Admiral history questions

zeno, I posted this link in another thread: http://books.google.com/books?id=cuI...vision&f=false It's to a Popular Mechanics article from 1976 that talks about Maganavox's Star tv's and also mentions Admiral was coming out with a digital tuner too. They said Admiral called it Era II Limited series. This was '76 and Star came out in '74. But, as you said it wasn't a true RAT, so maybe they were really first.

Here is a newspaper ad about Admiral Era II. Do you remember these sets? http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...4626%2C1888781

Did the Admiral and Philco brand names come together at some point? Maybe I'm dreaming this, but when I was in high school in the early '80 I worked in the library and I seem to remember they had two tv's with vcr's on carts. One was an Admiral and one was a Philco and they were identical except for the name plates. They were 17 or 19 inch sets.

[zeno]

Originally Posted by egrand

zeno, I posted this link in another thread: http://books.google.com/books?id=cuI...vision&f=false It's to a Popular Mechanics article from 1976 that talks about Maganavox's Star tv's and also mentions Admiral was coming out with a digital tuner too. They said Admiral called it Era II Limited series. This was '76 and Star came out in '74. But, as you said it wasn't a true RAT, so maybe they were really first.

Here is a newspaper ad about Admiral Era II. Do you remember these sets? http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...4626%2C1888781

Did the Admiral and Philco brand names come together at some point? Maybe I'm dreaming this, but when I was in high school in the early '80 I worked in the library and I seem to remember they had two tv's with vcr's on carts. One was an Admiral and one was a Philco and they were identical except for the name plates. They were 17 or 19 inch sets.

Thank for the ad. It looks like it could be the "rare" 19" I remembered.
We only sold the low end of Admiral as we had Zenith as our main line.
It was a cheaper set. Sold a few top-o-lines out of the books but that
was a cabinet thing usually. I do remember about plug in remotes
but thats all from this mystery RAT set. BTW Sams does list the
25" so they did go mass market with them.

VCR's mostly came from Sony & Sanyo (beta) Hitachi, Panny,
JVC, and more as time went on. Never built by a US company.
So you have different brands that are near identical inside &
usually outside. Big exception was Zenith. They switch from Sony
betas to JVC vhs & the outside was VERY different than JVC.

As for Philco no relation I know of. Sylvania bought Philco &
philco chassis ended. Meanwhile Phillips took Maggy. Maggy
chassis continued but at some point the small set changed
to a very Europian looking chassis. At some point Phillips (NAP)
took Sylvania/Philco & the Philco name faded away. So ended the
Sylvania chassis. The Phillips brand started showing up.
Mid to late 90' the maggy chassis started getting replaced by a real
crappy chassis. But almost else was turning to junk too.

enuf fer now
73 Zeno