Watch a 1970 Zenith COLOR TV and news broadcast from Chicago!

[KLM817]

Mine has the space command remote as well. I remember those tabs inside the set. You would turn them one direction and with the remote, it would skip that channel with the remote. The remote has 4 buttons, channel up, channel down, volume/off and a mute. If you muted the tv, you could control the hue control with the channel buttons. You had three levels of volume and on the 4th push, it would turn the set off.

[Tbolt1000TForLife]

i love old console tvs, i have a 1978 zenith, it needs to be fixed sadly

[LadyScorpio39]

wow!

how do you get the old shows on it?

[thecooldude9999]

gotta love that 70's haircut.

[tuuexx]

these sets ROCK....as a small boy,we couldnt afford a color set. when i got my first jobs,in the early 80,s,i sought out those tv,s we didnt have. my FAVE was this set,or one very close-it had space command,and the other one,also much like this but with the ZENITH ZOOM !

[Christianpreaching]

Thats a very nice looking TV. My 1984 Zenith is starting to get unwatchable. It has horrible "reception". I have white snow spots while trying to watch tapes and DVDs. Changing to a different coaxial cable or adaptor @ the antenna hookup doesnt solve the problem. Do you know what I should do?

[summer20105707]

The beauty of a set like this is that they fit in very nicely with any living room that has nice solid wood furniture. Put a small cloth on the top of it and you can use it as a table for putting your family pictures on.

[TheFIRSTFatJohn]

Very cool! I remember my dad's RCA console. I miss UHF/VHF! I want analog to come back! (O:

[RadioHamGuy]

The weather guy mentioned "no Skylab passes" for some time, I can remember going outside and watching the Skylab space station pass overhead very well. It was a very big deal at the time and it was common for weather guys to announce when the passes would be so you could go out and watch for it!

[deltaray3]

Wow. Awesome video. For once I really don't mind that someone is taking a video of a video on their TV. ;-)

[deltaray3]

Oh man the memories of being a child with one of these. Probably the color gain was actually more messed with by kids like me. Sorry.

[gsnfan]

It's a beautiful color TV set.

[nakayle]

Very clean looking set inside. I had a 1969 Zenith with the space command. It had more tubes because only the IF strip was transistorized. Before that had a 1964 RCA 21" round-CRT with a CTC-15 chassis- all tubes except LV rect. Think this was the last year of the round-CRTs. It also had the 6BK4 HV regulator tube that was later banned for putting out x-rays. In my mom' attic is a 1949 10" round-CRT Philco with a bad flyback-xmfr- no longer available so can't be repaired.

[inkey2]

I loved it back when TV sets were like a nce piece of furniture....wood cabinets, Now a TV is just another appliance

[GeorgiMl]

I am wondering why don't major companies make tv's like this anymore... I mean beautiful wooden cases like that one...what is up with all that plastic stuff what is up with all that futuristic modern art type of electronics they sell today...I want a retro sound to my house and a have to seek out old broken machines just to get close to the real deal...is it that hard to make a modern machine look like this ...

[Grymmorgan]

DOOOOD!!! Driving a '70s Zenith with a LAPTOP!!! You rawk the KNOWN GALAXY!!! 8^D

Remember the commercials when Zenith's System III came out? The solid state panels floating out of the service drawer like something from Star Trek? Man, I was like, "we live in the FUUUUUTURE!!!" x^D

[met12345100]

old but nise

[uxwbill]

What an incredible TV...and it looks to be in amazing shape! I was surprised to see so many tubes still working away in there.

The spinning display used by the weatherman was pretty interesting. Never saw one of those.

[merfwriter]

Aww, it's like going back in time. i feel like i was transported back to the early 1970s. i saw the same program on YT but this makes it feel real.

[traffety]

Space command remote control lol

[nakayle]

People have forgotten how amazing tubes are. It is completely possible to build an working analog TV set without any transistors, IC-chips or solid state components at all. Even the silicon rectifiers can be replaced with 5U4 tubes! Besides being EMP resistant they are much prettier than dark drab chips and can even help heat your house in the winter thereby saving you money on heating bills.

[inkey2]

@nakayle LOL.....i remember tubes getting so hot in a set that it heated the room....and also gave off this wonderful aroma of burning electronics and burning wood cabinet (which was normal). That heavenly pre 1980s TV smell

[walleyrt69]

I remember these like yesterday when I was young.Can you still get parts for these old 60s and 70s sets?

[mygaffer]

That looks beige, not gray.

[tetrodobeam]

nice tv

[LHZZ12MM]

man..I wanna watch the apollo mission on this!

[NowhereMan1966]

I have the manually tuned version of this set, it looks like the Boyden cabinet IIRC.

[123demaio]

easy set to repair . set has the chroma module in it. Resistors use to open up in the focus curcuit. plays like new

[choogo67]

reality was perfect at that time, what more technology did we need? And we had another decade of great movies & TV shows to look forward to. (PS; the guy in this vid looks and sounds exactly like he stepped out of 1970)

[6452ss]

why are the remotes on the back of the tv ? not at the front

[rivest266]

I do like the way of feeding the 1970 TV with 1970's era programming from your laptop.

[longlivemacs]

They don't build 'em like this anymore. Wow.

[Colortiniz]

Wow, a remote controlled TV from 1970! I thought remotes only came out much later.

[SuperSmasher97]

wow this is an awesome set

[SuperSmasher97]

very very very nice set.

[TheFRiNgEguitars]

Did I see a Grundig radio in the background? :-)

[gnolt]

My grandparents had a tv like this.We would go to their house to watch the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade.We called the remote the clicker because it would click when you canged the channel.

[Pugslee3]

It would be awsome to watch TV on one of those old sets.

[ege1993]

yes how do u watch the old news?

[chaz3345]

how much would it be worth now?

[drh4683]

I got it from a friend who saved it at the last minutes of an estate sale, otherwise it would have been junked. There are a good number of collectors that like sets like this, this set can fetch $175+ to the right person.

[chaz3345]

awesome mabye if us collectors hold on to our old stuff (i also still have a nintendo 64) we can cash in and make it part of our retirement fund :D

[devil6lock]

How are you watching that old news broadcast on there, cant you watch todays tv?

[savammy]

we had a 1979 or 1980 black and white zenith floor model 24' tv with dials no remote..my grandmother would never get a color tv.great picture but it only lasted 6 years for some reason.all the other zeniths we had in the 50's to 70's lasted 10 years or more.talked her in to get a color tv after this tv picture went haywire.repairman said it was too much power in cable signal.which wasnt true.took a small tv up it was fine we just got cable then too.he just didnt want to repair it.acted up before

[coololds85]

i use to have an old 1980 Zenith system 3 tv guide than I bought a 1986 Zenith system 3 which im still left with i dont know way but people say im weird for keeping old tvs

[Nokorola]

In my opinion, this was the epitome of style, function, and awesome in Televisions.

[noahf67]

An old '72 Mike Douglas show would look great on there.....!

[FrancisRidley]

That was very well done. Thank you for the trip down memory lane. :)

[NowhereMan1966]

BTW, my chassis looks the same and I got a big kick out of how the weathermen used the old boards and markers. Those were the days.

[NowhereMan1966]

That looks like a Boyden cabinet with a 23 inch screen. I have one from 1970 that look like that but it has the regular controls. Back looks the same as mine.

[NorthRiverTV]

As always, a top notch presentation! I've seen the WLS-TV video here on YouTube, but I'm curious how you're displaying it on the TV directly from the laptop. I'd like to do the same with some of the vintage sets I have.

[Trance88]

Dang! So many adjustments on that TV! Where did you get that video looks like maybe 1974??

[audubon5425]

Nice set - I like the styling on this one.

[retrochad]

Looks great! They seemed to be more "in-depth" with the news and weather back then.

[batterymaker]

Oh, my--an early seventies weather forecast from WLS-TV. Shades of John Coleman! I miss his term "'Thorms"...

[batterymaker]

BTW, I know that wasn't Mr. Coleman. I can't remember this weatherman's name. Just the sets and the display boards reminded me of his style and delivery.

[jefferyb304]

Doug, is this the same set that you repaired, just with a remote control upgrade ? Did you put the other set on eBay ?

[drh4683]

Yep, this is the same cabinet as the one I repaired but its a year older. I did sell that one on ebay.