1978 technology at its Zenith -- or GE at least. A whopping 75 inch screen in a beautiful faux wood mount. Finally, a tv that delivers "realistic flesh tones, blue skies, green grass". I was so tired of that purple skin, red sky and orange grass of our RCA console tv! Note that it had the option of the GE "Command Performance" VHS video cassette recorder. How much do you think this cost in 1978 dollars? I couldn't find that answer anywhere, but I'm guessing it was a lot. Reading the patent for this, it looks to be an early version of a projection tv, but still used a crt and shot the image through a lens to increase the image with "no noticeable change in resolution." I love the pencil-neck geek pushing it. Watch out! He has a clipboard!
I found another version of this ad that gives a little better picture of that early VCR:
It would appear you set the channels with the tv-like knobs on front.
Growing up, I didn't know anyone who could afford something like this. I didn't even know this existed back then! We didn't get our first VCR until 1983 and I thought we were ahead of the game then!
The sad thing is, in 30 years, we'll be looking back on ads for Blu-ray DVD players and 62-inch plasma televisions and laughing at them just as we laugh at this one. Maybe I'll hold off on buying one...
1 comment:
I actually remember seeing this ad for real, back in the day. I don't recall whether I saw the whole thing on display (at Sears, or wherever)... but I did have hands-on with a VCR very much like that one.
There was no pre-programming the thing, but I think you could get a remote to manually change channels (mechanically rotating the channel selector(s)).
Captcha: fiestobr... some kind of finnish version of Octoberfest?
Post a Comment