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Need help! RCA woodgrain television from 1988 won't get off channel 91

Bill-kun

Bill-kun

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My guess is this doesn't belong in the hardware technical help since it's a TV. Much less chance of me getting help in this forum section, though. :(

I was given a lovely 1988 RCA Colortrak 25- or 26-inch diagonal wood console television, model G26261TN. At pickup, the owner had a VHS VCR connected to it and playing a tape to demonstrate that it works. No remote control, but it appears I can buy one on eBay easily if needed (except that they have fewer button functions than the TV itself, so I don't see how that would help with my problem).

The ports on the back are for coaxial/VHF input, UHF, and stereo RCA composite (yellow, white, red).

I got it home, plugged it in, powered it up, and it requires a channel scan. I do the channel scan with no inputs plugged in. It finishes that scan, goes to channel 91, and I can't get it off channel 91, not even to the yellow-white-red inputs.
 

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Give it some sort of an RF input (like a VCR playing a video) and do the scan again.
The autoscan was back in the day how you skipped over channels you didn't have in your area for easy surfing. IF the tuner detected nothing there, it removed it from the channel memory. Otherwise you need a remote control to do anything.
 
I had tried using a playing tape in a VCR. Trying again now, I found out the problem wasn't the TV, but the VCR! It must be some worn down capacitor in or near its internal power supply, since the VCR is not consistently powering up. If it does, it can take a minute as the segmented display flashes (not the flashing 12:00, but a repeated power-up flashing). If it does, it may or may not play the tape. If it does, the VCR outputs sound but no picture.

I switched to another VCR and made the TV rescan and it works on channel 3. Excellent! (Played a Denise Austin aerobics tape.)

I still can't get the TV to switch to the RCA inputs, though. It can only switch from 3 to 91 to 3. Ultimately, that is not a problem since any VCR has RCA composite inputs and a coaxial output. (Played Astrosmash on a modern handheld Intellivision clone controller-console.) And I even bought an HDMI to RCA composite adaptor on eBay so I can output anything from my modern computers to it! (Played the opening of Tiny Toon Adventures from YouTube!)

If anyone has an idea of how to make the TV switch to its own RCA inputs, please tell. But I think I have tried every option in every menu on the TV. And like I said, the RCA Colortrak remote controls I see on eBay have less functionality than the native TV control panel.
 
What I have seen with other tvs is the RCA input on either channels in the 90s or over channel 00 which may not be reachable without a remote. Both are outside the range of normal TV broadcasting. If you can find the paper with a surplus universal remote, try to set the remote for the tv.

Try playing something over the RCA input. Maybe it will show up on channel 91. Doesn't make sense for the TV to tune to a channel that would never show anything.
 
Dumb question: does it display what’s on the rear input when it’s on channel 91? 91 isn’t a real channel; UHF stopped at 83 or 69, depending on when your TV was made.
 
Funny coincidence--today my bedroom made-in-USA Sanyo flat screen 27" TV gave up the ghost. I have the service manual and traced the problem down to the power supply, but stopped there. I really don't want to keep a 20-year old TV going that's so heavy that I can't lift it (age related decline). Ordered a Fire TV from Amazon for cheap and resolved to take the beast to recycling Monday.
 
Nice TV! You need a wood grain VCR to go with it.

TV.JPG

On my TV, channel 91 is the A/V input.
 
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It is fun to restore vintage analog TV sets. I have been doing it for decades.

Up until a decade or so ago, all of my sets were restored and could receive off air TV. Then all the analog TV stations shut down.

It is still easy to get many sources of composite video signals though, VCR's DVD players Digital set top boxes that have composite video outputs.

But these days, it is better not to run these via an RF modulator into the vintage TV's RF (antenna) input, or some RF Channel. While the results can be reasonable, it does require the video IF sections in the vintage set to be in excellent order and ideal alignment.

Better results (especially with signal to noise ratio and a sharp picture) are obtained if the TV set is modified to accept a standard 75 Ohm composite video input. This is done by introducing the signal into the set just after the Video detector on the set's video IF strip, and introducing the sound signal into the volume control area.

The question then is How to modify them ?

A very interesting paper was written by Don Lancaster on this subject. Actually it was incorporated into the SOL-20 computer hardware manual, the idea being that people could send the video output of their home computer to a domestic TV set and not suffer the noise degradation of the RF modulator and Tuner/IF section in the domestic TV that degraded the appearance of fine detailed Text & Graphics. So if you search for the SOL-20 hardware manual, you will find Don's article in there.
 
Hugo Holden said:
A very interesting paper was written by Don Lancaster on this subject. Actually it was incorporated into the SOL-20 computer hardware manual, the idea being that people could send the video output of their home computer to a domestic TV set and not suffer the noise degradation of the RF modulator and Tuner/IF section in the domestic TV that degraded the appearance of fine detailed Text & Graphics. So if you search for the SOL-20 hardware manual, you will find Don's article in there.
Click to expand...

Hugo's postscript here made me curious, so I went to find it-- in case anyone else is interested, the Lancaster article starts at page 234 of this PDF of the Sol manual. It's a reprint of the same article in issue #2 (Oct 1975) of Byte, linked here.
 
I have an old TV with built-in vcr in my bedroom, and I have a Digital TV tuner connected to it. The picture is fine (for an SD signal) and the colors are sharp.
 
You poor poor soul you.

But what the hell is wrong with channel 91 programming anyway? Some people got issues.
 
krebizfan said:
What I have seen with other tvs is the RCA input on either channels in the 90s or over channel 00 which may not be reachable without a remote. Both are outside the range of normal TV broadcasting. If you can find the paper with a surplus universal remote, try to set the remote for the tv.

Try playing something over the RCA input. Maybe it will show up on channel 91. Doesn't make sense for the TV to tune to a channel that would never show anything.
Click to expand...
This.

I had an RCA Dimensia TV and I believe the AV input was on 00 and you had to use the remote.
 
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