Here's an unusual creature. TV with 8 track player.

[brianbelfast]

A TV with a built-in 8-track cartridge player. There's something you don't see every day.

[toshiba tony]

I'll tell you what, does it record tv. Most certainly I haven't. What make is it, and model. Most interesting.

['LIVEWIRE?']

I don't know what make the TV is, but I guess it's American. One company in the UK, possibly Regentone or RGD made, back in the 50s, a TV/Radio/Record Player combination, but I've never seen, or heard of, a TV/8-track combo/

[electronicskip]

Possibly an RCA television? as RCA had a major part in the development of 8 track carts if I remember rightly?

[toshiba tony]

It certainly has an American look to it. I'm going to look a lot further if the poster tells us the the make and model, are we assuming it's colour, or color as it would be known

[paulsherwin]

The Americans were always bigger on 8-track than we were here. The TV appears to have VHF and UHF tuners.

[Snarf81]

I wonder if those speakers on top of the TV were magnetically shielded

[FERNSEH]

Looks like the CRT is a 23 or 25" rimband type so if the set is colour it has be a post 1965/66 model and monochrome a year earlier.

DFWB.

[hamid_1]

These TV+audio consoles were quite popular in the USA and Canada. One of my relatives had a Zenith TV console with turntable, radio and 8 track player, accessed by opening a hinged lid on top of the TV, very much like a radiogram. It must have been made in the 1970s but they were still using it into the 1990s. Houses tend to be bigger over there, and those big consoles became a showpiece in a large room, rather like today's large flat-panel TVs.

I heard Zenith even made a combination TV with a phone. When someone called, their number appeared on the TV screen. (This was in the 1990s, long after the demise of the 8 track.)

8 track tapes were also a lot more popular in North America, thanks to car manufacturers including them as standard on many models. This created a huge market for the tapes, and in turn for home 8-track players so that people could listen to the music they had bought both at home or on the move.

In the UK, 8-tracks were only really popular for a few years in the early 1970s. Various home, car and portable players / recorders were sold here, but the only TV with built-in 8-track player in the UK that I'm aware of was the Keracolor spherical one, which had the option of an 8-track player built-in (it looked like a standard car 8 track unit that had simply been slotted in). There were of course, lots of the small TV/radio/cassette recorder combinations with mains or battery power, popular amongst camping and caravanning enthusiasts.

[Richard_FM]

On the Facebook Vintage TV page there are a lot of American collectors with consoles with a TV, Turnable, Radio & sometimes a tape recorder built in, along with a cupboard for storing records in.

I'm sure I've seen one with a refrigerated cocktail cabinet built in.

[Brigham]

Curtis Mathes?

[Heatercathodeshort]

Combined Television, radio and gramophone units have been in the UK since the very start of TV broadcasting. One of the last produced I believe was the Decca SRGTV777 produced around 1966. It was a dual standard 23" TV with the DR122 type chassis fitted together with, a full stereo radiogram [transistor] that sounded absolutely fabulous. The record changer was a Garrard AT6 with Decca Deram cartridge. Pye also produced a Swan song model, the 28 with the late version of the 11U chassis, quality radio and a BSR autochanger but it was not in the class of the Decca. Alba, Regentone and quite a few others added to the number. The early Alba models were very lavish with 15" tubes and elaborate cabinets.

Many do not know that a combination of the BUSH TV11 and the later TV24 [TRG24] was produced with a Garrard changer and what was then the current radio chassis.

I believe there were models with tape recorders fitted but I have never seen one. In the UK the 8 track was mostly seen in what we now call classic cars and never really caught on for home use as the Philips Compact Cassette did. Regards, John.

[toshiba tony]

Philips made a VCR, a b\w set with a built in reel to reel video recorder. I think it was the so called twin panel philips. VHF\UHF. Must have been a terrible picture.

[Nuvistor]

Hi Tony,
The Philips EL3400 with 1inch tape with helical scan introduced 1963/64 had a 2.5Mhz frequency response for 405 line so perhaps quite acceptable. They may have improved on that for the 625 line systems. From the PT article it appears to be using valves, or at quite a few.
If the TV used a twin panel CRT 1963/64 would be about right, from 1965 the Panorama CRT’s were in use.
I never saw one of recorders so I can only go off the PT article.

https://americanradiohistory.com/Arc...on-1967-02.pdf

https://www.oldtechnology.net/reeltoreel.html

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/home.htm

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by Brigham

Curtis Mathes?

Lots of photos of Curtis Mathis sets, note the Collaro and BSR record decks and one photo on the site shows the BSR TD? Tape deck, never can remember it’s model number. I couldn’t see a TV with an 8 track but who knows.

https://www.curtis-mathes.com/apps/blog/

[John123]

Found some pictures of an RCA one which looks to be an all-in-one with an 8-track. Does remind me a little of that hideous Fidelity contraption we had over here in the eighties!

Note the silver screen bezel looks quite similar to the one in o/p's photo..as do the general layout of the controls, so my money's on RCA. Yes, that could also apply to many different models of the era but they do look somewhat similar.

[Nuvistor]

Just an off the wall thought, could it be an early games cartridge, the Tennis style of game and not an 8 track?
An Atari type but similar in size and shape if not colour.

[Heatercathodeshort]

Originally Posted by John123

Does remind me a little of that hideous Fidelity contraption we had over here in the eighties!

I thought someone would bring that one up! John.

[electronicskip]

I nearly had a hernia helping deliver one of those upstairs.

[Herald1360]

Originally Posted by toshiba tony

Philips made a VCR, a b\w set with a built in reel to reel video recorder. I think it was the so called twin panel philips. VHF\UHF. Must have been a terrible picture.

That wouldn't have been a VCR, but a VR......