zeno, I posted this link in another thread: http://books.google.com/books?id=cuI...vision&f=false It's to a Popular Mechanics article from 1976 that talks about Maganavox's Star tv's and also mentions Admiral was coming out with a digital tuner too. They said Admiral called it Era II Limited series. This was '76 and Star came out in '74. But, as you said it wasn't a true RAT, so maybe they were really first.

Here is a newspaper ad about Admiral Era II. Do you remember these sets? http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...4626%2C1888781

Did the Admiral and Philco brand names come together at some point? Maybe I'm dreaming this, but when I was in high school in the early '80 I worked in the library and I seem to remember they had two tv's with vcr's on carts. One was an Admiral and one was a Philco and they were identical except for the name plates. They were 17 or 19 inch sets.