CT-100 on QVC shopping channel
 

For those fans of the CT-100, RCA and QVC will celebrate the 50th anniversary of RCA's first color set in 2 one hour presentations this Thurs. March 25th. The shows will originate from RCA headquarters in Indiana and will feature 2 newly restored CT-100's. (No they aren't selling them). The times are: 7pm-8pm & 11pm-12am. These are Pacific time. So you other time zones set your vcrs accordingly.:o

Steve

Times are 10pm and 2am here in the Eastern time zone. Thanks for the heads up. My Tivo is set to record!
Jim

Uh-oh! That conflicts with watching St. Joseph's University marching their way through the NCAA's.

I may swing my CT-100 around and point it at the show so it can see what it is supposed to do.

I wonder what they will show on the beasts?

If you are the proud owner of a working CT-100, I would suggest watching this program on your CT-100. Might be the only chance you'll get to watch a CT-100 on a CT-100. :)

The rest of us will watch on our 21FBP/FJP/CYP/AXP roundies.

Can someone get me a copy? I don't get QVC :mad:

QVC COPY
 

Kamakiri, Would SVHS be ok? My philips dvdr 1000 has been a bad boy lately and not at all dependable. Philips offered to repair the 1.5 year old recorder for $980.00 which is more than I paid for it.:uzi:

Um.....what's SVHS? :dunno:

There was a short news story on the evening news about the 50th anniversary. They interviewed John Wetzel(sp?) from Aladdin Radio as he's about the last old timey repair shop in San Fran.

The knucklehead reporter mentioned the CT One THOUSAND several times. ARGH!!!!!! Kick him in the nads, Beavis.

Anthony

SVHS, Kamakiri
 

SVHS stands for super vhs or high band vhs, you get better than 400 line resolution and better color saturation but you need special vhs tapes and an svhs machine to play it back. I will record it for you in vhs mode.
When you get a chance email or pm me the address you want it sent to.
Regards,
Richard

The knucklehead reporter mentioned the CT One THOUSAND several times. ARGH!!!!!! Kick him in the nads, Beavis.


That's grounds for DEATH...:uzi:

So where did they get the sets?

Seems there are only a handfull of known working sets so are these pulled from the RCA vaults or something.

That would be interesting... to discover that RCA had a few sets tucked safely away for all these years!

I seem to recall a story from somewhere that RCA bought them a couple years back. Maybe one of the fellow CT owners remembers something about this.

Kam:

I've got the timer set for tonight. If you want it on DVD, PM me your address and I'll send it to you.
Bob

In my youth, I sold (traded actually for a RCA CC002 home color camera) to RCA around 1978. The local RCA factory service came to the house and picked it up. The set had worked, but fried a vert out transformer and none were available at the time.

In 1978, the set was only a curiosity and not the sought after item it is now. I got it from the local RCA dealer who actually took it in as a trade and could not wait to get it out of his shop for free.

I had this same note on Pete D's CT site a while back and I think there was some follow up that the set was still around. I never kept any of the serial numbers, so I can only hope that I did my part.

...

RCA's CT-100's
 

Hey Guys,

RCA actually has three CT-100's in their possession. I believe two were aquired over the past several years for display and promotional purposes. One was actually used, you may recall,in a commercial a couple of years ago.The third and last set was recently aquired from UCLA TV archives and used as a parts set to help restore the other two. Scott Marshall a noted radio-TV historian and technician who recently restored a CT-100 for the Sarnoff library was enlisted by RCA to restore their two sets for the QVC/RCA salute to the 50th anniversary of color TV. As a sad sidelight to the story, and with bad timing, Thomson/RCA closed its last tv manufacturing plant in Indiana just last week. This was in Marion, Ind.:mad:

CT-100 on a CT-100
 

My flash went off..but you get the idea!

I missed the very first part of the program, so looks like I missed the best part. :( Taping it now in case they bring the cT100 back.

A flat screen on the first flat screen
 

The CT-100 demonstrates the HDTV on QVC

It was nice to see a CT-100 in operation if only for a few seconds. I wish QVC would have shown more. My comment on the "special" tho is not good. What a load of bull-shit. They went on and on about the history of RCA like it was the SAME company. We ALL know RCA "died" when Thomson took over. What a great marketing scheme to go on and on about the history to get people who don't know any better to buy a crappy product. My thoughts on RCA have not been good since the CTC-175 chassis. And to make matters worse, the problems persisted thru the CTC-185 chassis! What did it take them, like over 6 years to figure out they had a problem? Who knows what problems will crop up on the new sets........ So, what do you guys think? Same opinion or am I nuts!?! LOL......

Yeah, and are those LCD/plasma thingies "REAL" televisions ? I think not. Even as expensive as they are there's just something awful "Attention K-mart Shoppers" feeling about them. I don't think anyone will get all warm 'n' fuzzy over one of THEM 50 years from now-if they last that long. The CT-100 they had playing almost brought a tear to my jaundiced eye, to think about what all we had- & what we've lost. -Sandy G.

You had to be quick to get a picture of anything old (or even see it!) on that show but I did try. The first time I had run both the 5 & 11 side by side so that was fun, anyhow.

I did find the description interesting of that new big screen that uses a color wheel of some sort. Everything old is new again! (noticed they said it would last 50 years-ha!!!)

One more picture, just because it turned out well.

less than 2 minutes out of 1 hour
 

I know that they are in the business of selling stuff but why would they go to the trouble of broadcasting from RCA headquarters when there was so little content about the early RCA color tv history. If they did not want to move the CT-100s they could have just used a satellite remote. I smell pure hype. And the RCA spokeswoman, sorry spokesperson did not know about what she reading/ saying in any of her technical explanations, thin film transmitters, layer of liquid crystals that just work, like magic. Maybe I am being too critical but I expected more old, less plasma.
Richard:(

Me too Richard..... Plus I had a mean thought when that spokeswoman came on. I wondered if she knew her ass looked that big on camera? I know that is SOOOOOO mean, but since she didn't know what she was talking about I didn't feel as bad later.

---

CT-100 on QVC
 

Since I started this thread I feel a comment coming on. It's no secret that both RCA and QVC are in the business of selling products. I also think that Thomson did fiddle with the truth a bit in trying to portray RCA as still being an old line American company and trading on it's history. But Thomson owns that history now and I guess if it can sell a few more tv's to an unsuspecting public, more power to them. On the plus side, anytime a 50 year old historic color tv can be seen and talked about on live national tv, for any reason, is ok by me. :)
Steve

nope Andy.... they "forgot" to mention that. You woulda thought RCA was ALL American and the same company it was when it started, and they had techs next door building away. It is nice that someone in the company does care about keeping some old sets around tho. That's cool. I wonder what happened to the stuff Zenith had around when they folded ?

I have neither cable or satellite, did someone record this? Do any of youse have a pic of the host? I wanna see that big ol booty! LOL!

As for RCA problems I can relate this one, around 1983 a GF of mine bought a new 17"(?) that used to squeal like a stuck pig due to a loose flyback. We got this at the local Macy's and they exchanged it for another set instead of fixing it........the new set ended up doing the same thing but far less so. I could get it to shut up by gently tapping on the side of the set.

Was this an ongoing problem? Although I do have hearing loss in certain freq ranges I do tend to be able to hear ultra high freqs (I can actually hear ultrasonic alarm signals sometimes!)

Anthony

after 50 years of color, they could have spent a little more time showing that CT100, or even a few other sets along with it. The should have had a 30 minute "history of RCA" first... then try selling their product.

I watched the repeat at 0100 central time, and realized I didn't miss out on too much from the 2100 show.

Got a good shot, though. It seems they had the TV camera up too close to the set.

Zenith did have a collection of vintage sets
 

About 14 years ago I interviewed at a Zenith location just outside of Chicago. An R&D and design place. It was a 6 story building, and in the lobby they had several vintage radios and TVs on display (none playing, though).

Hello Anthony
 

I did tape the "show" but have sent the tape to Kam. Besides a copy of a vhs tape would look like a copy of vhs tape. Perhaps someone has a dvd recorder that actually works, unlike mine.
Richard

I only saw a few minuites of this...
 

And it disgusted me. For starters, the saleswoman is flat out LYING about how long that DLP set will last, and how it has a better picture than a CRT set. ( I guess she forgot to mention that a 1% error rate is considered "acceptable", by TI for the DLP mirror module, and this means that it is quite likely that one or more pixels will be defective, or about the "color rainbows", that some of us can see on DLP sets, and that the color wheel /moving mirror/ gas vapor lamp idea for tv, is from the 1930's!!(albiet with micromirror technology today).At least, she did mention the xenon vapor lamp needing replaced every so often( but forgot to mention the $150-400.00 cost of the lamp!)

As for lcd's, she obviously didnt know her (big) a.. from a hole in the ground, as to that technology, either, talking about the "super long life of LCD sets( the lamp for the light source does fail after several thousand hours, but she failed to mention that), and calling thin-film-transistor technology, which has been around for AT LEAST 20 years, thin film TRANSMITTER technology!!LOL!

Re: Hello Anthony
 

Well, I did record it on DVD, but I sent that to Kam, too! Not that I think anyone's missing anything. It was a show selling TVs and they just happened to have a CT100 in the background. That's all.
Boo.

Although I too detest faulty information and the all too common sales hype that accompanies such a show, I think it's too much to expect anything other than that.

After all, this IS a sales pitch clothed in a celebration of history and the host can't be expected to know anything about tech stuff as she's just a mouthpiece for the copy handed to her to read. Am not defending any of this, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.

Hell, as I mentioned previously, even a "real" reporter in his coverage of the 50th anniversary misspoke and referred to the CT 100 as a CT 1000. If the "professionals" can't get it right how can you expect a salesperson to be any better?

Anthony

Re: Re: Hello Anthony
 

Perhaps Kam can foward the tape to Anthony/heathkit tv, if he still wants it.
Richard

I still have the show on my Tivo. PM me if you want a copy on DVD or VHS.

Never did get a chance to publically thank you guys for sending me the DVDs and tapes!

Makes me a proud papa :D

tag line rip-off
 

Hey Kam, For all you do, this tape/dvd is for you!:D