Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut
I think this set has been mentioned here before.
It was a black and white set. It worked, but had some shortcuts, such as, the channel was permanently tuned to one Chicago station and could not be changed from the outside. Still, it made for interesting press copy.
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I can see why this TV had to be fixed-tuned to one channel. I doubt varactor tuners had been thought of in the 1960s, which rules out pushbutton channel selectors, and the very small size of these sets would have ruled out the use of any kind of mechanical RF tuner as well (I have never seen any turret or switch-type VHF TV tuner that would fit into a television set this small).
The fact that this TV used the earphone cord as the antenna, and does not seem to have any input jacks or terminal strips for external antennas, would mean the set would have to be located in a very strong signal area to operate at all, say within five miles of the transmitter. I cannot see this set working at all in the semi-fringe area in which I live (I am about 35 miles from the Cleveland TV stations) or any other such area; forget about using a set like this in a deep-fringe area--all you would get on the tiny screen would be snow on whatever channel the set had been factory-tuned to. I don't think this TV would work on cable or with a DTV converter box, either.
But then again, who would want to tether a small TV like this to cable or to a DTV/cable box?
BTW, I remember the Popular Science article in which this tiny Motorola TV was featured. However, I did not realize at the time the set's shortcomings. I also remember a caption beneath one of the photos of the set in the article:
"Don't wait for this (TV)...it's not going into production." My best guess is this was simply a prototype, which was never intended to be mass-produced.