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Radio Rentals colour, 1970s

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ianj
 ianj
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Hi all,

A lot of the rental firms in the nid 70s onwards were renting out older colour tv sets at a reduced price for rental, or deposit ( we had a 19" colour dual standard until 1982 ) but apparantely, radio Rentals could do a wooden 17" colour set on legs, no remote, for only £6.90 down, and £6/month....what would the set have been-obviously not a newish Japanese model, and at 17" ?

 
Posted : 24/10/2012 8:25 pm
Anonymous
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8000 or 8500 series?

Cheers,

Steve P.

 
Posted : 24/10/2012 9:13 pm
Tazman1966
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Yep, Thorn 8000 if a 17". Could have been one just like mine...

 
Posted : 24/10/2012 11:55 pm
ianj
 ianj
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What a lovely little set!

 
Posted : 25/10/2012 1:46 am
crustytv
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Ad's from the period

CrustyTV Television Shop: Take a virtual tour
Crusty's TV/VCR Collection: View my collection

 
Posted : 27/10/2012 9:47 am
Anonymous
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oh nice
does anyone know what make the 3rd one down is?
it most of been fun for there engineers with so many different chassis to work on.
dont see a philps though.
rob t

 
Posted : 27/10/2012 3:33 pm
Red_to_Black
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it most of been fun for there engineers with so many different chassis to work on.
dont see a philps though.
rob t

Hi Rob,
Their engineers were all trained on the various chassis they faced, they had full service back up, manuals mods, kits of parts/spare panels, and 'idiot guides' for the stock faults encountered, more so when Thorn was running the show! (I knew a fair few Thorn engineers).
It was a different type of servicing, where speed and simplicity was the order of the day.

What was much harder, was being an independent, where you were expected to repair all makes and models, with none of the back up!, a lot (not all!) of the ex-Thorn lads were like a fish out of water 'in real world' servicing.
I did know a fair few good Thorn engineers too Btw, and this was not intended as a slur on any of them.

 
Posted : 27/10/2012 3:43 pm
Red_to_Black
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I addition to my post above:

I have just read it back and it sounded a bit condescending :oops:
I assure you it was not meant in anyway derogatory to either camp.

I was merely trying to hi-light the two very different aspects of the trade, they were two seperate animals, with maybe some degree of overlap. (rental engineers v independent engineers), they could achieve a much faster turnaround on selected sets than we could, but on the other hand we saw a much wider range of sets than they did, so it was swings and roundabouts.

For instance I had much help from a Thorn engineer when faced with the then fairly new and awful FV30/31/32 series VCR's with PSU problems, he kindly supplied me with Thorn's tech. guide and training notes on these **** machines, and often I would help him out with something he was unfamiliar with.

we helped and complemented each other back in the day, just their philosophy to repairs was very different from ours.

 
Posted : 27/10/2012 4:20 pm
Focus Diode
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does anyone know what make the 3rd one down is?

Think it might be the second generation Radio Rentals CTV, 710 series?

What great ads. I especially loved the GEC 2028 Radio Rentals clone!

Brian

 
Posted : 31/10/2012 6:30 pm
hamid_1
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It was nice to see those vintage adverts - thanks for posting.

The first ad, for the 19" Baird 705 Colour TV (25 shillings a week) was especially interesting for me. I've never actually seen a Baird 705 in real life, but I have an original service manual and a load of spare parts which came from an ex-Radio Rentals engineer. He told me that the Baird 705 was a re-badged GEC 2028 and was issued in 1968, just before Radio Rentals was taken over by Thorn. Thereafter, Radio Rentals supplied Thorn TVs. I don't think they ever offered any Philips models, but there was another rental chain "Visionhire" which did.

The third set down ("Now colour's starting ... is it wise to buy TV?") I think is a black and white model. It doesn't seem to have enough knobs on the front to be a colour set. I can't read all the ad clearly but underneath the picture it says "for all black and white programmes". The ad suggests that instead of buying a new black and white TV, you can rent one for a year for less than the cost of buying outright, and if you want to upgrade to colour later, you can put any remaining advance rental payment towards the cost of the colour set. It looks like the ad is offering a "stop-gap" black and white set.

 
Posted : 01/11/2012 10:42 pm
Captain Peacock
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Sorry to resurrect this thread from so long ago, but that third set looks like a Baird monochrome model 685 fitted with a Baird 660 chassis (with transistorised IF strip). The 660 was also a nice chassis to work on.

 
Posted : 12/12/2023 11:34 am
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