Same for me. A big Magnavox console with 15 inch speakers and 12 inch horns and real wood that closed doors on the 23, yes 23 inch picture tube. Great picture even by the best modern low-def standards. The only analog tv that the Red did not bleed, that astounded the repairman whenever he came over which was about once a month. A tube that looked like a 300B always needed replacing. It was purchased I think at Friendly Frost on Long Island. Take care, John M.
I don't think my dad popped for a color TV until around 1969 or so, so we were behind the curve I'm sure. Back then I think the way the cabinet looked on a TV or console "hi-fi" might have been as important as the electronics. These big wood honkin' babies were a statement in the living room so they had to "go along" with the other furniture in the room. I'll bet my mom had as much input in buying the TV as my dad did, solely based on how the thing looked.
That's a great picture. Of course in real life all the sets would be on and turned to NBC because, believe it or not, up until 1965 or so, NBC was the only network that actually broadcast anything in color! Sometimes, an entire show would be in black & white and every so often a color commercial would be on. That was exciting to us kids. And I remember as it came closer to 1965-66, the local kiddie shows had the host in monochrome and only the cartoons (Felix The Cat, Wally Gator, etc.) would be in color. By 1967 all the local stations here bit the bullet and bought color cameras so their news, etc. could be in color (non-NBC affiliates, I mean). I remember watching it all as a kid with great interest. Why else would I watch a turkey cartoon like Wally Gator? Even Deputy Dawg was in color on channel 11 by 1965, but the commercials were still in black & white. Same like you can watch a high def show today but some of the commercials are still in low def. Ad agencies were always slow to catch on..
Now that's well-done! [Should have been a SPECIAL, too.] My family never had a color set until my senior year of high school, 1972. My father kept complaining that "color TV's not perfected yet." I believe that was a Zenith as well -- no remote, click-stop tuner, a total piece of crap. I did watch color TV on neighbors' sets once in awhile, going back to Bonanza around 1962-1963. I think most of the 1960s I saw was on a B&W portable, and sometimes on my parents' late-1960s Magnavox "gutless wonder" console. Not that I think about it, my grandparents did have a Packard-Bell color console in the late 1960s, which they insisted was the best color TV in the world... Oh, yeah, I did that, too -- I can recall running down on Saturday morning to watch the color TVs in Tampa department stores, like Maas Brothers, Belk-Lindsay, and some of the national chains like Sears, Monkey-Wards, and Western Auto. If one would throw me out, I'd ride my bike down to the next one. Eh, when you're 8 or 9 years old, ya do what ya gotta do.
Funny, my parents would bribe the cigar smoking TV salesman to watch me. She'd sort of flirt with him or something (my little kid mind didn't care). But I was so polite, and so helpful that they never threw me out, always let me change channels (our KCOP Channel 13 here had travelogues in color as far back as 1961) and let me do the color adjusting so all the sets looked as perfect as they could be. Funny what you remember. All the TV sales guys looked the same in all the stores, cigar, dusty suit, paunchy, balding, gruff but with a heart of gold (or so I hoped at the time).. I can still smell the cigars.. I remember one guy listening to what was playing in the stereo section and saying "How can they listen to that trash?" He was talking about the Beatles REVOLVER. 45 years ago, yikes, seems like yesterday in my mind.
Colour TV wasn't broadcast in Australia till 1975. We got our first set (a Rank Arena) in '78. I remember going over to my grandparents' house to watch their colour TV the first time The Wizard of Oz was shown in colour on Australian TV. Those flying monkeys scared the bejeezus out of me. And here's how colour TV was introduced in Australia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6ETsZnto8
we had a large wood consul Color RCA TV with AM/FM and phonograph built in...all tubes. ...and back then to me the record player kicked azz! played all my Beatles albums on that set. It was heaven.
We never had a console with a TV in it but several of my friends did. Loved the sound of those things, loud and pretty Hi-Fi.
it was wonderful back then...powerful stuff for a youngster playing his Beatles albums...LOUD! My Mom was heavy into music and she had that player going everyday! went through needles like crazy. The RCA service guy knew our address blindfolded...such wonderful time...the memories are making me smile.
We did. Thing was HUGE. Good sized B&W screen, lid raised on the top, there was the record changer, and enough storage space for about 50 LPs (stacked of course). Large stereo speakers on either side of the screen. REAL wood, extremely heavy to move.
They did, but it is hard to convey to younger people what it was like back in the early 1960s. If you went in to a TV store, there were perhaps 60 TV sets, some stores had less, and they were all on, all tuned to the same station. The picture was usually not in color but in black & white. You would stand there watching for an hour and if you were lucky, something came on in color. All of a sudden that NBC Peacock would flash on and the color sets would light up with color and we would all go "ahhhhhhhhhh". When the show was over, it was back to all black & white for perhaps the rest of the day with only an occasional commercial in color. It's hard to get people to realize that now but back then a show coming on in color all of a sudden was like a miracle. It was very seductive. Now it means nothing. Heck, if an image comes on our TV in black & white I go "ahhhhhhhhh" now... What I am saying is that when that NBC Peacock started a show, it was truly exciting. But one could go hours without seeing anything in color back then. The idea of spending a fortune for a few color shows was just for the rich. That changed with BONANZA and DISNEY. All of a sudden there was more of a reason to get an expensive TV. 1964 was the year that Color TV production started to explode. Since RCA made all the 21 inch "roundie" tri-color picture tubes for all brands of sets they could barely meet demand.. By 1965, even grumpy old CBS bit the big one and converted all studios to color. The black & white era was over.
from memory.. this is a pretty close match to our first color tv (1967/1968) the 15k pitch from the flyback transformer used to drive me nuts. this beast rocked strong till 1981'ish
Although, NBC did do some early color "Spectaculars" in the mid-to-late 1950s. I was always said when somebody would bring in a 16mm B&W kinescope of some 1958-1959 show, and the peacock would be in the open, and I'd think, "I bet somewhere, there might be a 2" color lowband tape of this show, sitting on a shelf, deteriorating." I know of cases with rock & roll history shows where they took some pre-1963 color clips and changed them to B&W, because the producers thought that the color "made them look too modern." !!! This is pretty close to the early-1960s Packard-Bell TV my grandparents owned: I agree with Direwolf above: the 15.7kHz horizontal flyback transformers in tube TV sets used to drive me crazy in my teens and 20s. Sadly, a lotta sound mixing has tapered off my ability to hear that high nowadays.
My first looked like that also or close to it. I do remember it did NOT have the stereo, just the TV. The old Zenith anchor. Built like a tank and gave you a hernia trying to move it! My memory is fuzzy, but it had to be either 1968 or 1969. I do remember missing Batman in color. One of my classmates made MANY friends because her family had a color set. Naturally, when the Zenith broke and couldn't be fixed, we did what most everybody did in our region - put a set ON TOP of the console!
Batman is also the first show I remember seeing in COLOR !! Our family didn't buy a color set till Christmas of 1968, it was a 'portable' Hitachi. The thing wasn't really that small and was very heavy. Seems one of the first things I remember on IT was coverage of the Apollo 8 mission that was happening Christmas week. We didn't have a remote with it and always used the built in Rabbit Ears for the antenna.
Regarding the watching of TV at another's house because of color: In our neighborhood, I think we were the first to get a color TV. I remember some of the neighbors specifically timing their visits to coincide with a showing of BATMAN or RED SKELTON. I was never a huge BATMAN fan, but the exaggerated color they used made even our meager Sears color TV look good. Another instance I recall was my older sister's family coming to visit and my brother-in-law, a sports nut, marveling at how he could actually see the football on a Sunday afternoon game telecast in color. Again, I'm not a football fan, but other than games for the hometown Philadelphia Eagles, football games were usually VERY colorful. (I've always marveled at how UN-colorful Eagles games look. Their bland-green uniforms blend into the green field and don't stand out at all.) I remember the 15K whistle that these old sets produced. It usually began about five or so minutes after the set warmed up and might continue on and off, or just disappear later on. Some of us were more attuned to it than others - I guess hearing acuity controlled that. Another thing I remember was that something was not adjusted right in the back of the set initially... something called a "color killer". IIRC, it was the circuitry that allowed black & white shows to look black & white and not have stray colors mushing up the picture. Anyway, something was amiss with that circuitry on our set and for some reason it liked to pick on HOGAN'S HEROES to manifest itself. The show was in color, but a lot of it was dark scenes, and this TV would go into it's black & white mode during those dark scenes. A TV repairman came to the house (remember those?) and adjusted things so that shows like HOGAN'S HEROES would once again be colorful. When we first got the TV, just about everything in Philly came from the three network affiliates, 3,6, and 10, and PBS was on channel 12. We were one of those markets that had no UHF stations until around 1964 when a local broadcaster signed on channel 29 (now Philly's FOX-owned affiliate). That channel began life with a transmitter in a different location in the city, resulting in a pretty poor, snowy signal. They had virtually no color shows on their schedule, except when they'd take an ABC program that channel 6 opted not to carry. I remember watching DARK SHADOWS as it began life on that snowy channel 29. Once it became a hit, channel 6 added it to their schedule. And when DARK SHADOWS went to color, it was a huge event in our household. Harry
First color show I ever saw was around 1964 I think and it was The Wonderful World Of Disney at an aunt's house. I remember in the 80s seeing a Monkees episode on MTV and was surprised how colorful it was. Had just seen B&W before.
I believe the first color show I watched was Batman in the early 60s during a visit to NYC (I was 10 or so). I could be wrong, I may be remembering a View Master of the show.
WOW WOW!!! I saw a color TV!!!! Love this RCA ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtnsHJCex3s&feature=related By the time I was old enough to actually watch TV color was the standard. Born in '69, whenever I saw a B&W TV it was already a novelty by that point! Excluding portables, of course. We even had one of those. dan c
First one we got was in 67, a Sears Silvertone that was a piece of crap and always breaking down. Back then, at least to my eyes, Sony was head and shoulders better than any other brand. I remember how expensive they were. I also remember being surprised that Gilligan wore a red shirt and the skipper a blue one. I had always imagined Gilligan in a green shirt and the skipper in a red one.
I honestly don't remember when my parents finally got a color set. I'm sure it was after I graduated from high school in '73. We had a b&w Zenith console from the early 60s until then. They added a box that allowed us to get UHF channels sometime in the late 60s. In my room, I had a hand-me-down Sylvania "portable" b&w TV. It was a perfectly square, salmon and white metal box. A lightning strike finally fried it around 1970.
