G.E. Porta-Color

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

Lets raise a collective toast to that statement.
GE owes alot to Earl"Madman" Muntz, who showed how to do TV with fewer parts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing

While I could always troubleshoot and even get parts, my only beef with GE was that thier damned tuners really sucked in fringe areas. Sarkes-tarzan or something, I thing Mags used them too.

I think that Muntzing thing is a well-worn urban tale. It's a well known fact that every TV manufacturer bought sets from competitors and reverse engineered them. Then they built up a prototype and jockeyed the design around enough as not to get into a patent war. They generally did that on their lower end products.
Regarding distant reception, the tuner is only part of the chain. A well designed IF strip and keyed AGC is equally important. Sarkes Tarzian tuners aren't one of my favourites, but the circuitry was simular to the rest of them.