Which vintage TV will you watch the Superb owl on?

[snelson903]

iv never watched any sports on tv ,just never been interested .

[RCAGuy]

I had a selection of over-the-air sets fired up, from a 1958 Philco Tandem to 2012 LG Plasma! (But not the CT-100, which is still undergoing some chassis work...)

[ChrisW6ATV]

The game itself was such a blowout, it was not worth the valuable emissions of early CRTs.

RCAGuy, is that just a camera effect, or does your plasma set have some kind of big problem?

[RCAGuy]

That's just the camera in my phone, set on panorama, trying to capture a moving image and deal with a different frame rate. Plasma was banding side to side rather than CRT's that band top to bottom when being filmed or photographed. I assure you that it has a marvelous image!

[truetone36]

Is the Predicta console a Miss America?

[RCAGuy]

Originally Posted by truetone36

Is the Predicta console a Miss America?

Although quite similar to a "Miss America" model (the name of a line, not a specific set), this one is actually branded PREDICTA and not MISS AMERICA. It dates from 1959, just before everything went south with Philco.

[jr_tech]

Like this?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1957-Philco-...item20ced9b90b
I have never seen one "in the flesh".
jr

[truetone36]

The Miss America set has the same chassis, CRT, and knobs as your Predicta, but in a more conservative style of cabinet. I have a full set of knobs as well as the CRT, yoke, and CRT bezel from one that I found in a house I demolished. The rest of the set was unfortunately too far gone so I saved these parts and scrapped the rest.

[RCAGuy]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Like this?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1957-Philco-...item20ced9b90b
I have never seen one "in the flesh".
jr

Yes, EXACTLY! Those advertisements are very easy to find on eBay. Philco at least spent a lot of money to PROMOTE the Predicta line, even if the sets themselves were design statements (and servicing nightmares!)

Mine was cherry-picked out of a pile of old TVs by an East Coast TV recycling company a couple of years ago. It cost me TEN TIMES more than I paid for it on eBay to have it shipped to central Indiana. And I've spent many times more than that having the chassis rebuilt. It's still not working perfectly, so there's more work to be done (particularly on the touch horizontal oscillator tube connections and picture tube connections.)

Mine is a WALNUT version. The unit in the ad is a "blond" wood. Interesting to note that the TV ad does NOT show the power cord and no external TV antenna hookup (although the slots are there for the wires.) It has a "built in" antenna along the inside of the cabinet, which is an interesting idea but doesn't work with a hoot!

I've spent all this time on a 21-inch black-and-white TV because I just love the design. In person, it's MUCH SMALLER than it appears in the ad -- in part because of where the photographer must have been crouched to get the "room divider" look.

And it swivels, too.

A great piece of 1959 history (high praise coming from an RCA guy!)

[RCAGuy]

Originally Posted by truetone36

The Miss America set has the same chassis, CRT, and knobs as your Predicta, but in a more conservative style of cabinet. I have a full set of knobs as well as the CRT, yoke, and CRT bezel from one that I found in a house I demolished. The rest of the set was unfortunately too far gone so I saved these parts and scrapped the rest.

Hmmmm....methinks I'm interested in those parts. In a selling mode?

[RCAGuy]

While the chassis/speaker table is not pictured in my setup, I also had a restored Philco Predicta Tandem operating during Super Bowl Sunday. You can see the tube fired up and running. The large cable snakes across the room, under a couch, to the end-table styled chairside control (with chassis, tuner, speaker inside.) Picked that up a few years ago at the Hilliard Early TV Convention -- and had the set elecronically restored and the (cheapo) cabinet refinished in the same color/style of BLOND wood as the original. This model also came in a WALNUT finish.