Zenith Chromacolor II (Ch. 19EC45) 19" color tabletop TV repair log

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

My grandparents had the console version of this TV in the back bedroom of their old house, it worked except that the picture was b & w rather than color, no matter how much you fiddled with the front panel controls, unfortunately that TV is now burried underground from when my uncle tore the house down.

That doesn't seem right to me. The picture on that TV should have been in color if the set was getting enough signal from the stations. Were your grandparents in a fringe area for Chicago TV (Northern Indiana should be part of the normal service area of Chicago television stations), or was their TV antenna in bad shape or not oriented in the right direction for reception of Chicago stations? If your grandparents were in a near-fringe area for Chicago TV I could see why they would have problems with reliable TV reception, but in northern Indiana they should have been getting each and every TV station in greater Chicago (channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 and whatever UHF stations the area has) very reliably.

I can see, however, why they might have problems with poor reception if they were in a near-fringe area, and were trying to get Chicago TV with anything less than a large outdoor TV antenna. I live in something of a near-fringe area now, having moved here 21 years ago from an eastern Cleveland suburb. The latter is in fact part of the coverage area of every one of the city's six TV stations; however, the village I moved to is in fact a near-fringe area for Cleveland TV stations (especially the CBS affiliate on channel 19, which does not reach here at all without an antenna or cable; I have never forgiven the company which now owns channel 8, Cleveland's former CBS affiliate from 1949 until some time in the 1990s (why didn't they just leave everything alone?), especially now, since all TV stations are digital (this town is some 40 miles southwest of the stations' towers), requiring the use of an outdoor TV antenna or cable to get good reception.

BTW, another reason your grandparents' TV did not show anything in color might well have been that the CRT was on its last legs, or else they didn't know how to properly tune a color TV (the fine tuning must be exact on a color set or else the picture will appear in b&w, even if the station is showing a color program). Another cause may be the color killer control was set so high it caused the killer to cut off the color on everything, including local stations. Did your grandparents ever have this checked by a qualified TV technician? I say this because the rear-panel adjustments on all NTSC televisions (DTV ones too) are not meant to be adjusted by anyone other than qualified persons who know what they are doing. An incorrect setting of any of those controls can damage or destroy parts of the television. One of the best things to happen with modern TV sets, IMHO, was when the secondary controls were hidden from view, so they cannot be messed around with by anyone not qualified to adjust them.