It is amazing how many vintage CRT'S are still great!!

[rca2000]

I seem to recall in an old electronics magazine talking about color tv, they said "a new color CRT should last about 3 years". Man, were they WRONG!! I know some tubes did fail in a short time and some were never very good, (23EGP22, 710AB22, Zenith tri-potentials and their 90's tubes), but the GREAT majority of them were VERY long-lived, it seems. I would say it is NOT unusual to get over 50K hours out of a good CRT. I still wonder why they said they would not last long??

Compare this to the modern stuff. LCD panels are NOT really made to last that long. The panel itself, or the T-con fail often, as do the backlights, either CCFL or LED. I do NOT expect a lot of "vintage " flat-panel sets to be around in say, 10 more years, compared to the still available roundie color sets we cherish.

Even the 21AXP22 metal tube, if it is not aired, often gives good emissions, even though they are now over 50 years old. Not too mention the BW tubes , which my experience has been about 75% of them I run across are still fine.

Guess it has a lot to do with the "then VS. now" attitude of manufacturing.

[miniman82]

They still work because they were only used a year or so, then sat dormant for the next 45. It's not because they were designed better, they simply weren't used as much. I have the opposite experience, actually. My CTC-4 was run into the ground; it went through a pair of 21AXP22's from new, then a third was installed in 1976 but went to air when the set was finally laid to rest. I picked it up from the original owner's home in Indy, then waited for a good tube to turn up.

Most B&W sets I run across are absolutely beat. I recently got a Zenith 12" set with metal tube and while it wasn't aired, there was a brightener on it and it had 0 emission even after whacking it 3 times on max rejuve.

[tvcollector]

I've had my good and bad luck with CRTS.. Lately decent.. I just had a CTC10 Ushiped to me taking a chance on the CRT which is a metal 21CYP22.. Tested it and it slowly woke up, taking about 30+ mins for all three guns to come up.. Funny how green came up so slow that it didn't look like it was going to at all, come to find out it's the best one and the response is quicker than the others when first turning on the tester.. Red is sorta in the middle and the others are up past .8 on the Beltron tester.. With 7 volts the red goes up past .8 too..

Got a Zenith combo and all the guns are around .2 on the Beltron, but when I raise the voltage between 7 - 8 volts they all go past the .8.. May be a process on both tubes to where they need to run with a picture to fully wake up.. I've got an RCA CTC16 that needed a brightener due to a weak blue gun.. I noticed after months of using the set, that slowly I noticed alot of blue, took the tester and noticed the blue got to be way up on emissions and I took off the brightener... First roundie I got a few years ago is a Zenith.. It had a dead tube in it, almost zero emissions after rejuv..

[Eric H]

i've had plenty of 1940's sets with bad CRT's, so many in fact I'll probably never find enough good tubes to be able to fix them all.

The good ones were probably either low hour sets or had the CRT replaced shortly before being take out of service.

There wasn't as much stuff to watch back then so they probably weren't turned on at Breakfast and turned off at Bedtime the way some people do nowadays.

New sets have hour counters built in, they usually will tell you the number of times the set has been cycled on and off too.

Even this 2007 LCD monitor I'm using on my PC has an backlight hour meter on it, it has a bit over 9000 hours right now.

[tvcollector]

I didn't think TVs in those days were used as much as TVs in modern world.. Seems like people constantly have there TVs on.. Television in the 40s-70s didn't have constant airtime and weren't as many channels or variety of shows and programming like today... Correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is people back then tuned into the evening news, or watch their soap in the day time, or even maybe a show at night and then the TV went off after viewing there 30min or hour long show.. Today it's like people turn there set on, walk away and do something else, then becomes background noise, and it's on for hours and hours.. So you would think sets in those days got much less hours than the modern world..

[Eric H]

I can remember even in the early 70's the stations would sign off at Midnight or 1:00am or whatever, there were actually times when there was nothing but snow or a test pattern to watch in the wee hours!

It is rather amazing that most of these jugs have managed to hold vacuum for 50 or 60 years, with a few known exceptions, mostly metal/glass hybrids.

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by Eric H

I can remember even in the early 70's the stations would sign off at Midnight or 1:00am or whatever...

I remember waking on Saturday mornings in the mid-late 70's waiting for the stations to come back on... so I could watch Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Hong-Kong Phooey, Superfriends, and Looney Tunes!

I've had fairly good luck with CRTs... I think more than half the set's I've brought home have had good toobs.

[sampson159]

1 30 am was when the stations would sign off back in the 60s.they would resume programming at 7 00 am.sets would be watched usually when the kids came home until 11-12 00.then they were turned off!with the advent of cable,sets were on 24-7.we started to see more crts die after cable.the oldest set i have here is a ctc9.the crt is excellent.instorage,i have a couple of older sets and the crts are just as good.i personally dont think they were used much.my zeniths from the 70s all have strong crts.

[DaveWM]

Originally Posted by Charlie

I remember waking on Saturday mornings in the mid-late 70's waiting for the stations to come back on... so I could watch Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Hong-Kong Phooey, Superfriends, and Looney Tunes!

I've had fairly good luck with CRTs... I think more than half the set's I've brought home have had good toobs.

Yep I remember watching sign off, and then getting up early on the weekends (try not to wake up mom and dad) and wait for sign on. You had to plan your day around when the good shows were on. The only Opera I know is the barber of Seville, thanks to bugs.

[rca2000]

I GUARANTEE that ANY decent CRT will outlast a light engine, from an LCD or DLP set!!

Note--a "decent CRT" means a good one, like a roundie, Hitachi tube from before 2000, a Zenith tube made before 1990 or such-- NOT that "Chinese junk" the last CRT sets had!!

[jr_tech]

Of course, our sample is somewhat skewed, because millions of TVs simply were simply sent to the dump when the CRT failed. We are seeing the survivors, many of which were likely relegated to some sort of low usage status before failure of the CRT.

jr

[rcaman]

Originally Posted by tvcollector

i've had my good and bad luck with crts.. Lately decent.. I just had a ctc10 ushiped to me taking a chance on the crt which is a metal 21cyp22.. Tested it and it slowly woke up, taking about 30+ mins for all three guns to come up.. Funny how green came up so slow that it didn't look like it was going to at all, come to find out it's the best one and the response is quicker than the others when first turning on the tester.. Red is sorta in the middle and the others are up past .8 on the beltron tester.. With 7 volts the red goes up past .8 too..

Got a zenith combo and all the guns are around .2 on the beltron, but when i raise the voltage between 7 - 8 volts they all go past the .8.. May be a process on both tubes to where they need to run with a picture to fully wake up.. I've got an rca ctc16 that needed a brightener due to a weak blue gun.. I noticed after months of using the set, that slowly i noticed alot of blue, took the tester and noticed the blue got to be way up on emissions and i took off the brightener... First roundie i got a few years ago is a zenith.. It had a dead tube in it, almost zero emissions after rejuv..

there was never a metal 21cyp22 made........

[tvcollector]

Originally Posted by rcaman

there was never a metal 21cyp22 made........

Oh, excuse me, 21CYP22A

[David Roper]

That would be another of the 21CYs that was never metal. You must be thinking of 21AXP22.

[Jon A.]

I have a movie that was released in 2008, but set in 1976. Two working rectangular-screen TV sets were shown, both Zenith. No surprise there.