In 1950 or 51 my parents bought a 1950 Zenith tv console with record player and am-fm radio. I know they paid a lot of money for it and had to save for a long time. I watched this tv as a young boy and for years. In later years they got a color tv and this one went into their basement rec room. Eventually it quit working but was used as a bench, and fortunately was not thrown away. When I was in my 20's my father was going to toss it in the garbage but I was playing with a lot of electronics at the time and I fixed it with some tubes and if I recall, some new filter capacitors. It worked for several years after that. Eventually I inherited it when I got my own place, and I replaced some tubes and used it for a few years until I got a color tv. However, I kept this set and intended to completely rebuild it. Its been in my basement for years and I could never toss it. A few years ago I plugged it in and the radio worked fine, record player worked (but who uses records any more), but the tv had a noticable hi voltage leak, so I shut it off. Since then I have planned to restore it as an antique. It has lots of memories attached. I do believe the tv portion needs something more than tubes by now, but I planned to restore it anyhow. That was until recently when I found out they are going to completely eliminate analog tv stations and switch everything to digital. That's why I am pissed off. Even if I restore this old tv, there will no longer be anything to watch on it. I know there will be converters for newer tvs, but I doubt it will work on an old set like that, since there are no input jacks. It looks like anyone that collects antique tvs will no longer be able to watch them. As always, the government is screwing up our lives, but thats nothing new. Hell, tv frequencies have been the same ever since the beginning of tv itself, but now that we entered the 21st century everything is changing so fast one can no longer keep up. This really does piss me off. Maybe it's my age, but why cant they just leave things be. Pretty soon anyone over the age of 12 will be obsolete and rendered useless. New technology is great for those who want it, but why cant they leave the old stuff alone. It's history and it's well established and is part of our culture. Cant the government just leave us alone for once and stop screwing up our world. I'll admit that when color tv first came out I thought it was the greatest thing, but now it's fun to see an old B&W tv still working.
You can see a picture of this tv here:
Alvin