My sister bought the pink QT-50 as soon as she saw it advertised, maybe in 1985 From back when Sharp was as ubiquitous as Samsung is today. More recently my wife picked up a white working Sharp TV looking exactly like that off the pavement. I'm still not sure what to do with it as it doesn't have any inputs apart from antenna. Annoyingly there is space on the board for them but it was obviously a bottom of the range model that didn't get them.
Most TVs back then didn't have inputs, remember wrestling with your VCR/Atari/Cable box to do anything fun on them? I recently saw one of those microwaves somewhere, they were pretty low-end as well but the colors in the ad, I just need Miami Vice on the TV and it's 1985 again.
On many TV's, you can mod them to add more inputs to them, I'm sure The 8Bit Guy did a mod on a Samsung TV to add more inputs
You are right. Here in Europe I thought SCART was more popular by then, but checking the 1986 Argos catalogue none of the TVs had it. In France all TVs sold after 1980 had to have SCART but they were more forward looking, having the Minitel dial up home information system when the Internet was still Arpanet and the preserve of university boffins. This Ferguson was obviously aimed at home computer enthusiasts, but was over £50 more than the same set without the input (item 9). It wasn't remote control either despite there being plenty of sets in the catalogue that were.
Radio and Electronics World magazine did an article on that in about 1982. A bit pointless in Europe when SCART TVs are now so readily available (although I notice the price of CRTs are going up as retro gamers like them). I have the Ferguson above in the loft (and have never powered it on) and a much newer Ferguson with SCART, remote and teletext that I bought when someone at the Radio Club was trying to sell it for £15 and nobody else was interested. If you are prepared to use an LCD the LG Monitor I am using here has DVI, VGA, SCART, component, and composite inputs. The Panasonic LCD TV in the Kitchen has even more inputs with 2 x HDMI, 2 x Scart, VGA, component, and composite inputs, plus a Digital tuner and IPS screen. You can date it from the fact that it also has 2" wide bezels and a socket for a 30 pin iPod dock which was supplied with it.
