A Pye Television

I thought that people may like to see this. My parents purchased this Pye black& white television in the late 1950's, second hand, as an ex-rental TV when it was about 2 years old. It is believed to be my parent's 2nd TV that they purchased after getting married. The first was similar looking but a slightly older model which I remember being disposed of in the early to mid 1970's after it stopped working and was not economic to repair. Fortunately this Pye set, seen below, was saved.

For many years this was our "main TV" and continued to be used by us until the late 1970's. It worked on 405 lines transmissions which meant that picture quality was of much poorer quality and "grainier" than we would expect today. After turning the set on you got absolutely nothing for a few minutes until the valves/vacuum tubes inside had warmed up and then the set gradually came to life.

For the last few years the TV set has been on loan as part of a 1950's display which has now ended and, therefore, it has been returned to me. I well remember watching many a programme on this TV, as a child, in the 1970's, such as Dr Who, for example, and the picture quality seemed perfectly fine in black and white (with a touch of grey). That was until 1974 when my Gran went "way-out" and became the first person in the family to own a colour TV. Black and white TV never looked the same again but I would have to wait about another 5 years before my parents could afford our first colour TV.

The first TV my Grandparents had, I was raised by them...was much like that. Round edges and tubes, got very little reception as we were far out in the country. I was always jealous of one of my friends that had "Cable" way back then. They too were out on the farm but he had channels we didn't. We only had about 6 channels...dial that clunked when you turned. I was later told my uncle had bought it for them when TVs came out in the 50s.

Yep. i remember using one like that as a reactive target! Where I ived, there were only three channels and we had a portable black and white set. I saw the first run of Star Trek in B&W. The NBC Peacock was B&W. We all went over to my grandparents to watch the moon landing on their big color TV... but it was in B&W and pretty bad quality due to NASA creating their own TV format because they had NO IDEA anyone on the networks would be interested in watching. Once they were snowed under by the networks, they set up an impromptu telecine by displaying their bespoke format (320s can lines at ten frames per second) on a monitor and focusing an NTSC TV camera on that. You could see the scan lines. What a mess.

Bob

Grandpa started a hardware/appliance store in Cobleskill, NY, 1935, they had the first color TV set I can remember, mid 60's?. Dad bought him out in the mid-60's, we didn't get a color set until long after I was gone from home ('71). Moved to TX in '75 and soon bought a Curtis Mathis console, made in the USA!

Russ

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Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Where I ived, there were only three channels

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We in the UK only had 3 TV channels until 1982 when channel 4 started broadcasting.

By putting the television into a polished wooden case it almost became a piece of furniture in the home, unlike the plastic rubbish on offer today.

The other thing with "older televisions" was that they were often actually worth repairing when they went wrong. Our TV repair man had a surname of "Burney" which seemed slightly amusing and rather apt considering the job he did. I believe that he learnt his skills while doing his National Service in the RAF in the 1950's. Once he had been notified that the television was in need of repair he would arrive soon after normally in the late afternoon around 4pm. He normally left around midnight and during the visit a small amount of the time was spent actually fixing the TV. Fortunately he didn't charge an hourly rate for the whole of his visit, just the cost of repair. After the actual repair was complete he appeared to love "re-adjusting the set" while also giving a running commentary of what he was doing with the picture alternating from a watchable picture to flashing lines on the screen.

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

they were often actually worth repairing

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I remember the TV repair shops around my present city, shows how long I've been here. They were also a decent place to look for a TV at reduced rates. Someone didn't think the repair price was low enough and abandoned it, he'd fix and flog. They'd last a few years.

My father was pretty electronics savvy so we used to do our own repairs during the B&W years. In fact, we had a few sets lying around that he was trying to salvage. Whe I went to do my junior high science project I needed a high-voltage power supply. We grabbed one of those and used its supply to provide the voltage.

I remember my wife and my first color set - a large Sanyo, in the late 1980s. It was in the middle of the Toshiba/Kongsberg scandal and I live in a Navy town so I boycotted Toshiba for years. The tuner chip in the set began to fail with a heat-related failure. It would blink (loose lock on the channel) once for a few milliseconds and then be fine. You almost wondered if you had really seen it. Ten minutes later it would blink again and then five minutes later blink again and eventually would build up to being a continuous splutter of blinking. If you cooled it down it started again. I took it to a repair shop who turned it on to test it and nothing happened. A half-hour later they were just about to turn it off and tell me that it was fine when "blat!" it did its thing. They happened to have a few of the chips on hand so they were able to replace it. A few years later the failure started again. When we went back to the shop, the guy told us, "This is my last chip and they don't make them anymore." The next time it failed it was done.

Bob

Went on a brigade exercise, about four weeks away from home. 1978 about. No TV yet, couldn't afford it. Left the wife at home, of course, got back and the next dat discovered why our bank account was empty. Oh, well, was a lean month that one.

For the Pye 405 line TV seen in post 1 we had a large loft space areal to receive the signal which, as I recall, was a sort of frame, completely different to more modern TV aerials.

Of course once you had your 405 lines black and white TV and large aerial set up the other very important thing that you needed, and still do, if you live in the UK, is a TV licence. For those tempted to "illicitly view TV on the sly", with no licence, there was the ever present risk of getting caught out by the DETECTOR VAN, with it's swivelling detector antenna on it's roof.