Magnavox First Color TV

[Firebird]

What year did Magnavox make their first color tv and what was the model?

[Mal Fuller]

The answer to that may be a bit murky. One reason that that is so is that Magnavox had a stake in Sentinel Radio & TV and Sentinel produced a color set based on RCA's CtC-4 Chassis, circa 1955-6.
I don't remember Magnavox branded color sets until the early 1960s. They certainly were not color pioneers.

[miniman82]

Even when they got into color in earnest, the Maggitboxes never were top performers.

[Einar72]

But, at least early on, they often had nice cabinets. The ebony 9-foot combo comes to mind.

[marty59]

A friend of mine growing up had what I remember as a CTC10-ish Magnavox clone set. Cabinet was quite nice on it too, and had the seperate safety glass front.

[kx250rider]

I agree with Mal Fuller on the early 60s being the earliest true Magnavox color set. There were Magnavox-branded RCA clones, and the Sentinel probably was the first of those in the Magnavox family. Magnavox and Zenith didn't seem to like to license out any RCA patents from Sarnoff, and they've always kind of done their own thing. But with color TV, that was nearly impossible, so they probably had to give in and pay up to Sarnoff after waiting a decade to think it over.

Charles

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

Magnavox and Zenith didn't seem to like to license out any RCA patents from Sarnoff, and they've always kind of done their own thing. But with color TV, that was nearly impossible, so they probably had to give in and pay up to Sarnoff after waiting a decade to think it over.

Charles

There was litigation with RCA over bundling patents, and Zenith and some others didn't get into color until they could negotiate a better deal.

[Firebird]

Hey guys i found it. Here is an ad for the first color magnavox.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Firebird

Hey guys i found it. Here is an ad for the first color magnavox.

That is probably not an ad but rather a picture from, perhaps, a magazine article describing planned upcoming color TV sets. The set in the picture is a "clone" of an RCA CTC-4, as described here:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_ctc_clone.html

[Steve D.]

The Magnavox photo is from Popular Science Monthly magazine from October, 1955. Color tv article.

-Steve D.

[KentTeffeteller]

So, it appears that Zenith and Magnavox began color production at roughly the same time frame. Can someone here give us the first chassis number and some models which used the first chassis.

[bgadow]

I just breezed through the Sams index; the earliest Magnavox color set I see would be in Photofact 517-2, V37-01-00 or the 37 series. That would date to 1961.

[reeferman]

When I worked at a Maggot-Vox dealer in the early 70's the cabinets sold the set. Fruit wood seemed to be the most popular back then.
Phil

[Firebird]

Does not say in the ad but where it was posted said 1957 and picture is saved as magnavox 1956.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Firebird

Does not say in the ad but where it was posted said 1957 and picture is saved as magnavox 1956.

I think this was the time when a lot of companies showed an RCA clone on paper and then dropped out of color until the 60s.