1978 Magnavox 11" Color

[rwilson]

I picked this up at a estate sale today. It seems to work OK but I could not find any info on it by searching the web. This TV is made in Japan.
I was wondering if it might be made by some other company.
Bob

[zeno]

Its a Panasonic.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[AlanInSitges]

Quasar sold the exact same set, I think those were actually imported from Japan vs. the bigger sets built in Franklin Park. It had a killer picture. We used to turn it off before demoing the 19 and 25 inch sets in the store.

[Robert Grant]

Motorola saw where the real money was: Government contracts.

Seeing the writing on the phosphor, Motorola left the consumer electronics market, and sold it to Matsushita, giving the Quasar tradename (originally a line of color TV sets) to become the tradename for Matsushita products.

In the long run, they determined that the Panasonic brand carried more clout.

(EDIT). This is also why if you are looking through the Photofact directory for a Motorola TV from the 1950s, you need to look under Quasar.

[rwilson]

I was able to find the SAMS Photofact number for it and then found one on eBay. A much better deal than downloading direct from SAMS.

[bgadow]

A very modern look for '78; if it didn't have that label on the back I wouldn't have believed it. Japan, Inc. was on fire.

[AlanInSitges]

It was really peak quality for TVs I think; that set looked better in person as far as fit and finish, and the picture was killer. Inside a single PCB that I believe could be completely unplugged from CRT, yoke, tuners, etc., and removed for easy service, which barely mattered because those Matsushita/Quasar sets Never. Broke. It was a modern double-sided PCB that wouldn't look out of place in contemporary equipment, this during the era when Zenith and RCA were producing plug-in modules that had all kinds of bad connections.

[JohnCT]

Originally Posted by AlanInSitges

and removed for easy service, which barely mattered because those Matsushita/Quasar sets Never. Broke.

I was a Matsushita ASC back then, and they did indeed break in my experience. TVs were becoming extraordinarily reliable by the time Matsushita bought Quasar from Motorola, so their chassis were less trouble than Motorolas after the takeover (and they eliminated modules entirely - except the "supermodule" which wasn't a module at all), but everyone had a big uptick in quality by the mid to late 70s.

Of all the TVs we did warranty work for in the late seventies through the 80s, RCA was the most trouble free. They did have a bad run of IHVTs in 1981, but quickly addressed that problem in less than a year.

We had a run from 1981 to 1987 or so when we made zero claims to RCA for warranty work.

John

[old_tv_nut]

Some time in the 70s, I think, when every brand had gone solid state, consumer reports stopped complaining about TV reliability and just said essentially to buy the one you like, they're all pretty good.