[uxwbill]

I recently inherited my late grandfather's Zenith 25" console TV, model B25A74R (and serial 141-44240487 if anyone cares). To my great surprise, it was assembled in the US!

He and my grandmother bought it new in late January of 2002 after their 1995 Zenith console died in the night. (Perhaps rather surprisingly, the old TV had a great picture right up to the very end. Whatever conked out, went out in a big way, judging by how badly darkened the fuse was...)

I don't watch much TV, nor do I need high definition, surround sound or any of that fancy stuff. (I also wound up with the Sears 4 head stereo VCR and their DTV converter box.)

This TV is in very good condition and I'd be surprised if it has run for even a thousand hours. The picture's still outstanding, but that's what worries me. I know of (and was unfortunately bitten by!) the very short-lived Zenith 25" and 27" picture tubes. I'm hoping (but not too optimistic) that this set might have somehow dodged that bullet. I'd like to keep it around for a while. (To my surprise, it actually has an S-video input! I do wish it had more than one set of video inputs, but it was still early days for that and I suppose many console TV buyers never used them.)

Side note: I still find it amazing that it's considered acceptable in this day and age to supply a TV with extremely poor speakers and expect someone to buy an external speaker just to get acceptable audio volume and quality. That's certainly something that won't be a problem with this console!

Side note #2: This seems to have been one of the "last gasp" console TVs. As best I remember it, Zenith was the last company making console TVs and the party finally came to an end sometime in 2004. I think that's too bad...if the trend weren't to have TVs as big as movie screens today, I'd buy a flat panel set in a nice console cabinet. I suppose that's a very old fashioned viewpoint, though.