Actually, the 17 inch Chromatron went into pilot production only. The 13,000 to 17,000 Chromatron's that were sold in Japan only, had a 19 inch CRT. They sold in 1965 and 1966. It was an upright consollete.

I have two Sony KV-7010UA's but have never seen the U version. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them survive today, as they were ULTRA-expensive, and I bet people kept them in a closet when they quit working. Is there anyone here with a U?

Charles

I have one. It is a hybrid Chromatron.

I just wish that guy would send MY 7010 back to me...

PLEASE_-get some pictures of the interior for all of us!!!

Okay, hope this works. If you go this link, a lot of photos inside the set. If you have a slow Internet connection, give it time to load. You will need to scroll down to 1968 about half way down the page, more then 20 photos.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/time...e-a/page-five/

If you go to this link, you can see screen shots. Same thing, you will need to scroll down to 1968.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/time-line/

The Trinitron was a game changer for sure, even the first models deliver a picture that's superior to most later sets and certainly much better than anything else made at the time.
By comparison GE was making the Porta Color set around the same time frame, probably one of the worst color pictures ever made, but they were cheap and Sony was always a premium priced set.

This is a image of the label attached to the Sony KV 7010U CRT.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...ype2/image.jpg

The portion blocked out reads "Licensed under Patents of Paramount Pictures Corporation" I have another photo showing that and I will try to post additional photos directly to this site.

I would NOT really consider this chromatron a "hybrid set", since only the 2 HV rectifiers are tubes, Many sets in that time period , and even later, were labeled "solid state" but still had a rectifier tube. ALL o0ther ckty. looks to be SS.

The reason I'm calling this a hybrid Chromatron is that we believe it has 3 inline beams within a single gun like the Trinitron, as the original Chromatron used a single beam. It has a fine wire selection grid visually confirmed instead of the aperture grill.

Treasonous sale of national assets to a foreign entity. Paramount spit upon all the American electronic factory workers who spent their money watching their films. Someone should have gone to jail. History is repeated with the sale of Zenith's LCD research to S. Korea. Will we ever learn?

.... And GE wanted to license the inline Porta Color CRT to Sony and Sony said no thank you, instead buying the rights of the Chromatron from Paramount whose engineers said was hopeless. I give Sony credit for trying even though they failed with the Chromatron, because after all it led in the development of the Trinitron, the most successful color CRT in history. They had a 40 year run with it and big time profits.

Then there was RCA giving up on LCD, Ampex, Eastman Kodak and te beat go's on. Yes, will we ever learn?

I doubt we will ever return to the great business minds that made America such a powerhouse in years past. We have witnessed the failure of a system that was fine-tuned to make life good for the masses. What we have today is so pitifully obedient, if Wall Street can't make a haul off it, it doesn't get to survive. If it does, a mere pittance is handed to third-world workers who barely scrape by.

I've watched a vibrant industry I was part of (biomediccal electronics) for over 20 years simply evaporate into mostly offshore production. I now work elsewhere with brilliant minds from all over the globe on innovative products that hopefully will take their place on the world market, but the model is reworked so that very little of what we buy today is produced by our own hands. It was so much easier when we just worried about our own good and let the trade tariffs that served us so well since Colonial times do their job.

What I find so fascinating about the Sony KV 7010U Chromatron is why it was even released. My research shows it was only on the market for approximately 3 months starting July, 1968 and that may be optimistic because Sony started marketing the KV 7010UA Trinitron in October, 1968, I know because I saw one in the Sony showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York at that time.

The KV 7010U is part Chromatron and part Trinitron and Sony completed development on it by Spring, 1967. I speculate they pushed it out to the market under pressure of their shareholders to market the first Sony color TV and the Trinitron was not yet ready.

What we saw wasn't so much a "failure" as the carefully planned and orchestrated destruction of a system that was designed to make life good for the masses, so that the "1%" could reap even more profit.

US manufacturing didn't "die". It was KILLED, and those responsible went on to tank the entire world economy, with no repercussions whatsoever. "Too big to fail" really means "Too Rich to Jail".