With HDTV taking over analog this year, I'm guessing most of you are now watching on HDTV sets. Your analog TV was kicked to the curb long ago. I'm now wondering if I'm using the oldest TV set in the Portland area.

Here are the rules: Your TV can not be sitting on a shelf, idle. It has to be the set you watch most of your TV programs on daily.

My main TV set is a Teknika Model No. 3673. It was manufactured in August 1985. Beat That!

A few years ago, I visited my brother-in-law and he had a TV with channel 1 on it! I know it doesn't fit the rules but thought it was interesting anyway. There are probably lots of people who have extra TV sets in various rooms and I see them in mom n pop stores. Some of these are easily 30 year old or so. It hasn't been too long since my in-law's 1965 color set finally went out.

I think there is a Channel 1 now isn't there? Some kind of network?

That's a nice old TV! (You might want to have it converged, as it's gotta be drifting by now)

It's an educational network, currently hard at work branding and messaging to our next generations.

We just retired an early 90's TV.

I have a Zenith cube shaped portable from about the same time your TV was made Craig. It's not the primary TV, but it does see regular use!

I have a PhilcoB+W heavytabletop set from about 1952 but I do not use it much anymore!!!!!my uncle gave it to me in mid 70'sI used to use it quite often!has good sound!an imagekind of stays on the screen for a little while when it's turnd off if it is dark

http://www.channelone.com/

Channel One is shown to Middle School and High School students daily in the form of 7-15 minute news geared towards there demographic.

Channel One is also where Anderson Cooper and many others got their start in the news media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_1

Channel 1 was also a real broadcast channel in the 40's... 44-50 mHz. I have an old (un-restored) Hallicrafters (7" electrostatic CRT) set that has a pushbutton for ch 1.

The oldest set that I use occasionally is a '73 Sony 9" color set (KV9000) that lives in my garden shed.

I use my Commodore 1704 12" monitor as a TV set regularly - it's in my bedroom, attached to a DTV box. I seem to recall I bought that thing around 1983.

My main TV is a Sony 27" XBR15 purchased in December 1990. Has a few issues but with a few life support work-arounds still works and has a great picture.

In my office here at the house, I have a Mitsubishi 27" TV that, while I can't remember the exact date, was bought in '85 or '86.

As Andrew mentioned above, I also use my Commodore 1902 monitor hooked up to an old VCR that is fed by the 2nd output from my Dish Network dual DVR in the family room. The audio from the VCR feeds my Heathkit AA-32 10 watt per channel tube amp that I built in the late 60's!

Until a few years ago I had my parent's original B&W 21" Zenith. It had a manufactured date stamped on the chassis of Dec. 7, 1955. I hadn't used it in a while and while I was cleaning out my storage it found it's way to the dump. It did however work great the last time I used it!

> I hadn't used it in a while and while I was cleaning out my storage it found it's way to the
> dump.

That is too bad. A number of people would have probably paid good money for that Zenith, given that it was still complete and functional.

The TV in my living room is an Emerson 26C49WN (12D981A chassis), which is a 25" set, likely of late 1960s vintage. I haven't been able to find a manufacture date on it. I found this TV in one of the apartments I lived in in college, and I have had it in regular use since I moved out to the Portland area in 1998. There is only one transistor in this TV: the UHF local oscillator.

I re-converged it once, with moderately good results. The convergence seems to vary with the contrast of the image and with ambient temperature, so any adjustment is a compromise. The ability of this TV to produce natural-looking flesh tones is surprisingly good. Programs with very bright colors, such as The Simpsons, however, don't look that good because the brightly colored areas receive interference from the sound (squiggly lines that move with the sound, also known as 920kHz sound-chroma beats appear).

I have never had to replace any tubes or capacitors! Other than re-converging, the only other repairs I have done was to clean and re-lubricate the tuners. I had to do this when the VHF fine tuning adjustment got stuck on several channels.

Andrew 2, I think we've got the same TV! I agree, Sony made some very good TV's around that time, the only thing I don't like is how heavy the darn thing is.

"Emerson 26C49WN (12D981A chassis), which is a 25" set, likely of late 1960s vintage"

Good guess !... Photofact index lists this set in folder 1141-1 Which was issued in 1970.

No kidding!!! The big screen black and white TV's have a great look! What we can't see today, unless we are watching an analog broadcast of something like Perry Mason, is the detail. 500+ lines EASY.

It's a whole different TV experience.



Alfredo, you can cut down the convergence differences, which are caused by non-linear blooming of the image as a whole, by running the TV at a lower overall contrast. Leaving it on more often helps a lot with the temp issues too.

Back when I was a kid, tweaking TV's for summer play money, those were my top two recommendations.

On the contrast bit, it helps a whole lot to run the black level such that it's really about 10 percent grey. In brightly lit rooms this works out ok, only requiring a small tweak in the evening.

From there, set contrast so that whites are not crushed. This requires a grey scale generator. I used an older computer for this task, back then. Probably would work out just fine today too. Maybe one of your computers has a video out, or you can get a test DVD.

You want a nice separation between those last few bright greys, or it blooms pretty big on too many scenes.

There is nothing to be done about the commercials with the white backgrounds. Those are just gonna suck.

The flesh tones probably has to do with the color temperature being closer to the NTSC standard. This is kind of an orange tint, where most TVs today run hotter on that scale, being white, or a light blue.

Flesh tones, and greens are significantly impacted by that setting, BTW.

Google color temp, and you will see 6500, 8000, and higher, I believe. The lower numbered one is what most of the older TV's phosphers delivered.

Coupla other things that can be done:

With that same grey scale, tweak the video drives. They are probably not all that linear any more, and might be driving too hard at the high end (white). Between those and the contrast, you can get a very good picture in an ordinary to dark room.

The chroma artifacts are probably tweakable too. Chances are the chroma discriminator has fallen out of adjustment. This is usually one variable resistor to handle delay, and a can to handle overall bandwidth. (or perhaps frequency --I can't remember!)

For a TV that old, it's good to use a high quality analog broadcast, or DVD player to get some bright colors on the screen. The effect you are looking for is a blending of the colors. The trade-off is less noise.

Most TV's that old have a hard time with modern NTSC color signals. Many of these signals are out of range!! If you scope a DVD player, they will just flat out push the color beyond the spec as most TV discriminators made today can easily handle it.

A tweak to the color gain, can compress those signals in a fashion not unlike the attenuator on your home stereo does. You lose a bit of texture, but the noise goes away.

That can help you reach higher contrast levels too.

I was using Atari and C64 computers with TV's back then, and they were that old and that's how I became aware of some of the tweaks I've mentioned.

Those older TV's were so much fun!!

Oh, have you checked the IF? That may well be mis-tuned also. The older TV's had a tuner that translated the broadcast to an IF. 455Khz comes to mind? Anyway, the first coupla cans near where the tuner coax cable enter the main chassis deal with that.

I'll bet you can still find out what the frequencies for alignment were. If these have drifted, it impacts the whole TV big time. Could be causing you a lot of noise down the chain in the chroma.

(back to the old TV thread --sorry!)

455Khz comes to mind?

You are thinking AM Radio... Most tvs in the 60's had IF in the range of 41 mHz. earlier sets (40's) were mostly 21 mHz IF. Some pre-war sets used as low as 8 Mhz.

Alfredo, another cause of blooming is the high voltage rectifier tube.

It's usually in a cage with the flyback.

Be careful with this as it's connected directly to the 2nd anode on the pix tube and the pix tube can store a pretty healthy charge and will ZAP you when you least expect it! (Ask me how I know!!!)

Jr_tech....Sams Photofacts! You beat me to it as that's exactly where I was going to suggest Alfredo look!

I don't remember how many hundreds of those I had when I used to work on TV's back in the late 60's and early 70's.

IIRC back then they we $1.50 each and contained anywhere from 3-6 TV sets and usually a few radios in each folder.

Then they went up to $3.00 each and they cut down the number of devices in each folder.

Ahhhh....The good old days!!!

"With HDTV taking over analog this year"

No Craig, you mean the ATSC standard taking over NTSC this year. Yes, all HD broadcasts are in ATSC format (at least here; Europe has DVB) but not all ATSC broadcasts are HD.

(Exempli gratia, see channel 22.)

My Grampa had a mid-1960s RCA colour television (don't know what model) that he got just before he was drafted into the Army. It was one of those "semi-console" types, with the wooden legs underneath. It also had an AM and shortwave radio on it. (It may have had FM, I really don't know. I never really played much with its radio tuner.)

Thing had absolutely terrible convergence so everyone and everything seemed to have this reddish "haze" around it. Needless to say, that didn't stop me from watching my cartoons and getting to level 5 of "Star Fox" on it!!)

(Yup, watching "Darkwing Duck" and "Reboot" on that set was like watching whilst on a good LSD trip........... ;o)

He retired that old set about three years ago because I guess the picture tube went out, or something. Gran now has her piano setting where the TV once stood.

...Most tvs in the 60's had IF in the range of 41 mHz....

I think it was a 6 MHz wide IF, if my memory serves me correctly.

Which is why we had so much grief in residential areas with our low band (43.22 MHz) paging frequency when I lived in Tampa.

We bought a lot of people Sony Trinitrons because they used a different frequency for the IF. I don't remember what it was though.

41 mHz!

Thanks! I knew I was hosing that up!

6Mhz sounds right too.

Just looked this up:

The standard TV receiver IFs are 41.25 MHz for the sound and 45.75 MHz for the picture.

Paulwalker: I think we've got the same TV! I agree, Sony made some very good TV's around that time, the only thing I don't like is how heavy the darn thing is.

The XBR15? Cost like $1500 new? Has PIP and a bunch of neat digital effects I've never used since the week after I bought it??? The XBR10 cost 1/2 the price without the digital effects I never use...

Yeah, it is heavy - took four of us to carry the damn thing up the stairs to my apartment the first time, I think. I almost always moved to another upstairs apartment each time I moved. Gee, where are those friends now, LOL?

The problem with mine (probably posted about it here before) is what I believe is probably a cold solder joint, which I've read about on the web in the past. These things apparently are notorious for that, from that era. The main problem is the tuner is flaky when it's first warming up; so is the picture (B&W sometimes). However, I can use it immediately if I just use a video input (need a DTV box now anyway) and my old Pioneer receiver for sound. I'd really love to fix the thing - tempted to do it myself, but the heavy part makes me the most nervous. Maybe I can dig up some schematics for it?

I love my Sony. I did have to have it degaussed several years ago, and the remote keys are not all working, but the picture is excellent. On the weight of the thing, the last time I moved I tried to move this thing by myself. Needless to say, the 'ole back wasn't the same for days!

Paul, do you have an old Weller soldering gun?

Works great as a degausser!

I have a late 90's Sony XRB (32") and I had to move it around recently -- I don't know how the hell I even got it upstairs into the house!

I think that Sonys must gain weight over time. When my 14 year old 27" melted down last summer, I could not believe that I had wrestled it into place when it was new! A 32" LCD Sony (that fit nicely into the same spot) weighed about 1/3 as much, thankfully.

anyone have a round screen B&W tv set??color?

My mom gave me a REALLY old compact TV. 1979 Sony KV-5200...

"anyone have a round screen B&W tv set??color?"

Yes and Yes... but these are collector sets (from the 40s and 50s) and not in daily use. I am considering a really "first class" restoration (all new caps... the works) on a 10 or 12" round tube set to be used with a DTV converter box, as a fun project.

Perhaps one of these:

http://www.radioremembered.org/admiral20x1.html