Re: Who remembers how bad analogue television was?

On 28/02/2025 03:03, KevinJ93 wrote:

On 2/27/25 12:45 PM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 27/02/2025 19:58, KevinJ93 wrote:

On 2/26/25 8:52 PM, Sylvia Else wrote:

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Are you sure that 1984 date is correct? By 1970 in the UK colour TVs
used transistor signal processing stages and many had already changed
to transistors for the power stages such as line and frame output as
well as using chopper stabilised power supplies.

>
The first two colour TVs I recall owned by friends or family were about
the time of Apollo 8 in 1968. Memorable for the Earth rise shot. Both
were entirely valves and my uncle's caught fire leaving a nasty brown
burn mark on their wool carpet and smoke damage on the ceiling.
>
The earliest was at a school friends house and was in pastel shades pre
Nd glass. It was in colour but only just... Joe 90 launch was the first
programme I can recall watching there in colour. Test cards in shops
don't count.
>
I'd believe 1974 as a date for hybrid colour TVs that almost worked
correctly and didn't need a service engineer visiting them every other
week. By 1980 I'm pretty sure they were almost entirely semiconductor
based.

 My father bought a Ferguson 19" colour TV at the end of 1970 that was
fully semiconductor (it was my first term at university and he got it
just before I came back for Christmas). It seemed to work fairly well -
he would tinker with it but I don't remember it needing any significant
repair. I gather it was one of the first such sets.

The first domestic UK colour sets were valve-based. However, it wasn't long before transistor sets came in. See page 22 at <https://americanradiohistory.com/UK/Practical-Television/60s/Practical-Television-1968-06.pdf#search=%22practical%20television%22>. This was the June 1968 edition of Practical Television, and it refers to the new 19" Marconiphone Model 4701 as being "fully transistorised". More details can be found in Practical TV July and September 1967. What's amazing to me is the price - "284 guineas". So just short of £300 in 1968; equivalent to £4500 today!!!
--
Jeff