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Old 21st May 2005, 7:56 pm   #1
ianj
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Default Earliest television set memories.....

Hi everyone,

When we got a Colour tv set in 1976, it was a Peto-Scott dual standard one rented from Mr. Lansdown's shop in Churchfield Rd, Acton...........VERY NICE!!...........I dont know ANYONE else who had this type; my mates parents all had Ultras and DERs etc. ..............................but-- the earliest set I can remember ( about 1970) is a Bush b/w dual standard set...............cant remember the models nos. though! ianj
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Old 22nd May 2005, 8:51 am   #2
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

Hello,

You surprise me when you say you remeber a Peto Scott dual standard colour TV from 1976.

Philips took over Peto Scott in the early 1960s and then made "Peto Scott badged" TVs and radios with Philips innards - but for only a couple of years. The Peto Scott name was thenceforth used on semi-professional audio & video Philips products sold in the UK (e.g. early open reel VTRs). Even this stopped soon after Philips took over control of Pye of Cambridge in 1967. Philips also used the Cossor and Stella brands for a while but the use of Cossor ceased around 1965 and Stella around 1968 (after the Pye takeover).

If the set you recall was indeed branded Peto Scott, it must have been made between 1967-69 (when only BBC2 was offering a colour service on 625 UHF). Three channel 625 colour started in November 1969.

I know that sometimes manufacturers resurrect old brand names they have the rights to, in order to offer a "custom" product to a retail chain - maybe even one they own. Perhaps this explains the set you saw. I saw a Pilot branded colour TV in a Rumbelows shop in the 1970s and a KB branded one in another store in the 1980s - even though both brands had been dropped by their owners in the early 60s (Pilot) and early 70s (KB).

Regards,

Dazzlevision
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Old 22nd May 2005, 10:12 pm   #3
Danny
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

the two sets that spring to my mind was an ecko my parents rented from telefusion with a coin meter and a murhpy set that sat in an old garrage.
i pulled the murphy to pieces i dont know how i lived to tell the tale because i was abou 5 years old at the time and the tube didnt implode when i pulled it out and it got broken by my brother to see what was inside it.
I gues it must have been soft!.
as for the ecko it was rented untill my parents bought a gec fineline in about 1970 from telefusion.
this set lived on until about 1985 when the tube gave out. but in the seventies we got a brand new korting colour set and yes it also came from telefusion.
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Old 22nd May 2005, 10:30 pm   #4
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

We had an Ekco mono with valves until I went to primary school (c. 1979). It was white with orange trim and probably dated from about 1970. I can remember it having an "IBA2" button, which used to fascinate me - I always wondered whether there really would be a fourth channel one day! The picture used to fail on it regularly, and I can remember "watching" Play School with my brother with just the sound working. The repair man said it was full of dry joints, and it eventually went off with a lot of smoke one night. The rag and bone man didn't want it, so my dad saved the speaker and the chassis for me, and the rest went on a neighbour's skip.

Then we were given an Indesit hybrid mono set which became redundant when my grandparents started renting a Philips G11 with US remote control. The Indesit had a soft tube and felt cheap and nasty - the channel buttons had to pressed very hard, but it seemed like they were just about to break off their mountings too. And it made lots of creaking noises as the cabinet flexed. Again, it went bang, and I was allowed to take it apart.

Finally, my parents bought a Sony Triniton (KV2020), our first colour set, in 1982 - the last person in my class to have one! It came from Peter Jones in London, cost £400, and had a 5 year guarantee. The on/off switch became intermittent within a few weeks (my dad used an old tennis racket to wedge the button in), but then it got over that and worked faultlessly until the switch gave up again in about 1990, when I had to replace it. Amazingly, the TV is still in daily use, the tube as good as new, no faults apart from the mains switch (stock fault, apparently). Shame my parents couldn't afford the KV2022 with remote control - they could do with it these days

Nick.

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Old 22nd May 2005, 11:24 pm   #5
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

In the 50's my mum's parents had a Bush TV43,they had it for 10 years and in that time it just had one valve replaced. We was one of the first have colour TV (rented) when it came out, I cant remember what model the set was but we didnt have it for long when it was replaced by a telefusion set. When that set got older we had the repairman out every other week, it had an eht short which would produce a nice spark in the back. That was our last rented set which was replaced by a Pye Studio 21" TV, that lasted 12 years till one day it was switched on and thick smoke came pouring out of it
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Old 23rd May 2005, 12:13 am   #6
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

The first set that I can remember was a 19" duel standard Pye which we rented from ETS in Helston back in 1966. It had great pictures on both BBC1 and ITV (Westward TV) both on 405 lines of course. There was no BBC2 available at this time in Cornwall. This model predates the 267 & 368 chassis but not sure what chassis or model number it was as I was only 6. I can remember that it had Transistor on the front of the cabinet even though it was obviously a hybrid set as you could see the valve heaters looking through the ventilation holes in the back.
Instead of the usual Pye rotary tuner this one used a 6 push button integrated tuner. The engineers were called out several times to replace missing tuner buttons. Occasionally you would change channel and the tuner button would fly out of the set with considerable speed ending up across the other side of the room, one ended up in the fire!
We got our first colour set in 1973, it was a Pye CT205 which thankfully we rented. This was not a happy set and broke down frequently. It did not like a marginal signal either which caused the colour decoder to lose sync and cut out all together. Another quirk of this set was the same as Nick described with his Indeset a very noisy cabinet. As the temperatures changed it would make loud cracking noises which could be heard thoughout the house.
We had to go back to black and white for a while and bought a re conditioned ITT/KB VC53 duel standard set, again from ETS. This was a brilliant set with superb pictures. I kept this set,as a second set, for many years until the LOPTX failed and during a house move the Tube suffered a fatal blow.
We returned to colour a few years later (1977) when I bought a Decca Bradford from the company I was working for in Bath. I still have the same Decca Bradford and am watching the Monte Carlo F1 Grand prix on it as I write this.
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Old 23rd May 2005, 8:40 am   #7
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

My earliest memory was I think a Sobell SC270. I don't remember watching it exactly, but I do remember sitting in it ! You see when it finally expired, which I guess must have been the start of the 70's, my dad took out the guts and I remember climbing in it, or more correctly, the rollocking I got for doing so ... it must have been filthy in there ! With the sides removed as well, the wooden top was attached to the old base plus legs and used as a coffee table for many years. I also kept the tuner panel for a number of years too.

Funny though that whilst I don't remember watching it, I recognised it as soon as I saw it whilst researching Sobell stuff. Then at christmas I trawled through some slides and managed to find some photos of it - anyone know a decent film scanner (I bought one from Jessops ... it didn't work, I took it back) ? If I can scan it I'll bung it on-line so you can all laugh at Jon wearing THE loudest wooly jumper whilst sat in front of the telly.

I remember the replacement, a Fergy 3809, more clearly and still have the user manual for it though the set departed in the late 70's with a worn out CRT.

That was replaced by our first colour set. I don't remember it at all, being a teenager I probably had other things on my mind

TTFN,
Jon
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Old 23rd May 2005, 9:52 am   #8
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

The first set I remember was a Bush TRF c1954. My mother used to sit with me for 'Watch with Mother' every day for such classics as 'Bill and Ben' and 'The Woodentops'. I know it used to take ages to warm up. Then soon after ITV started my brother (a TV engineer) came home with a converter that he put on top of the set and after much tuning and fiddling with the aerial we got our very first ITV commercial. It was an advert for 'Pepsodent' toothpaste which we thought was very funny . Remember in those days, thousands of people had never heard an advert before.

By then I had started school and finished at 3:30 so I used to rush home to watch 'Popeye' on ITV feeling very pleased that I could tell my friends that we 'could get ITV'. The only problem is that apart from the slow warm-up of the set, there was a major problem with BBC breakthrough and my mother used to spend ages trying to get a good picture without 'herringbones' across the screen. Very often you could see a BBC picture 'floating' in the background of ITV. We all thought it was pretty amazing at the time though. We never seemed to worry about adjusting frame or line hold or the fact that there was some interference on screen.

Of course things were better when we got our next set which was a Decca DM2C. That set had a proper turret tuner fitted so all the herringbones were a thing of the past....!


Rich.
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Old 23rd May 2005, 9:53 am   #9
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

Good film scanner, Jon? I find my Epson 2400 photo scanner excellent for all normal scanning plus 35mm film and positives. Got it from Dabs.com. Its been supplanted by newer models by now, though.

My earliest memory of TV was watching The Cisco Kid at my mate's house, on a 9" (GEC, I think it was), THe very rounded CRT meant that the only good viewing position was dead central, plus it had to be in a darkened room. I thought it was magic. A little later my Dad rented a 14" set from Radio Rentals - still early 50s, of course - which had a balanced line aerial input. When we changed sets some years later, we had to have the aeria rewired with coax! The RR set was very good, I have to say. Don't know the model, unfortunately.
-Tony
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Old 23rd May 2005, 9:58 am   #10
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

My very earliest memory were some friends of my parents who must have kept a table set for the duration of the war. We visited them, I guess about the time that transmissions were resumed after the war. I must have been about 10 at the time.

I hardly saw another set until we moved house to NW London and our neighbour, who was an engineer with the old BTH company, made himself a set. Imagine a whole family sitting in a darkened room staring at a green image on a VCR97 through a 6" plastic lens!

Eventually my parents bought a set, like so many other people, to watch the coronation in 1953. It was a Marconi or HMV which I learnt many years later was a badged Plessey. It had a 12" screen but still required the curtains to be drawn.

I never saw a colour set until my first visit to the US in '63. It must have had an ultrasonic remote control because it would leap ahead several channels whenever the dog shook its head.

Joe
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Old 23rd May 2005, 10:26 am   #11
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

While the TV is no-where near as old as the others menioned here, the earliest TV I remember (about 1988ish) is the one my parents rented before we moved from Coventry to Norfolk. I have no idea what it was, but it (I am fairly sure of this) had a wood/plastic wood cabinet, with a grey plastic front. To the right of the screen was a flip-open panel with a load of controls under it, and the speaker was underneath it. The little cover had the 'three colours' thing on it! I remember me and my sister sneaking downstairs on saterday mornings at five-to-six to watch cartoons, and watching the test-card before they came on!

When we moved in about '92, we couldn't take the TV and video with us, so we had to buy our own! I still rememer a few weeks after we moved going to look round the shops to actually buy our first TV! We still have it - a Panasonic - and it is going strong! It makes far fewer noises than the newer Sony we have in the front-room!

Sam
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Old 23rd May 2005, 10:49 am   #12
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

The first set I recall coming into our home was sometime in the mid 50's { Oops - Showing my age now} It was a 12" Regentone... Monochrome, of course. A gigantic cube, temperamental, intoxicating.

A so called 'table top' model ... which is code for : 'We didnt want to put any legs on it'... So my father made a table for it , using the screw-in legs which were the fashion of the time . Black tapered sticks with gold spun ferrules.

It wasn't new. I assume it may have come from my Grandfather , because I know that at some stage he had fitted an adaption to it.

The voltage regulation in these sets must have been poor because when the mains voltage fluctuated, as it commonly did at periods of high demand, such as evening meal times, the picture size would shrink quite considerably, as much as to half screen size. Picture brightness and contrast would degrade too.
His solution was some 'manual regulation' in the form of a large board of power resistors, bolted onto the back of the set connected to it by a large umbilicus. On this board was a multiway switch to bring in / take out various droppers.
At brownout times, we would turn it up a few notches .... reducing it later when the picture became overblown... and probably quite quickly when there were crackles and flashovers [ Gulp!]

I can remember the excitement of it coming ... and the subsequent frustration of it not working perfectly, immediately, because we had no aerial of course.

I can remember my Father contriving one temporarily out of the only bit of cable we had, which was a length of tacky rubber impregnated cotton covered mains flex which I think he may have had from his days in the Navy during the war as a telegraphist.
This was strung strategically across the room, because it was scarcely long enough to reach ... and went outside the front window... not attached to anything ... but terminated with a large blob of plasticene to prevent ingress of water [ So hi-tech}

However ... It worked ... enough for me to watch the second half of a Three Musketeers film, albeit through a badly locked blizzrd !
Being able to watch a film ! At Home! ... Sheer luxury {"You were lucky ....!" }

I think it must have been a Saturday , because I think I remember it being followed by the football results.... { and could I be mis-remembering , but did they not give the scores of the reserve team matches also ? }

BBC only of course. ITV started broadcasts in my area in 1955. I think this was after that but I know that at first we could not get it. Probably because of the aerial problem.

I recall one occasion, my parents acquiescing to some salesmans balderdash that he could convert it from a 12 inch set to a 21 inch.
He came to do a demo ... and proceeded to apply what looked like a contrivance of sticky rubber cups and knitting needles before mounting his 'tour de force' : A large fresnel lens.
The whole thing was utterly preposterous. The only real benefit was that someone viewing from exactly the right angle , at exactly the right distance, after much adjustment of the 'knitting needles', had a lovely amplified view of the line structure of the picture.

I think it fell to me to give it the ultimate thumbs down.

Technology has been doing that ever since: trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.... and commercial pressures just squeezing too hard ... taking too much blood.
I hate compression ... Oops - I've gone off-topic again
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Old 23rd May 2005, 1:10 pm   #13
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

Hi Everyone.

I suppose I'm lucky in a way as the first three sets I remember, I have identical sets! And my 'Uncle Bill' was... A TV engineer!

The first set I ever saw was a BUSH TV125. This had 2 breakdowns that I remember, both during childrens TV after school. Once, the EHT collapsed and the set needed a Loptx (Not that I knew that at the age of four) and Uncle Bill changed it, but I missed it as my mum saw through the 'fake illness' that day.

The other time, it was my fault. It didnt come on in time for The Clangers. So I twiddled every knob on front and at the back.....
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Old 23rd May 2005, 1:18 pm   #14
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

I was born in 1951 and my earliest recollection of television was as a 3 or 4 year old being invited as a special treat, along with other children from the area, to watch the kids programmes on a neighbours 9 inch set. I can still remember the likes of "Muffin the Mule" and "Andy Pandy" flickering in the corner of the darkened room. My parents could not afford a set at the time. In 1957,our first TV, a new 14" Sobell 13 channel set arrived , and gave 10 years service without breaking down, This was replaced by an assortment of 17" 405 sets I had been given, as by then they were virtually worthless, and I remember a Murphy being the best of an unreliable bunch. Meanwhile my bedroom was filling up with 12" table and console sets that people kept giving me, most were eventually scrapped, but I kept a nice 12" Ferranti going for years, and even fitted a turret tuner to it. Colour was late in coming, and the first was a single standard 22" Hybrid Decca in 1975. I rebuilt this monster with a regunned tube. The set came from a batch being scrapped at work. B.T. had used these as monitors, before replacing them with more reliable Sony sets. I kept the old Decca going until 1989, although I lost count of the number of boost caps, PCL84s and PL509s it had consumed... . My parents replacement for this set was a 20" Ferguson, totally reliable and still going today after 16 years. I have resisted the temptation to collect TV sets, apart from the one TV22, lack of space being the main reason, radio has always been the main entertainment medium for me. As somebody famous once remarked, "The pictures are better"....... .

Regards, Mick.
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Old 23rd May 2005, 2:18 pm   #15
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

The first set that my parents bought was a Philips 1400A projection set. It may have had 20" screen but I always thought it was inferior to that of my pal down the street whose parents had bought normal 12" Philips. The 1400A had a slightly yellowish and dim picture and you really needed to be sitting directly in front as the viewing angle from the Fresnel screen was poor. I still have the optics and tube assembly for it and I discarded the original chassis when I was offered a better one but the console cabinet didn't survive the clear out of my mother's house. Oh, and I also have the instruction booklet and a bill for replacing the MW6-2

Peter
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Old 23rd May 2005, 4:51 pm   #16
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

I was born in 1950. I remember in about 1953 or 4 we had a Pye Console with doors (I think a 14-inch). Anyone know the model? I'd love to see it again. I think it was a present from my grandmother to my parents. We lived in Sevenoaks, Kent and got quite a good signal from Alexandra Palace. Apart from Andy Pandy and the rest, my memories were of the demonstration film, which seemed to be played over and over - so much so it elicited complaints from the family.

Also, as a 4-yr old, I was fascinated by the Picture Page Suppressor Film, where a man gets up and throws a brick at his set in exasperation over the interference, and the old crock outside (causing it) blows up. I don't recall trying this myself though, since I was too small to lift the brick.

We must have had problems with the vertical hold, because my father was forever getting up to adjust it. I recall Test Card 'C' always had an egg-shaped circle in our home and I once ticked off the serviceman (a regular visitor) when he changed it to round. I was also peeved because he would not let me round the back of the set to 'touch the back of the picture' !

The Pye eventually moved with us to nearby Sundridge in about 1956 and an ITV converter was then fitted, controlled by a 2-position rotary knob emerging from the side of the set.

All in all this was the birth of my fascination with television which continues to this day...

Steve
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Old 23rd May 2005, 5:09 pm   #17
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

My first memory was of an Ekco 12" console, with the classic Ekco cut-off wedge speaker grille. I vaguely remember an Engineer swapping valves about, which meant nothing to me until much later.
The Ekco was eventually replaced by a shiny new Philips 17TG100U, giving us the wonders? of ITV. I seem to remember it being very reliable and my Dad regretting paying the Insurance. When it eventually broke down, they said it was too old to be covered! That was replaced by a BRC 3000 colour set.
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Old 23rd May 2005, 6:27 pm   #18
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The earliest TV I remember in our household was a mono dual standard of some sort. I was certainly there when I was around 4 or 5 in 1968-69. I have no idea what model it was and cannot picture it now. I remember that we had two aerials, a black round disk that sat flat on top of the set (UHF?) and a dipole hung fertically from the pucture rail in the corner (VHF?).

In around 74 they bought an Ultra branded Thorn 1500 set. It had a wood effect plastic cabinet, the usual four button mechanical tuner and was probably around 18". A couple of years later they rented our first colour set, and the Ultra ended up in my bedroom. I didn't use it much though, because it wasn't colour and because it ran very hot and made the small room stuffy after an hour or two.

I can't remember what brand the colour set was, but I would guess that it would have been a Thorn since it came from the same shop as the Ultra. It had the same four button mechanical tuner and was rather unreliable. It was regularly in for repair and we tended to get the same loan set each time, which was quite similar but older.

After two or three years of this it went back and we rented a Luxor colour set instead. This was probably late 70s. That developed a rattle on the sound after a few months and went in for a new speaker, and I think that was the only fault in the time we had it. After about 10 years my father questioned the rental cost with the shop, they checked the records, and said we could stop paying rental and just keep it (I guess they dodn't want it back anyway). It kept going for another five or six years and was replaced by a Philips set (I think the teletext lines on the picture of the Luxor finally started annoying dad). The Luxor was stored in the shed for a couple of years, dad then tried it with a view to giving it to someone but it gave a loud pop so went to the tip instead.

Someone in the late 70s my Ultra was replaced with a Ferguson TX9 portable (this was not long after they were released). This was an excellent little set! It went wrong after around 18 months (lost vert and horiz hold) and had a large IC replaced. I bought it to Hereford with me and had it until the late 90s. The only other fault was the stock-fault of a 220K resistor in the PSU going high - I fitted a 100K and 120K in series. I can't remember what happened to it - I think I gave it to a friend. It was certainly still working and had a good sharp picture, and I know it wasn't dumped.

My parents bought a Sony Betamax VCR about a year after Beta was launched. I think it was a top-loader with touch controls. A while later I bought a Sanyo Beta machine, another top loader but I think mechanical. I remember it was the first Beta machine below £200 or something, so it was the budget end of the market. This of course also allowed us to copy tapes! Both kept working reliably until they were dumped a few years later and replaced with VHS machines - after dad had copied a couple of hundred films from Beta to VHS!
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Old 23rd May 2005, 10:48 pm   #19
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

I can never remember the makes or model numbers of TV sets we had in my youth, although we seemed to have a Pye dual standard set for some time in the '60s... The earliest programme I can remember is Rag, Tag and Bobtail - I can't recall anything about the set as I was too young! The first colour programme I saw was The Partridge Family, so we must have got a colour set in the early '70s I think...
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Old 23rd May 2005, 11:02 pm   #20
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Default Re: Earliest television set memories.....

My first memory of TV must have been in about 1966 (I was about 4 - born in 1962). We had just moved to a new bungalow in a village called Blewbury in Berkshire (well it was then, its now in Oxfordshire!)

The set was a rather large HMV with a built in radio. It was rented from Radio Rentals. I can remember sitting in front of it listening to Listen With Mother, this is why I know I was 4 because I started school at 5 and wouldn't have been at home at lunchtime.

The thing was not the height of reliability, and the repairman always seemed to be fiddling with it. In the early 70s Dad decided we needed a colour set, so we rented a Baird set (sorry don't know the model) It was definitely a hybrid set though and filled the whole lounge with a very distinctive "pong" of hot plastic and PCB's. ......This set was even less reliable than the HMV. Eventually (when they had replaced most of the panels) the thing "settled down" somewhat, and we stuck with it until the late 70s. Dad got to thinking that we should have something a bit more up-to-date, but the rental company wanted more money - which he wasn’t happy about. We stopped renting and he bought a 14" Thompson colour set from Boots. This was a surprisingly good little set - it has never gone wrong to this day and it’s still installed in their guest room, it will probably “hit the tip” when they turn analogue off though like about a million others
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