First Ferguson colour TV??

[Nuvistor]

The 2000 was leading edge technology in 1967 and a great achievement, unfortunately for me the pictures did not stand up to other dual standard sets on the market, personal opinion..
Perhaps I did not see them displayed at there best.
Frank

[raditechman]

BRC mounted the crt upside down as it was supposed to minimize pincushion distortion.

Since reading this in the morning I have all day been trying to recall something I read or heard when the Thorn 2000 chassis came out and that the CRT was mounted with the blue gun uppermost to assist with a convergence problem called "blue droop". Does anyone remember what that was?
The Thorn 2000 sets I serviced were 25" and we had a box with replacement panels. Replace a faulty the panel in the house, then repair it back at the workshop.
Seems incredible that we worked on dual standard colour sets back then.
John

[MALC SCOTT]

I once read years ago that the BBC used the 2000 chassis as monitors and that they had the pincushion correction fitted, Malc.

[TonyDuell]

To drift off on a tangent...

One of the advantages of PIL tubes over the delta gun type is that the convergence of
the former is really only affected by the vertical component of stray magnetic fields (e.g. the earth's) so they don't have to be set up in the position they are to be used. They could be essentially pre-converged at manufacture.

But of course the direction of the vertical component of the earth's magnetic field is different in the 2 hemispheres.

I read somewhere that B&O made a TV where (due to their 'odd' cabinet design) the CRT was actually mounted upside-down. As a result, they used a tube covergered for the other hemisphere. Worked well (of course), but getting a replacement was 'fun'.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi
I agree with Frank above that the 2000 didn't give the best picture of the duals (though not the worst which I would award to the Bush CTV25).
I suspect that was due to the RGB drive used whereas all the others used colour difference which, to my mind, gave a truer colour. I once put a GEC 2028 and a Ferguson 3701 side by side and the GEC won on picture quality. Both are eclipsed by a well set up G6, though that's only in my opinion.

[gec2110]

i agree that the GEC, was very good colour that why it was called living colour but i don't think they were very reliable.

[Nuvistor]

Bush CTV25 and the be Davey lamp mod, although I never had one go up in flames. I appreciate the mod would keep the flames inside the box but a better LOPTX was really required. I wonder how many of the wire mesh screens were removed and not put back after a service call.
Frank

[Ferguson 2000]

Hi,

I think that colour from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter started on 1st July 1967 and the business where I was an apprentice had a 25" Ferguson 2000 on display then, or shortly afterwards.

We also had an Ekco CTV on display, the Ferguson became my first colour television repair and the Ekco my second.

I went to the 1967 annual Radio / Television show and met the designer of the Ferguson 2000, he answered some of my questions and explained how to check the beam current without any specialised equipment. The only test equipment that we had was an AVO 8! I still use an AVO 8 nowadays.

I have in my lock up garage a 19" version of the 2000 which in the 1970's etc was a rare set.

Best wishes, Geoffrey.

[Niechcial,Steve]

I've got a 25 inch 2000 going fairly strong. As someone else has commented, the technology looks an awful lot less frightening than it did in 1967! It was one of the rarer RGB drive sets (most were colour difference drive) which I think accounted for the picture being a bit less 'Agfa' colour and a bit more 'Kodak'- ie more in your face. The picture wasn't bad but cheap skating on mean level AGC was a bad idea as was the lack of pincushion correction. The tuner fortunately is one of the more reliable in the pantheon of combined UHF/VHF jobbies.