@Blondie SL The little green is probably the green crt gun burnt out not the camera. This is probably a high hour set and it's very old so it's not strange that CRT is tired. The video was shot in 2008 I doubt It was done by a vcr camera, but then again the video was made by the hipster who has a room full of these very old tvs, so you might be right there is a slight chance it wasn't filmed with a digital camera at all.
Extraordinary performance for the era. Too bad not a lot of color was being broadcast in 1956 but the owner would have been the envy of the neighborhood when a color program was available. Obviously WAY ahead of it's time! This was cutting edge back then.
Wow, it actually blows me away how good the picture looks on this set! I'd wager that there are very few sets like this around today that still work this flawlessly. I hope this set is still in good shape after 14 years.
anyone else remember that wonderful aroma of a hot wooden TV cabinet. If you left the TV on long enough there would be this sweet aroma of warm wood and hot electronics
Ah, the magic of old tube TVs. I also remember the sound coming on before the picture, and the little white dot in the center of the screen when you turned the set off.
Absolutely! When I was a kid, At night I was always sticking my head around back to see the MAGIC AND A LITTLE SCARY GLOW of the tubes.and awesome smell of hot electronics!! I still get my fix from a 1954 Zenith am fm phonograph console that works perfectly.has the cobramatic turn table too. My great uncle left it to me when he passed in 1994, at 100!! He knew how much I liked it . He bought it new..it has lots of glowing tubes and the familiar odor that goes with it. I also have several Zenith table top radios, one from 1961, the other 1964. Both tube types, and playing well. Also have a 1941 Zenith floor model radio that belonged to my mother's parent's. She told me on December 7, 1941 when pearl harbor was bombed, everyone listened to everything happening on THAT RADIO! Still works!!
When RCA got the final FCC approval for their system, the equipment was capable of producing an excellent picture. However, consumers didn't see that for another 10 years. The TK-41 color cameras produced great picture as did the sets, but only if you watched it on a closed circuit. They had not yet figured out how to transmit a stable color signal that was shielded from outside interface that required viewers to adjust the color every few minutes. Several innovations were developed that overcame these problems and allowed the public to see just how good color TV really was. By 1964, sales of color sets started to take off. The researchers and technicians at RCA did an incredible job. In fact, the NTSC system that was originally derided all over the world because of it's initial instabilities, wasn't really tossed aside when we switched to digital HDTV. It's still the basis for producing a color image. ......
Wow. So cool. Most people alive now don't remember how revolutionary color TV was. Of course most people alive now do not remember when there was no TV. My dad bought a color TV because "Bonanza" was in color. It cost a LOT of money in 1965. I was thrilled because I could watch "Lost in Space" in color.
I love Lost in Space! They're re-running it here in the UK at the moment, and in fact, tonight's episode was the first colour one, the one with the earthquakes, where they finally blasted off the Jupiter 2...
@@danieldaniels7571 Amazingly, the price of an average color TV back then is about the same as an average HDTV today. However, if you spent $500 for a good 21-inch console color TV in the early 1970s it would be the equivalent of $3,300 in today's money.
Around '66, a nice, older couple on our block had a super-rare color console TV. They let a 9 year-old, yours truly, watch a retina-melting episode of the hot new "Batman" show; I swear, it was combo of Eden, and an acid trip. I'll never forget it.
This surviving set deserves better programming, Peter Gunn,for example. (sure It's slightly newer than this set and B/W but a faithful to the era test of the "color kller" and would not offend the 'ol girl!)
worked for an rca dealer in the 60's. bought a used ctc15 console and remember changing the sulphide crt for a newer rebuilt rare earth model. thrilled my new mrs. first program we watched together was "family affair" with the intro kaleidoscope pattern. those were the days for a young married tech. barry.
@@atariforever2002 Well content is a very subjective thing anyway but most of the shows but not all of them are pretty crappy there are a few good ones.
Fantastic. Its a credit to you for doing the restoration work. The picture & sound are excellent. The CRT was obviously built to last. A piece of History to admire!
In reality, the round 21" tubes lasted between 5 and 10 years when used daily. I changed a hundred of them easy. Of course, there are many for whatever reason just defied physics it seems and ran much longer. My dad's CTC11 needed it's original sulfide phosphor tube changed around 1969 (ten years) and the replacement tube (hi lite phosphor) went to 1977 before we scrapped the TV for an XL-100.
And the good old days of listening to vinyl records that popped and skipped and you had to turn them over to hear the other side. I remember one vinyl record I bought that when I opened it, there was no music on the disk. It was just a blank vinyl disc with no grooves, not even a hole for the spindle. I took it back to the store and they couldn’t believe it either. 🙄🤭 They did exchange it for another copy of the record . They opened it in the store to make sure it was a good record.
I had a brother who was mentally retarded. He had a habit of filling his mouth with water and spitting it on stuff. One time he spit a mouth full of water into the back of our TV set. Was not pretty what happened next! 🤭😱
Let me add a little history...My Dad was an RCA dealer and we had the very first color TV in town, he also sold the first color tv in town and I grew up in the business and running the business till 1985. The very first color TVs used a vertical chassis and the top of the cabinet was hinged, it would raise up for servicing, they had a boat load of tubes and your TV tech was your best friend! At first there was only one hour of color TV broadcast per week, RCA owned NBC and talked Disney into being the first program, Disney's Wonderful World of Color was the name as I recall. Color broadcasting slowly increased over the years, but exploded when RCA finally licensed other manufacturers to make their own color TVs, I'm not sure about the year but it would have been about 1966 I believe. When I started selling color TVs RCA was the only one, but about the time I was in college they licensed it, every color TV of the time had a notice: Built under license from RCA Victor. One other small detail, growing up around a TV repair shop, the owner's name written on the chassis means that at some time the chassis was removed from the cabinet and taken to the shop for service, we used paper tags but some techs just wrote the customer's name right on the chassis.
This made me feel young and I’m old !!! Lol, I was born in 1989 and by the time I was 3 years old I was using a remote control and a random Sony Vega in the early 90’s, never met an 80’s wooden tv, without remote, all I knew was black plastic tv’s of the 90’s, vhs, handycam, windows 3.1, etc etc since I was a baby, my generation is truly not young anymore and we have never seen an original record player, we had to re-invent them to see them working as a retro trend !! Like it’s a piece of art from a museum
I graduated high school in 1989 so I'm a bit older than you. I was lucky in the sense that growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, I basically had the same electronic experience my parents did. Console TVs, eight track players, tons of radios from big to handheld. The first new tech experience for the whole family was in 1977 when we bought the first Sears Telegames unit (a.k.a. Atari 2600). Having said that, I also was young enough to enjoy "new" tech like affordable VCRs, home computers (got my first Apple IIc in 1985), and of course the internet. So in a way I had the best of BOTH worlds, unlike the kids today who never operated a reel-to-reel player, or an 8-track player.
We had that exact TV in 1959, and were the first in our entire neighborhood to have color TV. The only differences I can see is that ours would swivel left & right, and our front control panel's door had a spring to flip it closed. On top was my dad's Heathkit FM radio, that he wired to the TV's speaker. I bought my parents their first microwave in 1978, and my mom wouldn't let it in the house. In 1980 I gave my dad a video camera and VCR. I'm glad I did. I have home moves since then, starting when I was 25. I'm 65 now, and have few friends with home vids that are that old. Thanks for sharing this video!
Modern TV's will, but the idiotic superficial society won't let them. Fucking millenials gotta get a new TV every 5 months because their old one is not cool anymore.
Its easy to do that nowadays. Electronics this day and age are much cheaper in comparison to electronics from many years ago. I bet that TV originally sold for a families months wages back then!
cowtippingrocks I was watching some 50's sitcom,I think it was Bachelor Father, in one episode I think he said he was saving up for a year to buy a TV. He had a little jar he kept putting small amounts of money into.
Nowadays we would whip out the plastic regardless of if we had the money... and would probably never had it paid off by the time it broke down and had to buy another one.
As a kid I remember all the TV repairmen made house calls to work on the floor model TVs, which everyone seemed to have. He would carry in 2 huge tool chests full of every kind of tube to fit the different TVs. One by one the repairman would take out each tube and test it, then put it back in the TV until he found the one that had burned out.
It's amazing to think 65 years ago someone brought that TV home, bran new, from the store. The kids were probably on the floor watching it for hours, the next day their friends came over and were amazed. So many stories that tv could tell over 65 years....
One thing I find impressive, apart from the fact that the TV is functioning perfectly, is that the camera didn’t do that shutter speed illusion where there’s a rolling line on the CRT screen
@@SoundJudgment no, because then there would be a rolling line on the CRT and there is not. So the camera and CRT are probably at the same or a very similar frame rate. The camera is probably recording in NTSC or something, since the video is also 480 rows.
Motorola offered the first rectangular 25" color TV sets in 1964. Picture tubes were made by National Video; I had the great honor of removing 2 safety screws from the back of a brand-new set and the back broke the tube neck at the socket. Had to go and exchange tube and re-install it. In those days we had to go thru the process of convergence which was quite elaborate and it could take 30 minutes or more. We used a pattern selector to accomplish this.
NBC, owned by RCA, did most of the early color broadcasting to help promote sales of receivers. CBS, who lost a patent battle with RCA over its mechanical color TV process (a real "Rube Goldberg" system that, unlike RCA's color, could not be received as a B/W picture) actively fought against color; while cash-poor ABC simply couldn't afford color equipment. Some individual local stations did adopt color for local programs. Thanks for sharing this wonderful old TV set!
That's a beauty! I'm a ex-TV man now in commercial audio, but when I started in the business, I worked for a used tv shop that sold CTC 5's for $75-100 each (1970 dollars). The sets they sold were mostly trade-in's from a large RCA dealer.
I had a CTC-15 Color set. I believe it was from about 1964 if I remember correctly. Back in 64 the set cost about $900. Back then this was very expensive! When everything was working properly and reception was good the pictures and sound was very good. RCA was one of the better TV sets during these times.
Imagine the history of the shows that families watched on this tv. If dad was like most of us dads he probably watched a lot of sports on it. Cool bit of history. Thanks for sharing with us.
Nice old set. I remember fixing one of those when I started my TV repair career in 1982. I used to have a Philips K6, but a worker broke the picture tube working at my place so it went in the bin.
Wow beautiful color on that classic set. Great job! The cabinet is still nice too. Of course now in 2021 there are no more color analog signals being broadcast, so those wonderful old circuits are officially retired. But it’s the engineering of something so solid that it could function 100% 65 years later with little maintenance that truly impresses. Our grandfathers really knew what they were doing.
Wow, astonishing work! From this video it looks like you've done an amazing job on convergence, geometry, raster sizing and h/v alignment. Really nice set!
1957 Incredible!! At this time here in Spain we have only a few black and white TV receivers mostly kits for assembling in a radio repair services and the color TV appear at middle of 70's with brands like a Philips,Telefunken,Saba and others. Congratulations your TV looks nice and have a incredible good image and sound without semiconductors, only tubes. This TVs are made for during a lot of years and today is impossible made something like this. I also repair old radios and TVs but this is it a little jewel from the great USA. Thanks and Like.
Love it. It's great to see people who have this passion for keeping old tech going. I like doing this with computers when I can, and I love old 30s, 40s and 50s radios and 60s HiFi equipment. But TVs, wow!
Forgotten fact--American analog tv system had a horizontal scan rate of 15,750 Hz. The horizontal sweep transformer in the set consequently vibrated, or "hummed," at this frequency, producing an audio tone that could be heard by children but not adults. As a kid, I could tell by listening if the television was on, even if the sound was turned off.
Hopelessand Forlorn I remember walking into a room or computer lab and hearing a TV or monitor on somewhere. I would search around until I found it and turned it off. My father could not relate.
Hopelessand Forlorn That is so wierd, I remember being able to hear the old tv's when powered on but no picture or sound. It was extremely high pitched.
Oh my God, I'm loving this! For the age this TV set has, the picture and sound are wonderful. I bet that the current flat screen TVs won't be able to show a picture 60 years from now - they are changing the standards every few years: half HD, Full HD, 4K, 8K, 12K...H.264, H.265...DVB-T, DVB-T2, etc...while many TV channels in the world are still broadcasting in 4:3 aspect ratio.
I didn't know the USA had colour TV in the 1950's. Here in Australia we got colour TV in 1975 using the PAL standed and we don't have a tint control on the CRT TV's.
Sean are you sure? I'm from New Zealand and we got colour tv in 1973 (in time for the commonwealth games that was held here). I'm sure Australia was earlier like the late 60s. However though the broadcasts were in colour, I think my family brought their first colour set in the early to mid 80s due to the cost.
Yes, although it wasn't very common in the U.S. until the late 1960s/70s. My dad, who was born in 1958, said his family didn't own a color TV until 1972.
Back in the old days people actually talked to each other - when there was nothing on TV to watch. And kids, we played outside all day with no electronic devices. I don't know how we survived? :-)
Alan Spicer We didn't have a TV in our house until 1966. Some of my best childhood memories are those years before the TV came along. I had 3 brothers and 2 sisters and we were never bored. We occupied our time playing cards, reading and just talking. The TV came along and all of the sudden our family is fighting about what to watch.
Alan Spicer my generation (millenial) was the very last to experience analog tv, i remember watching WGBY and WEDH kids shows untill 6 when all the boring adult stuff would come on lol and then i would go outside to play
Just NBC prime time. I got my first HDTV in 2007, and it was similar with very little being broadcast in HD at the time. I’ve had a 4K TV for 3 years and still no 4K broadcasts yet.
Beautiful. Colour TV in 1956...the same year that TV transmissions started here in Australia. While you guys were watching colour TV we got a grainy B&W picture of, "Good evening, and welcome to Television." And flash forward to now...we're still behind the times.
Nice restore and awesome convergence job! I always loved 'roundies' because the phosphors they used in the crts had accurate hues, especially red. The rectangular crts had a brighter picture, but the red phosphors were orange-red in hue and they 'fudged' the color demodulators to try and compensate.
Dipende dai sistemi utilizzati di trasmissione NTSC, PAL, SECAM l SECAM G, come colori anche ora con i multistandard il migliore come definizione è il francese SECAM anche nei LED, OLED e 4k
As a kid I remember watching Disney's Wonderful World of Color. Sponsored by RCA no doubt to sell color TV's. It worked. I also remember adjusting hue and tint to get right picture. Bonanza was another big deal.
Great job done there. Years ago, in NZ with assistance I put together a VCR97 Oscilliscope tube TV set in green! It took a NZTV technician to finally get it going but eventually after a couple of dry Summers and static electrical discharge episodes I decided the punishment was too much. It went out into the garage. Bravo to you Sir.
If my memory serves me correctly, I remember gathering in a friends house (in those days the invitation was worded, "wanna come over tonight and watch color TV?") - no mention of any specific program, just whatever was available. But the beautiful images on your restored set are thanks to a lot of technology that has taken place since then. In the early days, they had not yet perfected stage lighting among other things and I remember the live broadcasts where as people walked around the stage they would change from amber to green and we would be constantly trying to adjust the set as the program went on because of the constant fluctuation.
Enjoyed the flash back video! Back when I was in high school I was given a non working CT100 RCA. I cant remember how many $$$$$$ I spent (from lawn mowing money) trying to fix it, as I wanted to experience watching color tv. At that time color programing was very limited, even in the SF bay area. Anyway, your video brought back memories. I eventually got it running, but it didn't look as good as yours. Shortly afterwards the red gun went south.
My dad purchase one of these RCA sets in 1958, I remember watching many colour programs when I was very small, we lived in Havana and I think that only the U.S. and Cuba had colour television back in the 50's. Some time before we left Havana in the early 60's Tele-Color, channel 12 went off the air and didn't come back until 1975 I hear.
Cuba aired the first color show on March 19, 1958. I remember the sets in the stores. They were very expensive compared to black and white receivers. When Castro took power, he destroyed most of Cuba. I am a retired Broadcast Engineer in America. The station I retired from did not have color until 1964, six years after Cuba. You are very lucky for leaving Cuba so early.
A very good job done restoring this old set and the colours shown seemed quite stable and natural. What I'd like to know is, back in 1956 would this set have been able to display as good pictures as in your demonstration given that back then the tv cameras and transmission systems were not as good as now? I've heard that in the early days the colour signal on Ntsc was always drifting and true colour would then be lost particularly in poor reception areas and certain weather conditions resulting in noticeably yellowish or green skin tones for example.
In my early days I was servicing CTC15 and later models. I am in my mid 70s now. I serviced so many of them. This goes back a bit over 50 years ago for me. Back in the days of these TV sets the RCA was among the best of the available TV sets.
That was an incredible picture and Sound for the age of the TV. Linearity both vertical and horizontally from what can be seen without a grid pattern was spot on. Did you have to adjust it at all by using the CRT neck adjusters? That could be used today full time, the CRT didn't look tired at all. Good restoration job.
Dirty_Horror A beef a lot of people have with cable is that although you get a lot of channels, many of the SD channels are still analog. Because it's a closed system, they do not have to abide by the mandate.
It's still possible to demostrate working of this type of TV while having RF modulator or using cable analog TV. Anyway I think that analog broadcasting was shut down too early.
Great effort mate! I'm doing a resto on an early b/w Australian tube tv. I admire your efforts. Look at how clean everything is in that beautiful receiver. I hope you really enjoy it.
That set and I were born the same year...didn't even know there was color TV that early..... we didn't get a color set (Philco) until the mid 70's... thanks for the video
You have the same problem with transistors. I've got amplifiers here from the 70/80s that have obsoleted or discontinued parts. I imagine tubes are a bit more forgiving when it comes to equivalents.
True, but it took a few years to get the production right. The first generation of transistors were rather expensive, not very reliable, and would not carry the current needed for the line/frame timebase circuits in a telly.
@@BadWolf762 So, why was it not used in mainstream electronics until the late 50's early 60's. Here in the UK everything was valve tube technology, although you Yanks were always a step ahead of us Brits.
That is absolutely astounding. The color quality is superb! Hard to believe that in 1956 there were virtually no color broadcasts. I am very impressed! I would love to have one of these early color models.
It's always weird to me to see modern music or TV shows on antique TVs and radios. Especially when you listen to rap on an antique radio. You know they never would've imagined that would exist back when the radio was made and it just seems funny. American Idol is exactly the type of show I would think people in the 50's would've imagined people in 2018 watching, though. Like a modern version of the Ed Sullivan show or American Bandstand.
If Rap were played back in the 50's or 60's you'd have been arrested for a variety of crimes. Incitement to riot. Misogeny, foul language, just for starters.
What a beautiful TV! I had a roundie B&W Muntz, but the picture tube was damaged sadly, always wished I could have gotten that TV to work. I ended up giving it away for parts.
We had one in '56. After we watched the Wizard of Oz and a Disney show, my mother made my dad take it back. She thought the electric bill would be too high.
Disney didn't present any color episodes until he began "THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR" on NBC in 1961. ABC telecast Disney's weekly series in black and white only. You must have seen something else that looked like a "Disney" program. Not too many color programs were telecast when this model was introduced.
@@fromthesidelines I was quite a youngster at the time. And the folks who I could have questioned further about other shows are long gone. I'll just have to say, whatever. Thanks for your reply.
you could afford a colour tv in the 50s? were you guys practical millionaires? colour sets were insanely expensive. it wasnt until the late 70s even my parents could get a colour tv
This must have been a mind blowing luxury item for people in the 1950s, I remember even as a small child in the 80s, color TV was still kinda sorta a big deal. We finally ditched our black and white and got a big screen color TV when I was in first grade in 1982, and I remember thinking that was a big deal watching cartoons and Knight Rider in color. By the late 80s, color TV was the norm, but in the early 80s and even mid 80s, they still sold a lot of smaller B&Ws for cheaper prices. I'm trying to imagine the wonder and awe of people in the 1950s having a color TV like this.
@@rongendron8705 Not so much in New Zealand, colour wasn't even broadcast until '73! Even then it may have been prompted by hosting the Commonwealth Games the following year.
I am a retired Tv tech started in the 70s with Gte Sylvania and ended with my own shop retiring 2013, saw massive change with the trade ,tvs became so cheap to buy people stopped fixing them, unless really minor repair, compelling me and other tv shops to close after many long years in business. That set you have there in the video is a beauty, was at the time the third most expensive thing that person probably owned at the time he bought it.Things changed electronics, got cheap and better who knew!
As someone who has always had an interest in electronics---I am wondering what the advent of color TV meant for service techs at the time. It must have been a HUGE learning curve. Given the complexities of an old tube-type color TV. Compared to that of a BW set at the time.
In today's dollars this TV set would be costing in the range of $14,000. Only people who were fairly well off would buy a TV like this. With these TV sets if all the components are in proper spec and in good condition, and including all the alignments are in proper set up, the pictures are excellent.
At least here in the UK it was common to hire televisions - from Granada and Radio Rentals (microwave ovens too). Right up until the late 1970s. My generation has mobile phone charges, older people hired televisions.
You are indeed right, most of us British peasants could not afford tobuy colour tv's back in the early 70's, and so had to rent one as youmentioned. Prices of consumer electronics have come right downsince then, mainly due to cheap imports from China. This has madeit possible for most now to buy them outright.
the first 2 TV sets my family had were given to us by financially better off relatives. The tv's didn't last long as they were old when we got them. The first new TV we bought was a real odd-ball my dad got at a warehouse sale. It was a Sylvania table top model, blonde wood cabinet and had this white plastic frame around the picture tube that lighted up when you turned on the set. That TV was JUNK and died in 4 years. Then we bought an RCA, B&W console on legs. That was a good TV. It lasted at least 10 years
I think the previous owner of this TV appreciated paying a lot of money and looked after it - these days tv sets are so cheap they are almost disposable ....
Looks like a beautiful restoration. This was the very latest thing in home entertainment back in the day. Very few homes had a color TV in 1956. I wonder what the cost would have been in today's dollars?
That's really a big fun to watch an old TVset! Has it occurred to me that watching a modern show on that old TVset looks like to watch a future from the present moment? :)
I had a 24" dumont color TV in the very early 60s. The houselight dimmed when I turned it on amd the picture tube would crackle when the high voltage was applied. My dad worked for the Dumont network, later became Metromedia
This set still amazes me whenever I see it. Good color, black level regulation, sound, and sharpness. I wish things still lasted this long, especially CRT's. The Orange Drops probably make the set perform better than new as well. Does it still have all of the original carbon resistors in the chassis?
I had a CTC15 back in the 1960's. If I remember correctly I paid about $850 for it back then. In our money today this would be the equivalent to about $14,000! A new Chevrolet back in 1965 nicely equipped costed about $4100 back in the mid 1960's. It is unfortunate in a way, these old TV sets can no longer work on the broadcast systems that are now in place. A down-converter, or some type of analogue type TV distribution would be required to view the TV's of that generation. It is only a matter of time before the radio system is also changed to digital only.
Know what you mean...I bought a new '76 Chevy Impala Landau Custom in January, 1976-the sticker was $6282! An equivalent 2013 Impala runs about $29,000.
Yes in 1965, 4100$ wud get you loaded impala.. 4100$ cud really get yu into a olds in 65, if yu got the Dynamic 88, not a olds 98..My dads 68 delmont cost 3450$, light on options..
a TV was almost considered furniture back in the day. People would place vases, pottery or lamps atop their TV....and yes there was plenty of "character". TV manufacturers boasted of various cabinet designs such as "Mediterranean, Early American, Danish Modern and many more.
No, you're right! people are happy to look at video thru a 4” screen they paid $700 dollars for. And they shoot video in "portrait".... Man, those '50s people were stupid... Not!
Nice television set. I heard that RCA was the very first company that came out with the 1 1/4 inch video color reel to reel tapes system, back in 1957. I also know that they introduced the very first colortrack television technology system, during the mid 60s as well. I own an RCA Android cellular phone and I only paid $150. RCA is such a reliable company that made it throughout so many generations. Good american craftsmanship quality. Thank you for this RU-vid broadcast. Johnny Montreal Canada.
I remember back in the late 1960's being in awe of colour tv's. In 1968 at the age of 10 often I used to go into town just to peer into shop windows just to see programs in colour. And there was the Moon Landing. It was a wonderful optomistic time to be a kid.
