Is this Sylvania worthwhile?

[ESigma25]

Spotted this neat old Sylvania on Facebook, not a whole lot of pictures but enough for me to be able to identify "GTE" and "GTMatic" branding...any idea what era this set is from, and any inkling of whether it would be worth my time?

https://i.imgur.com/TEg1HHC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/g0J820i.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/lnVM1Sz.jpg

[zeno]

The were a very good set BUT the CRT's didnt last long.
If its free it may be worth taking, if not you gotta pay to dump it.
I would want to see any raster first or a game.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[ESigma25]

Originally Posted by zeno

The were a very good set BUT the CRT's didnt last long.
If its free it may be worth taking, if not you gotta pay to dump it.
I would want to see any raster first or a game.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

Hmm, I definitely don't feel like taking on a potential bad CRT. Thanks!

[vortalexfan]

I have a TV just like that (just a different style cabinet) its from about 1974 or thereabouts, they were Solid State (at least mine is) and when they have proper working picture tubes they have a nice picture, fairly comparable to the Zenith CCII sets from the same time period.

But as Zeno stated they do have issues with being short lived picture tubes in these sets, mine thankfully was a low hours set that was mainly used as furniture by the previous owners who were the original owners of the set.

If its free, just go over and ask the owner if you can plug the set in and try it out (bring a VCR with a known good video tape) to test the TV with and as long as the picture isn't all washed out looking and you don't have to have the brightness and contrast cranked all the way up to see the picture and has decent color (has green greens and blue blues and flesh-tones that look normal) then the TV is probably fine, but if it looks like crap when you test it out, don't take it, that's the beauty of freebies.

[ARC Tech-109]

Personally I'd grab it even with a weak jug, they're not a very common set in the collector world and if you have a pix tube tester/rejuvinator it wouldn't be an issue. I had the 25" hybrid variant GTE/Sylvania and it was rock solid only needing some tuner fish. To me they're an underappreciated set that's simple and reliable.

[AlanInSitges]

It's a desirable cabinet style, and odds are that if the CRT is weak you can give it a little bump to get some more life out of it. Get it going, zap the picture tube, clean it up, and if you don't love it, sell it to a hipster or Etsy mom as "MCM".

[Jeffhs]

I had an uncle, now long since deceased, who owned a Sylvania 23" b&w console TV. His must have been from the early 1960s or even late '50s, as it did not have UHF; it was just as well, I guess, since Cleveland (where he lived at the time) did not get its first UHF TV station, a PBS (then NET) affiliate, until some time in 1965. He replaced this TV with a smaller (I'd guess around 17", no bigger than 19") Admiral color portable which did have all-channel tuning, as required in all TVs made after April 30, 1964. He kept the Sylvania b&w set to use as a stand for the Admiral TV.

I have absolutely no idea what happened to either the Admiral portable or the Sylvania console after my uncle passed away, as this was quite a while ago (read many decades). If I had to guess, however, I would say someone in his family took the Admiral color set, with the Sylvania b&w console probably put out with the trash when the latter finally quit (bad CRT, power transformer, flyback transformer, or . . . ).

BTW, I was not aware that the CRTs (B&W and color) in Admiral televisions were so short-lived, as I read in another post. Was this because the tubes were being imported from a no-name offshore factory with a shady reputation for quality, while the TV chassis itself was made here in the USA? If this was the case, it was a darned shame, as Admiral TVs weren't half bad, to the best of my knowledge. (The only other thing I can think of is many Admiral CRTs had problems with X-rays, an issue which was very serious with color sets of all makes in the 1970s.) As I said, my uncle's Admiral color portable worked very well as long as he was alive, and was probably inherited by someone in his family after his death. It probably quit for good long before the DTV transition in 2008.

[radiotvnut]

Those sets produced a heck of a picture and that dark-face CRT is highly desirable, if it's still good (unfortunately, they often didn't hold up well). If it was free or cheap and if I had the space, I'd take it and if the tube was weak, I'd bump it with a good CRT rejuvenator and hope that it would last until I found another tube. Years ago, I stuck a Zenith Chromacolor II tube in one of these and the results were good. As far as the chassis, the main things that died on them were HV triplers.

[zeno]

A few comments on Sylvania sets from this era.
There were two major chassii & maybe some hybrids for value sets.
GT Matics introed an important feature, the hoz / vert count down circuit.
Basically there was a master hoz / vert osc that divided down the
osc. If you change channels you usually saw the vert blanking bar for
a few seconds before it snapped in. This became the industry standard on most better sets.
Chassii
1) IIRC the E-08 was 13, 17 & most 19" sets. Better models had the "Dark Lite" CRT & were in line CRT's. One board with plug in semi's & fold out chassis. Great pix on them & easy service.
2) High end 19" & 25" sets had a 3 module chassis & delta CRT's. They were
the ones with short CRT life. Looking back for a few years all sizes of
dark lite had the best pix out there. So why the bad CRT's ? IMO
they drove them too hard to overcome the dark glass. New sets on a
black scene had REAL blacks unlike others. The in line jugs seemed to handle
things much better.

enuf fer now
73 Zeno
LFOD !

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

Those sets produced a heck of a picture and that dark-face CRT is highly desirable, if it's still good (unfortunately, they often didn't hold up well). If it was free or cheap and if I had the space, I'd take it and if the tube was weak, I'd bump it with a good CRT rejuvenator and hope that it would last until I found another tube. Years ago, I stuck a Zenith Chromacolor II tube in one of these and the results were good. As far as the chassis, the main things that died on them were HV triplers.

Why didn't the CRTs in these televisions last very long? If the sets which used this CRT made a great picture, and the tube itself was a dark-face one, I would have thought these tubes would have been made to last. After all, when these TVs were new, they were made here in the US, not offshore like today's TVs and almost everything else are made these days.

I honestly don't know why the dark-glass tubes did not last as long as other types did. Color televisions, after all, were not cheap, most going for $1000 or more (!) when they first came out; most people kept these older TVs as long as they worked, unlike today's flat screens, which are generally thrown out with the trash when they fail and are replaced with another no-name FS TV which will last a short time, then will be trashed and.....here we go again.

I would think the tubes in early color sets would have been made to last at least as long as the rest of the set. What on earth, again, was it about Sylvania CRTs that gave them such a poor reputation for quality? I would not have thought (in fact, I would never have even imagined) a company like Sylvania would use junky CRTs in its televisions, at least the ones from the 1950s until the beginning of the HDTV era.

Sheeeeesh.

[old_tv_nut]

Jeff, CRTs, like all tubes, are in wear-out mode from the first use. The speed of wearout depends on the cleanliness of the manufacture plus the current density of the cathode, that is one of its design aspects. The size of the cathode affects the spot size and resolution of a CRT, so there is a balancing act between gun design, resolution, brightness, and life. I don't think Sylvania had a particularly bad process, but running these particular type numbers surely had more stress on the guns to make up for the dark glass, and may have had comparatively more stress if the guns were designed with a bias toward finer spot size. There's no free lunch.

You can find plenty of notes on this site about certain Zenith CRT types that had poor life compared to others that were long-term performers - all produced by the same company.

Another anecdote about electron guns - when Sony came out with high definition Saticons for HDTV cameras, the cathodes were so small (in order to get the fine scanning spot) that they were guaranteed for only 800 hours. At Zenith, we replaced the tubes in our $800,000 experimental HDTV camera as a precaution, somewhere around twice that number of hours, at a cost of $85,000. I recall our CEO asking if we could leave the camera running for impromptu demos, and quickly changing his mind when we explained the facts of CRT life.

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Why didn't the CRTs in these televisions last very long? If the sets which used this CRT made a great picture, and the tube itself was a dark-face one, I would have thought these tubes would have been made to last. After all, when these TVs were new, they were made here in the US, not offshore like today's TVs and almost everything else are made these days.

I honestly don't know why the dark-glass tubes did not last as long as other types did. Color televisions, after all, were not cheap, most going for $1000 or more (!) when they first came out; most people kept these older TVs as long as they worked, unlike today's flat screens, which are generally thrown out with the trash when they fail and are replaced with another no-name FS TV which will last a short time, then will be trashed and.....here we go again.

I would think the tubes in early color sets would have been made to last at least as long as the rest of the set. What on earth, again, was it about Sylvania CRTs that gave them such a poor reputation for quality? I would not have thought (in fact, I would never have even imagined) a company like Sylvania would use junky CRTs in its televisions, at least the ones from the 1950s until the beginning of the HDTV era.

Sheeeeesh.

GT Matic and SuperSets drove the CRT very hard. Which is why the reduced CRT lifespan. These sets ran harder.