First truly practical color television set?

[Electronic M]

You raise a good point that it is perspective. If you want to define it as the first set that could be ran somewhat regularly and need comparable maintenance to a monochrome set of the time (~annual service) sets were getting there in the late 50's (first is a matter of opinion).

If you want to say first that could go ~5 years without service and last 2-4 times that with maintenance I'd say ~2-4 chassis in to the game Zenith had a decent portion of their roundys hitting that mark.

If you want to define it as a reliable SS I'd have to pick horizontal flat-chassis Zenith CCII sets (Moto WID would be a candidate too)....Those things are darn near immortal (I have seen and owned several that to this day have never had the back off and still work), and the CRTs never die....You could do 2-3 CRT swaps in a Sony over 13" and the Zenith will still be putting out a respectable picture and not yet need a rejuve.