Old timers - what was the first color tv set at your house?

Zenith - "The Quality Goes In Before The Name Goes On".

 

There were two things I desparately wanted as a kid: a color TV and an electric guitar. We finally got the color TV in, I guess, around 1969. It was an MGA (as Mitsubishi was called at that time) 17 inch. I was thrilled to death. Couldn't wait to see the NBC Peacock. This TV had a really good picture, the best I had ever seen, better than the ones I'd seen at the appliance stores, or at my Aunt's house.

I never did get the electric guitar. My parents got me a classical acoustic and had me take classical guitar lessons. I just wanted to play Last Train To Clarksville. Sigh. The lessons didn't last too long, don't know what happened to the guitar.

Jeff

 

On Sept. 27, 1948, Fort Worth's WBAP-TV became the first commercial television station in Texas and televised a speech by Harry S Truman. Six years later WBAP would claim yet another first -- the first color program in the state and only the second local color show in the nation. WBAP-TV eventually changed its call letters to KXAS-TV.

Here is a site listing early color television studio facilities ...

 

Our first color TV was a Magnavox in the late 60s. Those Saturday morning cartoons were never the same!

 

My grandad was an early technology freak, a very early adopter. He had the first TV on his block, the very first transistor radio released and a very early RCA color TV. In January, 1969, I took him shopping to finally replace the RCA with a new TV. When he bought it, I got the RCA, & got it into my bedroom just in time to see The Beatles perform Revolution on The Smothers Brothers Show that night!

 

I remember a game show host proclaiming that next week "you'll see us in color and you will see what a nice tie I'm wearing". It sounded exciting to 6-year-old me. Seven days later, I rushed home from school to watch but couldn't see the difference. Years later, I understood that one needed a color TV to appreciate a color show.

The first color I saw came when our next door neighbour invited us (plus most of the block) around to see his new set. All I remember was that it was a football game and that he kept working to fix the picture.

 

It's never too late to answer the question, heh heh. In my house, it wasn't until our family moved to England (and my Dad had a well paying job) that we got our first colour (English spelling) set in 1974.

In addition, the resolution in England was much better - their system had c. 50% more lines plus superior feeds from a direct antenna (rather than primitive cable). Made a huge difference.

 

Wow, Steve, that really brings back memories for me. I too, was a Color TV junkie back then. I remember that I would make a beeline for the TV department in any store we went to just to watch in color while my parents shopped. Sometime around '67 or so I became a little bold: our local W.T. Grants store sold their own brand of television (Bradford, made by Westinghouse, I believe), but they just plugged in the sets and never bothered to adjust them, so I started adjusting the sets for the best picture I could get from the front panel controls (naturally). One of the salesmen started to tell me to leave the sets alone, but when he sold one to a customer after I had adjusted it, he was always glad to see me in the store.

Our first color set was a 23" Magnavox console which my parents bought in December 1968, the first thing we watched after the technicians set up the TV was "White Christmas" and I remember being transfixed by the brilliant color.

 

A Nice 1966 Zenith "Loyola" I think it was. Boy do I remember how great "Jeanie" and "The Monkees" looked on that set.


What innocent times they were when we got so much pleasure out of a half hour show.

 

Same here. Actually, we did have color up until 1966, when my parents got divorced. Then we didn't get another color set until the end of 1974. It was a 25" RCA color console. Man, the first thing we saw on it was the last bit of an ABC Movie of the Week "Dirty Larry, Crazy Mary". Before then, we had a 1966 model Philco-Ford 19" B&W set. For the period between May 1974 and November 1974, we had no TV set at all.

 

Yes indeedy, Steve. I pestered my parents like crazy to buy a color TV, when they finally bought one, they chose a great set. I remember being very impressed that the Magnavox set they bought was very pricey ($850 in '68 was about $3500 in today's money) since my mom was always very frugal. It had a great picture, though, and lasted 20 years before giving up the ghost (my stepbrother used it from '83 on). I remember my stepfather saying that their new television had "phony" looking color compared to the old Magnavox, and I had to agree. It wasn't until I bought my new HDTV set last year that I saw a color picture that was the equal of the old set (with a much sharper image too).

 

1965. A Zenith, which lasted 10 years and 3,000 miles of moving. It even had a remote control, which was nice for us kids, because until then, WE were the remote control!

Batman, Star Trek, and the Banana Splits all in beautiful color. Thanks, Dad.

 

In 1980 a friend of mine had just gotten out of grad school and was still dirt poor so they only had a B&W TV. Some of his friends came over who had children of about age five. When one of them saw the B&W TV they started to cry because they thought it was broken.

 

Personally, seeing Judy & Penny in "Living Color" on Lost in Space pushed me into puberty

 

I'd guestimate that it was early in the fall season of 1965 that the family was wandering around in the TV department of Sears Roebuck & Co. My family was very big on Sears back then - anything we needed - it was off to Sears.

Anyway, they had this big boxy 19" Silvertone on sale and my Mom and Dad were impressed enough to get one. Loaded it up in the family station wagon and set it up in the living room. That fall, many of the prime time shows were being broadcast in color. It was a changeover year for the networks, NBC leading the way with most shows in color. I think they ony had two shows that weren't in color: "I Dream Of Jeannie" and a show called "Convoy". The reasoning I read was that "Jeannie" required a lot of special effects - too expensive for color, and "Convoy" was a WWII show with a lot of black & white stock footage.

CBS and ABC had about half of their shows in color. I remember being sad that Dick Van Dyke was still black & white - always a favorite show.

Most people remember NBC's color peacock announcements. Anyone remember ABC and CBS's answer to those logos? If not go to:

http://www.roadode.com/ and click on Tubetown. From there, you can click on the little TV to see the NBC Peacock and further down, go to "In Color" to see ABC and CBS's color logos.

 

Did it have a Beatle wig?

 

My first color television was purchased in 76 (I know it was late). I remember researching televisions in Consumer Reports. My choices were between a RCA Colortrack and a Sony Trinitron. Like a fool, I chose the RCA. It was a 19 inch table top; I bet it weighed close to 100 lbs.