Quote:
Originally Posted by wa2ise
It was mostly a marketing ploy. Often, there was nothing wired to the socket. And I don't think anyone actually made the adapters in any real quantity. And when NTSC color came out, it turned out better and cheaper(!) to buy a color TV set. Coupled with the lack of a lot of color programming, few people even thought about it.
It was somewhat similar to radio sets claiming to be "Television ready" when they had an audio input jack on the back. As if TV sets were not gonna have audio amps?  |
I remember reading somewhere, don't recall where, that some pre-war TV sets did not have self-contained audio stages or speakers and were to be connected to external audio systems, such as the audio amp and speakers of a console radio, which acted as the TV's sound system. The same reasoning applied years later to radios that had a radio-phono selector switch and an RCA jack on the rear of the chassis; this was meant to be used with an external record changer, so the user could listen to records (at first only 45-rpm ones, as one of the first mass-produced record changers designed for such use was RCA's single-speed 45-EY-3). The changer did not have its own amplifier or speakers; the unit was to be plugged into the phono jack on the back of the radio and listened to over its audio system. Many TVs of the '50s had a similar socket and switch arrangement to allow the use of the set's audio system with a record changer; the arrangement worked, but in many cases the selector switch was on the rear chassis apron and was difficult to operate. The TV-phono selector switch was wired such that, when in the phonograph position, it would black out the raster on the CRT and possibly also remove B+ voltage from any tubes not required for audio. This switch may have been responsible for TV problems such as no raster, if the switch contacts became tarnished or outright dirty or if the switch itself was defective. I wouldn't be surprised if some repair shops simply cut the switch out of the circuit when it went bad; after all, by the '60s, many people had separate high-fidelity systems, newer TVs, and had relegated the old set (if they hadn't junked it by now) to rec room service--there was no longer any need to use the TV as an audio amplifier. My folks' first TV was a 1954 21" RCA console; they also had the matching 45-rpm record changer. Both are long gone, and even if I still had the changer, it wouldn't be of much use to me as the cartridge was missing as late as the 1980s; besides, I don't have any 45-rpm records anymore. I do have a Zenith C-845 AM-FM high-fidelity radio (the set in my avatar) which has a radio-phono selector and RCA phonograph input jack on the rear of the chassis, but that switch hasn't been moved off the radio position in years or decades. It's probably dirty as all get out now, but as long as the radio works (which it does, and well), I couldn't care less if that switch freezes in the radio position.