Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyNYC
Do you think it was a color set? Also, how new would this set have been in 1962? How much would it have run?
Also, what is a UHF tuner, and what was a UHF ready badge? What did it do?
My grandparents' two earlier TVs. First pic circa '54, second late 50s:
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The UHF tuner in TVs manufactured after April 1964 (and in some sets of the 1950s and '60s, which were sold in UHF-only areas such as Youngstown, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Indiana, et al.) covered the then-new UHF television spectrum, 470-890 MHz, long before digital television (DTV).
The UHF-ready badge was actually a knockout plug on the front panels of TVs made before '64. This badge covered a hole through which the tuning shaft of an optional UHF tuner protruded. Most TVs which were manufactured prior to April '64 had this badge; at the time, optional conversion kits, containing a UHF tuner and associated components, were available to retrofit these televisions for UHF reception if and when UHF television stations arrived in the area in which the set was to be used. Of course, UHF converters (devices which converted incoming UHF TV signals to VHF channels 5 or 6) could also be used with these sets.
Some Zenith TVs of the mid-1960s had provisions for up to six optional UHF tuner strips, to be installed in the VHF tuner's turret in place of unused VHF channels; some sets also had a factory-installed UHF tuner which normally eliminated the need for UHF strips. However, Zenith TVs with Space Command remote control used the UHF strips to provide remote tuning of one to six UHF channels, depending on how many such strips were installed in the tuner.
Your grandparents' second TV is a Zenith from the early 1950s. However, I am not sure if the tuner used in these sets could have used optional UHF channel strips, since it may not have been a conventional VHF turret tuner. For this set, an external UHF converter would need to be used to receive UHF channels, if the area in which the set was being used had such channels (not all areas had UHF TV until the 1970s or, in some cases, as late as the '80s). The VHF tuner would be set to channel 5 or 6, depending on which of these channels was not being used by local TV stations, to receive the output of the converter. Because channels 5 and 6 were never assigned in the same city, one or the other of these channels was always vacant in every city in the US, and was the channel to which the VHF tuner would be set for UHF reception. In your area (New York City), for example, you would turn your TV's VHF channel selector to channel 6 to get the output of the UHF converter. The TV's own tuner would operate normally for reception of VHF stations; the UHF converter did not affect the operation of the VHF tuner at all.