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The one that got away - Aussie Pye from 1977

Colour Television

Last Post by irob2345 4 years ago

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irob2345

(@irob2345)

Posts: 704

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Pity looks like we missed this neat little 22" lowboy, it was on Gumtree for free. Probably will become a fishtank now.

This TV has a lot of styling, design and engineering significance.

It has the 2nd generation very clever modular front panel treatment (used on 20, 22 and 26" models) with microtouch channel buttons.
Because it's a T34 (somewhat rare) it has the Matsushita Mosfet tuner.
The T34 was the short run simplified development of the T30 for self-converging CRTs up to 53cm. Simple and ultra reliable. They only made 18000 of this chassis because they couldn't move production of it to Philips Hendon. Pity, it was SO much better that the KT2 that replaced it.
The world's first IR remote control was introduced in this series and this set has it.

Plus the gorgeous joinery made cabinet, by Parker I think.

There is a postscript to the T34 chassis.
It was developed while the R&D manager at Pye Marrickville was on leave. Once they had built the prototype they went over his head and dumped the large box of parts that wouldn't be needed in the new model, on the boss's desk, along with production costing that showed the new model could be built for half the cost of the old.
That's why the T34 went into production.

The T34 was an incredibly reliable chassis, I don't recall ever having to fix one.

Posted : 11/08/2020 5:27 am

Red_to_Black, Nuvistor, Doz and 9 people reacted

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PYE T34 Chassis

Doz

(@doz)

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Modern looking set for 1977 - perhaps it's the grey facia?

Posted : 11/08/2020 8:12 am

irob2345

(@irob2345)

Posts: 704

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Topic starter

@doz

It's actually a kind of metallic gold beige colour, sprayed onto the plastic.

Yes their styling was somewhat avant garde, they put a proper industrial design effort into this one because the 1st gen TVs (rotary tuner only) looked pretty ordinary.There was also a twin rotary tuner version for the cheaper models that had the same form factor.

That front panel styling only lasted a few years, it was too complex to build. Replaced by a one-piece plastic moulding and a single PCB, no more rotary tuners.

Posted : 12/08/2020 6:32 am