Replicas of rare early televisions?
 

I've been browsing here long enough to know that certain early televisions, especally certain color roundies are rare and are prized for their looks/image quality, etc.

I wonder if anybody has ever replicated an, oh say a CT-100. I don't mean something dressed up to look like one, I mean replicated it as close to the original design as possible.

I would think there would be some market for this, especally if somebody in Hollywood wanted to create a movie based in that era.

For the movies, only the cabinet design would matter. Plus, for the movies, the chassis has to be modified to run at 24 frames per second to match the film cameras. There are also many reasons why a TV picture will not photograph well, so it was usual to fake it in the past with an inserted film image (which was also hard to do well and could usually be spotted easily). With current computer graphics techniques, going to the trouble of duplicating the guts of an old set is strictly not worth the effort for a movie production. A picture that looks just like a TV when shown in the movie can be created in the special effects lab.

There was a documentary on how TV works on cable a few years ago, and in one part of the documentary they showed how they used electronic image inserts to create an image in the documentary (how's that for recursion?). The scene was a remote pickup of an auto race, and the monitor was way too dark to show up in the same scene as the race itself - so they created an image for the monitor screen, and actually panned and zoomed it in sync with the documenting camera so it appeared perfectly to be played back on the monitor.

Replicating a CT-100 would, to me, seem to be an experiment in masochism, leading to madness.

I used a bad example when I said moviemaking. You're right. CGI and props would take care of that completely.

I think it could be done. They did it ~50 years ago, and the technology has only improved. I'm sure there's enough technical data out there, and a few surviving sets that could be studied and photographed.

The chinese will duplicate ANYTHING if you are willing to spend enough.

Oh it could be done, i used to work at a company called VAC where we reproduced, "under contract" the Marantz Model 7,8, and 9 audio components. The model 8 was a El34 stereo amp. I think the replica sold for about $7000 in 1996. it had only 8 tubes. Being that a color tv has about 30? tubes plus the picture tube that might bring the total price to about $30,000 if you make them in 1000 quantity. Logan

There was a person who made color "replicas" of the Philco Predictas using a modern chassis. These sold for around $4000. On another note, I loaned out a Motorola TV that I had for a commercial. The TV did not work and the time and was B&W. I received a video of the commercial when I got the TV back. They commerical had a color picture placed on the TV by special effects. I think that this is done all the time.

I saw that show...i think it was narrated by murphy brown...or whatever her real name was. That kinda dates the show.

Not exactly a working replica, but sometime back an AK member posted a picture of a CT-100 miniature he had created. It looked pretty good.

-Steve D.

There are several people reproducing nearly perfect replicas of some of the E.H. Scott radios... I've seen the repro Scott Philharmonic power supply/amp chassis sitting side-by-side with a real one, and I can't tell on top or under the chassis.

But why reproduce a CT-100? For about the cost of just stamping out the chassis box and building the cabinet, you could buy a real one in mint condition.

Charles

A CT 100 was just an example. There are probably rarer sets then that, that would be worth replicating.

The only replica maker that I've heard of is Telstar, which sells a new color TV in a Predicta look-alike or Predicta-inspired cabinet. Look for predicta.com if you're curious.

Repro Scott radio chassis are a new one on me, although I wouldn't be surprised, given the ever-increasing value of Scotts. Charles, do you have pointer to an example?

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

In the early 90's a British co. called Radiocraft created the Retrovisor. This was a replica of the 1950 10" British TV receiver Bush TV22. Two models were produced a b&w and later a color version. Here's a link to the site, scroll down a couple of items for the Retrovisor info. and an additional link to a more complete Retrovisor manufacturing history.

Vintage Television
http://www.radiocraft.co.uk/vintage_...on/index.shtml

-Steve D.

Several people have made replicas of prewar and mechanical sets. Denis Asseman makes some amazing ones:

http://users.skynet.be/telehor/Replica.htm

Ah. It's nice to know that there are indeed people that do this.