Quote:
Originally Posted by bgadow
I think quite a few factors added up to kill the industry in the US. Some others: once, independent TV shops were where most folks would go to by a set, and they stuck to the domestic brands. (Something they could service easily.) As time went on more and more people would buy from department stores, especially discounters like Kmart. It was one thing if the price difference was small, or the quality gap was wide, but in time it became more difficult to justify the cost. I was given a 19" Midland from about '77 that I think was from Korea (Gold Star? Can't remember for sure) I recall thinking that, while it might not have put out quite as good a picture as a new Zenith CC or System III, for the cost savings it would have been worthwhile. By that time pretty much anybody could crank out a color set with a decent picture.
The American electronics industry really needed a "next big thing" to stay alive once solid state color TV became a commodity in late 70's. That should have been the VCR but RCA/Ampex sold the technology to Japan. RCA tried to make the next big thing the CED and Zenith tried home computers & HDTV but the world had passed them by.
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We had cartrivision and some other formats, but without Japan we never would have had the VCR as we knew it. Hollywood and big networks would have bullied any domestic builder out of the market or made them make a product no consumer would have particularly wanted: a VCR that could not record TV.
We threw a decent amount of shit at the wall on video recording tech, and so did the Japanese, but they made it stick.