Television Technology In 1992-1994
 

Hello all.

I was wondering what kind of television was high-end/low-end/normal in the early 90's?

I assume a majority were CRT-based, and Panasonic and Sony were the big names. I also assume Laserdiscs were sold at the high-end.

But what connections did these TVs have? Were they stereo?

It would be interesting to see a Panasonic catalog from the time.

Thanks all.

Low end from the early '90's:
1. 12" B&W sets with rotary tuners (yes, they were still made in the early '90's).
2. 13"/19" color TV's with a manual power/volume knob and rotary tuners. These were available in the USA until '93, when it was mandated that all TV's 13" and larger must have a built-in CC decoder. It was now easier for companies to build TV's with electronic microprocessor tuning control with the CC decoder built in the microprocessor than to house a CC decoder inside a rotary tuned set. The main people buying rotary tuned sets in the early '90's were the elderly, who did not want change. These TV's usually had no A/V input jacks.

Next, there were non-remote sets with digital pushbutton channel selection. Some were cable ready, while others would only tune OTA channels. These sets usually didn't have A/V inut jacks.

Moving up, there were remote controlled sets with cable ready electronic tuning. Some of these sets had an LED channel readout and others had OSD. There were usually no A/V jacks on these.

Next, we had sets that met the description of TV's described directly above, except these set had stereo sound and many had at least one set of A/V input jacks.

The higher end sets had what I mentioned above plus the addition of PIP, better speakers, a decent audio amp, connections for external speakers, various A/V jacks, and an elaborate menu system that would allow channel labels, etc.

Today, even the cheapest TV will have A/V jacks, a remote, and other features that would have only been found on high end sets 20 years ago.

When I think of the 'average' TV from that era I think of a 19 or 20 inch crt set, remote control (which was pretty much standard by then) often without stereo, no inputs or outputs, just a coax antenna input on the back. This was the beginning of the "BPC" (black plastic crap) era of cookie-cutter, increasingly imported sets.

Very interesting.

Do you think I might be able to find such a top-of-the-line set from, say, 1992, today?

I always liked the picture on those quality sets, but could never afford them at the time.

I'd say that the chances are good that you'll be able to find one. There were many TV brands and most had their high end models. There were a lot of them sold and many still survive.

Early 90s was Sony's last grand high-end day in the sun. The KV-36XBR400 was an incredible set, but not so reliable as they got to be 8 and 10 years old. Mitsubishi was probably the most high-end set for big screen sets, and also excellent with CRT direct view. They came out with the 40" standard CRT, then Sony came out with the 40" flat CRT shortly after. Those sets all had component video and SVHS, and a few had TTL and VGA ports. No HDMI or DVI at that time.

The "fad" sets; the ones the young professionals needed to brag ownership of, were the NEC and the ProScan. NEC was a great set, but not worth the inflated price, and the ProScan was a glorified cheapie RCA-GE, and although it had an OK picture, they were terribly unreliable (blowing flybacks constantly, and blowing power supplies, etc). And let's not forget the Proton, which was basically a Hitachi. Great set, and great picture, but unreasonably high-priced. The worst fad set was the Zenith Inteq. It was the worst POS I've ever seen.

Charles

Yeah, don't consider anything with the Zenith name on it from the '90's or those "digital system 3" sets from the late '80's. I have a friend who paid around $1600 for a 31" Zenith digital system 3 console around '89. The reason he bought it is because it had a feature called teletext that would allow him to access all sorts of information. That TV was a POS from day one. When the Zenith dealer wasn't working on it, I was. I rejuvenated the CRT at least twice while he owned it. A few years ago, he told me to get it out of his life and I brought it home, replaced a bunch of bad electrolytic caps in the power supply and vertical sweep circuits and rejuvenated the CRT (again). Then, it developed a tuner problem that I think was just a loose connection; but, I wasn't going to open it again. I paired it with an old VCR to use as a tuner and I gave the set to the SA. Most any '90's Zenith you find will have a bad CRT, no matter how "high end" the TV was supposed to be.

Mitsubishi's had good pictures; but, that's a set you'd better be prepared to change every electrolytic cap on the chassis and clean up the mess from the old leaking caps. It finally got to the point where I wouldn't accept a Mitsubishi for repair.

I remember the Proscan hype in the early-to-mid '90's. I worked on a few that used the CTC169 chassis; which, wasn't a terrible set. However, they are now getting to the age where the CRT's are getting weak and the chassis will come near having too many problems. Most of the problems I had with the 169 had to do with bad caps in the PS/horizontal output/vertical sweep sections, blown HOT's, blown power supply parts, and blown audio output IC's. There was a CTC170 chassis that was a total PITA that I refused to work on. Then, there was the CTC179 that was an OK performer; but, they were difficult to work on and the flyback was a high failure part.

Sony's were a decent set; but, the CRT's tended to go bad after a few years.

If you consider a set to buy, look at the picture. If the greyscale is off, displays a soft picture, has color bleeding, or any combination of the above; you likely have a weak CRT and you'd be better off to move on to something else.

Very interesting, thank you for explaining.

Where do you think I should look?

Thrift stores, Craigslist, yard sales, estate sales, the side of the road.

I had an old RCA console from 1989. XL 100 with remote if I remember. Very basic set. RF input only.

Developed a tuner problem in 99. It stayed that way till 2004 when one of the color drive transistors blew. Replaced it and resoldered the tuner. That TV looked really nice for a basic console.

Tried to give it away in December after I got a flat panel, but no one wanted it.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

Outland,
What part of the world do you live in? If you're looking, that is.

Chip

I see. Thank you, radiotvnut.

I guess a 20" high end 1992-1995 Sony would be ideal. I'll keep looking.

Craigslist is loaded with sets these days and would be the easiest place to look. You'll have to wade through a lot of junk to find what you are looking for, so be patient. There is a very good chance you can get the set you want for somewhere between free and $20, $30 max. These sets have basically no resale value right now.

I don't have much experience with the higher end stuff but Panasonic would get a look if it were me.

As Bryan states, you really can't go wrong with Panasonic.
Sony and Toshiba were nice, but the CRT's did not have the longevity, so take a good look at the picture.

I have a 1991 Toshiba CRT "flat screen 27" with one S-video (SVHS) input that's looking soft in the last 7 years of daily use. The dark scenes are not black, but a slight shade of green, indicating poor cutoff of green gun.
I found it at a private school in the surplus AV equipment room. It had low hours due to any early vertical collapse that was not fixed with a new IC. It was an obscure 1mf-50V cap nobody could find. Otherwise it woulda been tossed 10 years ago.

If you are talking about the 4 pin video connector SVHS is not the correct name for it S-video is (the S is for separate as in the chroma and luminance signals are separate). SVHS is a video tape recording format. These terms tend to get mixed up quite often by most people BTW.

Thanks Tom, I was thinking they were the same since I see it so often. :DS-video output from a Channel Master CM-7000 set-top box looks especially good on this set.:D

The same thing happens when a "VGA" input is mentioned. That connector is called an HD-15. VGA was the IBM name for their (then) high-performance computer output signal, Video Graphics Array.

Well, I've tracked down a high-end Sony locally.

It doesn't have S-video though, which concerns me. Why is that, I thought S-video was designed in 1987?

In any case, what do you think? I like colors, and those early 90's sets that I remember had fantastic color.

The quality of the picture also seems to depend on the quality of the TV. Some TVs have excellent pictures with RF, while others look awful over S-video.

Should I also check for anything? I know streaking reds are bad, but not much else.

Many sets that had video inputs omitted S-video since many consumers didn't have the good quality equip to take advantage of it.....It seems a bit more normal for an older Sony to lack it as they were the pioneers of the Beta video tape standard which they were by then having to begrudgingly drop due to poor sales at the time (I seem to recall that S-video was made to go with SVHS decks).

Y/C connections go back at least to the Commodore 64 computer in ~1983 (but not with a four-pin mini-DIN connector). S-video connections were a step up from composite video, so they were not universal even once composite inputs were.

Ah, I see.

Is there anything I should check when I look at the TV?

In the 80s and 90s, I was a pure Sony snob, and I bought only their top-of-the-line sets. From 1989-1995, I had a Sony XBR Pro 25-inch monitor with separate tuner that displayed an amazing picture from Laser Discs and was quite good with broadcast signals as well (and cable on the channels that had good signals). So, I do not know much about other brands or lower-end Sony sets in those years.

To evaluate a set of that era now, you should set the color control to minimum (so it looks black-and-white), and watch the overall tint of its picture when first turned on, and also compare the overall tint and sharpness with the contrast very low versus very high. If it is anything other than proper shades of gray during these tests (other than in the first ten seconds or so when first turned on), or if it gets blurry with high contrast compared to low, then the CRT is quite possibly weak. (Very small amounts of off-tint can be adjusted out with internal service controls, though.)

You will need to use a digital-TV tuner "converter box" or a cable box with TV channel-3 output to test any sets of that era, if you care about the RF input; many Sony sets had problems with their tuners in that period.

Thank you very much for the information.

So this set isn't a high-end set?

It does look like a nice set in the pictures I found.

If a high-end set in 1990 had composite and optional S-video, what would a high-end Sony TV have in 1996? Component? Flat tube?

Pretty interesting.

My parents bought a 1991 (close enough to this topic's era of interest imo) 19" Fisher TV that lasted untill late 2001 when the picture started developing a strange folding over, warm up expansion/stretching problem (image was collapsed and folded over on startup, but continued to expand over a half hour period). It had bad caps somewhere I'm sure, but when it worked properly, it had a beautiful picture. It had remote control, stereo sound, on screen display, and composite A/V inputs with audio output. Still probably one of the best TV's I've had.

...

Thanks for the information, Andy.

I've always felt that 27" was too large, 20" was always the perfect size for me. But for every 20", there seems to be 5 27" Sony sets. Kind of strange.

I guess I'll just hope to find one.

Let me just add this:

TVs with RGB input, usually, *will not* accept component video.

Reason being, component video uses YPbPr encoding. Its luma (Y), blue difference (Pb) and red difference (Pr). Yes, it uses red, green, and blue cables; but its not the same as pure RGB, which is basically sending a full bandwidh luma signal of each color component.

When component video started becomming standard, a lot of people thought they could get a VGA to 3 rca adapter and hook the TV up to the computer. Sometimes it worked; the computer would output a proper HDTV YPbPr signal; or the TV happen to accept an RGB signal.

I finally found one, a Trinitron KV-20TS20. It's from 1989, and doesn't have s-video, but I figure it's the best I'll find.

The CRT on this Sony is strong, I guess it wasn't used much. How can I keep it strong? I reduced picture from 100% to 50%, and calibrated the black level (which was already pretty much perfect for 7.5 IRE).

In the 90s, My parents had an RCA floor model which had the glass doors at the bottom. Wouldnt call it High end, but more like middle of the road. 1995 or so.

The basement family room we had a projection unit. all the bells and whistles of the time. I think it was a Magnavox.

I imagine if you don't watch the hell out of it, it'll be fine.

Romania was one of the poorest countries in Europe in years 1992-1994. Between 1991 and 1998/1999 we had hyperinflation. One bread had a price of 10-20 Romanian Lei (Lions) * in 1991 and about 1.500-1.700 in 1999. So you can figure...
If you where a tv colector you could get even some hybrid color sets (especially from Germany, the main provider of second-hand marchendise to Romania).
2nd color sets where the chance for most people. New sets... expensive. Especially the ones from big brands. Popular diagonal: 21" = 54 c.m.s.

Most popular foreign brand of new sest: Korean "GoldStar" and "Samsung". There was an tv comercial "GoldStar, nobleţea aurului/GoldStar, the noblece of the gold". "Samsung" where lasting sets. 15-20 years, some even worked for more.
Another Korean brand (not so popular) was "MegaVision".
They usualy had 1-2 video inputs.
My maternal grandfather bought in June or July of 1995 an 21" "Panasonic", mono, teletext, A.V. input and 3.5 jack output in the front, S.C.A.R.T. connector in the back for about 1.280.000 Lei (minimal wage 75.000 Lei, avarage wage around 210.000 Lei). "Cheap", no?

The new "Electronica" Plant (the old one is at #82 Baicului (of Baicu, Baicu's) Street; later to become "Electronica Industrială", "Elcomp") splited into 2: "N.E.I." ("Network Electronica International") and "Thomas". "N.E.I." used some good components in the early years. Some set had less buttons then others. I don't know if they where ever where tv sets without A.V. input. Some had the useful teletext.
The new plant was wiped out during the economical bubble of the '000's to make room for offices (it was in the Norht Area where there are a lot of offices now); the old one still exist, but not as an electronic manufacturer (there are several buildings anyway).

We made black and white sets up untill after 1995, throu all that that sales declined and some people couldn't even afford and second-hand color tv set even after 1995! I had black and white up untill 2000! An "Sony" KV-21FT2K (21" screen), mono... but still costed about 7,5 minimal wages (sallaries) or about 3,5 avarage wages on 12-12-2000!!!

* the Bulgarian currency is called Leva, which also means lions.
the subdivision of the Romanian Leu is Bani, which also means money. So if you buy a bread that costs 2 Lei and 20 Bani you say 2 Lions and 20 Money :D Avarage price of bread is around 1 Leu.

The first, really cool TV was bought by my father in Moscow in 1992 - Panasonic TX-29V1R. 29", 21 system, Dome Sound System, all my friends were jealous of me!

High-End Toshiba's in the 90-ies (US Market)

I actually owned two of the lowest end TVs from 1994 for a short period, an RCA and a Panasonic (the real cheap Panasonic where they stamped the name on instead of making it a badge). Both were RF only sets, about 19 inches, with the RCA being mono and the Panasonic possibly being stereo? It had two speaker grilles.

I very quickly got rid of them and I'm glad I did.

35"... that's around 88-89 c.m.s.' Those sets where really big. And stereo. That was awsome! But I wonder how bought them.

And more? 45"... that's around 114-115 c.m.s.'

Wow! A 45" tube. I thought 36" (witch I have a JVC of) was the biggest production CRT.

That must have weighed about 400-500 pounds...