1983 9" Color RCA Colortrac Rescue

[jstout66]

Lucked out and saw this in our local free section on CL.
Was in the RICH part of town. Guy said he bought it new from K-Mart in 1983 on sale for $249.00. He said they took it camping, but it's been sitting in the closet for over 20 years. Came with all the papers and BOTH cords. It can run off of 12V as well. I lucked out on the cords, as I remember someone on here picked up one of these and his was missing. It uses a power cord with a WEIRD end-plug. Great picture altho my camera doesn't show it.
I got it because I told him I collected these. He had had it out at a garage sale and everyone said they would throw it away, and he was PO'd about that...

[walterbeers]

Yea, that a nice set to add to your collection. Works too, and picture looks good. A few minor scratches, but that can be expected for something over 20 years old. It's just too bad there is no analog stations any more, and everything needs a converter. Even so, it can be a good little TV to put into a kitchen or bedroom, etc. I just think it's such a waste that all of these older working sets are being junked, since analog is no more. Of course were in a throw away society.

[wa2ise]

I have one of those, a CTC115.

I used to work for RCA Labs back then, my set say's "pilot run" on the chassis.

[radiotvnut]

I don't blame the guy for getting PO'ed. It's real easy to do when you have something that was considered higher end and cost a good bit of money when it was new, only to have people walk by and make snide remarks about throwing it away. I can almost guarantee that this TV will still be working when their flatscreens are all in the dump.

I recently had the newer version of this set, with the signal seeking tuner. I ran into similar problems trying to find it a home and I eventually let someone I know have it to play video games on it.

[MRX37]

Nice.

Yeah analog being gone really sucks. I would like to get my hands on a good analog transmitter, that can transmit on something other then channels 3 and 4 just to have that capability.

I can't really fault the picture quality of DTV, but analog had better, well I want to say better reception, but really it was more options for pulling in a weak station, and an immediate, visible indicator of how good the signal that you were receiving was. With that gone, something is lost.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I don't blame the guy for getting PO'ed. It's real easy to do when you have something that was considered higher end and cost a good bit of money when it was new, only to have people walk by and make snide remarks about throwing it away.

That sort of thing happened to me once, when I was making a tremendous effort to rescue my old Viking clothes dryer. Some woman made rude comments and told me that I should sell it to a scrap metal dealer. Well, I was going to such an effort to SAVE it from a scrapper. I was going to hide it and rush home for my dolly but I was offered a ride. I've passed up newer machines that were right across my street, and they end up there fairly often. I made the effort to pull a motor from one only to find out it was held together by some industrial adhesive. I won't do that again.

[old_coot88]

Dang, I have an RCA identical to that (but no 12V cord). Tried to find a good home for it in the Classifieds, but no takers.
http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=264575
Label on the back shows 1981 mfg. date.

[Jon A.]

This is the first one I've seen with a glare filter.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by walterbeers

Yea, that a nice set to add to your collection. Works too, and picture looks good. A few minor scratches, but that can be expected for something over 20 years old. It's just too bad there is no analog stations any more, and everything needs a converter. Even so, it can be a good little TV to put into a kitchen or bedroom, etc. I just think it's such a waste that all of these older working sets are being junked, since analog is no more. Of course were in a throw away society.

Analog TV may be nearly dead (except for a few small UHF stations), but that's the way it is, although I don't like the idea. However, I did finally break down and get a Roku player for my flat screen TV a few months ago, and have never looked back. (I kept my cable service, since that is the only way I can receive local TV with the Roku; this is just how their billing system works.) The reception is much better than cable, since the Roku (and most other streaming video players) works with video streams only, not with RF signals; cable TV always compresses and otherwise butchers the signals just so they can add more channels.

As to all the older TVs being junked, yes, that is a waste, since these sets often have plenty of life left in them and will work perfectly well using a cable box, OTA converter, or a streaming video player, to say nothing of a VCR or DVD/Blu-ray player. I have two perfectly good analog CRT TVs here that still work well on cable (Time Warner hasn't yet gotten to the point where its cable service won't work without a cable box, but that day is coming, I'm sure), and will use one if anything should happen to my flat screen set. I tested both with the Roku player and they work just fine.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

As to all the older TVs being junked, yes, that is a waste, since these sets often have plenty of life left in them and will work perfectly well using a cable box, OTA converter, or a streaming video player, to say nothing of a VCR or DVD/Blu-ray player. I have two perfectly good analog CRT TVs here that still work well on cable (Time Warner hasn't yet gotten to the point where its cable service won't work without a cable box, but that day is coming, I'm sure), and will use one if anything should happen to my flat screen set. I tested both with the Roku player and they work just fine.

Looks like that day will be August 28th for Eastlink.

[zeno]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

Looks like that day will be August 28th for Eastlink.

Looks like the same crap we get in the states.
BTW what happened to Red Green ? Now that was a great
show but disappeared before NTSC .

73 Zeno

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

Looks like that day will be August 28th for Eastlink.

They could be deleting only that guide channel or a piece of the analog spectrum....TWC here killed the analog band TVGuide channel long ago, but many analog channels are still running.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by zeno

BTW what happened to Red Green ? Now that was a great
show but disappeared before NTSC .

73 Zeno

No idea. It was a good show for sure, I used to watch it all the time.

Originally Posted by Electronic M

They could be deleting only that guide channel or a piece of the analog spectrum....TWC here killed the analog band TVGuide channel long ago, but many analog channels are still running.

Could be. Some channels have been dropped lately, and I get an occasional scrolling message on others that say they're being "upgraded". That guide is all but useless anyway, I kept it on most of the day recently trying to find the special on Pluto.

[Jeffhs]

I have a Time Warner Cable account and still have the cable connected to my TV, but I don't use it, preferring instead to watch my favorite shows via my Roku 1 streaming player and LG Blu-ray. Couldn't care less what happens to the channel packages on TW's Standard TV service. The guide channel is now on TW's digital tiers only, on channel 230 if memory serves me correctly.

The Roku players already have a program guide, accessed through the main menu after clicking on the TWC TV app on the home screen, so the loss of the Time Warner analog program guide channel (formerly on channel 13 in my area) doesn't bother me. The only thing I wondered about at first was why the on-screen program guide from the Roku shows the local TV stations on their analog channel positions, rather than their actual channel numbers; for example, CBS channel 19 in Cleveland is listed as channel 4 on the guide, channel 25 (PBS) is listed as channel 10, and so on. I asked about this on TWC's Roku forum and was informed that the guide is indeed out of date; however, when or even if the guide will be rewritten to show the network stations on their correct channels remains to be seen.

[DavGoodlin]

Throw it away !!!! Most people have completely lost their marbles on what is quality and collectible.

I just found the same TV at the Habitat ReStore and it was only $5 what a great example of RCA's fine product in the 80s