Zeniht ads 1952, 1955
 

Product oriented from 1952, and corporate image oriented from 1955

Interesting that Zenith chose to call their 27-inch set the "Sovereign." A rip-off of DuMont's 30-inch "Royal Sovereign," with the intention of confusing customers a little?

"Sovereign" seems to be one of those words you can attach to almost anything in order to make it sound as if it reigns supreme. My Jaguar XJ40, for instance, is a pretty standard model compared to the slightly better-appointed Vanden Plas series, but at the rear it is badged "Sovereign." In this case, I think Zenith may have very well "borrowed" the title from DuMont. Of course, they may been set on the name all along and simply didn't mind if people made that association. :scratch2:

I have to admit it was really a surprise for me when I first discovered that they had 27'' televisions as early as 1952. When I first picked up my '53 Zenith, I figured that the 17'' CRT was a standard in the industry at that point. But, actually it looks like Zenith was pushing more 21'' and 24'' models that year than anything else.

Interesting how people used to care about reception and interference. Now they just give us this junk and no one cares how well it works. Americas dont care either we passively shrug our shoulders and so ohh well.

Thanks for taking the time to post the adds.

With cable TV, it doesn't matter if a tuner is sensitive. OTA DTV put the nail in the coffins of ghosting and interference. TV makers put in the cheapest and crummiest DTV tuner they can get away with into their throwaway sets because hardly anyone uses them.

I remember reading that less than 10% of all TV users still use over-the-air signals, and that TV station owners were complaining that they had to install expensive DTV transmitters at their own expense for small local audiences. Many wanted to just feed cable systems directly because they'd retain 90%+ of their audiences anyway.

They might not be carried on local cable if they stopped transmitting an OTA signal. "Must Carry" rules IIRC compel cable companies to put all local OTA stations on their cable systems.

That isn't true. ATSC tuners have gotten way better over time. The tuners in TVs now can deal with multipath, interference, and weak signal issues way better than the ones from say 5 years ago. Also the newer stuff takes advantage of and implements the PSIP data better and present a much more user friendly interface for that data in the program guides and program information. Several months ago I had a brand new Olevia LCD TV here that belonged to a friend of mine and I had it connected to the same rooftop antenna that my 2005 era Samsung plasma and my 2007 era Sanyo LCD projection set are usually connected to, and the Olevia blew both of them out of the water in regards to the sensitivity and performance of the tuners. So that is a good example of a cheap LCD set blowing away two higher end sets that are a couple generations older. In this forum, there is a lot of negativity directed toward the new technologies, and HD and DTV in general, but you've got to realize that this new stuff has its place. Remember to keep an open mind. It's great that we do the work we do to preserve the technology of yesterday, but whether we like it or not, technology changes and advances. Its a fact of life. I love to see my vintage televisions restored and playing vintage TV shows, but I also love watching the latest Hollywood bluray releases on my 55 inch HDTV and Dolby 5.1 sound.

Latest statistics I heard, 85% of households have non-OTA service; but 22% of TVs are OTA only. Not all secondary sets are connected to non-OTA service.

It's also true that digital tuners/demods have improved greatly as the manufacturers learned what aspects of performance are most important for reliable reception. The same thing happened with analog sets in the beginning. Some of the early tuners had lousy noise figures. By the time the FCC set rules for noise figure, designs were exceeding those requirements.