Soviet tv's bought in U.S.A. and Australia

[TubeType]

Some time ago, Ingo Kubbe shared his experiences with Soviet television. While living in East Germany, he said it wasn't unusual to see a flaming television being tossed from an open apartment window. He was trying to dissuade me from adding a Soviet television to my collection. That project is still on the back burner.

Terry Cheek

[Telecolor 3007]

Maybe the Soviet televisions that caught fire where the colour ones... I din't hear in Romania that black and white soviet tv sets to cought fire.

[TubeType]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Maybe the Soviet televisions that caught fire where the colour ones... I din't hear in Romania that black and white soviet tv sets to cought fire.

You are correct! As I recollect Ingo's story, it was the color television sets that caught fire.

Terry Cheek

[wa2ise]

The broadcast standard in the USSR was SECAM, "System Entirely Contrary to the American Method". And also 50 fields per second, 625 lines, also not compatible with American NTSC.

And besides, USSR color TV CRTs only had red phospers anyway...

[Telecolor 3007]

I heared (not verified) that Soviet color picture tube where awfoul. The black and white one where quyte good! Anyway, I heard that the Western-Europanen color tv sets where pain in the a2xs too... especilally because of the voltage stabilzer tube that had to be isolated inside an led sheld, because they where small X ray generators... this why I'm dreaming at an "R.C.A." or "Zenith"

[Hokieman]

Yep, you guys are correct - the Russian system is SECAM, not PAL. For the last 10 years I've been working in Russia, the TV's they use (all imported, BTW) use PAL/SECAM encoding, so I assumed it was PAL without doing my homework. I actually had my original post as PAL/SECAM before editing it out to only PAL.

If you ever saw an old Soviet factory operate, you would understand why it would be well nigh impossible for their system to have had the flexibility to alter their design, parts manufacture, and assembly processes to accommodate:

120v/60 Hz versus 220V/50 hz power and component specs
NTSC versus PAL/SECAM (different tube architecture, if I'm not mistaken)

This wasn't the export-driven Japanese electronics economy, which depended upon the US and European markets to drive their businesses, as well as having NTSC as their native format. They had sufficient economies of scale to justify these variations, similar to LH vs. RH drive cars. Russia was (and still is) a very inward-looking society and economy, and really only concentrated on its "captive" market in eastern and central Europe during this period.

[Robert Grant]

Originally Posted by Hokieman

Yep, you guys are correct - the Russian system is SECAM, not PAL. For the last 10 years I've been working in Russia, the TV's they use (all imported, BTW) use PAL/SECAM encoding, so I assumed it was PAL without doing my homework. I actually had my original post as PAL/SECAM before editing it out to only PAL.

If you ever saw an old Soviet factory operate, you would understand why it would be well nigh impossible for their system to have had the flexibility to alter their design, parts manufacture, and assembly processes to accommodate:

120v/60 Hz versus 220V/50 hz power and component specs
NTSC versus PAL/SECAM (different tube architecture, if I'm not mistaken)

This wasn't the export-driven Japanese electronics economy, which depended upon the US and European markets to drive their businesses, as well as having NTSC as their native format. They had sufficient economies of scale to justify these variations, similar to LH vs. RH drive cars. Russia was (and still is) a very inward-looking society and economy, and really only concentrated on its "captive" market in eastern and central Europe during this period.

One thing I might mention - Japanese TV sets for the US and Canada still had to be made for export, despite common use of NTSC color, for the following reasons:
1) The channels were different - on VHF-high and UHF, one would have to always remember to convert channels (one off), and US / Canada VHF lowband would be untunable on a Japanese market set (Japan's first three channels start at 90 MHz, which is the FM radio broadcast band in The Americas).
2) Voltage- despite common 60Hz AC, 117 V American power could harm a 100 V Japanese set.
3) Markings - EXTREMELY FEW Americans can understand Katakana or Hirogama characters. A set with no knob or button marked "ON/OFF VOLUME" would have been impossible to sell.

Another problem that -may- have arisen is the fact that NTSC-J set a different standard for black (thought I suspect one twist of the brightness control would fix this for the life of the set).

The Soviets probably could have had the ability to run a production line for US market sets (not just NTSC, but different frame rate, audio frequency, tuner, power supply and markings!), but, even with trade barriers and attitudes toward the USSR at the time aside, they would have had no chance competing with Tokyo and Chicago.

Not to mention that possibly the only American to have worked in a Soviet TV factory was Lee Harvey Oswald!