HOW did people AFFORD our treasures--when they were new?

[Jon A.]

Come to think of it, our TVs were financed at one time through what was Halifax Cablevision and stayed until they broke.

Fortunately for me I don't feel the need for the latest and um, "greatest", so automatic savings for me. Just about anything new I'd consider a waste of my funds.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I grew up in the late '60s-'70s. Most of the TVs I had until the mid-'70s were trash finds or second-hand sets from relatives. My first set was a 1950s Capehart console; the next one, if I remember correctly, was a 1955 Emerson metal-cased b&w portable, the second color set I owned (after my Silvertone CTC15 clone) was a Silvertone (Toshiba made) 16", and so on. The first TV I bought new was a "Kenco" (house brand of the now-defunct Kennedy and Cohen retail chain) 12" b&w tube-type portable, in 1975. The first new color TV I owned was a Zenith L-1310C in 1979, followed three years later by a Zenith color portable with the then-new electronic varactor tuning system. I needed a new color TV at that time like I needed a hole in the head, but for some crazy reason I wanted a TV with electronic tuning, even though the first Zenith color set was working perfectly well.

Hey, don't knock the Kenco B/W portable. IIRC, they were selling them for something like $38.00, as a leader.
Back then, I got a few of them as freebees, because the owners thought that they weren't worth repairing, as they were so inexpensive. There was always something simple wrong with them. They were made by Sampo and were similar to the small Admiral sets. The real nice ones sold for $40.00, two bucks more than new.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Hey, don't knock the Kenco B/W portable. IIRC, they were selling them for something like $38.00, as a leader.
Back then, I got a few of them as freebees, because the owners thought that they weren't worth repairing, as they were so inexpensive. There was always something simple wrong with them. They were made by Sampo and were similar to the small Admiral sets. The real nice ones sold for $40.00, two bucks more than new.

My Kenco portable lasted all of three years and worked quite well before something shorted out in it. I turned it on one afternoon and saw a wisp of smoke coming out of the ventilation slots in the back of the cabinet. I junked the set almost immediately after that and, the next day, bought a solid-state 12" Zenith b&w portable at Best Buy for $62. That set lasted 22 years and was still working amazingly well, bright picture and all, when I got rid of it in 2000. I'd have kept it, but I had just moved to my apartment a few months earlier and had no room for another TV, as I had brought two color sets with me from my former residence.

I hope whomever snagged that portable from the trash got a few more years of use out of it, as it was far from useless in its condition at the time. In fact, the only thing wrong with it was that the detent mechanism on the UHF tuner was jammed, freezing the tuner on one channel. If that set is still in use today, the broken detent wouldn't matter anymore since the set would have to be used with either an OTA converter box or a cable box, of course, which normally output to VHF channels 3 or 4.

BTW, I didn't know the Kenco portables sold so cheaply when they were new. I don't remember how much I paid for mine in the mid-'70s, although I seriously doubt it was more than $50 or so. (I didn't know at that time that these sets were leaders; if I paid $50 or more for mine, I'm sure I wasn't aware of that fact, or else the store I bought the set from wasn't aware of it either.)


I had the back off the set at one point and saw just how cheaply it was built. Every tube, including the horizontal output/damper tube (38- or 53HK7, IIRC), was mounted on the set's single large PC board. There was no metal chassis; the entire set, except for the tuners, speaker, volume and contrast controls, was on that board. First TV I ever saw with almost the whole thing on one board. Was this a glimpse of what was to come in later sets, before they all went solid-state?

My Zenith 12" solid-state b&w portable was all on one PC board as well, except of course for the tuners and controls. It probably made sense to build a solid-state set on one PC board, since these TVs run much cooler than the tube-powered ones did. In fact, the only transistors in a solid-state TV that heat up to any extent would be the horizontal output and, perhaps, the audio output. The rest of the set could and probably did run as cool as a cucumber. I don't remember my Zenith SS portable ever getting as warm as some of the old tube sets I've owned, and I used that set a lot.

Today's flat screens, 19" and smaller, run much, much cooler and draw less power than most if not all SS CRT sets, although I have read here that the very large flat screen sets do heat up quite a bit, and draw quite a bit of power to boot. Someone here on VK (miniman82 comes to mind) has or had a DLP or projection TV that draws something on the order of 500 watts, but that's par for the course for a projection set, at least the older ones. The newest DLP/projection sets, if they are still in production, are likely designed for much less current consumption, and could be Energy Star certified as well.

[davet753]

Growing up, my younger brother and I watched a 21" black-and-white GE metal cabinet set that my parents bought when they got married in 1968. In 1972 (the year I was born), they bought their first color TV, an RCA tube type console. The color TV was in the den, and us kids only got to watch it in the evenings when dad was there to supervise.

The RCA lasted about 18 years, and dad replaced it with another RCA (thinking it should be just as good). I think it was 3 years old when the flyback smoked.

[Beachboy]

I'm 62 years old, and my dad would never buy us a TV as we were growing up. The JFK assaination in '63 prompted my grandmother to buy us an 18" Zenith B/W "portable" set, which we used as the family viewer until it went on the fritz in 1974. Dad agonized whether to spring for color or another B/W, and whether to go 19" portable or 25" console. He finally paid $500 for a Magnavox 25" console, no remote, and I took the old Zenith to college, had it fixed cheaply, and it went with me to my first apartment after college. I finally gave it away to a friend in 1978 when I moved to another city and didn't want to lug it along.

As mentioned by others, most families I knew didn't get color TV until the early to mid 70's, after the "bugs" were worked out. Remote control was a rarity. Cable was a rarity unless there was no other option for TV reception. We got 3 channels and were happy (happiest when the weather was good and all the channels were coming in with a minimum of snow).

BTW, my parents would never allow a TV in the living room, as it was considered in "poor taste". The TV always resided in the basement.

It took decades for color TV to become commonplace. It boggles my mind how flatscreens overtook the market overnight, with people replacing perfectly good CRT sets with flatscreens. When I was growing up, you never bought anything new until the old one died and could not be economically repaired. One other thing, credit card debt was virtually unheard of when I was young.