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-   -   Yet another Zenith roundie (http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=269857)

TUD1 12-09-2017 03:41 PM

Yet another Zenith roundie
 
5 Attachment(s)
Got this 25LC20 set today in a deal I made with a friend and local collector. I had to give up my CTC-15, but I also got another set. Had to completely set it up. When I first plugged it in, the picture was horrible. Very dim and blurry. Had to rejuvenate the original tube, and now it's better, but not great.

TUD1 12-10-2017 03:14 PM

I've been watching this set quite a bit. The tube is still waking up even after I rejuvenated it. It gets very bright now, I even had to turn the bias down a little. Focus is a little on the soft side though.

Jeffhs 12-10-2017 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TUD1 (Post 3193197)
Got this 25LC20 set today in a deal I made with a friend and local collector. I had to give up my CTC-15, but I also got another set. Had to completely set it up. When I first plugged it in, the picture was horrible. Very dim and blurry. Had to rejuvenate the original tube, and now it's better, but not great.

Dave, you simply cannot expect a 52-year-old television to work anywhere nearly as well as a modern set; even if you replaced the CRT, the picture still wouldn't be as good as a modern HDTV. Those old sets will not work without modification on today's TV standards, so I don't know how you are getting a picture on yours unless you are using a DTV converter box or cable. I don't know how your cable service is set up in Birmingham but here where I live, in northeastern Ohio, the cable, as of the first of last month, is 100 percent digital, so a cable box is required to get any reception at all unless you use a streaming video system such as Roku, Google TV, et al. I have a Roku (Internet TV) box on my 19-inch Insignia flat screen and am getting beautiful pictures on every one of the seven TV stations (and their DTV subchannels) serving Cleveland.

However, I will say it again for emphasis, you cannot and will not get anything but snow on your 52-year-old Zenith roundie if you try to get local reception using just an antenna; again, I am baffled as to why you are getting anything on your set as it is unless, as I said, you are using a DTV converter box, satellite, or cable. If you have cable, your local cable system in Birmingham must not have made the full conversion yet to digital if you can hook up your cable directly to the TV and get a picture. However, the day will come when you will need a cable box on your TV to get anything at all. Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) was the last cable system in the US to convert to full digital, so the cable in your area has probably been 100-percent digital for some time. The only other thing I can think of is there may still be one or several VHF NTSC television stations operating in your area.

SpaceAge 12-11-2017 12:08 AM

Very nice find, as usual. I would be interested in seeing a picture of the screen after your setup procedure, showing something other than color bars. It sure does look like a winner to me. And it appears you got the legs as well? I think that’s what I’m seeing in the first photo, but not sure.

TUD1 12-11-2017 12:21 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Quote:

Originally Posted by SpaceAge (Post 3193262)
Very nice find, as usual. I would be interested in seeing a picture of the screen after your setup procedure, showing something other than color bars. It sure does look like a winner to me. And it appears you got the legs as well? I think that’s what I’m seeing in the first photo, but not sure.

Yes, I did get the legs and a spare NOS Triad flyback. This is the only picture I have at the moment of programming using my 2009 LG/Zenith DTV converter. (Way too cheap to pay for satellite/cable/etc.)

SwizzyMan 12-11-2017 07:38 AM

Uh... You do know that you have to actually work on the 52 year old tv if you actually want it to work correctly...

TUD1 12-11-2017 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SwizzyMan (Post 3193265)
Uh... You do know that you have to actually work on the 52 year old tv if you actually want it to work correctly...

Uh... Well aware of that. I'm not new to this hobby. Plus, I don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on these things like some people here do. I have bigger problems, like keeping the refrigerator full and the lights on.

Jeffhs 12-11-2017 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TUD1 (Post 3193263)
Yes, I did get the legs and a spare NOS Triad flyback. This is the only picture I have at the moment of programming using my 2009 LG/Zenith DTV converter. (Way too cheap to pay for satellite/cable/etc.)

Your Zenith roundie makes a darn good picture using that LG/Zenith DTV converter box, although I did notice the convergence is slightly off at the right edge of the screen. In the image your set is showing, the misconvergence seems worst with the word "Atlanta" on the weather radar map.

What are you using as an antenna with that DTV converter? You mentioned you don't have cable or satellite, so the only way your set would work at all would be with a DTV converter box, and I'm sure you are some distance from Birmingham's TV towers so you would probably need some sort of outdoor antenna. I wasn't aware these boxes were even available anymore, as inexpensive as many flat screen TVs are these days (I see some sets with 20-inch-plus screens advertised in my Sunday paper for under $200), although you said yours was a 2009 model so you've probably owned it since the beginning of the DTV conversion.

TUD1 12-11-2017 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffhs (Post 3193314)
Your Zenith roundie makes a darn good picture using that LG/Zenith DTV converter box, although I did notice the convergence is slightly off at the right edge of the screen. In the image your set is showing, the misconvergence seems worst with the word "Atlanta" on the weather radar map.

What are you using as an antenna with that DTV converter? You mentioned you don't have cable or satellite, so the only way your set would work at all would be with a DTV converter box, and I'm sure you are some distance from Birmingham's TV towers so you would probably need some sort of outdoor antenna. I wasn't aware these boxes were even available anymore, as inexpensive as many flat screen TVs are these days (I see some sets with 20-inch-plus screens advertised in my Sunday paper for under $200), although you said yours was a 2009 model so you've probably owned it since the beginning of the DTV conversion.

Thanks, and yes, I'm aware of the convergence issue. I tried doing dynamic convergence using the coils on the convergence board, but they didn't do much of anything. I got it as good as I could and left it alone.

I got my Zenith converter box brand new in the box in January of this year at an estate sale. I'm using an Iron Butterfly antenna.

Phil Nelson 12-12-2017 01:07 AM

What is an Iron Butterfly antenna?

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
https://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Electronic M 12-12-2017 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson (Post 3193318)
What is an Iron Butterfly antenna?

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
https://antiqueradio.org/index.html

I think he means the classic UHF bowtie.

Yer bowtie ain't an Iron Butterfly till it has received at least the albums Heavy,
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Ball, and Metamorphasis. :D

Jeffhs 12-12-2017 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TUD1 (Post 3193316)
Thanks, and yes, I'm aware of the convergence issue. I tried doing dynamic convergence using the coils on the convergence board, but they didn't do much of anything. I got it as good as I could and left it alone.

I got my Zenith converter box brand new in the box in January of this year at an estate sale. I'm using an Iron Butterfly antenna.

If you are using just a simple UHF bowtie antenna, you must not be as far from Birmingham's TV towers as I had originally thought. You are only about 9.5-10 miles from the city of Birmingham itself (I looked up the city on City-Data.com yesterday), but it is possible you could be slightly further away from the TV station towers, as most TV stations have their towers located in high-elevation areas, often high-ground suburbs, so as to maximize their coverage areas. As an example, the TV stations serving my area near Cleveland are located in Parma, Ohio, a southwestern high-elevation suburb of the city, some 40 miles from where I live. There are some areas, however, such as New York and Chicago, in which the TV transmitters and antennas are actually located in the downtown areas of those cities; New York's stations are atop the city's Empire State Building (some having been relocated since the World Trade Center disaster in 2001), and most of Chicago's stations are atop that city's Sears Tower.

BTW, I didn't realize you had already reconverged your TV's CRT. It's been a while (45 years, to be exact) since the last time I had a TV with a round color tube, but I do recall that it isn't easy to converge them, especially in the corners of the screen. (I was trying to converge my set's tube by eye, without a pattern generator--believe me, I'll never do that again, as the results were far from even optimal.)

TUD1 12-12-2017 02:15 PM

Most of the transmitters are on Red Mountain, which is about 10 miles away. The only channel I have issues picking up sometimes is WABM 58. On stormy days, it's hit or miss. I don't know where the tranmitter is for that station. I can pick up WBRC, WVTM, WTTW, WUOA, and WIAT without issues.

jr_tech 12-12-2017 02:51 PM

WABM is located on Golden Crest Drive just off of Beacon Parkway East... fairly close to many other tv transmitters. They have a construction permit to go to ch 20 for repacking. Decent power, but they do have a directional pattern with lower power going North.

https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/t...2=&EW=W&size=9

jr

TUD1 12-12-2017 03:20 PM

1 Attachment(s)
This is what I MEANT to say...


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