[Jeffhs]

wa2ise,


Your set looks very familiar. My great-aunt and uncle had a TV exactly like yours in the early '50s; they used it until the '70s, when they got a color set. Their RCA worked well on Cleveland's three VHF stations (at that time), and the set itself didn't give them much trouble at all (that I was ever aware of, anyway).

Those early RCAs were built to last, which is more than I can say for the company's new color sets. My folks' first TV was a 21-inch RCA in a huge console cabinet; this set also worked very well on our area's three VHF channels on rabbit ears (we lived about 30 miles or so from the stations, so really good reception on all three with rabbit ears in the '50s was not easy to attain--eventually, when we got a new set, we put up an antenna in the attic which worked much better).

RCA once was "the most respected name in electronics", but look what's happened since then. Since the company was taken over by Thomson in the late eighties or early nineties, a lot of their TVs have been nothing but trouble for their owners. I have an RCA 19-inch color set which I bought new almost four years ago; I've already had it repaired twice for the same problem (the RF port on the back of the set snapped off the tuner PC board both times) and I know there is one defective IC (the EEPROM signal processor) in the signal circuits. (Also, I have a friend whose parents' RCA color set blew a picture tube after only two years!)

Since I live in an apartment building wired for cable (the village in which I live is 40+ miles from the seven TV transmitters serving Cleveland and is a definite fringe area), however, and my set is connected to the cable system, I have never used the set on an antenna except to test it. (The reception on all three VHF stations using rabbit ears was terrible; the only good signals were from Cleveland's three commercial UHF stations, one of which [channel 19] is now the CBS affiliate for our area, having swapped networks with channel 8 which was bought out by Fox Broadcasting in the mid-1990s. Channel 8 was Cleveland's CBS station for over four decades; 19 was a Fox affiliate from 1986 until it acquired the CBS affiliation from 8 around 1993 or so. Channel 8, now owned by Fox, naturally got the affiliation to that network).

The cable signal (from Comcast digital cable) is so good it doesn't matter that the signal processor in my set is bad and (probably) getting worse. The picture is still very good on all analog and digital channels on the system. The cable box bypasses the tuner anyhow, so even if the tuner were shot (or getting there) I'd still get a decent picture as long as the tuner worked on channel 4 (the output of the cable box), which it does.


BTW, I heard about the outcome of the World Series, although I did not see any of the games (found out from a friend of mine who is an absolute sports nut). Oh well, maybe the Yankees will win it next year.

73,