Newer Zenith console?

[technicolor]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

'91 Zenith CRT's were not that great; but, they were not as bad as what was to come. If yours has held up for 22 years; then, it must be a good one.

Zenith CRT's really took a nosedive in '93. They would become weak and/or intermittently short/arc. They often failed under warranty and the replacement CRT's were not any better. When the tubes shorted, they would take out the power supply and/or video output stages. What was really frustrating is when I'd fix the chassis, think the set was fixed; and, three weeks later, it would come back to bite me in the butt because the CRT arced and blew up the chassis again. These intermittent CRT's will usually never show up as "shorted" on a CRT tester.

Starting around '98, Zenith started to figure out that they could no longer make a good CRT and they started using either bonded yoke Thomson CRT's or LG/Philips CRT's. However, I've seen a few '99 Zenith's that used a Zenith CRT; and, yes, they were bad.

Sometime in '99, LG finally absorbed what was left of Zenith and within a few years, there were no more Zenith CRT TV's. Recently, I had a 2001 Zenith 25" console that was likely one of their last console models. I think the last Zenith CRT sets were the "healthview" line for hospital use.

During the late '90's until around 2006, I was getting boatloads of Zenith's from the local Zenith dealer. Many of them were junked because of a bad CRT. Some others got a donor CRT out of another brand of TV and some had their original CRT's rejuvenated and sold very cheaply to customers who didn't want to spend much on a TV; and, yes, the customers were made aware as to why the TV was being sold cheap. Many of those customers didn't care what the picture looked like, they just wanted something with sound and some sort of picture.

My favorite Zenith's were the chromacolor solid state models and the first System 3 ("K"-line chassis) for the '79 model year. The next model year brought us the infamous 9-160 power supply module and it continued to go down the drain from there. When I was getting sets from the Zenith dealer, I got more excited to get a '70's Chromacolor II over the 3 year old junk with bad CRT's.

my 73 chromacolor puts out and amazing picture, that's 40 years ago. doubt it has even had it's crt replaced.