'65 Sylvania roundie steel cabinet color TV
 

Here's the '65 Sylvania roundie that I brought back from SC. This set uses the D01 chassis and appears to have the original CRT. All I've done, so far, is plug it in and it does work. But, it's going to need some restoration work to bring it back to 100%. The CRT test very strong and it uses the orange flyback, which looks decent. This set also has provisions for screw on legs in order to make it a console TV. Anyone remember these?

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...oundie0003.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...oundie0002.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...oundie0001.jpg

Wow! Can I have it?:D

Sylvania sets usually had some nice wood cabnets so that metal one is kinda unique...nice shape too.

That's a kick ass set Bryan! I really like the metal cabinet roundies and that one is in great shape. Are there some knobs missing down at the bottom or do you have them off? Regardless, great save! I think that trip was worth it for the two roundies 'ya got.:yes:

Me Likey ! Me likey Very Muchly !!!

That was a neat set. I took one of the other Philcos and a bunch of round crts. The Philco needs to only need a focus diode.
http://justsmog.com/Clay/sround.jpg

Actually, those knobs are there. They just look like holes where knobs should be.

I do need to fix the bottom control door, as the hinge pin is broken off.

I watched it a little more and it looks like the two biggest problems I need to correct are poor focus and a general convergence, purity, and grayscale setup.

Oh, and did I mention that set is HEAVY? I need to stick that picture of me and Ryan carrying that set so I can prove that I exert manual labor at least once a year, LOL!

Beautiful set! Makes me miss my metal Cabinet CTC-12 I sold Jpdylon a couple of years back..

that is a great looking set. I always enjoy seeing the other brands of sets other than zenith and RCA. If I could have one TV collection of one kind of set - it would be metal tabletop color sets.

Don't worry Shawn, that set will always have a good home here. You're welcome to see it whenever you like when you're in the neighborhood. :yes:

Oh I know it's safe and sound. :D No worries, :thmbsp: If im down that way, sure thing!

Yeah, I really didn't want to pause for that picture at the time - heavy is right!

Metal cabinet set
 

our first family color set was a WARDS Airline set in 1964, a CTC-15 chassis; this one was a metal cabinet ; your photo brings back memories. It had 4 spindley legs. I put a new CRT in it but acquired a CTC-11 set in the early 1980's that needed a new tube and since it was a real nice RCA wooden cabinet I put the CRT in that set where it remains to this day. I put the old metal cabinet in a storage shed along with its chassis and junked it 6 years ago when we moved--kinda sorry I did but when you're moving things tend to happen.

Yea, I know that moving thing too..That's how I parted with my black metal cabinet CTC-12..:tears:

I had a 1964 Sears Silvertone 21" roundie color set in a metal cabinet, with provisions for screw-in legs, in the early '70s, a trash find in my old neighborhood around 1970. It didn't work really well (convergence was off and I didn't have a generator to reset it, the picture developed hum bars, the color sync went haywire, etc.), but I used it for three years until a circuit board cracked. I missed it for quite a while after that (was watching b&w TVs, of various makes except Magnavox, until I found my next Sears color set in the trash in the mid-'70s) but when I bought my first new color set in 1979 I realized how much of a difference a modern set can make. The picture on my 1979 Zenith color portable (on the attic antenna in my home at the time) was much, much better than either of the two second-hand sets I'd had previously. I bought a Zenith 13-inch portable with one-knob varactor tuning some four years later; the picture was as good on that set as it had been on the '79 portable. I had these sets for close to 20 years, then I moved and bought a new (at the time, late 1999) RCA CTC-185 XL100 19" table model, the TV I have now as a daily watcher. The picture on this set is excellent! I have Time Warner basic cable (broadcast channels only), and I swear the picture on my now decade-old RCA (and a 14-year-old Zenith Sentry 2 in my bedroom) are better than any of the color sets I had owned previously.

I was thinking tonight as I watched the evening news how much TV has changed since I got that 21" Silvertone roundie in 1970, and am glad I don't have that set anymore. Not that I don't like vintage TVs -- my basement was full of old trash-picked sets 40 years ago, and goodness knows I enjoyed working on them and actually getting a few of them to operate well -- but since I now live in a small apartment, I no longer have the room for such things. Anyway, I got to thinking how much more stable color TV signals are today, how much more reliable the sets are since they are (and have been since RCA's first XL100s) solid-state, and again, I found myself actually happy that the old days of tube TVs and analog signals are behind us. Digital TV had problems during the transition (and still does in some areas), but I think it is actually better now than it was when all television was analog. Remember when UHF first appeared in the US, and all the reception problems some areas had, even areas in supposedly prime-signal locations for VHF? And who can forget the problems a lot of viewers encountered with weak signals, etc. when color arrived?

One of the best things to happen to TV, IMHO, was the arrival in the '70s and '80s of cable in cities and their suburbs. With today's DTV standard, many viewers have such problems getting decent reception using a converter box and an antenna that they have given up on outdoor or rabbit-ear antennas altogether, turning instead to the cable with its rock-solid, stable signals. Even if a viewer cannot afford the high rates most cable companies charge for digital or expanded basic cable, basic (what I call "bare-bones" basic) cable service, at least in my area, costs under $20 after the initial installation, and with all digital broadcast signals converted to NTSC for viewers with older analog sets, there is no need for the viewer to rent a digital converter box unless he or she actually wants the extra channels -- and most of the programming shown on cable movie channels, to say nothing of older TV series from the '90s back to the '50s, is now available on DVD. I'm saving a lot by having gone that route (downgrading to basic cable and watching older shows on DVD and/or VHS), which is important to me since I live on a fixed income, and simply did not want to pay through the nose for expanded basic any longer when it exceeded $50 per month.

Cable is not the blessing it seems. You are at the mercy of a monopolistic company that will do whatever they can to drain your wallet. I have had three analog channels stolen from my analog cable package and moved to an area where I would need to pay more to see them again. Did they discount my bill? Of course not!. This is theft, the same as if Ford came and took back one of the wheels on my truck and did not pay me for it.

Another issue is how cable treats the local broadcast channels. My over-the-air reception of these with DTV(when the weather is ok-most of the time) is far better than my cable signals for these.

Now, the phone companies(and I am sure cable also) are trying to kill broadcast TV. I am completely against this!!. In fact, I would like to see broadcast TV send some of the channels now seen only on cable/satellite over the air via the DTV sub-channels, reducing the cable/satellite monopoly.

I don't follow you. Why would your OTA reception of broadcast TV be better with DTV than it is over the cable? I would think it would be the other way around. Cable signals, after all, are not affected by weather; on the other hand, a good thunderstorm, rain, or snow can mess up DTV reception royally. I've had cable for years, and the only time I ever saw my cable TV reception ruined was a couple of years ago, when my cable operator, Time Warner, was converting its systems to digital. I remember trying to watch the NBC news one evening, but didn't see more than five minutes of the program if that much--the picture was dropping out every few seconds, and it did so for the duration of the entire newscast. There are occasions when certain channels on my cable are distorted or downright unwatchable, but that's almost certainly due to technical problems at the head end; moreover, it doesn't happen all the time. If it did, TW's phones would be ringing off the hook with calls from angry subscribers, wondering why their cable service is acting up--after all, the subscribers would point out (and they would be right), they have cable to get better reception than they presently get with an antenna. Most people do not understand how cable TV works, but the cable company almost always puts a disclaimer in their literature sent to subscribers at the initial hookup stating that there may be occasional interruptions in transmission due to weather, service outages due to power failures, and other problems beyond the control of the cable operator. The subscriber does not need to know one thing about how cable TV operates to understand this; the only ones who wouldn't understand it would be young children, people who cannot read, or who have mental problems that keep them from understanding even simple concepts.

I'm not following you either on your second point, that the telephone companies are trying to "kill" broadcast television. The phone companies' business is telephone and, nowadays, Internet service, not television, unless you are referring to AT&T which now offers U-Verse television service or Verizon with its FiOS system, both of which hard-wire the user's TV into the wall and do not use satellites or copper coaxial cables.

However, I don't see how these services can or will do away with broadcast TV. The FCC made a huge mistake just under a year ago when they ended NTSC broadcast television in favor of all digital; their reasoning was that they were going to auction off the old analog TV channels for use by public service (police, fire, etc.) and cellular telephone services, claiming the airwaves were too jammed after communications failures during at least one major disaster (Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana five years ago). There are still far too many people who still get their TV reception over the air, with a TV antenna, so the FCC would be making another huge error in judgment if they decided to do away with OTA TV--after all, many people feel that they do not want to pay through the nose for cable or satellite.

Yeah, we have one cable company that serves this area and it seems like they raise the rates every 1 to 1.5 years. In the early '80's, the cable bill was something on the order of $17/mo. There were not as many channels back then; but, the quality of programming was better. There was more than enough there to entertain our family.

Fast forward to today and the bill is $56/mo with 60something channels on the analog package. Our cable company has also moved 5 or 6 analog channels to a higher priced digital package over the last two years. Needless to say, the bill didn't decrease any. Now, the quality of programming is so lousy that it's hard to find anything, even with 60+ channels. It would likely be the same way if we had 300+ channels.

My Brother-in-law dropped cable when the DTV transition took place and I informed him that he could now receive 10 or 11 channels out of the air. He thinks that it's a waste of money to pay for 60 channels of nothing when you can get 10 channels of nothing for free. I'd probably do the same thing if it wasn't for the high speed internet.

I have analog cable, not digital. The cable company also sells phone and internet service via the same cable. I suspect these and other signals are interfering with the local channel signals, causing interference patterns, etc. The signals are watchable, but have interference.

With DTV, if it is working, there is no interference.

As to the killing of broadcast TV: see this website:
http://broadcastengineering.com/news...217/index.html
The phone companies are trying to take more spectrum away from Broadcast TV. It will only get worse unless people protest.

I agree with you about the huge mistake. In fact, from what I have read about using VHF channels 2-6 for DTV or mobile apps, these should be re-allocated back to analog TV. I know of two stations that were allowed to move from these bands to UHF bands as the DTV reception was so bad. I have also read that the antennas for mobile apps are to large in this area of the spectrum.

The other mistake the FCC made was selling the spectrum. It would be better for the US taxpayer if they rented the spectrum for certain periods of time(just like the phone companies do to their customers).

The problem after Katrina was that the different civil authorities had no way to talk to each other, several systems were totally incapacitated and batteries could not be recharged. If anything crowded the airwaves it was the out-of-town agencies - not berating them, but think about a couple of hundred different police/fire/spca/etc. departments coming down all with their own radios.

Today, all of Louisiana's police and fire departments are on a trunked relay system. Most of the channels in the new trunked system are in bands already allocated for 2-way communications. They have also retained their old channels as emergency backup.

In short, any disaster or civil emergency will "clog" the airwaves. The implication that the extra bands would alleviate such situations is bunk. That's like sandbagging your house now because it may flood next March, or moving everything to the basement because you may get hit by a tornado one day.

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Wow, that Sylvania is exactly the same as my set, except mine is a console with the swivel base. Wish my set was in as good a condition as that (and working).

The latest that I have heard involves the tv broadcasters giving up 120 mHz of spectra (20 channels) and "repacking" many of the existing channels into a smaller spectra.... stay tuned, if you think the DTV transition was a bumpy ride, things could get worse:

http://www.televisionbroadcast.com/article/96588

jr

Thank you for these excellent photos!

I agree with peverett and rely only on over the air tv. One of the religeous channels carries arirang tv from South Korea. Its a very nice channel kinda like a Korean travel brouchour 24 hours a day. I have found that the area cable people do not carry it. So I guess there are some, or many things cable does not have. While our reception is more troublesome that analog was, the picture is quite good 70% of the time. and If i had spent as much on antenna and several boosters/preamps before digital, I would have got crystal clear analog reception.

Relatives of mine had that exact same model way back. It was the set that gave me my first biggest doseage of radiation from marveling at the inside with the back off. I was way too young to be exposed but my parents were busy working and everybody else thought I'd learn something. Thiers had black tapered round legs that I suspect were about 8" long.
I wish I could buy that set if it comes up for sale sometime.