Remember Your First Color TV Set?
On January 22, 2014
- TV History
Remember Your First Color TV Set?
This RCA model is the one our family had and we got it in 1964. What do your remember about your first color set?
A 10″ RCA ‘console’ and the other was a Columbia (CBS) spinning wheel TV. Late 40s or early 50s. de K6RLA
Bonanza, Rose Parade and Johnny Carson…
When color TV was introduced in Brazil in 1972, I was 11. I remember my father bought a Philips 26 inch, identical to this photo. It was one of the first color TV models produced in Brazil. By imposition of the Brazilian military government (1964-1985), the color TV system used here was the PAL-M (PAL – 525/60Hz) which prohibited the import of color TVs. (photo from Museum of the Pioneers of Brazilian TV).
I remember very well when we got our first color television around 1964. We bought it from Beasley’s Electronics in Longview. At that time the only regularly scheduled television show in color was Bonanza but that was enough.
I built it! Heathkit.
Dad insisted we weren’t getting a color TV until they became dependable. We got our 1st color TV about 1970, it was a “works in a drawer” Motorola, the model with 3 or 4 vacuum tubes. We used it for 20 years.
Our first color set was precisely the model shown here. Dad bought it so we could bring over the neighbors to watch Mary Martin as “Peter Pan” live on NBC. My duties were to (A) adjust the motorized rooftop antenna to bring in either the two Dayton, Ohio stations WLD-D (Ch. 2) and WHIO (7), or Cincinnati’s WLW-T (5), WCPO (9) and WKRC (12), and (B) to try to balance the three color guns to get fleshtones right…a nearly impossible task.
We got our first color TV in 1970.
1967 CTC-25 chassis series. Ran for 25 years until sockets and PC board failed on the demodulator.
A 1971 12 inch Sharp “luggable” tube set that cost $177. It lasted (as our only TV) until some time in the late 80’s….with the UHF functioning because I jammed a piece of plastic into the panel on the turret that stuck out the back of the drum to make contact with the leads from the separate UHF tuner. That repair was good for the remaining life of the set. I think it died of a blown power supply after what must have been a staggering number of hours of operation.
The thing that I remember was always fooling with the color setting the skin tones were never right. No wonder we called our system NTSC, that stood for “NEVER THE SAME COLOR”
Ours was a “Motorola Quasar, probably a 27” model — with “the works in the drawer!”, of course — must have been 1968…
A faint memory of the CBS color system with the spinning wheel. But full memory of the RCA color TV from the early 1960s. Not much programming–the Late movies starting at 11:30 PM and 2 AM on a Saturday night were great. Funny how we stayed up so late just to watch movies (The Music Man) in color on the TV! My Mom had that TV until the mid 1980s. Our children could not understand why people did that late night viewing just to see it in color. You had to be there to understand!
Yeah – I ended up buying it since my parents didn’t believe in “color TV”. It was a 13″ portable that I bought used from someone. I don’t remember the make but it worked pretty good.
we had the first color set on the block. I think it was an Admiral 25″. our house was very popular lol
Ours was in the early to mid 1960’s and it was a 26″ RCA in a large wooden cabinet. We were the first in our neighborhood to have a color tv, so lots of kids would be parked in front of it every time an episode of Superman aired (once it was in color, of course). My parents couldn’t afford to buy the set, so my grandmother got it for us.
It was a 13″ Trinitron in the early ’70s. That set lasted a long time. Even after the tuner knob broke off, my dad just clamped on a set of vise grips and it kept on going 😉
A 19″ Zenith “Works in a Drawer”, in the late ’60s. I don’t remember the first color show we watched. My wife certainly does, however: she and her mother were avid viewers of the Merv Griffin Show, and their first set was purchased specifically to see the costumes of the dancers and guests. Merv’s guests that first night with their new color set? Four priests!
The late 60s in UK. I was a TV trainee repairman. The HV section was in a fire proof cage, and the slider switch from 405 B&W to 625 line colour carried a few KV and produced a nasty arc. They also stank of ozone.
My grandparents had a similar set, all-channel. They gave it to us a decade later and that was our family’s first color set.
1964 RCA New Vista. Every time it got moved we had to call the repairman out to converge it. Good picture and LA had several stations airing color programs. I also tuned in to the color bars in the morning before the first program of the day just to see color!
Panasonic 19″ from the late 1970’s. Great picture. We also were one of the first with a VCR… Quasar top loader. The VCR trucked along until the mid 1990’s and the TV lasted thru our move in 1999 when it was damaged.
I remember that you could break your thumbnail using the remote channel clicker! It has huge resistance on the buttons!
my First Tv color was a Grundig W8250 in 1976
Our first color set was 1961 21″ RCA