Colour TV

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

Im sure the tv had a huge back to it.

We still had a black and white tv even after we got our first colour telly.

Yes i remember rediffusion well.

You had cable free for a month i assume it had many more channels than the ones we had at that time on normal telly.

we must have been one of the last families in the street to have colour tv, late1984 or early 1985. I can't remember what make it was, but possibly from rediffusion. It seemed brilliant all that colour! On the plus side, being with rediffusion, we had free cable for a month or so has a trial period. There was a black box on top of the tv. We were lucky living in the south wales valleys, transmission was bad, so most houses had their tv connected via a white box on the wall. This box had letters on it, abcdefgh. A and b were radio stations. C was bbc wales, d was bbc2, e was bbc1, f was htv. The rest were spare. An external cable ran outside from this box to a central box elsewhere.
Seeing a lot of films free, in colour, was fantastic. All i remember about the tv, was it was very heavy by todays standards. In the end, it made a crackling noise, then give up the ghost.

[jamesa]

Re: Colour TV

My dad built our first Colour TV in something like 1974 - from a magazine called Television - every week you had to do something and eventually you had a colour TV - it was great - a bit big and needed adjusting all the time so it never did get the sides and top put on it. It was replaced after we moved as it didnt settle properly, with a Philips Colour TV with an ultrasonic remote. First thing I watched on colour TV was Jesus of Nazareth, I think it was called that - I remember thinking how blue the sea looked.

[Richard1978]

Re: Colour TV

Sounds like quite an advanced project to build from a kit even these days.

[jamesa]

Re: Colour TV

Sounds like quite an advanced project to build from a kit even these days.

Yes, - he was an electronics engineer though - at the time there used to be loads of electronics magazines with projects in them - amplifiers etc - I guess back then people had fun building stuff themselves rather than just buying things?

[Richard1978]

Re: Colour TV

Clive Sinclair made kit audio equipment before moving into computers, the early examples of which were available as kits.

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

vintage ferguson 3703 single standard 625 lines colour tv

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

Sony KV1320 Single Standard Colour TV

[Richard1978]

Re: Colour TV

My Aunt & Uncle used to have this model, & passed it on to me when they stopped using it.

[gamerouche]

Re: Colour TV

Wow! seeing the pic of the old Ferguson 3703 19" Colour TV brought back a few memories. It was a good looking machine & one that I used to sell when I worked for the defunct Electrical retailer Civic Stores in Putney high St. London.

I can date the TV for definite around July 1969 as we were fascinated watching the Moon landing.

HMV & Ultra both produced a similar model with the model numbers 2703 & 6703 respectively. They were part of the same company.

My parents were Irish & very old-fashioned & didn't trust these new fangled colour tellys however, I managed to persuade them to have a home trial.

The TV I chose was a 20" Mitsubishi (the model number escapes me) but at the time (1973) due to some kind of trade embargo, at that time it was the largest size imported TV that could be sold in this country. It did however provide a super picture & started up very quickly.

When Mum & Dad saw programmes in colour like Hawaii 5-0, they were hooked and so my plan worked as dad signed up for a rental agreement promptly.

Everybody rented in those days as being new technology, people were afraid of repair bills. Different today, reliability is so good.

I can still remember the many TV High St. rental outfits now gone......Rediffusion, DER, Radio Rentals, Granada, British Relay, Vision Hire.

Gam

[darren]

Re: Colour TV

[George 1978]

Re: Colour TV

Although my parents didn't have the same model of Pye set, they did have an identical remote control to go with it, and I bet that the one in the picture would have worked the one that we had! We had ours from 1984 right until the late 1990s.

[andrec]

I think the first time I saw colour TV was in 1969 or 1970, when I would have been 8 or 9. I remember my gran or mom took me to a relative's house as their son had a Chopper bike and I wanted to have a go on one - my parents were going to buy one for my birthday and also wanted to see if I was big enough for one. Anyway, that relative also had a colour TV and to me it seemed incredible. I can't recall exactly what I saw, it could have been Wimbledon, but after so long I can't be sure. Our first colour TV was a 22" Pye bought very late 1973, not long after Princess Anne's wedding. We watched that wedding on my mom's employer's 26" Grundig colour TV, which seemed enormous at the time to me. 65" flat TVs attached to walls were just science fiction back then, now they are nothing special. Our 22" Pye cost £220 at the time. It was not very reliable, and nearly every time we came back from our week's Summer holiday it wouldn't turn on. It was replaced by a 22" Bush in 1980. I used the old Pye in my bedroom well into the 80s. I connected it up to a Sanyo VCR, but when playing a tape the picture at the top right would start to bend inwards, gradually getting worse as the tape played.