Quote:
Originally posted by Chad Hauris
One thing I have found is that on TV's with varactor tuners the UHF channels are not usually set up. The sets all came with channel numbers that you could replace the asterisks or the U1, U2, etc. with on the tuning display or dial but very few ever have these numbers installed, or are set up for UHF channels. I have observed this both in N.E. Ohio where I collected TV's as a kid and also in West Tx. where I live now.
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Chad,
Just out of my curiosity, where in northern Ohio did you live when you were growing up? Anywhere near Cleveland? I grew up in Wickliffe, a Cleveland suburb east of town about 15 miles. I live in Fairport Harbor today, which is a village about 30 miles east of Cleveland, very close to the south shore of Lake Erie. TV reception is so bad here everyone in town has cable; however, my FM radio reception is great. Can't figure that out for the life of me (the great FM reception, that is; I do know why the TV reception is so bad--the transmitters are about 45 miles southwest of here, and there is one channel [NBC channel 3] I do not get here at all with rabbit ears. Ironically, three of four of the Cleveland UHF stations, including channel 19 which is the CBS affiliate, do come in well enough to watch even using an indoor antenna. The only one that doesn't is channel 25, the PBS affiliate).
BTW, I remember seeing a lot of those TVs with the preset UHF positions (usually six) on a 12-position channel selector (I owned one of those sets, a Zenith, in the early '80s). You're right about most of those sets never having had the UHF channel tabs installed on the dial. Many if not most of the newer sets I have seen in the past and still see every now and then on curbs here have not had these tabs installed, so the UHF positions still show U1, U2, U3 (or even nothing at all) where the numbers should be. I guess people just didn't want to be bothered with setting up the tab positions, or didn't want to pay a service person to do it for them. They may have figured they know where their favorite stations are (U1, for example, is channel 14, U2 is 29, U3 is 47 . . . etc.), so why bother with the tabs?
Of course, in this day and age of cable, there is no need to have these UHF positions set up at all--almost. If you use a cable box, as I do, your TV's channel selector stays on channel 3 or 4 all the time, with the channel selection done at the box or by remote. The only time you'd have to have the UHF positions set up, with or without the number tabs on the channel selector drum, is if you are still getting your TV reception over an antenna (as you and at least one other AK member, Carmine I think, still do).
The days of 18-position varactor tuners are behind us, though. Today's sets all have quartz-synthesized cable-ready tuners, so the need for channel setup has been eliminated. Just find the auto channel search option on the set's main menu, press a button to start it, and a minute or two later you're all set. The preset varactor tuner has gone the way of the clunk-clunk drum detent tuner in most sets, all but those cheap under-$50 5-inch portables with AM/FM radios you can get at any drug or discount store. Who knows--some day even those cheap portables may have quartz tuners as well, although I personally don't see the sense in having a 181-channel cable-ready tuner in a battery-operated portable, as these sets are not ordinarily used on cable (though I suppose they could be--IIRC, these sets have 75-ohm antenna inputs).