Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M
One can get converters to take a modern digital input signal and out put NTSC. Also there are still cheap sources for the signal NTSC such as analog cable, VHS, DVD, older video game systems, etc. One can also bring old Vacuum tube sets back to life using the original circuitry by changing a few bad components.
You would be surprised how good of a picture a vacuum tube set can produce.
I run a 1964 round screen color set as my daily watcher and prefer the picture it produces over every flatscreen I've had the displeasure of watching. Here is what I watch daily.
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Your daily watcher Silvertone TV looks almost exactly like the one I had from 1970-1973, the only difference being the volume control knob. Mine had a plastic knob with a brass insert in the center (the AC push-pull switch on the volume control was defective and had been jumpered), but otherwise it could have been a dead ringer for your set -- same black metal cabinet, same plastic insert with the words SILVERTONE|COLOR above the tuner, etc. My Silvertone met its demise some time in 1973 when I tried to replace a defective 6AW8 video output tube. The replacement from my junk box had a bent pin, and when I tried to insert it in the socket, I pressed down on it a teeny-tiny bit too hard, and -- CRUNCH! The tube socket promptly broke out of the board and put the set out of commission for good. I missed that set for quite a while, until I got hold of a 16" Toshiba-built Silvertone table model around 1975-'76, and later got my first new color set, a Zenith L1310C 13" portable (the first of several) in 1979.
I still think of the old Silvertone every now and then when I watch reruns of several old CBS shows on MeTV, as I watched those shows on the old roundie when they were new.
Again, however, that particular Silvertone, which had an RCA CTC-12 chassis (IIRC), was an excellent set and will serve you well, but again I wish to caution you against putting too much pressure on the PC boards. These sets are 47 years old, and the boards are brittle as potato chips (almost literally) by now; the least bit of unnecessary pressure on them will permanently damage them, especially if a tube socket breaks loose.
BTW, I wonder why you said "...every (flatpanel TV) I have had the
displeasure of watching"? I think most FP TVs have much better pictures than even the best NTSC CRT sets, especially since all TV signals are now ATSC digital. Aside from the fact that many FPs are extremely short-lived (many of these sets are built to last two years or until the warranty expires, whichever comes first), I think FPs have it all over NTSC-standard CRT TVs. Granted, FPs are more fragile than CRT sets (one fall to even a carpeted floor will smash the screen), but otherwise these new sets run rings, IMHO, around CRTs as far as picture quality is concerned. I was dead-set against getting a flat-panel TV in the beginning, mostly due to the high prices of the first sets, but the day I saw an Insignia 19" FP on sale at Big Lots last August, I finally bit the bullet and got one. I've never regretted it. My two CRT sets now sit in storage in my bedroom, unused, and as well as my FP has been working, it looks like those old sets are going to stay back there a good long time. It was probably a good thing I waited as long as I did before getting my FP, as I've been reading that the sets now in stores are much better, from a quality and performance standpoint, than sets made even five years ago. Even if I had a projection TV such as a Zenith Space Screen 45 (as much as I liked Zenith TVs before they went down the tubes in the late 1980s-nineties), I'd replace it with a FP of the same size as soon as the projection set either quit entirely or developed an expensive service problem. I bet many other people did the same thing the minute their projection sets showed their last program and died.