[Jeffhs]

Your TV is very unusual, to me anyway. I never knew Hitachi made console color sets until seeing the pictures of yours; I hope you get it working. If you bring it up very slowly on a Variac you should be OK; just be sure to watch for signs of overloading such as smoke and/or sparks. Your set may need new filter capacitors as well, but if you just want to find out if the TV works at all, the slow power up with the Variac is the way to go.

Since Canada still has some analog TV stations still operating after switching to digital a couple years ago (so I've read here), you should be able to watch a few stations before having to use a cable box for everything, as many cable operators have required us in the US to do. (VK member Radiotvnut in Mississippi comes to mind, as the cable company in his area has done just that; a lot of cable operators are following suit to free up bandwidth for other services, such as broadband Internet, telephone, etc.)

As to the weather, it looks like your storm is the Canadian version of the bucket brigade of snow storms and cold weather events we just had to deal with (and deal with and deal with . . .) until just recently in the northeastern-midwestern US, making this the longest winter I can remember in 57 years of living in this area near Cleveland, except for the blizzard of 1978 which was much worse. I've been seeing the pictures and video of the so-called "Nor'easter Bomb" on NBC Nightly News the last couple of nights, and it certainly looks as if you guys up north are getting hit hard by it! While I don't think this storm is or will be your "armageddon" (the TV news here in the US often exaggerates these things to death in the name of high drama), but you will have to be very careful on the roads if you must be out in that mess. Best to stay in if you can, and get that Hitachi TV working--or at least find out if the set powers up without incident. That the CRT is probably good is a good sign.

Good luck. That set deserves to be saved.