1967 Motorola 9” portable
 

Got this set the other day for $10 which is ok I guess. Didn’t try it out when I got it. Turned it on when I got home and no sound and had almost no vertical because one or more of the jap made caps were bad. Replaced the Jap caps and I now have a full blank raster, and thats it, no sound still and the tuner doesn’t seem to do anything, I’m sort of suspecting these west German ero caps. Will replace them soon and see what that does.

This set was assembled September 1967 in Quincy, Illinois. Uses a HV rectifier tube and the rest is transistor. Pretty cute set.

Reminds me of those tooob GE 9" little guys that were so pervasive in the mid-late Sixties. Remember they came in a multitude of colors, hands or no handles UHF or no UHF. They pulled signals in like crazy, too- There was one in the pro shop in this golf club my dad belonged to in Boone, NC, The nearest TV stations were ones we also got at home from Tri-Cities, Tennessee, & they were usually "Clear as a Bell"...

This could be the model I worked with as a newb in Moto B&W TV engineering in Franklin Park, IL. I was assigned to jeep a video input on a small set (this model or similar?) so that they could be sold as inexpensive closed-circuit TV monitors.

I wonder, too, if the 9" models were US mfger attempts to try to stave off Japan, Inc... They gave you a bigger picture, were cheaper-a 5-303W Sony a few yrs earlier was right at $300 & maybe they DID give you a better picture. Never understood why Zenith or RCA, when confronted w/Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, et al, didn't kinda throw down the gauntlet, introduce a 5-9" all solid state COLOR set, & say, OK, boys, top THIS... That would have blown Der Nips into the weeds circa 1967 or so...Especially if they hadn't so badly "Cheapened 'em up. I remember going into a full line RCA dealer's place about 1970. You had "Entertainment Centers"-AM/FM/turntables/TV, & maybe an 8 track all wrapped up in plastiwood, carnival plastic grade knobs & plywood that would fall to pieces if you spilled a drink on it. Those bad boys were Muy Expensivo, but they were so gotdang cheap & shoddy , they were hardly worth dragging home. If the electronics were of no better quality than the cabinetry, no wonder they were discontinued by the late Seventies. The American electronics industry has always bleated about Japan eating their lunch, & there's a lot of truth in that, but A goodly amount of blame is squarely laid at the feet of the companies themselves, I think. They wouldn't innovate, they spent too much time worshipping the FALSE god of Cost Accounting, & just basically "Didn't Get It." All the Sonys I've bought over the years, the only one I ever had to get someone in to set up had been the last one-A 55" screen model. And set up basically involved just mounting it on the wall. NONE of the Trinitrons ever needed set up-you just took 'em outta der box, hooked up the cable, plugged in the power, & you were all set. I remember my next door neighbor was an appliance dealer-And he kept a guy to "Tune up" the TVs til way in the '80s.

Intresting analisis, Sandy_G.
Is that true that Japanese tv sets where more relaible the ones Made in U.S.A.?

Probably depended if you bought better quality brands/models of American sets or not...Our best was better, but we also made complete garbage.
The American sets were often easier to get fixed, some of the tube era Japanese stuff was not as service friendly and some techs tried not to service it.

Not at 1st, I don't think. Back when Japanese stuff 1st started showing up, it was kinda laughed at. Then, somebody clued them into this quality control guru, a Dr. Deming. They took his principles to heart, & next thing you knew, Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi., et al had become world class builders of consumer electronics. Of course, there was a lot more to it than just that, but Dr Deming's principles should not be underestimated. The Americans were more interested in squeezing the last penny of cost out of a product, the Japs were more interested in improving the quality & reliability of their stuff. It worked undeniably well in electronics, & then in cars, virtually any industry the Japs decided to delve into. The company I worked for-Gravure printing-we were having quality problems as well, we got Dr Deming to come, he spent quite a bit of time w/us & turned our plant around, too.

This Dr. Demming? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

It's a well known fact that the Japanese firms were "Dumping", that is selling a product cheaper in the US than it can be bought in Japan, to get a foothold in the US. I Don't think Sony ever did that. Their products were always expensive.

Yep ! If your company decides to adopt "The Deming Philodsophy" ,hold on to yer rear end, you're gonna be working harder than you ever have in yr life.. But it also means they're SERIOUS about wanting to be an industry leader.

In the service industry, parts availability was always a problem for the foreign companies, which made many American brands preferred by the technicians. In my area, we had several local companies who carried a full line of parts and service items for RCA, GE, Zenith, and Magnavox. They delivered weekly, and if you were in a hurry, you could jump in the truck and go pick up a part from the distributor's parts counter. To get parts for foreign brands meant ordering on the phone, paying shipping fees, and waiting a week or two for your parts.

Plus, many of the import brands had higher parts prices....especially Sony. Many people who brought in a Sony would mention the high price they paid to buy it, to which we'd think to ourselves "you aint seen nothing yet, wait until you see how much replacement parts cost".

Further, most of the American manufacturers took good care of their authorized service centers (until the mid-1990's). RCA and Zenith were always holding training schools, mailing tech-tips and materials to us, and they paid out warranty claims quickly. Getting a warranty claim paid from Goldstar, Samsung, or Sharp took forever, and if you forgot to dot an "I" or cross a "T", they denied your claim.

Well, then what where the reasons for U.S.A. tv industry (and generally electronic consumer industry) went down?
Lack of inovation, dumping or there where any other reasons too?
In Romania there was some tv assambley in the '90's.

In order not be totally off-topic, I'm curios, what is the weight of the tv set from the 1st post?

Now china has made moo goo gai pan of both sides.

Basically, the Nixon administration traded our consumer electronics industry for a military base in Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c - this is a fascinating documentary that was made as it was happening. It's mostly focused on Motorola and Zenith but the other brands were sunk at the same time.

One of these days all those 4.5 gazillion people who live in China are gonna wake up & tell their red overlords they'd BETTER start providing a living wage-Or else. Or so we can hope... Hey, I think everybody in the entire world oughta have a Vista Cruiser, 3.2 young'uns central heat 'n'air, a ginormous Teevee & as many loudenboomers as they want & can afford... In other words, EVERYBODY oughta be able to be a middle-class Murrican or Canuck. A lot of folks would be INFINITELY better off, especially if we could get all the idiot gummints all over the world to take a chill pill or 3 & STAND DOWN. Ain't gonna happen, I know, but havin a basically Western Yoorup, N American or Australian lifestyle for EVERYONE on this little bluish ball, I think, would not be all THAT horrible... If we could do that, I'm sure we could figger out how to feed & provide health care, too.

Our conversation has drifted from the OP, but that's all right, it's been interesting.

I think the TV industry decline was multi-faceted. In the 1970's, the American brands focused on gaudy, plastic-filled, pressboard console televisions and entertainment centers while the foreign brands tended towards modern styled table models and portables. By the 1980's, consumer tastes moved away from the cheap furniture models the American brands were pushing towards the sleek styling of the imports.

In the 1980's, the import brands started innovating and were neck-and-neck with their American counterparts. Dumping hurt the small American players by the 70's, and we saw once proud brands like Motorola, Westinghouse, Admiral, and the like shrinking or selling out.

Several import TV manufacturers also done a good job of improving their quality and dependability in the 1970's, which surely helped their sales improve.

I also think evolving views on buying imported goods came about in the 60's and 70's. A good many of the older generation wouldn't have bought anything Japanese as long as there was an American made option. Lots of families who lost loved ones in WW2 would have never consider driving a Japanese or German car, but as they say, time heals all wounds.

Somebody posted a youtube link about what part Nixon's trade policies played. That's an interesting angle I hadn't considered before, so I'll watch that.

I think quite a few factors added up to kill the industry in the US. Some others: once, independent TV shops were where most folks would go to by a set, and they stuck to the domestic brands. (Something they could service easily.) As time went on more and more people would buy from department stores, especially discounters like Kmart. It was one thing if the price difference was small, or the quality gap was wide, but in time it became more difficult to justify the cost. I was given a 19" Midland from about '77 that I think was from Korea (Gold Star? Can't remember for sure) I recall thinking that, while it might not have put out quite as good a picture as a new Zenith CC or System III, for the cost savings it would have been worthwhile. By that time pretty much anybody could crank out a color set with a decent picture.

The American electronics industry really needed a "next big thing" to stay alive once solid state color TV became a commodity in late 70's. That should have been the VCR but RCA/Ampex sold the technology to Japan. RCA tried to make the next big thing the CED and Zenith tried home computers & HDTV but the world had passed them by.

We had cartrivision and some other formats, but without Japan we never would have had the VCR as we knew it. Hollywood and big networks would have bullied any domestic builder out of the market or made them make a product no consumer would have particularly wanted: a VCR that could not record TV.
We threw a decent amount of shit at the wall on video recording tech, and so did the Japanese, but they made it stick.

In the fall of 1967 Allied Radio advertised a 15" Midland color portable, Built by Sharp for the price of $177.00. The paper where the ad was posted came out about 3:00Pm. All the stores in our area were sold out by 7:00 PM.
The picture was better than the PortaColor , larger and less expensive.
They were rather trouble-prone as they got older.

One of the few things the Porta Potty had going for it was that you couldn't kill one. I'm sure the parts WEREN'T Mil-Spec, but my dad got ours the 1st year they were out it lasted til '72 or '73 & had been to the local TV shop ONCE, after being on virtually 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.