Vintage Samsung CTC-8550 cable converter box ?

[Robb]

Here's the vintage Samsung CTC-8550 cable box I got for free recently.
Anyone know the year of manufacture of it ?
I cant find any info.

[Jon A.]

Dunno, but analog CATV boxes rock in my opinion, I have a sub-collection of them. I don't know the manufacture dates of mine either.

[Robb]

Originally Posted by KV-1926R

Dunno, but analog CATV boxes rock in my opinion, I have a sub-collection of them. I don't know the manufacture dates of mine either.

Ya, the channels scroll through so quickly !!

[Einar72]

First time I've heard the term vintage to describe an analog converter, or a Samsung, for that matter. Let's wait until the dinner plates are in the dishwasher, at least!

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Einar72

First time I've heard the term vintage to describe an analog converter, or a Samsung, for that matter. Let's wait until the dinner plates are in the dishwasher, at least!

Well, there's a first time for everything. I guess not many of us "specialize" in these. I have one that uses an ultra sonic remote and three that use huge wired pushbutton varactor "remotes".

[Robb]

I hated those old wired cable box remotes

[radiotvnut]

It looks to have the newer Samsung logo; so, I'd say it's no older than the early '90's.

In my area, analog cable boxes are good for nothing more than a doorstop, since crapcast turned off their analog cable delivery.

I think I've still got an old Jerrold set top box with the click buttons that's probably from the early '80's.

[Robb]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

It looks to have the newer Samsung logo; so, I'd say it's no older than the early '90's.

In my area, analog cable boxes are good for nothing more than a doorstop, since crapcast turned off their analog cable delivery.

Ya maybe 1992. The old Group logo (“three stars”), used from late 1980 until replaced in 1992



Here we still have analog cable which is nice to have.

btw, its tough finding anything vintage from samsung. It was all sony, zenith, RCA, toshiba back then !

[lnx64]

My cable provider just got rid of analog cable. Luckily they have a simple DTA for them though which for the most part keep the charm of analog, though not quite the same.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Robb

I hated those old wired cable box remotes

Come to think of it, all but one of mine are Jerrold boxes, the other one is a Philips. My Jerrold 450 uses quite a brick of a remote, but nothing like those of the old wired boxes, which I'm not old enough to have seen in regular use. One day I'll dig into them and hopefully find an alternate use for them.

[maxhifi]

I have a radioshack converter box I got in about 2001, last of a breed? The better ones had stereo audio outputs, mine doesn't. I haven't had analog
Cable in years, recently I cancelled cable entirely and got a dtv
Converter box... Man did that ever change my mind about the dtv
Transition, the picture is beyond fantastic.

[Einar72]

BTW, when you mean vintage cable boxes, Hamlin comes to mind. 96-year-old Philip Hamlin, Senior, was murdered by a hired hand just days ago a few miles from my home. There used to be a huge factory south of Seattle where, I assume, they built product in the 1960's or so.

And, here's a cool collection of vintage cable and pay-tv decoders:

http://theoldcatvequipmentmuseum.org/170/173/1731/

[Robb]

Damn ! Never knew Pioneer made cable boxes !!

[wa2ise]

I have a vintage cable converter box here:

I also have somewheres boxes that block converted the CATV spectrum up to the over the air UHF band. It had a conversion table printed atop the top.