RCA built-in TV, 1960

[Jeffhs]

An episode of "The Odd Couple" '70s TV series, titled "Oscar's New Life", had a scene in which was shown a 3-screen TV installation in Oscar's new office, with the TVs in the wall hidden by a large (and no doubt very heavy) motorized door when not in use. The door was opened and closed by a switch on a rather complicated control panel.

Oscar was showing Felix the installation one day, and he pushed the button to reveal the screens. "Three major networks, plus educational television," Oscar said when the three screens became visible. Later on in the show (near the end), however, Oscar is shown watching a baseball game on a very small-screen portable battery-powered TV. Felix asks him why he is watching the game on that set and not on one of the TVs in the wall. The reason was the three TVs were now gone, with only the wiring hanging out from the CRT masks. "A tube blew out and the repairman had to take it all back to the shop," Oscar answered. "They took out the whole wall! . . . (TV repairmen) make a fortune, don't they?" Felix marveled.

Back in those days and with a complicated setup like that, I'm sure they did, and continued to make their fortunes until the end of the NTSC CRT TV era. However, with today's flat screens, the 21st century equivalent of the multi-TV wall installation in Oscar Madison's office would have four flat screens behind the door, rather than CRT sets. When one of the sets went bad they would be thrown out and replaced, so no more than one channel would be out of service at any given time. Makes a lot more sense to me than having to pull out four CRT sets, leaving the customer with no TV and four gaping holes in the wall.