Remembering your old TV days

[skyactiv]

One of my brothers had a small color TV in his room growing up. He bought it from money he made delivering the Toledo Blade.
My other brother and I took a magnet to the screen and screwed it up. It went back to normal after a few hours.

 

[aquariuscsm]

One of my brothers had a small color TV in his room growing up. He bought it from money he made delivering the Toledo Blade.
My other brother and I took a magnet to the screen and screwed it up. It went back to normal after a few hours.

Haha we had a guy in our 5th grade class. We told him to go home after school and put a magnet up to his parents' tv screen, and he was like, ok!! He calls us later that night and the first thing he said when we answered the phone......"How do you make it go away?" haha!!

 

[Kruse]

When I was a kid, my dad did some dealing and got a USED Curtis Mathes color TV set. I remember seeing the build date on it of 1965 and we probably got it in the late 60s. Curtis Mathes advertised as: "....being the most expensive TV in America, and darn well worth it!"
A few things I remember about this TV: It was a console TV about five foot long with real, beautiful wood, three speakers and a completely round picture that was 25" in diameter. It had about 30 picture tubes in it. We had taken the fiber back off off of the thing because it generated lots of heat. Our living room had the furnace thermostat behind the TV and in the winter time, the thermostat wouldn't kick the furnace on until we'd all gone to bed, it gave off that much heat! When I went to college, I took it into our dorm and people would laugh at the (actually quite beautiful) round picture tube. Then they would see the brand on it and say: "Oh, it's a Curtis Mathes!!" They were admired it AFTER they say what brand it was.
As far as every store and drugstore having a tube tester and selling replacement tubes....well, it was good money. Those tube testers actually "failed" a lot of good tubes so the stores would sell a lot of tubes. One of the last major chains to sell vacuum tubes was Radio Shack. Their tubes initially had a lifetime warranty on them. During the dusk era of tubes, you could bring in a failed "lifetime warranty" tube and they would give you a free replacement, but the replacement would then be a "long life" tube, not a "lifetime warranty" tube.
I still dabble in vacuum tube audio. I've got dozens of good sounding tube stereos that include names like Fisher, Marantz, Sherwood, Kenwood, and Pilot.
Oh, and getting back to the circa 1965 Curtis Mathes....it's still in mom's basement. It still worked the last time it was retired a few decades ago. However, I've robbed some 12AX7A tubes from it. Those are audio tubes that are used in most tubes amps.

 

[y_p_w]

Trinitron? It used a vertical aperture grille instead of the standard shadow mask.

edit: Lubener beat me to it!

I've had a couple of Trinitrons over the years. One was a 13" with rabbit ears that I watched in my bedroom. It replaced a dying 13" TV that my mom got really cheap from work. Not sure what the deal was, but it was some no-name thing that

When I had a job and a new house I decided to get a 30" Trinitron with a matching stand. I used to think it was huge. I also had a Trinitron computer monitor - circa 2000. It was kind of small, but it was part of Sony's VAIO series and it also had a USB hub built in.

The first TV I remember was a 21" RCA with tubes. Sometimes it would act up and my dad would bang on it to get the picture clear. We also had early able TV where there was a duplex selector to choose a different set of channels. There might have been two cables too, although it was a while ago. Like others, replacement tubes usually came from Radio Shack. There is an old-school electronics shop that still had tubes, but they're closing at the end of the year. Haven't been there in a while, but they kept their tube tester around for years just for show.

Eventually that RCA stopped working and we got a brand new 20" (I think) Zenith that I believe was still assembled in the US. That was our first solid state TV. We also had an aerial antenna on our roof. It was mounted on a pole near the chimney. The original one was this really nasty looking aluminum. We replaced it with an Archer antennal from Radio Shack. The TV didn't have a remote, but the channels were selected with a keypad and not a dial. It had a digital LED display for the channel.

 

[dishdude]

I was watching an old Price is Right episode on the Game Show network a few years ago and they gave away a "Michaelangelo by Zenith" console TV, record player, stereo combo. The thing was so massive it didn't fit on the stage. Showcase showdown included a Chevy Monza. The Zenith was bigger.

 

[y_p_w]

I was watching an old Price is Right episode on the Game Show network a few years ago and they gave away a "Michaelangelo by Zenith" console TV, record player, stereo combo. The thing was so massive it didn't fit on the stage. Showcase showdown included a Chevy Monza. The Zenith was bigger.

https://www.vintagepaperads.com/1981-Zenith-Michelangelo-SN2575E-Television-Ad_p_105999.html

I remember the days of TVs in big cabinets. They were pretty much a piece of furniture. Some furniture stores even sold TVs. The Zenith TV I mentioned wasn't a big console, but it did come in a real wood cabinet. All tube TVs we had in my family from that point on had plastic cases.

 

[dishdude]

https://www.vintagepaperads.com/1981-Zenith-Michelangelo-SN2575E-Television-Ad_p_105999.html

I remember the days of TVs in big cabinets. They were pretty much a piece of furniture. Some furniture stores even sold TVs. The Zenith TV I mentioned wasn't a big console, but it did come in a real wood cabinet. All tube TVs we had in my family from that point on had plastic cases.

They must have used the Michelangelo name over several years, this thing they gave away on the Price is Right was twice the size of that! That looks to be just a TV, the one I saw had two huge lids to the left and right of the TV with a record player on one side and a radio/8 track and cassette on the other. Zenith always make a great TV.

 

[y_p_w]

They must have used the Michelangelo name over several years, this thing they gave away on the Price is Right was twice the size of that! That looks to be just a TV, the one I saw had two huge lids to the left and right of the TV with a record player on one side and a radio/8 track and cassette on the other. Zenith did make a great TV.

I saw some pretty massive console TVs in my day. We didn't have one though. Sony had a pretty nice one.

I had a 2.2 inch Sony portable TV from maybe 2000. I took it to a golf tournament hoping that I'd be able to see some of the action, although they might have told me to turn it off just in case the sound accidentally was turned up. It operated off of 3 AA batteries. I tried alkaline, but fully charged 2100 mAh NiMH batteries actually lasted longer. I don't think they'll work any more since the analog signals are gone.

 

[Lubener]

How bout the magnet that you would run across the screen for degaussing

Not a "pure" magnet but a coil of wire. Got one in the basement.

 

[Lubener]

Anyone remember the Channel Master "UHF Converter" that enabled you to watch all "cool" programs. You tuned your set to channel 6 and then tuned a rotary knob to tune in the channels on the UHF band.

 

[Benzadmiral]

TV Band radios! As I mentioned earlier, the TV audio band was on FM, channels 2-6 below the FM radio band, channels 7-13 above it. In the '70s you could buy little TV band radios with an earphone jack, so you could watch the picture on your TV, listen to the audio with an earphone, and not disturb your wife or roommate.

As for more recent TV's, I only just bought a 50" modern TV. The 1996 JVC before it gave up the ghost in October after almost 25 years of service. It weighed some 75 pounds, so it was a bear to transport out to the dumpster. I hated to see it go. You could set it to come on at a particular time every morning, or maybe just M-F, to act as an alarm clock. The new Vizio doesn't have that.

 

[Tom NJ]

Back in the 60s my father always fixed our B&W TVs by testing the tubes at our local hardware store. From '68 to '72 I slept in the attic of my parents house and had a TV from 1953 with a small B&W screen, and now I was the one testing and replacing tubes. When I got married in 1972 I was broke and had a 15" B&W TV with a coat hanger antenna and a knife jammed behind the channel dial to tune in the handful of available stations. Finally in 1978 when I was promoted to sales I got a 27" color TV console - Heaven! Now I am quite content with our 60" LED smart TV.

 

[SeaJay]

Maybe a dozen years ago, my next door neighbors who in their 70's at the time asked if we could help move a TV that someone on the next block was giving to them. It was not a good idea. We took my minivan to get it and when we got there we realized that it was a high end Sony in a large cabinet and was probably quite old. That was a heavy beast. After putting in our van and arriving at the neighbors we had to move it down a set of stairs into the neighbors basement. It took four of us to muscle it down.

Did I mention it was a heavy beast, unbelievable heavy and large! I suspect that TV will remain in the basement until the owners pass on and the heirs have to pay someone to remove it, probably after taking a sawzall to it first.

 

[Al]

Its Howdy Doody time!!! 3rd August 1949​

​

At 5:00 in our small town all the kids would shout "Willie the Worm"..they would then run and watch the show
https://www.broadcastpioneers.com/willietheworm1.html

I love this thread

 

[Touring5]

As a kid in the 60's our family had a "go-to" repair guy. Usually he fixed it in our house, but I remember once when he had to take it to his shop (a traumatic situation for a kid). A few times my mom would take me over to my "wealthy" uncle's house to watch Walt Disney in color.

We got a real fancy color TV back around 1976. It was a Magnavox S.T.A.R. (Systematic Tuning At Random) set. Used a 10-key remote to enter channel (also had on on the set). When you entered a channel it would display on the screen in huge, block numbers and fade/shrink until disappearing. THAT was pretty cool at the time.

 

[vindex1963]

We lived in a valley and the TV was in the kitchen with the rabbit ears on top of the refrigerator, it was the only place for any kind of reception. ABC, NBC, CBS.

 

[BlueOvalFitter]

The only TV my grandparents would buy was a Quasar. They had an antenna that would go in circles by turning a knob on a box that sat on top of the TV. My brother and I would take turns operating it just to watch the antenna go round and round. Until my grandfather caught us. I can still feel that leather strap on my rear end!

 

[wpod]

I though that testing the tv tubes was such a cool thing to do.

 

[aquariuscsm]

TV Band radios! As I mentioned earlier, the TV audio band was on FM, channels 2-6 below the FM radio band, channels 7-13 above it. In the '70s you could buy little TV band radios with an earphone jack, so you could watch the picture on your TV, listen to the audio with an earphone, and not disturb your wife or roommate.

As for more recent TV's, I only just bought a 50" modern TV. The 1996 JVC before it gave up the ghost in October after almost 25 years of service. It weighed some 75 pounds, so it was a bear to transport out to the dumpster. I hated to see it go. You could set it to come on at a particular time every morning, or maybe just M-F, to act as an alarm clock. The new Vizio doesn't have that.

I remember the high end jambox’s (aka ghetto blasters) of the late 70s-early 80s had AM,FM,TV1,and TV2 on their radio dials.

 

[wpod]

And then there were Heathkit TV's.

Dad fixed black and white TV's for friends on the side, but once color came out he stopped, part of the reason being that he didn't want to buy new equipment to work on them. He came across a Color TV in the Heathkit catalog and one thing that caught his attention was that the set had built in equipment to help diagnose problems so it was more likely he'd be able to fix any problems and soon after that, one was on its way to the house. Other than the high-voltage assembly, the thing was all loose parts. I don't remember all of the details but I remember one board had well over 100 components that needed to be soldered into place.

It worked so well that when the second set in the house died he went back to the catalog - problem is that Zenith had purchased Heathkit. The kit was so dumbed-down that it was almost shake the box and you had a TV. I don't remember anything needing soldering, we just had to bolt some panels together, plug in wiring harnesses and slide it into the cabinet. He mentioned his disappointment when he called into their help line with some questions and the guy on the other end said that he was hearing that a lot. We got a number of years out of that TV and it even had Zenith's Space Phone which allowed us to answer calls if the TV was on.

I remember Heath kit.