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Old 10-12-2016, 07:26 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Celt View Post
I had a Fony with an ultrasonic remote. When my niece would scream, it would send the TV into a frenzy changing channels and such.
TVs with ultrasonic remotes were notorious for that. The least little sound, if it was the right frequency, would operate the set's functions at random. For example, a dog walking in front of the set could turn the TV on and off in the middle of the night, cause the set to change channels, turn the volume up or down...when the tags on the dog's collar clinked against each other or the collar. I'm sure this must have confounded many people when, after they had gone to bed for the night, they found their TV on at three or four o'clock in the morning, with just a raster (the station it was tuned to had signed off minutes or hours earlier) and white noise from the speaker.

This type of behavior, of course, is impossible with today's IR (infrared) TV remotes. I have never heard of and cannot imagine any IR remote system being falsely triggered.

Zenith's Flash-Matic remote, the company's first attempt at wireless remote control of a television receiver, could be triggered by other light sources besides the remote hand unit itself (which was nothing more than a flashlight--in fact, a regular garden-variety flashlight could probably be used to operate the television if the Flash-Matic hand unit became lost or broken). There were incidents reported of these sets changing channels on their own when a beam of light (sunlight, for example) would strike the channel up photocell (the Flash-Matic had four such cells, one at each corner of the CRT mask). Since there was no lockout scheme to prevent false triggering, stray ambient light could and often did cause the set to change channels, increase or decrease volume, etc., depending on which cell was struck first. Heaven forbid the channel up and down cells would be hit by stray light at the same time! Under these conditions, the tuner drive motor would probably burn itself out trying to rotate the channel selector in both directions at once.

Due to these problems, and the comsumer complaints which were likely filed with Zenith over them, the Flash-Matic remote system lasted only one model year (1955-56, IIRC) and was replaced by the Space Command ultrasonic remote control. I don't think anyone who ever owned a Flash-Matic TV would ever forget the problems I mentioned, and would be more than willing to replace it with a Space Command remote set--or even (gasp!) a different brand of TV.
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 10-12-2016 at 07:35 PM.
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