen b/w sets plus 17" and 19" color sets...it seems just about every type of TV GE made came in a "performance" model.

[JCFitz]

Originally Posted by Chad Hauris

The Performance line was in the late 70's and early 80's...I have one of the Portacolor-type solid state color 10" sets plus a 27" console with VIR. also have seen b/w sets plus 17" and 19" color sets...it seems just about every type of TV GE made came in a "performance" model.

Wonder what the difference is on the 10" versions between the Performance and Non Performance models.Mine says nothing about Performance series on it.Works great though.Doesn't have VIR or Autocolor.I don't even think it has AFT.Maybe only the Performance series had those features?

P.S.I'm jealous of that Wurlitzer 1100 jukebox in your new avatar,Chad.Is that yours or a customer's.

[Whirled One]

I've seen both the 19" and 12" versions of the Zenith digital-tuning B&W portables show up occasionally at thrift stores and such. They're not *real* common, but not super rare either. They have direct-access keypads, but I don't think any of them ever had remote control or cable-ready tuners.

About a month ago at a local "junk" store I saw a recently-made 12" B&W set that had (amazingly enough) on-screen digital tuning display, CATV tuning capability, on-screen menus (!), and A/V input jacks. Yes, it was a B&W set. Really! I even lugged it to a nearby outlet and plugged it in to verify the existence of the menus and everything. I've never seen one like *that* before. It did not have remote control capability, nor a closed-caption decoder, but otherwise looked a lot like a typical modern 13" color set, and the cabinet was made of transparent plastic. I don't remember the brand name (it was some no-name brand as I recall), but I think the sticker on the back indicated it was made in the year 2000. Weird!

Speaking of "new" B&W TVs, has anyone noticed that many of those cheap little 5" portables nowadays have resumed having UHF tuners that have coverage up to channel 83? Seemed like in the late 1980's, all of the TV manufacturers reduced the coverage of their UHF tuners to only receive channels 14 through 69. I assumed this was due to the "upper" UHF channels being re-assigned; part of this was for the then-new cellular telephone service (the old FM analog celluar band). [Oddly, the FCC also banned the sale of radio receivers (such as scanning radios) in the USA that covered the cellular band, even though practically every American household already had a device that could receive analog FM audio in the celluar band-- namely, a television set.] Anyway, while analog cellular is pretty much obsolete now, I wonder why any manufacturers would bother changing their UHF tuners over again to cover channels 70-83 (it's not like there are any actual broadcast stations there anymore), or if that's even allowed? (Does the FCC even care anymore, or was the no-UHF-tuners-over-channel-69 thing a voluntary guideline rather than a mandate?) On a related topic, once analog TV goes off the air, I suppose that will mark the end of the small, cheap, battery-powered TV set. Or new B&W TVs in general, for that matter. I guess I'm having some difficulty imagining a 5" widescreen B&W HDTV...
[Seriously, though, I wonder how long it will be before someone introduces a 5" LCD portable HDTV similar in style to those portable DVD players.]


In regards to last-gasp B&W consoles, yeah, I've always wondered about that myself. Zenith had 'em until at least 1979, and I've got a 1978 Admiral dealer catalog that still listed two models of them. Attached is a picture of one. Granted, they were still significantly less expensive than a color console, but I'm amazed that anyone would have still bought a brand-new B&W console in the late 70's...

[Whirled One]

Originally Posted by JCFitz

Wonder what the difference is on the 10" versions between the Performance and Non Performance models.Mine says nothing about Performance series on it.Works great though.Doesn't have VIR or Autocolor.I don't even think it has AFT.Maybe only the Performance series had those features?

I could be mistaken, but I always thought the "Performance" label was something GE put on *all* of their TV's during one or two model years. I've seen even the lowliest of GE 12" B&W portables from that period with a "Performance Television" label on it. I figured it was just an ad campaign slogan that covered the entire GE TV lineup for that model year (or however long it was), and didn't specifically refer to a particular feature or "luxury" version of a product. I could be wrong though!

[vintagecollect]

Nice pic-- whirled one. That TV cabinet looks a definete throw back to late 60s, early 70s when TV makers still produced quality cabinets. That TV surely looks older thatn it actually is!

[andy]

I wonder who, if anyone, actually bought a B/W console that late?