[Jeffhs]

The laundromat in my town, up the road from me by about a mile, had a 13" Magnavox-branded color portable, wall-mounted (on a swivel mount such as is commonly used with flat screen TVs). This set had the speakers directly below the CRT, as were the control buttons for all major functions, although the button for the power switch was missing, and I don't even know if it worked as I never saw it in operation; I have a feeling that this TV was made by Funai, though I have no way of knowing how old it is. The set was removed and replaced recently by a 13" Zenith (likely with an off-brand chassis, can't think of the brand offhand) color portable. That set has about the worst color picture I have ever seen on a color TV; I saw the set in operation a few weeks ago, and man alive, the picture was awful. The color was way off (green faces, etc.), as if no one had bothered to reset anything when the set was reinstalled (the Magnavox was probably only a temporary replacement for the Zenith while the latter was being repaired). When the Zenith set was reinstalled on its mount in the laundromat, the person/people who reinstalled it must have simply put the set back up on the mount, reconnected the power cord and cable, turned it on once to see if everything worked, and left it set at the factory defaults for color, brightness, contrast, etc. Either the default settings themselves were off or the TV may have had a chassis problem; either way, as I said, the picture was awful. The only time I ever saw a worse color picture on a TV was about twenty-five years ago; the people who owned the set obviously did not care about picture quality or whether or not the colors were accurate, as the picture on that set was terrible. Green faces, blue water, red trees...good grief. One correct primary color out of three is not acceptable.

On the other hand, the poor picture on that TV may not have been the owner's fault at all, but it may well have been due to any number of things--weak CRT, gray scale tracking off by a mile, magnetized CRT shadow mask...who knows? After all, this was at least 25 years ago, and I think the person who owned that set may have junked it and gotten a flat screen since then. They may not even remember what a goshawful mess the picture was on the old set, and they probably don't care at this late date.