This has to be a fixable issue

[zeno]

Normal. Back then there was nothing that would give the
kind of signal that the OSD does so it wasnt a big issue.
Note the rest of the pix is good. When Zenith started using
comb filters about 7 yrs later ( M line IIRC) & you side
by sided them the difference was startling. I think about
75% of the customers spent the extra $50 to get it.
All but eliminated things like you see but also made a big
difference in resolution. Individual hairs could be seen instead
of a blur at best. You may not see it much on other older sets,
thats because they arent as good as yours.
A few things do improve with time........

73 Zeno

[TinCanAlley]

I found it's more a product of the RF modulator. I was feeding it an S-Video from the DVD player, so I switched it to the composite and it was greatly reduced. It's at a level I can live with.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

It's just the usual crosstalk for a set without a comb filter. People forget what this looked like since they got used to digital component video. It can be reduced if the input video has the luminance frequency response rolled off, which your source of lettering obviously doesn't.

Originally Posted by zeno

Normal. Back then there was nothing that would give the
kind of signal that the OSD does so it wasnt a big issue.
Note the rest of the pix is good. When Zenith started using
comb filters about 7 yrs later ( M line IIRC) & you side
by sided them the difference was startling. I think about
75% of the customers spent the extra $50 to get it.
All but eliminated things like you see but also made a big
difference in resolution. Individual hairs could be seen instead
of a blur at best. You may not see it much on other older sets,
thats because they arent as good as yours.
A few things do improve with time........

73 Zeno

Excellent descriptions of the issue!

In the era between the introduction of color TV (1954) and the widespread availability of comb filters (1980s), high resolution was just not available or expected in broadcast TV reception and signals, so you rarely if ever saw any content with detail like those characters. (This is one reason why consumer VCR formats have only 240 lines of resolution; that was about all a color TV set could display throughout that era.) Put a 1990s or newer video game or similar device on a 1970s TV, and this is what you get. It actually looks better than a lot of older color displays I have seen when showing high-resolution signals.