Why the color tv sets where so expensive at the beging?

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by WISCOJIM

More programming available in color.

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Yes, in the earliest days of Color, Color programming was limited, and the early Color TV chassis cost $1,000.00. And the sets were much more prone to needing repairs (many early Color set owners reported 2-4 service calls a year). And servicing these early pioneering Color efforts was also more difficult, especially convergence and alignments. Not all TV set manufacturers were producing Color TV sets either. RCA, Motorola, and a few others were mainly it, and quite a few companies only had developmental sets to show at that point. Zenith Radio Corporation did not produce a production Color TV set for one until 1962. And quite a few manufacturers early on had to use RCA Victor TV chassis or variants of it, GE included for their early production color sets, under RCA licenses.

And also TV Color broadcasting was a pioneering art, much more expensive to do, much more intensive lighting was necessary, color cameras were also very expensive, their alignments and maintenance much more labor intensive. 1960 was when Color TV began showing signs of life and of sustaining itself. By 1964, set prices were getting lower, bigger screens than 21" were possible, and more color programming was being shown. Remember there was no videotape let alone color in 1954, 1956 was when Ampex announced the VR 1000 2" Quadruplex video recorder, and by 1960, Ampex and RCA collaborated on patents and color VTR equipment became reality. By 1966, all 3 networks had their evening programming schedules in Color. And in many cases until the late 1960's-early 1970's time frame, many smaller markets did not have locally originated programming in Color, many such network affiliates and independents had to make do with second and occasionally third hand equipment, much of it well used by then, local news was still filmed on 16mm cameras.

Just trying to point out the events of the day, and the forces of the market and set adoption by consumers. And also until around the middle 1960's, many Color set owners elected to use their expensive set for color programming only and to use their monochrome sets for all else, due to being less wear on CRT and also to keep down the service calls on the big color set. Dealers and repair service technicians also had to buy new service gear, and get trained on color set repair and diagnosis also, many had a difficult time gaining comfort with such repairs. And also the transition from tubes to solid state technology and more.

[Telecolor 3007]

19.000 / 12 = 1.583,3. Uh-oh, a top model tv set was almost a good sallary.
Gush, in Romania, <<Telecolor>> 3007 had a price of around 14,000 (14 hunder thouthand) lei ("lyons") when a good decent sallary was around 3,000-4,000 lei... and with all this you had to wait to get your hands on one. Some people bought 2 and sold one for 18,000-20,000 lei.
After 1989 we had more tv broadcasting and after that we had private tv station. Second-hand * sets brought from Germany where the option for many, because they where cheaper then new sets. And some of those sets where used for more then 10 years after they where bought in Romania...
When my maternal granfather bought himself a new color tv set - "Panasonic", 21" (54 c.m.), mono but with teletext in June of 1995 he payed for it around 1,500,000 lei - avarage sallary in that month was 205,080 lei. Well, I think you could bought Romanian assambled sets for less then 1,000,000 lei.

* well, we still buy second-hand stuff from Germany. But mostly vehicels.