Why the color tv sets where so expensive at the beging?
 

Why in the early days the color tv sets where so expensive? It was becuase manufacturing cost where high (no printed boards, a lot of time to assamble the components, delta color picture tube where more expensive and harder to adjust) and that 1964 selling boom of color tv sets camed because by that time printed circuit borads and semiconductors camed into tv set, making them more easy to be manufactured?

In this country, producing volume reduces cost of manufacturing!
Before the mid-60's color boom, there was only one network that had a lot of color programing.
Most of the TV buyers, were still buying B/W sets in the late 50's, early 60's.

in addition to all mentioned, some licensing patents were active and royalties were due to them.

Printed circuits were used in early RCA sets. The major parts cost was in the picture tube, and that was reduced only slowly over the years. Of course, there were also more parts in total than black and white. The manufacture of the sets itself took more set-up labor than a black and white set. So, although there were cost reductions, most of those except for the color tube could be applied to black and white sets too. As stated above, the overhead costs per set were reduced when volume increased.

The history of TV prices is one of either being constant or decreasing while general inflation increased the prices of everything else. So, the inflation-adjusted price was always decreasing, sometimes fairly rapidly and other times very rapidly. This was a positive feedback loop in the market, with falling real prices spurring sales and increased production reducing costs. The adoption curves showed the expected result, with one B&W TV per household, then multiple B and W, then color, then multiple color sets. Both B&W and color showed this "S-shaped" curve of number of households with sets, B&W in the late 40s and color in the mid-late 60s.

correction: if you consider the mid-points of the durves rather than the first upturn, it was the early 50s for B&W and early 70s for color:
https://findwhatworks.files.wordpres...y-adoption.jpg

RCA was the major inventor of NTSC TV & held tons of
patent rights for it. They charged fees to use it & that
was one early problem. When they stopped charging things
started to take off. Just about everyone started to make there
own & drove the cost down.

Building in quantity saves money. If you have a CRT plant
that can make 250,000 CRTs a yr but only make 100,000
you better find a way to run it at 100%. The excess gets sold
off at lower prices.

PCB's save money & almost everyone used them. Zenith
hand wired sets then slowly evolved in the '70's to all PCB
due to cost & tech advances. Zenith & RCA sold for the same
money & they were considered the 2 premium sets.

73 Zeno:smoke:

You have to also figure in the R & D costs in developing color tv. RCA absorbed most of these costs and lost money on each color set sold until the mid 60's. Smaller manufacturers that did not sell rebadged RCA clones and developed their own chassis suffered even more losses on color tv. With the additional expense of using RCA & Hazeltine licensing fees. Slow color tv acceptance by the public showed up as red ink. Hence, by the later 50's, most electronic manufacturers producing color receivers dropped out. Giant RCA with it's NBC TV network soldiered on and finally showed a profit w/color tv in the mid 60's.

But what caused that boom in 1964? Generally there wheren't more than 20.000 color sets sold per year, but in 1964 there where sold 100.000 (one hundred thousand).

More programming available in color.

.

Every new Electronic technology is expensive at first, it usually drops like a rock after a few years when they've learned how to make it cheaper.

Look at Personal Computers, CD players, DVD Players, Video Cameras, large screen TV etc...
Early Plasma sets were $10,000 or more, by the end they could be had for $500.

According to this chart from tvhistory.com there were 1.6 million Color TV's in the U.S. in 1964.

That would mean they had to sell an average of 160,000 sets per year since 1954, if they sold 100,000 in 1964 when did they sell the other 1.5 million?
Judging by this chart 1968 was the big year for Color?
http://www.tvhistory.tv/Color_Households_64-78.JPG

All three major networks, NBC, CBS and ABC went 100% color in the 1966/67 prime time season. This together with dropping prices spurred a rush to color by the buying public.

There were many publications saying color television was finally ready for prime time and the public was eger to adopt. I was 19 at the time (1966) and purchased my first color television which was a RCA 19 inch rectangular console.

I didn't get a color set until 1979 or 80. :no:

Those cone shaped terminal strips and tube socket terminals that poked above the chassis were wave soldered. The workers stuffed resistor and cap leads into the cones before the wave soldering, (a little like circuit boards) and then they added IF transformers and such above chassis parts later. "Hand crafted"...

Wow. In just 2 years the number of color tv sets sold increased 3 times.
The number of color sets sold overcome the number of black and white set sold in 1972 as far as I know.
In Western Europe it took about 10-12 years for the number of color sets to outnumber the numer of b & w sets. But Europeanens got a little bit less costly production methodes and where closer to more modern tehcnologies (solid state sets, in line picture tubes). In Eastern-Europe the number of color sets increased only after 1989.
Yes, a lot of old set where expensive, but the people got jobs manufacturing/assembling them... now in a lot of countries those jobs are gone :tears:
As we get close to modern times, the time of adopting new techology is decreasing. But it's strange how modern technology is not uniting people... it's making them become lonlier. Oh, it's a pitty that isn't like in the old days when you invited people to you in order to see movies on V.H.S., L.D., D.V.D.

@ EricH : why it took so long for your family to get a color set?
In Romania... but that's another story.

We got color TV as soon as our area got Cable, because the OTA reception was just barely adequate for B&W (down in a valley, in an apartment complex that forbid outdoor antennas). In the early/mid 70s, when CATV came to town, almost everyone bought new color sets to enjoy all the new channels and snow-free pictures.

Was a boom time for a young kid trashpicking parts from discarded sets to build electronic projects...:D

My families first color tv was a 1982 RCA 19". Its never had any work done except to the tuner and still works and looks great. Its in my bedroom. But we were WAY behind the times watching B&W Tv's. Put simply, they just cost a lot more money than we had. We had a few working B&W's all the time so were never without a tv to watch.