Harry's at it again, Westinghouse this time
 

Ultra Rare 15" Westinghouse on eBay.
Tube is definitely down to air.

http://cgi.ebay.com/rare-1954-Westin...item4cf8250218

He has an RCA CTC-11 on Ebay, as well.

...

Drool, drool, drool...(grin)

Won't be bidding on this one, I still have the prototype to deal with and this Westy has a bad tube.

Andy, au contraire, TV was in Texas in the early fifties. In Beaumont that meant a 50' mast with two yagis, a big one for Channel 2 Houston, and a little one for Channel 11 Galveston. Then in a couple of years Beaumont and Port Arthur got stations.

...

"color hold", I like that. I wonder if it has color afc or that control just bends the crystal like adjusting the osc coil.

Interesting

Well the ebay pictures tell the story. It's all there. Anyone got a spare, working, 15GP to sweeten the deal? I wonder if Marlin Mackley is still keeping track of these sets? He hasn't updated his site since 2004.

H1>Marlin's surviving H1>
Address:http://www.studio4-17.com/westlist.htm Changed:4:12 PM on Friday, April 9, 2004.

-Steve D.

According to the ETF database there are 17 confirmed survivors (including this one) with an unconfirmed 18th and yet another pre-production prototype at the museum.

A fascinating set from the technological viewpoint, but dang is that cabinet ugly.

Just my $0.02.

Phil Nelson

As us Hillbillies say-"It don't favor much..." (grin) But would I have it, especially if a working 15GP22 could be had ?!? Is New York big ? Pope Catholic ? Sky Blue ? Grass green ? (grin)

This set has no crystal. The color hold control locks the color sync. Once it is set it is fairly stable.

I once said I thought it looked like they used the front panel from one of their clothes dryers to mask the tube. :D

My Westy
 

I acquired my Westinghouse a couple of years ago from a lady that
Lives about 10 miles up the road, I recapped the set and shortly
After replaced a defective on/off switch.that all that was done.I have
Had 2 ct100 over the years and the westy has better picture and
Color. It's unusual color lock works well. I noticed the set that Harry
Posted has a chassis at the bottom also, I do not--- is that an audio
Amp?the set is large and kind of ugly -- but I love it.

Looks like a power chassis, but I know squat about these forgotten stepchildren of early color.

One thing about the CT-100, I really like how they look. This set kind of emphasizes how small the picture is compared to the cabinet, in contrast with the RCA. Regardless, I would love to have it anyway. Just no money in my budget even if it wasn't across the whole country, and it isn't going to sell for just $2200 in any case. I will be happy with my CT-100, and when funds are available they will go toward completing it and getting its restoration going.

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I would think at this stage all the early color sets all used the same tubes and phosphors and classic chroma demodulator gain and phase. Once phosphors shifted and people noticed that flesh tones looked different than they should designers started to spread the R-Y and B-Y demodulation angles and play with the gain ratios to get the color rendering they liked. Later went the color temperature started shifting up gains changed again.

Then came the boom of auto correction circuit. ACC was the first in the CTC-4 i think?Then came auto flesh circuits they pulled the phase of the chroma demodulator for a color close to flesh even closer. The auto flesh circuits that operated on color difference signals were less obnoxious than those that pulled the color sub-carrier.

Does anyone know if the Westinghouse have an ACC circuit?? Does it use a standard demodulator circuit?

rcafan, the 15" Westinghouse color set has a separate power supply chassis for B+ and filaments down below. How can you sen not have one? How about a photo of your chassis? I am very curious.

There was no ACC signal being broadcast in 1954-56. None of the early color sets had and automatic color correcting. They all used a color oscillator phase locked to the burst. Some designs had a crystal in the loop, others (like Westinghouse and Sparton) did not. The Westy used R-Y/B-Y demodulation as opposed to I/Q demodulation.

The ACC circuit in the 4 was used to control the gain of the bandpass amp, and depended on the strength of the burst signal. I've wondered if RCA issued a mod to bypass the ACC, allowing for manual-only control of the gain. There isn't any such mod in the lit I have on the 4, and my chassis has all the other mods.
Kevin

Gotta luv sitting in on this deep engineering arcana that the average tube jockey was never privy to 'back in the day'.

:nerd: oc

Yes, we are fortunate not to have to make a living as tube jockeys. I was privileged to know many "old-timers" who did it for a living, and some were really talented and learned technicians, but many were tube jockeys, and winged it. The really good shops gained excellent reputations, as word of mouth spread, but still others did well because they were undercutting the "good guys".
I'm happy just to have a few hours a week to devote to vintage video and radio. If I ever retire, ha-ha, I have a bleep-load of projects just waiting to be attempted. :yes:
Kevin

Yeah, at the risk of sounding sacreligious, its kinda like lookin' over the Good Lord's shoulder & reading His "Crib Notes" when He made the World...

Hey John, I wasn't talking about that GE VIR thing of the 70's. I was talking about compensating the chroma gain in the TV set for circumstances where the burst and chroma levels would be attenuated!

I and Q demodulation will give you the same color rendition as an R-Y /B-Y system if the gains and phases are set properly. You can't get the wide I channel but that is really hard to see.

It was senior moment John! It's there.

Ah, good! :-)

I would disagree, IQ demodulation gives a depth of yellows and oranges and subtle shading of flesh tones that just don't seem to exist in bandwidth-restricted RY demodulation. Case in point, I have a late-sixties Ikegami and mid 70s Conrac 19" rack monitor, both with Conrac broadcast tubes, both used as studio check monitors, both aligned to test instruments... the Ikegami uses IQ, and has a subtlety to the hues that the Conrac can't approach. Even my Admiral C322C1 with sulfide 21AZP22 doesn't have the rich reds of the Ikegami. (it uses RY) I have never seen any TV using simple quadrature that approaches he colour fidelity of a set using dual bandpass demodulation. This is one area where PAL definitely is at a disadvantage, since it doesn't HAVE a 1.5 Mhz modulation channel.

The irony, now that analog TV is on its way out, is that RY demod was used because it's easier and cheaper in the analog domain, and one could "play around" with the angles to "improve" flesh tones to compensate for picture tube colorimetry; you can't "play around" with IQ demod. But now digital methods make IQ demod easy, and a digital matrix can make any required adjustmant to vectors.

Part of the fascination of early colour sets is that the design did everything the hard way.

Block diagram of H-840CK15

It is a linear system and you can make the same hues with either system. The design goals were different and that it why the look different. The bandwidth doesn't affect the hue. A 90 degree (R-Y)/(B-Y) system produces the same hues as a 90 degree I/Q system.

Agreed
 

The hues are the same, but the 1.3 Mhz "I" bandpass for orange-cyan, to repeat myself, allows for greater subtlety, there is more resolution in the colours to which our eyes are most sensitive. Freckles and lighting reflections are more apparent. Also the design of dual bandpass demodulation allows for less crosstalk, meaning no blue ringing at red to green transitions eg. The colour "fits" the black and white image better.

And, subjectively, again, oranges and thus flesh tones just look richer, backgounds have more saturated colour, whether or not there is a technical basis for that observation. Actually, having accurately rendered green and cyan dark areas is something that very few sets get right, maybe due to chroma-luma gamma tracking, which again seems better with full bandpass demodulation. (and the "I" channel is orange and cyan..)

As for background colours, my Samsung plasma TV (PN50C8000) gets it right - as does the Ikegami, I tried a Sony LCD which was way off for background colours, as was my Sony XBR. (but the Sony HX800 was marginally more accurate on flesh tones, even after calibration of the Samsung) The Conrac is better than either Sony set but worse than the Ikegami.

Yes, no need for non-standard gains and angles since they all used the same phosphors.

Here I disagree. The hue pulling circuit could affect hues around flesh tone without killing greens, cyans, and blues. Effectively, all the linear matrix type auto flesh tone circuits did was to decrease the Q axis gain, so you tended towards either reddish orange or cyan. Depending on how far the manufacturer went with it, you could end up with "the tan cowboy on the brown horse riding into the orange sunset" while trees and grass got desaturated and had a tendency to turn brownish. Engineers never used a set with that "one button auto color" engaged (well, maybe their family members did), preferring to adjust the color when necessary.

The thing about RCA's auto color that I didn't like was the setting of color level based on average chroma level. This resulted in the color level turning up or down based on scene content, and I often saw obvious failures when the scene cut to talent wearing bright red clothing. It did result in "calendar color" (somewhat oversaturated on low-saturation scenes), which the public seemed to like. I PO'd someone I interviewed with at RCA once when I told him this was not a good idea in my opinion.

The hue pulling circuit was invented by my colleague Ted Rzeszewski at Motorola. For some reason, Motorola never used it, but licensed it to RCA.

Sounds like sabotage....

Tom C.

Hoorah!
 

Wow...Eighty-eight hunnert dollars for a non-working, somewhat banged-up 1954 television...An' if I'd had NINE grand to throw around, it mighta been mine !!

Holy Crap! And with a dud CRT, no less! Glad I got min when the getting was good....

it is quite amazing....... but then more rare than a ct100 so that ='s more money.

Wow, that's a darned expensive Fish Tank!