Technology from the 1960's to the 1990's

[Del Boy]

Share some of the technology you remember or had from said period

I'll start with the following:


Old Amps from the 60's and early 70's are said to have good quality circuitry and components. These make them viable to be
repaired and or refurbished. 
FFD to the end of the 70's and cost cutting had already started taking its toll on quality and by the 80s most of the stuff was inferior 
to 20 years before with profit maximisation being the aim rather than quality.

These days of course obsolescence is built in and most stuff doesn't last more than 5 years.

The same was true of VHS recorders.
Expensive but well built in the late 70s early 80s by the 90s they were cheap but didn't last long generally speaking.

[Gene Hunt]

Great thread Del.

I have a top notch 80s JVC Amp tucked away in storage. I'll try and dig it out over the weekend and grab a couple of smudges.

It cost me a fortune in the very early 80s but the quality was second to none. Weighs a ton!

Gene.

[The Saint]

Great idea for a thread Del

My neighbours had an identical video recorder to that in the late 1970s, I recall it had a velvet dust cover!

I have a collection of GPO telephones from the 1960s/1970s all in working order, I will post some smudges at the weekend.

The Saint

[Vienna]

I read fairly recently that a top of the range JVC video recorder from 1979 would cost about £1600 in today's money. When you consider that a decent Blu-ray machine will cost about £100, even though they don't last very long, you realise how expensive electrical goods used to cost.

Vi

[Del Boy]

When colour tv was a new thing here a 22"set would cost around £300.
Today that 300 quid is equivalent to about £5000 worth of buying power.The cost was why many homes used to rent colour tv's then video recorders.

It was a huge industry at one point. I remember seeing Radio Rental and D.E.R Escort vans everywhere. By the end of the 80s the writing was on the wall for those firms. My in laws still rented a telly until 1994.

[Cartman]

Yes, mum and dad rented their tv for years. We got a colour telly in September 75, up to then we were black and white. 

[D.C. Burtonshaw]

Yep, we also rented our TV's for many years until my dad agreed on buying outright a colour TV in 1989. Before then it was rentals and black an white too! One Christmas, in the early 80's the rental set packed up and Radio Rentals said they'd give us a courtesy set for over Christmas which was an old iffy colour set (the colours while it was in operation kept going wrong - luminous green snow on "Where Eagles Dare"!!) which must have been in storage.

To me and my brother only used to a b & w site for years, it was a real treat and a bit of a come down when we got the replacement b & w set in the new year. That was in the days when B & w sets were cheaper to rent and then they changed the rules.

As for my DVD player, I've had it since 2003, and it still works mostly fine, occasionally refusing to play the odd DVD but hasn't packed up yet. JVC. My Auf Pet DVD's get a stuck on a couple episodes but I never have the problem with any other DVD boxed sets.

[Del Boy]

Like Cartman we had a rented colour tv 26" tv from the mid 70's. We had it  until the mid 80's when my parents bought a PYE
colour outright. That midrange telly did 10 years service and we got rid of it still working  
Alongside the rented set we had a small B/W portable with turn dial tuner. Obviously the main set was always my parents domain
so me and my brother would watch our stuff on the B/W a lot of the time.

Glad to hear you got your money's worth out of the JVC Dvd player Gerry. It can work out that way. The issue arises if anything
these days needs repairing, then bet you it would be uneconomical. I know that parts are not stocked for these models half as long
as the old days.

I had a bad run of iffy tellys in the late 90s I had a £500ish quid JVC 28" last just over a year before the colour filter played up.
They wanted about £200 sovs to repair it ! I declined and got rid.
The £550 Phillips replacement fared little better. It was widescreen CRT when they first came out and looked great.
That only lasted 2 years     I complained to Phillips successfully and got paid out.
I bought a Mitsubishi 32" widescreen that thankfully lasted 7 years until flat screens came along. I got rid of that still working.

[Del Boy]

Jan 24, 2018 22:32:12 GMT Gene Hunt said:

Great thread Del.

I have a top notch 80s JVC Amp tucked away in storage. I'll try and dig it out over the weekend and grab a couple of smudges.

It cost me a fortune in the very early 80s but the quality was second to none. Weighs a ton!

Gene.

Nice one Gene. Would be interested to see the JVC if you are able to get a snap.

I have a Technics Amp and Cassette deck in Silver dating from 1980-81. Its half old half new. By that i mean the cabinet is still good
quality but the circuitry is modern PCB so not as good as the valve gear or first pcbs of about 10 years previous to it. 
I bought it to go with a Silver Technics SL1200MK2 I have.
I can't dig it out at the mo as its well buried in the loft. I am hoping to clear that out soon though so will take a snap then.

I'm currently using a Technics SL1210MK2 as my daily player
Needs a bit of a clean 
I've had it 20 years and it was second hand then but its been a great acquisition.
I've just clocked the serial number so i'm going to try to find out how old it actually is. I think these were first made in 1979 
so it could be some age.
I plan to have it restored at some point.

EDIT: I've just dated it to be October 1993 but interestingly the serial gives a code that shows it was intended for the Belgian market.
Must of been imported here as retailers shift stock.
It will be interesting to see what my SL1200 is. Its in far better nick than this but could be a lot older ? Who knows.

[Sam Tyler]

Jan 25, 2018 9:18:39 GMT Vienna said:

I read fairly recently that a top of the range JVC video recorder from 1979 would cost about £1600 in today's money. When you consider that a decent Blu-ray machine will cost about £100, even though they don't last very long, you realise how expensive electrical goods used to cost.

Vi

The thing with the old videos was that there were so many precision moving parts. I replaced a few video heads in recorders some years ago and the complexity of the drives and latches is horrendous to follow let alone design. When you consider the mechanisms required to open and close the tape slot, open the cassette, spool the tape out of the cassette, around the pinch rollers, and then around the recording / playback head before you even start playback or recording, and then the tape having to line up correctly with the angled heads (hence the tracking controls) while also tensioning the tape without stretching, it is no wonder the cost was so high. Added to that the electronics were usually all separate components mounted on large circuit boards.

By comparison the disc players today "only" drive the disc tray in or out, spin the disc, and then drive the laser from the centre of the disc outwards. So the mechanism is much reduced and the remainder of the drive is solid-state technology using hybrid or integrated circuitry instead of individual components.

Mind you, we all still thought that videos were the dog's danglies at the time and when NICAM stereo came out, there was the next stereo source plugged into the Hi-Fi and TV played through proper loudspeakers! 

Sam.