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Originally Posted by Jeffhs
That doesn't seem right to me. The picture on that TV should have been in color if the set was getting enough signal from the stations. Were your grandparents in a fringe area for Chicago TV (Northern Indiana should be part of the normal service area of Chicago television stations), or was their TV antenna in bad shape or not oriented in the right direction for reception of Chicago stations? If your grandparents were in a near-fringe area for Chicago TV I could see why they would have problems with reliable TV reception, but in northern Indiana they should have been getting each and every TV station in greater Chicago (channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 and whatever UHF stations the area has) very reliably.
I can see, however, why they might have problems with poor reception if they were in a near-fringe area, and were trying to get Chicago TV with anything less than a large outdoor TV antenna. I live in something of a near-fringe area now, having moved here 21 years ago from an eastern Cleveland suburb. The latter is in fact part of the coverage area of every one of the city's six TV stations; however, the village I moved to is in fact a near-fringe area for Cleveland TV stations (especially the CBS affiliate on channel 19, which does not reach here at all without an antenna or cable; I have never forgiven the company which now owns channel 8, Cleveland's former CBS affiliate from 1949 until some time in the 1990s (why didn't they just leave everything alone?), especially now, since all TV stations are digital (this town is some 40 miles southwest of the stations' towers), requiring the use of an outdoor TV antenna or cable to get good reception.
BTW, another reason your grandparents' TV did not show anything in color might well have been that the CRT was on its last legs, or else they didn't know how to properly tune a color TV (the fine tuning must be exact on a color set or else the picture will appear in b&w, even if the station is showing a color program). Another cause may be the color killer control was set so high it caused the killer to cut off the color on everything, including local stations. Did your grandparents ever have this checked by a qualified TV technician? I say this because the rear-panel adjustments on all NTSC televisions (DTV ones too) are not meant to be adjusted by anyone other than qualified persons who know what they are doing. An incorrect setting of any of those controls can damage or destroy parts of the television. One of the best things to happen with modern TV sets, IMHO, was when the secondary controls were hidden from view, so they cannot be messed around with by anyone not qualified to adjust them.
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My grandparent's lived closer to where you live than to where I live, as they lived near Fort Wayne, Indiana which is in Northeastern Indiana.
The TV I suspect might of had some issues with the color modulation circuitry because when I adjusted the color adjustments on the back of the TV the color came back in somewhat, but it definitely wasn't a reception issue because the pix was crystal clear (or about as crystal clear as an analog UHF TV Channel could be with a mid-grade amplified TV Antenna which was all they had as they didn't have access to an outdoor tower antenna) it just wasn't in color.
I do remember though that it had some smearings of red along the edges of the screen but that was about the only color the screen had.
The Channels my grandparents had access to was Channel 15 WANE the CBS Affiliate out of Fort Wayne, Channel 21 the ABC Affiliate out of Fort Wayne (I can't remember the call letters for that station), Channel 33 which was the NBC Affiliate out of Fort Wayne, and Channel 39 which was the PBS Affiliate out of Fort Wayne.
My grandparents got the TV from my uncle who in turn got it from a friend of his who was a TV serviceman and that's about all I knew about that TV's history and how my grandparent's got the TV, they actually never used the TV they mainly used it as a night stand and a catch all for some of their stuff, I only knew about the issues with it because I in my infinite curiosity decided to plug the TV in and try it out and that's how I knew it wasn't working correctly, I of course got in trouble for that because my grandfather didn't want me messing around with it.