DRH4683,
Your recent acquisition is a Zenith 29JC20 from 1963. The last time I saw one of these was 31 years ago, when I was in high school. We had one in our electronics lab that looked as if it was in good shape and probably should have worked, though I don't know if anyone ever tried to fire it up or not. No sense even thinking about that now, though; that set probably went out with the trash long after I graduated in 1975.
The roundies are collectors' items today, even if they aren't quite antiques yet. I had a Silvertone roundie from 1964 (RCA CTC12 chassis) that I picked up in 1970. It had a lot wrong with it (circuit breaker was bad, on-off switch on volume control was shot, convergence was way, way off, etc.), but I managed to get it working after a fashion. Sadly, though, the set met its demise three years later when the video-output tube socket broke out of the video circuit board.
Your new ebay find is a Zenith, however, with a hand-wired chassis (Zenith didn't use printed circuits in any of its TVs or radios until the late 1970s or early '80s). You won't have tube socket problems (or any other kind of trouble associated with PC boards) with that set. Not meaning to belittle or attack other manufacturers, Zenith of Chicago in its early days, because they believed in hand-wiring all their sets (radios in the 1920s through the '50s, being joined by televisions from the 50s on), enjoyed a reputation for very high quality throughout the United States; remember their former slogan, "the quality goes in before the name goes on"? Case in point: I have a Zenith radio which was built in 1951; hand-wired, solid metal chassis, the whole nine yards--this set had "Zenith" written all over it, not just on the front panel. The last time I had it on, a month or so ago, it was working unusually well for being over 50 years old--the set even has its original filter caps, or so it seems. If that doesn't speak volumes for the way Zenith built things before they went to Korea in the '80s (they had already begun production of radios and stereo gear there by then; I had a Zenith stereo system from 1982 until 1999 that was made in Korea and which worked quite well over those years), I don't know what will.
Good luck with your new/old Zenith. I'm sure that set will work quite well on cable if you use a converter ahead of it, or on an antenna if you choose not to go that route. You have a set which was made to last, which is more than I can say for some of the inexpensive color sets coming from the Pacific Rim (Korea, Japan, etc.) these days. (There are still some excellent color TVs, radios and so on coming from the Far East made by Sharp, Sanyo, Sony, Hitachi and so forth, however, but one always pays through the nose for them.)
As a Zenith devotee for many years, I am somewhat disappointed that it moved its production facilities to Korea
but I guess that's where the company figures it will make the most money--and as I think everyone knows (or should know), businesses always go where the big money is, even if it is out of the country.
Kind regards,