Nowaday names don't mean much

[oldtvman]

Go buy any piece of electronics today, and look at the name on the label RCA(Thompson consumer) Zenith(LG industries) and so on and so on.

Back in the day the name on the first color set you bought usually meant the difference between getting a decent piece of gear, or getting something of less quality. Re the Motorola color sets. I guess the point is when your restoring some of these beauties, keep in the some of the brand back then even working at optimum performance, couldn't hold a candle to the big boys.

[stromberg6]

I'm waiting for some enterprising dolt to bring back the Stromberg-Carlson mark, which is now owned by Siemens of Germany. Can't wait to see what kind of crap will bear that name.
Anyone have a screen shot of a working K-1?
Kevin G.

[Nikko75]

I auditioned a couple Bose HT systems over the years and I have to say, I do not understand what the big deal is.Where does this idiotic "prestige"come from?Their latest 2.1 HT actually hurt my ears, worse than my car's stock audio sytem. I just feel they give more effort into cosmetics than sonics. Were they ever a producer of good products, and if so have they changed hands?

[colortrakker]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

Go buy any piece of electronics today, and look at the name on the label RCA(Thompson consumer) Zenith(LG industries) and so on and so on.

With everyone supplying parts for everyone else's sets, and several brands being made on the same lines in China (that means you now, RCA), nobody can tell what they're buying just by the brand name.

[jedo1507r]

Hmm, like the Sylvania and Emerson (to a point, Magnavox and Philips combos) brand on Funai's disposable video equipment. Same with the Sansui brand - which did have a stint in the '80s in selling "component"-style televisions, but quickly had Orion (sells Broksonic, World, Orion, Toshiba) take over that product line and rebranding them. Both manufacturers have nearly indistinguishable designs within their product line.

From what I know, Philips and Thomson have a joint operation factory in China, a recent Magnavox set sold at Wally-world had a Hitachi-[something] tube which does not have a bad picture, and is nearly flat; but the build quality was left to be desired - and wouldn't survive in an environment with mischievous children.

When Thomson made sets for the States in three brands many years back: GE, RCA, and ProScan; the sets were so similar, only the brand mark on the corner of the set could distinguish the difference. Of course, the remote control buttons were slightly different; RCA had the colorful scheme, GE had the gray scheme, and ProScan was all green.

And speaking of corporations, there are talks of Daimler selling Chrysler to GM...

[Richard D]

Plus, I hate all the non-repairable surface mount devices now glued to the circuit boards. They may be fine in my laptop but not in products that have plenty of real estate in them and have high voltage or current switching loads. YES, I am old!
Richard.

[doctorbongo]

Colortrakker pretty well hit it on the head. As soon as a company goes mass market, the odds of getting a piece of crap with unlimited features, each of which can go off the bubble at any given time, increases exponentially. Because they slapped the tag "Charger" on them didn't make those bogus 2.2L things Dodge put out in the 80s Chargers. And while I've always been a buy-American car guy, the reality is pretty much every company is an international consortium, they serve the consumer only in as far as they can get us to fork over our cash, and an American car or German car or Japanese car is likely filled with parts from, or assemble in, Mexico or Korea. Good luck discerning the supply chain for an RCA component these days.

[peverett]

Does the company RCA even exist any more? It was my understanding that it is just a name owned by someone now. The previous owner was Phillips, but I am not sure who owns it now

Two my knowledge, there are only three of the major old line(pre WWII) electronic companies that still presently exist in independent form. These are Motorola, IBM, and GE. To my knowlege, Philco, RCA, Zenith, etc. are just names owned by other companies at present.

[doctorbongo]

it's kind of a circular argument, or question, Everett.
yes, I saw some RCA dvd players in the GrossMassMarketRetailer's "audio-video" section, but as this thread points out, the RCA nametag on the units means virtually nothing. RCAs are being sold. I'd suspect the connection to the historic company is tenuous at best.

[colortrakker]

Actually, RCA was owned by Thomson. Philips owned Magnavox, Sylvania and Philco.

GE, although their appliance and medical divisions are still self-owned, merged their consumer electronics division with RCA's in 1986 and sold the lot over to France. Thomson, in turn, has sold RCA to China's TCL.

Sad thing: the head of the Chinese company that absorbed RCA didn't even know who Nipper was.

[bgadow]

Yeah, from what I have read the Chinese bought Thomson which owned RCA. I have a hard time thinking of any major American consumer electronics makers still kicking, aside from those mentioned. Of course, GE doesn't make electronics anymore and will seemingly license its name to anyone for a buck. There are some minor players still around. Wells-Gardner is still going-there was another smaller company which makes some sort of beacons for the military-Sentinel? Or maybe Sparton-I know they were still making car horns last I checked, a few years ago. (they made the horn in my 96 Dakota, for one)

I sure don't pay too much attention to brands on electronics these days. The only thing that might get a second look from me would be Panasonic/Toshiba/Hitachi. Everything else is just a little bit of ink sprayed on a plastic case.

As oldtvman points out, there sure WAS a difference at one time. Looking around the room I see 4 black & white portables from the mid-60s. GE, Philco, Setchell-Carlson, Zenith. The Philco makes everything else look like fine craftsmanship. The GE, as is typical, is built as cheap as they could figure out how. The other two, in comparison, could have been made on a different planet. Back when they were new I guess a lot of people didn't know the difference, or based their opinions on older gear those companies made. (you can get into a lot of debate over who built the better radio in the late 30s, Philco or Zenith-they certainly were close in quality back then) The only thing different now is that everything is junk. Brands do still sell sets which is why my father recently bought a new Sylvania (based on my experience with a "real" American made Sylvania built 17 years ago) and why my in-laws have replaced their RCA with a Magnavox, though they would have done just as well to have bought a ChangChong.

[andy]

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[peverett]

One that is still around that is a bit supprising is the Hoffman TV people(Easy Vision).

http://www.hoffmanvideo.com/aboutus.asp

Of course, they do not manufacture TVs anymore.

One of my radio friends said this about Philco:
"The quality fell out before the name went on" Fitting for the 1960s GE tvs also.

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.

One final comment is that a modern piece of consumer electonics equipment is just ike the cars mentioned by doctorbongo. The components come from all over, including the US, no matter where the company headquarters are.

[jedo1507r]

Originally Posted by andy

You can scratch Toshiba off your list. All their TVs are just Orion (they made most of the stuff brnaded Emerson in the 80's and 90's) with the Toshiba name sprayed on.

Same goes for Panasonic. A couple of years back, some of low-end Panny-branded sets were also made by Orion. I had an Emerson portable made back in '87 with Matsushita tube and flyback. I continue to loathe today's Panasonic sets, since I worked at a hotel and tend to see them fail more often than even the disposable 27-inch Funai sets.

About those RCAs, I have a 9-inch portable back when the portables were made in Taiwan, around the mid-1980s equipped with a Toshiba tube - but it was not as prominent as the RCA brand on the label, just on the bottom right corner in small text.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by bgadow

I have a hard time thinking of any major American consumer electronics makers still kicking...

Looking around the room I see 4 black & white portables from the mid-60s. GE, Philco, Setchell-Carlson, Zenith.

Setchell-Carlson changed its name to Audiotronics about 1980, and to Dotronix in the late 80's or early 1990's, and they still make video monitors, here in the USA:

www.dotronix.com

Their monitors are still used in airport video display systems around the country, for example. Several years ago, right after Zenith (the then last-existing U.S. consumer TV maker) was bought by LG, Dotronix briefly got some attention when they discussed selling consumer TV sets/monitors, but they never did release any that I am aware of.