Nowaday names don't mean much

[Carmine]

A couple points:

It appears to me that Zenith was probably one of the last holdouts still building a good, durable set, in the US at least into the late 70s. But by that time, TVs had begun the slide into commodity and consumer's weren't willing to pay the premium.

There of course was the famous (infamous) TV dumping case against the Japanese that was dragged out so long in court (in exchange for Japanese support of US policy) that every US-made TV company except Zenith and RCA was gone by the time it was ruled the Japanese were dumping.

That does not mean that ALL Japanese companies were dumping... There is a small article in a 1977 issue of Consumer Reports called "Why nobody's mad at Sony" Pretty much says that Sony was selling sets on quality, not price, so they weren't part of the dumping case. Naturally, CR takes the opinion that dumping is a "good" thing, because it means lower prices for consumers. (scumbags)

So they outsourced. First to Mexico, then to Asian countries. Quality went in the dumper, and the reputation began to slide. The tried to diversify into computers, but that went nowhere. Enter Gold Star to buy a good chunk of the company.

They pinned their hopes on a compatible HDTV system, as was required by the US government at that time. In the early 90s, under intense lobbying from foreign companies, the FCC's compatible requirement was dropped. Practically overnight, Zenith stock became worthless because nobody needed the patents on a compatible HDTV system.

Gold Star steps in and buys the remains. Their name in the US is junk, so they re-badge it under the Zenith brand. This buys them some time in the US market, and they re-enter as "LG". The LG products are better than the Gold Star, and the Zenith name is phased out.

Right? Wrong?

I also believe that Zenith was an early pioneer of flat-tubes, at least having them as early as '88, and those WERE good tubes, not the junk that came after '93. They did continue with a "rounder" 23" tube in the entry model sets. I remember seeing a lot of those in bars.

[RVonse]

Originally Posted by Carmine

A couple points:


There of course was the famous (infamous) TV dumping case against the Japanese that was dragged out so long in court (in exchange for Japanese support of US policy) that every US-made TV company except Zenith and RCA was gone by the time it was ruled the Japanese were dumping.

For whatever reason since WWII, the Japanese seem to be far more sucessful at business than the American counterparts. First they successfully took over television electronics and now they have taken over the huge automobile industry that used to be the mainstay of America. All accomplished by a small nation with little or no natural resources to themselves.

A lot has happened since WWII and it hasn't been so good for the U.S I'm afraid. The U.S. should have made Japan the 51th state while we still had the chance.

[peverett]

The Japanese success in electronics has been fleeting. The consumer business is moving to other countries, such as China, etc. The Japanese stuff never really caught on in the personal computer world either, .

In addition, in the semiconductor manufacturing world, the Japanese were always also-rans. The large fabs have always been in the US, Europe, and now Taiwan. The Japanese fabs have actually only supplied the internal Japanese markets, never catching the US companies in market share. .

Saying the US companies have not been successful in electronics since world war II is just not correct. Just look at Intel, Hewlett Packard, Dell(until recently), TI, and Apple. There are many others. US companies just have not been successful in consumer entertainment electronics. They have been quite successfull in some consumer electronics. An example is the cell phone-Motorola. In fact, there is not a Japanese name in the top three cellphone suppliers(Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung). In addtion, US companies continue to provide components to Japanese consumer electronics companies to this day. Components made in the US.

As far as cars, it is my belief that the US manufacturers are still reaping what they (both management and labor) sowed in the 1970s. I am old enough to to remember horror stories from all of the big 3(crankshaft on gasoline engine breaking in two at 20,000 miles-GM-only warrantied half the cost, pulley falling off on an almost new Chrysler product, transmission lines crushed by poor assembly-causing out of warranty transmission re-build at 40,000 miles-my 1978 Ford Mustang-I can list many others). People bought far better quality Japanese cars, had good experience, and never looked back. It does not matter at this point if the big 3 automobilie quality is close to or as good as the Japanese-people my age and their children(as recommended by the parents) buy Japanese, they have no reason to go back.

By the way-I have four Fords, including a 2006 model, so I am not biased toward Japanese cars.

[andy]

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[colorfixer]

I can remember the first time I saw a Zenith FTM CRT monitor at the UBC in 1988. The display was so flat it had the appearance of bowing inward!

I think I recall an article that indicated Zenith had issues with yields in making the FTM tube in regular television sizes like 20 and 26". I imagine that such a tube would weigh something akin to a comparable Wega or more.

I came across a new in box FTM monitor a while back. Every pot in the thing needed going over with Cailube, and it was filled with those pink painted hex screws... The picture is breathtaking, but like it was said, fixed frequency monitors were getting dated in '88. My first 20" VGA monitor was a NEC multisync XL. It still works, and at 1024x768. I find it interesting that the FTM tube still used a round dot trio mask/phosphor rather than stripes.

[andy]

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[dr.ido]

I think that AWA was one of the last if not the last company to manufacture TVs in Australia. For a while they were sticking there name on some cheap nasty Onwa sets while still manufacturing some higher end sets here. Not long after that they went to only rebadging Onwa crap (exactly the same sets that were also sold under the Masuda and Akai brands). On the last curbside collection collection I saw what had to be one of their last Australian made sets, a stereo 26" set with AV inputs in a full sized wood (well chipboard) console cabinet. I wanted to grab it, but it was simply too big for me to handle on my own. The AWA brand disappeared totally for a while, but has recently reappeared on the same silver plastic sets sold under many, many, different brand names. A while back I was looking through one of those chinese export sites. The quantity price (minimum a container load) on these sets starts at $30 for the 14" up to $60 for the 27" with whatever brand name you like on them.

I had one of those 14" Zenith monitors, but I never bothered to get it going. It wasn't worth it for 640x480. I wonder if they were at all related to the flat screen Idek monitors that came out at around the same time. They were the flattest screen monitors I owned until I got a Diamondtron when Gateway closed down. I had a couple of the MF-5150 15", they'd do 15-38kHz making them one of the best Amiga monitors. I remember lusting after the 21" version, but I never did find one. I think the 21" model would probably beat the Diamondtron in picture quality if it still had a good CRT.

I'm typing this on the Thinkpad 600X that is my daily driver (I still have my 310ED, 560X and a couple of 600Es). I've yet to actually lay my hands on a Lenovo Thinkpad, but something tells me they just won't feel the same. I use Thinkpads exclusively for the feel/action of the keyboard/trackpoint. I just can't stand the feel of other laptop keyboards or those rotten touch pad things. I've got a much faster Toshiba laptop sitting here doing nothing because I find it so awful to use.

[andy]

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[jedo1507r]

Whirled One, good thing you've brought up Polaroid Captiva cameras, the interesting part of the model's history was its tie-in on WGN's "Bozo Super Sunday" show in the early 1990s (I was little, so that's how I know).

dr.Ido, I had a friend with a "Sony" VCD player that resembled a Technics minisystem, didn't last too long - like most inexpensive video players. Turned out the same as you posted, a company had pallets of these things with the brand of your choice.

The infiltration of Chinese-imported RPTVs is an interesting thing. Back in 2003, Apex (known for their DVD players) sold some of their 46-inch 4:3 sets at/around $800 or so, but as far as I know the store that carried them had a couple of them in repair and seriously discouraged those models. Typically these RPTV sets are made either in Mexico (Thomson, Mitsubishi) or in the States (Philips, Sony). Of course, Apex has scaled down their presence, not sure but the company/distributor was in some legal trouble or something; or was that Cyberhome and the MPAA?

[andy]

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[bigolds98]

The last thing I am going to say on this subject is this. If you want to know the truth about Wal-mart and how they have cost the jobs of thousands of Americans I mean the jobs that pay paid a living wage not the the seven dollar and fifty cent an hour jobs that they create. Please read these books. "Take this Job and Ship it." By Senator Byron Dorgan. When I read this book it made me so mad I had a headache for a week. In it tells how Wal-Mart being the largest retailer in the World forces it's suppliers to charge less and less for there goods. Forcing once American made product companies to have no other choice but to close up shop here in the USA throwing people out of work and moving production to China. I still have not seen the benefit of any major savings on anything. One example and there are millions of examples. Is I bought a Hoover vacuum 3 years ago. It was made in Canton Ohio. I paid $100.00 dollars for it at Target. Since then the Hoover vacuum cleaner factory in Canton has closed the workers were making 20 dollars an hour and is now building them in China and Mexico. The same vacuum today made in China is still 100 dollars. The reason Hoover moved production to China and Mexico was that Wal-Mart wanted them to continue selling the vacuums at their stores but could not sell them to Wal-Mart at the lower price they wanted to pay for each vacuum. Hoover said No to Wal-mart. Well seeing that Wal-mart is the largest retailer/seller of Hoover vaccums Hoovers sales fell off so bad they had no choice to throw everone out of work and go to China/Mexico. This is just one Example. There is Radio Flier wagons, Etch-a-sketch and a billion more this has happend too. It also why wages have gone backwards not forwards in this country. Please read this book it is not just on Wal-Mart it is on how the Middle Class in this country is disapearing at an alarming rate and how corperate America runs the government. The other book is by Lou Dobbs called "War on the Middle Class". It is just as good. There was a Time when I shopped at Wal-Mart it is when Sam Walton was still alive and prided himself on having American made goods in his stores. When he died that all changed. I don't want to change peoples minds. I just want people to look at the big picture and make up their own minds.

So anyways now onto TV's. In the next couple of weeks I will be taking my CTC-5 "Wescott" into a TV repair guy that said he would work on it. All of my freinds can't wait to see it working again. I just hope it doesn't cost a fortune to get it working again. Sorry for the rant.

[peverett]

Not too long ago I read a story about the demise of Cannon towls that echos what Andy and bigolds98 said about Wal Mart.

I have also read that 90+% of Costco and Target's employees have employer supplied health insurance, but less than 60% of Wal-Marts employees do. (Wal-Mart would rather us tax payers supply it through Medicaid, etc.) For the reasons mentioned above and by several other posters, I try to avoid shopping there.

[jshorva65]

The cheap, inferior products branded with once-reputable names are just the tip of the iceberg. American industry has been systematically dismantled by Corporate oligarchs who are working toward enslaving all of America under the rule of a scandalously wealthy elite, which (despite its false "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability" motto) is the true nature of Communism.

Kruschev's "We will bury you!" threat from the 1950s was only a part of a longer series of threats which have since shown themselves to be almost prophetic. Kruschev knew that he had planted an army of Communists here who would slowly indoctrinate Americans to embrace Communism without ever realizing they were doing so, and the indoctrination would be accomplished through the schools, media, and churches which he had instructed his brainwashing experts to infiltrate and use to preach Communism disguised as expansion of freedom. What he actually said was "We will bury you! Your children are being spoon fed Socialism, and one day your grandchildren will live under Communism!"

One of the "planks" which Moses M. Levy (better known by his pen name, Karl Marx) stated must be at the foundation of Communism was the elimination of the middle class. NAFTA, GATT, and many other programs enacted by our corrupt giovernment, along with the "amnesty" and "guest worker" proposals which will flood the country with a new peasant underclass whose gang affiliations, savage violence, and flagrant disregard of the rule of law will ultimately turn their "peaceful demonstrations for amnesty" into Bolshevik Revolution USA whether granted amnesty or not.

Trashing the names of once-great American manufacturers by those names' being asociated with inferior, disposable products is a bit of "adding insult to injury" as our nation is being softened up for its destruction.

Proving the greatness of America's former industries by showing that American products at 50 and 60 years old can still be restored to working order with a little effort is one of my motivations for restoring vintage electronics.

[Captain Video]

One of the idols of the communists is an Italian named Antonio Gramsci, who always said that the way to turn a society into a communist regime was not by means of violent revolution, but by slow cultural indoctrination. I observed that all around the world there's a lot of people who are following this guy's agenda.

[dr.ido]

Originally Posted by jedo1507r

dr.Ido, I had a friend with a "Sony" VCD player that resembled a Technics minisystem, didn't last too long - like most inexpensive video players. Turned out the same as you posted, a company had pallets of these things with the brand of your choice.

Argh! I know exactly which player you're referring to. They were sold here with Sony and/or other labels on them (literally, I found one that was marked Sony on the front, but with some other house brand on the back). Both the S-video jack and the fuse holder on the back panel were purely cosmetic. Not only were they not connected, they didn't even have any metal contacts in them. The power supply was not fused. I wonder if any of them ever caught fire.

At least even the cheapest, nastiest, crappiest DVD players I've seen have an actual fuse on the primary side of the power supply.