[Jeffhs]

The trouble with the Chromix control on old Sears color TVs (and similar controls on other makes) was that many people didn't know how to adjust it and/or even what it was for, so the control usually wound up being set to midpoint (b&w or neutral) and forgotten. Today's flat screens (as well as CRT color TVs of the last few years before digital TV) are made such that there are few or no adjustments to be made; just turn the set on, select the channel you want to watch, and enjoy the program, without a second thought to the color controls. In fact, I remember reading somewhere online just recently that the on-screen tint and color controls on today's FP TVs are simply holdovers from the NTSC era, and don't really do that much for the picture; the advice given in that article was simply to leave those controls set at their factory defaults, using the set's preset color settings (on my Insignia 19" FP they are Custom, Vivid, and two others I don't recall at the moment) to adjust the picture to your liking.

The color and tint adjustments on FP sets have their uses, though they don't have nearly the range the old NTSC CRT color sets' controls had. If you set the preset color option of your FP TV to Custom, it is in fact possible to adjust the on-screen tint and color intensity controls for the kind of picture you like. In fact, those controls will also work with the presets activated, albeit with limited range. I'd use Custom for setting color parameters to individual preferences.

The color-temperature control never really disappeared from color TVs, although CRT sets of the '80s-'90s don't have such an adjustment. However, most flat screens probably do have an on-screen menu option for setting color temperature, although the adjustment only has three steps (at least it does on my set) that adjust this parameter by a set amount; it is not continuously variable as the Chromix, et al. controls were. However, I think, as with the Chromix and other color-temperature adjustments on CRT sets, most set owners even today just leave the three-step color temp control set at its default and then forget it. What goes around comes around.