Nowaday names don't mean much

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by peverett

I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

Rather an unfair comparison don't you think? I should hope that reliability would improve as electronics moved to low-heat solid-state, ICs, and so forth. Actually, when you consider that the last of the "true" Zenith sets (Chromacolor/System 3) are in some cases over 30 y/o and still produce a sharp, clear picture that rivals or exceeds many new CRT sets, I would say the bar hasn't been moved very far.

If those same engineers were designing sets today, thirty-years later, we would already have compatible HDTV and for all I can guess, smell-o-vision!

Instead we have commodity-type sets that work pretty decent, but don't excel in quality, or advancing the state of the art.