here is the last black and white tv ever made not this specific one of course but this
general design i'm sure you've seen plenty of them
even today in thrift stores you can often find them for sale i got this one for 1.99
this particular style of black and white tv started appearing sometime in the 1990s for
example radio shack sold this very similar looking tv beginning in 1995 and by 2006
these were selling for 14.99 brand new and i definitely remember seeing these in stores
even after analog tv was shut down in 2009 which would have rendered these
mostly obsolete unless you hooked it up to a vcr or just used it as a radio
doing some research i've been able to find over 30 different brands these tvs were sold under
here's two of them this one is a spectra and this one is a memorex and you can see the very
similar but not quite exactly the same not just the difference in color of course for example
these fake vents on the side you can see this one is slightly curved well this one is flat
and the two crts you can see are slightly different colors this one is more white
and this one is more gray you can also see differences in the tuning dials
so these were kind of like those suitcase style record players where they all basically look the
same but if you look closely you can see minor differences between them so clearly they were
not all coming from the same factory i'm sure there were multiple different factories in china
making these tvs with slight differences in the parts they used
these tvs were commonly advertised as having a five and a half inch picture tube but the actual
viewable image size is just under five inches which is what they're supposed to advertise
but just like they didn't bother following the rules about not selling analog tvs after
2009 they also didn't bother following the rules about advertising the actual viewable image size
and these small black and white picture tubes were also commonly used in things like
karaoke systems baby monitors and security camera systems
so the part sharing between all those different devices is what also helped to make these so cheap
this spectra 52-bwr was made in september 2002 and this memorex mt-0550 was made in july 2005.
as for the reason why people kept buying these well into the 2000s it's mostly because they
were just so dirt cheap i mean 15 bucks that's the kind of price where people would see one of
these on the shelf in the store and they would say hey that's kind of neat i could bring it
outside i could take it with me camping i could put in my rv i could take it to the ball game
and they probably use it once or twice and they realize it's a piece of crap and they
put it in their closet and they never use it again until 20 years later when they're
cleaning out their junk and they donate to goodwill and that's how we end up with these
this one even still has a protective plastic film on the tuning dial
the glue holding it on started coming off so i just took off the whole thing
and now you can see how cheap it is the tuning indicator is just a strip of plastic
that moves up and down to show you approximately where you tuned in obviously these are just
continuous tuning they don't have click stops on each channel so you got to manually tune it in
and you get fm radio am radio vhf low which is channels 2 to 6
vhf high which is channel 7 to 13 and uhf which goes all the way up to channel 83
even though the channels above 69 were reallocated to mobile phone service in the late 1980s
for some reason they just kept indicating on the dial on these tvs made in the 2000s
even though there are no longer any tv stations in that region but the ones of these that were sold
in europe only have uhf because europe has not used vhf for tv broadcasting since the mid 1980s
and some of these have an a/v input on the back with composite video and
audio but these do not they just have an external antenna jack
which is a 3.5 millimeter jack which was typical for portable tvs back in the 80s
and 90s 12 volt dc power input it can also run on batteries which i'll show you in a minute
vertical hold control brightness and contrast and on this one these
knobs are very difficult to adjust because they're larger and they're almost right up
against this lip here so you don't get much finger room to get a grip on these knobs
on this side is the speaker which has virtually no
openings in this grille for the sound to actually come out on this side it's just a decoration
and here are the batteries 10 c cells i actually went to the dollar store and bought these they
come in a pack of two for a dollar so i spent five dollars on batteries to power this tv and these
are only heavy-duty non-alkaline batteries so they won't last very long because these tvs draw about
12 watts when they're in operation so they're definitely rather power hungry on the batteries
first let's just try using as a radio so i'll switch
it on to the radio position i have it set to fm
"93.9 fm you can also listen online at wnyc.org
for the rest of this evening we're looking at clear skies it's going to
be cold the night low of about 37 sunny tomorrow tuesday high near 50 in..."
the fm reception on these is not bad
so it's picking up plenty of stations on fm but am is not nearly as good
and only a few stations are coming in strongly the rest are barely audible
that's my own transmitter that's why it's so loud
now let's try the tv function obviously we're not going to pick up anything watchable because
there's no longer any analog tv of any kind on the air i kind of wish i did this video about a year
ago when there were still some low power analog tv stations on the air but now they're all gone
it takes a while for the tube to warm up and there you can see just static
some bleed over from my fm transmitter
i'm sure you don't want to just look at snow for the rest of the video
so i connected it directly to my vcr and this is the best image quality i can get there's
a line there's some ghosting and static and there's some buzz in the audio if i turn it up
but that's the best you're going to get these tvs are just not very sensitive
i'll play a tape here
"daytime running lights are for daytime use only remember to turn on your headlights at
night for full power and to illuminate all other lights and if you leave them on accidentally
a warning tone will sound to remind you to turn them off now let's talk about security
peter ready" "well callie this is the key to using jetta's central power locking system
it can lock or unlock the doors rear trunk lid and fuel filler flaps simultaneously"
so that's the kind of video quality you can expect from one of these not very good even with a direct
connection to a vcr and when you turn off this one it looks very old-fashioned you see that dot in
the middle sometimes it lasts longer than others but you definitely get that dot in the middle
now here's the silver spectra tv and the image quality is noticeably superior
and also has less distortion on the audio although it has more buzz
and it sounds more tinny so i'll give you a sample what this one looks like
"by choosing a jetta you've rewarded yourself with a car that's full of driving excitement
intelligent engineering and plenty of personality once you enjoy what jetta's
got to offer we think you'll agree that it's unlike any other car on the road today in fact
volkswagen believes so much in its product it's backed by volkswagen protection plus"
so that's an example of the differences between these tvs even though they all basically look
the same they all have minor differences in their quality and performance some are definitely better
than others and this one also doesn't make that dot in the middle when you turn it off
i'm sure you wanted to see what these look like inside and well there you go these
are so cheap they don't even use screws to hold the components inside the case
so once you crack it open the whole thing basically spills apart like this
the tube in this one was made by dongguan crt manufactory and as for how they were
able to make these so cheap that's because there's only three integrated circuits
in this entire tv here is the csc 5151 that's the tv chip basically the entire tv in a single chip
so it does the tuning the video decoding the sweep circuits for the crt everything in a single chip
and there's the chip for the radio it's an sa 2003 a completely integrated am/fm radio
tuner and a single chip and the only other chip is an lm386 audio amplifier
i don't see any traces on the board for what could have been an a/v input but you can see some
unused traces for what would have been an ac power input with rectifier diodes and a filter capacitor
the flyback transformer is a bsh-8 so i wouldn't be surprised that the high voltage on this is
8000 volts instead of the 25,000 volts that is typical for color crts
and there's the tiny and tinny sounding speaker
and interestingly there's a serviceman warning or waring printed into the back of the case
reminding you to ground the crt when you're going to service this
as for when production of these ended i'm not sure there's still one seller on aliexpress
selling a black and white portable tv that is a kit you have to put together yourself but they
only have about 58 of them left so i'm pretty sure those are just old stock they're still selling off
as for when the last cathode ray tube televisions of any kind were made wikipedia claims it was in
2015 but the company they identify as the last known manufacturer of crt tvs videocon in india
said in 2015 that they still had enough demand for them to continue manufacturing them for three
more years so sometime in that range after 2015 when the last crt televisions were made
so there's a look at the last black and white tv ever made they were an inexpensive
mass-produced novelty item whose quality ranges from poor to miserable so even if you're a fan
of black and white crt televisions once you see how bad the image quality actually is
even with a direct connection to a vcr or a digital tv tuner box the novelty will
quickly wear off and you'll probably just end up donating it back to the thrift store again
"if you happen to have a jetta with power windows or
power sunroof you also get the convenience of a closing feature built into the system
by holding the key in the locking position your windows and sunroof will automatically
close and now that everything's locked on your jetta a flashing red light on
the driver's door sill and that beep you heard earlier will tell you that your alarm is set"