The impact of early color

[oldtvman]

Originally Posted by Don Lindsly

Consumers traded out the early color TVs mainly due to reliability issues. Even the best ones burned through horizontal output tubes, dampers, rectifiers, circuit breakers, convergence board coils, flybacks and vertical components on a regular basis. People watched them several hours every day so things overheated and boards got brittle. Eventually it was fix the TV again or buy a bigger boat. Few could afford both.

Those unreliable components were engineered out one by one. Each generation improved until the current generation of solid state TVs is sufficiently reliable that it required FCC regulations to mandate a trade out. That's what HDTV is all about.

Early on people put up with the reliability issues as a trade-off for the magnificent color images beamed right into their living rooms. As color became more wide-spread I think we lost our love affair with the color set.