early 60's Motorola color - Videokarma.org TV - Video

oldtvman · #1 12-14-2009, 08:01 PM

Before Motorola unvailed the 23" rectangular crt in 1965, I remember they did have some round tube color sets in the early sixties. Does anyone have any photo's of these sets?

John Adams · #2 12-14-2009, 08:14 PM

Didn't they briefly bring out a 19" round tube around 1955 to one up RCA and the 15"?

oldtvman · #3 12-14-2009, 08:18 PM

Yes they did, but just like Zenith, they re-entered the color market in the early 60's, I don't remember which year it was.

*zenithfan1* · #4 12-14-2009, 08:22 PM

They also had the 15" 16CK1 in 1954 along with the 19CT1. I would love to see an early 60's Moto, I've been wondering about it for some time as I like Motorola stuff. I bet it would be a beautiful set seeing as they were working with Drexel for the cabinets then. My '62 Motorola stereo has the nicest hand made cabinet I've seen from that time, it's veneered and stained on the inside to look as good as the outside. A roundie like that would have me drooling all over.....

old_tv_nut · #5 12-14-2009, 09:02 PM

Here's an ad using a Moto roundie for comparison to the Moto rectangular

bgadow · #6 12-14-2009, 09:57 PM

I'm pretty sure somebody on here has one. It seems as though Motorola completely dropped the roundie when they introduced the 23EGP22 sets. I didn't see it in this ad, but also seems I read an ad where they said they had decided to not make a color TV until they could make a rectangular one. If they did, they couldn't have been out of production for very long-perhaps less than a year.

stromberg67 · #7 12-15-2009, 07:49 AM

The father of my teenage sweetheart brought home a Motorola roundie table model in Summer 1968. He got a deal on a closeout, I guess, maybe a leftover. It was installed in the basement family room, and had a crappy picture. Don't know just when it was manufactured, but it had a front like the one in the ad posted on this thread. The set didn't last, but my sweetheart and I are still very much in love, although we married others.

*zenithfan1* · #8 12-15-2009, 10:23 AM

Eeeew! That roundie looks like crap, not what I was imagining going by some of their other cabinet styles. I would still own one but I wouldn't like it

It reminds me of those houses with all the hummels, cows and "folk art" crap.

Charlie · #9 12-16-2009, 01:00 AM

Motorola had some early-60's models, and seems I recall someone here has one (or at least had posted a photo of one). I don't recall them being very attractive.

The Motorola service book I have shows them all, but can't get to it right now (sitting at anchor onboard ship near Galveston at the moment) but I will go dig that service book out when I get home.

Charlie · #10 12-17-2009, 01:15 AM

I knew I had a photo of one. It's a 21CT220. Not sure who's it was... could have been one on ebay. Seems I remember looking this up in my Moto book and found it to be a series strung set. Not exactly their best looking design.

Jeffhs · #11 12-17-2009, 11:38 AM

In the old DIY television repair books of the '50s-'60s (particularly the latter), the Motorola color TV in that picture was often shown as the demonstration set; I recognized the control panel. I particularly remember the large VHF and UHF tuning dials, the latter for channels 14-83 (that alone gives away the set's vintage; channels 70-83 were reassigned to land-mobile in 1970, although most color sets still tuned 14-83 until at least the late 1980s or nineties).

How well did these sets actually work as far as picture quality and such were concerned? Being Motorola, I would think these were fairly good performers in their day; of course, today's in-line CRTs make sharper and better pictures than the delta-gun sets did (subjectively speaking, of course). I noticed the improvement on my RCA CTC185 XL100 as soon as TV went all-digital on 06.12. The picture on this TV has always been very good, but the digital signals, combined with the in-line CRT, make for an excellent picture on every channel I get on my cable (broadcast channels only, as I have Time-Warner's lowest-priced tier of cable service). I think the transition from the delta-gun tubes to the inline ones was one of the best improvements made to color TV until now; in other words, IMHO, the inline tube may have been the best TV manufacturers could do (as far as image sharpness, picture quality, etc. went) before the flat panel sets came in.