Soviet tv's bought in U.S.A. and Australia

[Telecolor 3007]

A friend of mine insistes that Soviet made tv's where bought in U.S.A. and Australlia, because they had a transformer, not live chassie. True or fake?

[TubeType]

Good morning Telecolor3007.
During the Cold War Era, there were many strict trade restrictions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The sale of Soviet made consumer television receivers would have been covered under those restrictions. Personally, I have never found any Soviet made receivers that were sold to the public in the U.S.

Terry Cheek

[electroking]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

A friend of mine insistes that Soviet made tv's where bought in U.S.A. and Australlia, because they had a transformer, not live chassie. True or fake?

If your friend is claiming that the presence of a power transformer
on a TV is evidence of Soviet manufacture, he is obviously wrong.
U.S. and Canadian manufacturers had roughly comparable numbers
of models with and without power transformers in the tube era.

It is true that by the late seventies, many brand name replacement
tubes were Soviet made. Around 1976 (I was 15), I went to Payette
Radio (long defunct radio parts store) in Montreal and bought a Sylvania
5Y3GT that was plainly marked USSR. I still have the tube to this day
in one of my radios.

[julianburke]

Personally speaking, I would say the answer to that is NO! Not too many people over here were aware of a "hot" chassis in the first place and Soviet produced merchandise has never been well received here esp in the cold war era. In the late '60's I cannot remember any such issue of a transformer set vs a transformerless set. I can remember back in the late '50's while in grade school in Arlington, Va., that everyone was fearful of the USSR. "Better dead than red" were some of the expressions of the day and I know of no one who would have bought any such product.

This also begs the question of parts, service and warranty repair. Can you imagine a family in that era buying a Soviet TV set! Your neighbors would probably look at you in a different light after that. For that matter, even Japanese sets of the '60's were looked down on and I remember servicing a Hitachi 21" color console in 1970 that everyone looked at it as "what's that"?? It did however have a beautiful color picture!

The only Soviet sets that I have seen have been in Steve McVoys' museum or a picture of one on the internet. They would have to be quite rare and besides, who in Russia could afford one anyway? They would have not been produced in any great numbers. Also their early automobiles are rare and we didn't import any of them either. From any standpoint, much of their stuff was reverse engineered and the quality of their materials was far from satisfactory resulting in a inferior product. Another good example of terrible Soviet products were watches, cameras, calculators and motorcycles. (All reverse engineered) They even tried to copy our Harley Davidson motorcycles resulting in a vehicle that would only run on a 6:1 compression ratio because of 30-50 octane gas over there and manufactured with Soviet iron that you could bend with your bare hands! Stalin also killed all intellectuals and scientists, burned all books that he could to control the public so the gene pool was diminished in the heraldry of engineering. All of the lucky ones came to our country. David Sarnoff? Zworykin? What an interesting read!!

Starting in the late 80's we began to see Soviet products such as "submarine clocks", military uniforms and other such "surplus" being sold here. There was no such animal as this stuff was being marketed to raise cash in their collapsed economy. They had starved their people to build a unwanted war machine and the only things they could make in any quanity was military stuff and was touted as "surplus". There were thousands of those "submarine clocks" available as if they were going to build that many subs! As most of you know, if that clock or watch has a picture of a sub or otherwise on its' face, it is not real surplus but is a novelty item being touted as such. You notice it was all brand new in the wrap-of course it was, it was MADE YESTERDAY! They still sell those early version night vision items which are at least 20 years behind ours and cannot be repaired. Don't buy any of 'em, they're JUNK!!

Tubes: Guess what? When we got down to our last four tube manufacturers, (RCA, GE, Westinghouse and Sylvania) they all traded around to save production costs and when they went out of the tube business, the equipment was taken down AND GIVEN OR SOLD CHEAP TO THE SOVIETS!! We felt at that time that we no longer needed tubes or would ever sell them again and the Soviets, who were at least 20 years behind us in technology were still using them hence their insatiable demand for manufacturing tubes. NOW THEY ARE MAKING THEM AND SELLING THEM BACK TO US FOR 20 OR MORE TIMES THE COST!! Especially audio tubes and I'm still not impressed with them either. It does make me sick when I hear "audiophiles" start talking about their Macs or other tube amps and their special "tubes" like they were invented/discovered yesterday. BS!! Yes, they may sound OK but they just are not worth what they want for them. I did tubes for over 30 years as a living and longer as a hobby so they don't get my immediate attention!

I do however like to play with my tube radios and TV's, and making them work is my natural high!

Pretty much anywhere you go, old technology is given away or sold for very little cost. Since tubes work quite well, they stuck with them for a long time and didn't have to pay any R & D to upgrade themselves. What wasn't given to them, they tried to copy by reverse engineering. I like to collect early four function mechanical calculators and I have an exact Russian copy of a Swedish Odhner. They are identical except for the Russian logo/brand name. Also for the sake of any argument here, Zenith lost their luster quickly when they wouldn't update their facilities and use new improved manufacturing techniques; that's why they failed in their later years. Remember their hand wired chassis'? It had nothing to do with quality as they touted. It is a very expensive manufacturing process but was by far cheaper than upgrading their assembly lines.

[Sandy G]

I have NEVER seen a Soviet era consumer electronic good for sale in this country, except for a few radios sold as collector's items on Ebay. Well, I take that back-Around 1991-92, gunshows were flooded w/certain Soviet military paraphanalia-Pistols, ammo, a few Dragunov rifles, & nightscopes. I bought a "Baikal" pistol, its roughly equivalent to a 380 ACP, but it really shoots HARD, due to a poor grip design. I also got a night vision scope, a 1st generation design, which only worked for about a year before it checked out. I was told that they are basically unrepairable. In the late '70s, the Soviets started sending tractors & other agricultural equipment over here to sell. It was sort of a bad joke. The stuff was CHEAP, to be sure, but it was very crude, & trying to sell Rooskie tractors to super-patriotic red-blooded American farmers was somewhat of an exercise in futility...

[Hokieman]

Soviet TV's used the European PAL broadcast format, whereas the U.S. uses NTSC. Thus, no Soviet-made TV would work here, so none could ever be sold here. No other reasons like transformers matter.

[electroking]

Originally Posted by Hokieman

Soviet TV's used the European PAL broadcast format, whereas the U.S. uses NTSC. Thus, no Soviet-made TV would work here, so none could ever be sold here. No other reasons like transformers matter.

And the Japanese don't make cars for the U.S. market, since Japanese
cars are RHD and U.S. cars are LHD... (!)

[TubeType]

Some time ago, Ingo Kubbe shared his experiences with Soviet television. While living in East Germany, he said it wasn't unusual to see a flaming television being tossed from an open apartment window. He was trying to dissuade me from adding a Soviet television to my collection. That project is still on the back burner.

Terry Cheek

[Telecolor 3007]

Maybe the Soviet televisions that caught fire where the colour ones... I din't hear in Romania that black and white soviet tv sets to cought fire.

[TubeType]

Originally Posted by Hokieman

Soviet TV's used the European PAL broadcast format, whereas the U.S. uses NTSC. Thus, no Soviet-made TV would work here, so none could ever be sold here. No other reasons like transformers matter.

Hmmmmm ......
USSR=SECAM : USA=NTSC
During the Cold War, didn't the Soviet Union provide the NTSC transmitters and receivers used in Cuba?

Terry Cheek

[TubeType]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Maybe the Soviet televisions that caught fire where the colour ones... I din't hear in Romania that black and white soviet tv sets to cought fire.

You are correct! As I recollect Ingo's story, it was the color television sets that caught fire.

Terry Cheek

[wa2ise]

The broadcast standard in the USSR was SECAM, "System Entirely Contrary to the American Method". And also 50 fields per second, 625 lines, also not compatible with American NTSC.

And besides, USSR color TV CRTs only had red phospers anyway...

[Telecolor 3007]

I heared (not verified) that Soviet color picture tube where awfoul. The black and white one where quyte good! Anyway, I heard that the Western-Europanen color tv sets where pain in the a2xs too... especilally because of the voltage stabilzer tube that had to be isolated inside an led sheld, because they where small X ray generators... this why I'm dreaming at an "R.C.A." or "Zenith"

[Kiwick]

Russian and east European sets were quite popular in Italy: here's what we have here

Unitra B/W and color sets from Poland, from the mid 70s to the early 80s

Geloso branded "EI" sets (B/W portables and color) from Yugoslavia

VideoPocket 5" B/W portables from USSR, sold from the mid 70s to the mid 90s, actually a wonderful little piece of engineering.

Telecolor 80s sets from Romania.

Tesla B/W sets from Czechoslowakia in the 60s and early 70s.

Also many Italian set makers used russian KEA-IT capacitors in the Early-mid 80s, these were fairly reliable, much better than the Daewoo or Nichicon capacitors they used in the late 80s

[Hokieman]

Yep, you guys are correct - the Russian system is SECAM, not PAL. For the last 10 years I've been working in Russia, the TV's they use (all imported, BTW) use PAL/SECAM encoding, so I assumed it was PAL without doing my homework. I actually had my original post as PAL/SECAM before editing it out to only PAL.

If you ever saw an old Soviet factory operate, you would understand why it would be well nigh impossible for their system to have had the flexibility to alter their design, parts manufacture, and assembly processes to accommodate:

120v/60 Hz versus 220V/50 hz power and component specs
NTSC versus PAL/SECAM (different tube architecture, if I'm not mistaken)

This wasn't the export-driven Japanese electronics economy, which depended upon the US and European markets to drive their businesses, as well as having NTSC as their native format. They had sufficient economies of scale to justify these variations, similar to LH vs. RH drive cars. Russia was (and still is) a very inward-looking society and economy, and really only concentrated on its "captive" market in eastern and central Europe during this period.