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Here's a GREAT IEEE article about the death of Zenith. Was on HN a while ago. https://spectrum.ieee.org/zenith-tv https://spectrum.ieee.org/zenith-tv Delves

Here's a GREAT IEEE article about the death of Zenith. Was on HN a while ago. https://spectrum.ieee.org/zenith-tv https://spectrum.ieee.org/zenith-tv Delves deeper into the "lower cost of overseas manfuacturing" as cause of death for the US TV industry, with a focus on Zenith. Zenith saw this coming and tried to avoid it by investing in technology and R&D - and unfortunately chose to invest in technically superior but unpopular or uncommoditizable technologies like Betamax, digital signal transmission standards, and early analog HDTV. Heck, they paid to develop the standard for stereo TV broadcast audio, then gave it away royalty-free.

Aloha 4y ago
I enjoyed that. I disagree with some of the suggestions in there, RCA went to PCB's early (so did Philco, who went even earlier), and the reliability of their products markedly suffered for it. As I mentioned in a parallel article, it's not uncommon to find older (60's era) Zenith electronics that still work as new from the box. Zenith waited until the mainstream use of transistors to move to PCB's because it solved the primary issue of PCB's - heat. There (still) is no reliable way to put tubes on a PCB and have it last, and this was particularly true for television applications one, because of the amount of heat generated by particular tubes used for certain aspects of TV design, and because of the sheer number of them. Zenith went to PCB's for the Transistorized sections and kept point to point wiring for the tube portions in hybrid sets. It's part of why they had a good reputation for quality - one that persists today. Interestingly enough, there is still a small rump of Zenith humming along in Illinois, mostly doing R&D and Technology Licensing. LG owns them now, I've often wondered if LG ever introduced US Television production, if they'd do it under the Zenith brand name. https://zenith.com https://zenith.com
TMWNN 4y ago
The article was published in 1988, before Zenith decided to sell the PC business (a very successful unit, as the article indicates), rather than exit the TV business.
- Aloha 4y ago
  Lots of wrong bets out there in time - notably, look at AT&T, they held on to Western and Long Lines, they probably should have divested those and held onto the RBOC's

Aloha 4y ago

I enjoyed that. I disagree with some of the suggestions in there, RCA went to PCB's early (so did Philco, who went even earlier), and the reliability of their products markedly suffered for it. As I mentioned in a parallel article, it's not uncommon to find older (60's era) Zenith electronics that still work as new from the box. Zenith waited until the mainstream use of transistors to move to PCB's because it solved the primary issue of PCB's - heat. There (still) is no reliable way to put tubes on a PCB and have it last, and this was particularly true for television applications one, because of the amount of heat generated by particular tubes used for certain aspects of TV design, and because of the sheer number of them. Zenith went to PCB's for the Transistorized sections and kept point to point wiring for the tube portions in hybrid sets. It's part of why they had a good reputation for quality - one that persists today. Interestingly enough, there is still a small rump of Zenith humming along in Illinois, mostly doing R&D and Technology Licensing. LG owns them now, I've often wondered if LG ever introduced US Television production, if they'd do it under the Zenith brand name. https://zenith.com https://zenith.com

TMWNN 4y ago

The article was published in 1988, before Zenith decided to sell the PC business (a very successful unit, as the article indicates), rather than exit the TV business.

Aloha 4y ago
Lots of wrong bets out there in time - notably, look at AT&T, they held on to Western and Long Lines, they probably should have divested those and held onto the RBOC's