DTVuser2009

Jay

Does that remote feature wood paneling too?

DTVuser2009

it did, if i remember it all correctly, so 1970s. my grandparents had one too, it was a tad older but sported the same features. i was born in 1979 so it was still new. lasted a good 20+ years before the remote stopped working and the phonepad on the front started acting weird (zero turned the set off, 1 turned volume up down, channels wouldn't change)

I wish i lived during the last of the '70s, it seemed to be fond of natural, woodsy surroundings what with all the wood pannelling on every thing and the folk songs.

AVProductGuru

Hah I have never seen that before! You could actually here tones coming out of the remote??

DTVuser2009

Yes, just like a garage door opener. it was before IrDA was king of wireless. that's why it took a 9V battery to power it. it was actually a sonic or ultrasonic emitter but if your hearing was worth its salt you could detect the tiny notes

Sound-emitter remotes first started in the late 1950s with the Zenith Space Command, but it didn't use batteries. it was acutuated by hitting a button and it struck a bar that sounded the note.

Some disadvantages included older refrigerators kicking in would turn the TV on. or airplanes would fly overhead and the TV turned off in the middle of the show. really bad with the radio interference. i cannot imagine what a cell phone buzzing would do. but then, hey it was the 1970s. same reason some garage doors spontaneously open at times lol

acwriter

Lol. Back in the day when we were kids, my parents were able to use the same remote for the television set as they did for the dishwasher. They even had names picked out for each remote. Depending on which kid was in the livingroom, they got to be the remote for the television and I was usually the remote manually doing the dishes.

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stevezachtech

LOL, That sure is amusing.. I guess it was far more advanced in its time since it already had sound recognition.

DTVuser2009

not really 'sound recognition' as in voice-activated, but it had sonic sounds emitted from the remote that could be easily mimicked if you were talented enough.

However, it was ahead of its time in that it featured a OSD and had electronic-tuning, while most TVs later on in the early 1980s still needed to be manually-tuned by those tiny wheels in the same manner as early VCRs. Even Sony didn't catch on to electronic-tuning until the mid-to-late 1980s.

I have a later model variant of this same TV, albeit it's missing the cool 'spacey' channel OSD that this one had(shows a yellow '03' when powered on for a few, then just blinks off), but it still uses a 9V battery in the remote. but instead of it being sound emitter-based, it's early IrDA remote. it's called 'TouchTune TOTAL remote control' when these TVs first came out they were tagged in advertisements as 'Cable Ready' since all you needed to do was plug in a cable and go. no fine-tuning or mechanical pre-sets like most TVs of the time.

TonyT

Wow, never seen this before. Pretty cool for back in the day.

DTVuser2009

My grandparents had a model of TouchTune in a nice oak cabinet, but the one in the ad is the same one my parents had. it lasted a good 20+ years before (i think) lightning hit it and then the button-pad on the front refused to work correctly. 'Zero' would turn the set on/off and the volume would do 'mute' (which was odd since there was no feature labeled 'mute' anywhere on the TV) and the channel would do up/down volume. you couldn't change the channel any longer plus the remote was lost. occasionally it would work right until it 'warmed up' then everything you did seemed to turn it off or act wrong. it was a nice TV for some relic from the 1970s.

The TOTAL remote control came out on the very last TouchTunes in the early 1990s, the oak cabinet was no longer available and it was a TV useable in entertainment centers. remained a very nice 25" TV with superior stereo sound, but alas, the TOTAL Remote Control TouchTune lost the ability to change the bass/treble of the speakers. in the model shown in the ad, there was a door that opened below the 'phonepad' that had bass, treble, balance, and a mode to activate the 'computer color' (auto color eye that dimmed/brightened the screen depending on the daylight or lighting inside) or turn stereo on/off.

I'm still looking around for an original TouchTune as they're super-rare and i like that On Screen Display. once in a blue moon one will make an appearance in the local secondhand store, but the only one i tried to test in-store was kaput. sound worked but no CRT.