Some of the portable tv's in my collection. Nobody wants these anymore since we went all digital, but to me, they still hold a charm. I've added a few more since this picture was taken, last one was a Panasonic TR-5030G from around 1981, looks a bit like a video camera of the era.
I've got a Blonder Tongue Transmitter so I can still use them, I was thinking about putting together a wall of them and renting it out for events.
JVC 3060 from 1978, this one was awesome but I have to believe it was silly money back then. At the time a smaller screen was technologically advanced so it was treasured to have something this small. I'm not a CRT expert, maybe Longman can let us know why it was so hard to make the tiny TV screens.
I don't think it was. Part of the problem is that the electron guns etc at the back of the tube tend to be a fixed size (probably due to physics, high voltages etc. Consequently a 2" tube wouldn't be that much shorter than a 5" tube. Unlike an LCD it certainly wouldn't be any cheaper to make. Most manufacturers seemed to settle on about 5" as a good compromise between usability and portability. Of course, when camcorders became popular a whole new market appeared for very small tubes (although the screen size to length ratio was terrible). Regarding the Plustron that was a rip off. This is what Argos were offering back in 1979. The 12" Pye and Fergusson were obviously much better value. Manufacturers had been churning out hundreds of thousands of sets like that for a decade. Every other student ended up with one (my sister got a similar Sanyo for her 18th Birthday). A new market was also appearing for them. The Tandy TRS80 monitor was a similar TV minus the tuner.
