[stampeder]

Tacky is in the eye of the beholder, and its transitory with time. We had one of these beauties, a Philco Predicta TV set:

http://www.mztv.com/predicta.html

But by about 1970 it was hopelessly tacky and dad was getting tired of fixing it so he took it to the dump. Now I'd freak if I could find one!

 

[filper]

Tacky is in the eye of the beholder, and its transitory with time. We had one of these beauties, a Philco Predicta TV set:

My folks had one too. I used to get an AC zap everytime I touched the metal cabinet .

 

[stampeder]

My folks had one too. I used to get an AC zap everytime I touched the metal cabinet .

Hee hee I forgot about that!!! ZAP!

 

[filper]

Your First 'Home Theatre' ?

A trip down memory lane...

What 'gear' did you have in your first 'Home Theatre', and what year ?

My first set up included a 20" Toshiba Blackstripe with a 30 lb. Stereo (not HiFi) VCR connected to a Nikko receiver and a pair of homebrew speakers.

At the time I thought I had the ultimate rig... circa 1983.

 

[johnp'in'bc]

August, 1970 -- it wasn't much of a 'home-theatre', but it was my first tv + stereo setup: a 17" Admiral back & white tv + small Kenwood integrated amp and bookshelf speakers. I lived in a bed-sitting room, in a 'rooming-house' in Halifax. Those were the days!!

 

[RRH]

Well I guess my first Combined A/V setup was my1985 NEC 27" TV with
A pair of small ADVENT speakers for the rear channels running off
the TV, with a secondary audio feed off it to my 1974 Vintage
JVC 4VR5445 4- channel descrete audio amplifier which was hooked to
4 Dual TG 911 3 -way floor standing speakers as well as 4 Large advent
2-way speakers in a series paralell setup.

All of this gear is still in daily use by the way, the TV now resides
in My bedroom, and the 4 Channel JVC is hooked up to a 36" RCA TV
In the livingroom and is still used daily.
P.S.
The JVC amp was thier top of the line product in 1973 and
was purchased April 1973 for a
wopping $1400 txs in , in 1973 dollars ( you could buy a new Car for $3000) but it has and still does perform flawlessly for some 33 Years now, Guess You Get What you pay The JVC 4VR5445 is my most prized piece still as it is incredibly rare vintage piece of gear with less then 15 units ever being sold in North America,in the 1 year it was produced and in my contacts with JVC Canada
and JVC japan only 3 units were ever sold in canada and mine is the only Know unit of all the 15 to still exhist, besides the original prototype.
These recievers were built in very limited #'s and shipped as ordered according to JVC japan. Its a honking paperweight too at an incredible
57 LBS. Its a heck of a piece of gear.

I also have still in working condition
1 Sony 4 channel 10" reel to reel tape machine, an AKAI 4-channel
reel to reel tape, and a fully functioning 4 channel discreet Vinal Record
setup with shibetta stylus cartrige, I just hate to part with anything []
Now there's a trip down Memory Lane [].

 

[Audio]

This is an interesting thread...
In 1986 my first home setup was an LXI (Sears) system. Duel tape deck,turntable, digital tuner, CD player and a 50watt X2 amp and I was thrilled with the sound I payed $500 for it. and it all still is working although I sold it to a friend.
I soon after bought a Toshiba 4 head sterieo VHS VCR It was one of the first to have a flying erace head and has left and right level meters. payed $1100. It still is working today. I also bought my first TV it was a Yamaha 29" sterieo monitor ($1200) still one of the best displays I have ever had and seen. Up until two years ago it was also still working but the flyback transformer went and wasent worth fixing.
I did upgrade to a Carver receiver 6250 to replace the amp and bought the Mission speakers shortly after in 1990 and added a Yamaha DSP e300 to give me dolby souround sound. and did for some time have the only system like that in my group of friends for years.

 

[bgclarke]

My first "home theatre" was a 4-channel Yamaha AX-500 amplifier with a Sony Hi-Fi VCR, connected to PSB MKII 50 fronts and Radio Shack Minimus 7 rears. The TV was an Electrohome (Mitsubishi) 27" stereo. Also had two Yamaha cassette decks, a Yamaha AM/FM tuner, Yamaha CD Player, and a Technics turntable.

That was circa 1990.

Those PSB MKII 50 speakers are still the front speakers in my current 5.1 home theatre system, the TV is the same.

The Yamaha amp, tuner, cassette decks, turntable, and the Minimus 7 speakers are now part of my secondary system in the computer room.

 

[Soulflare]

I bought my first HT in the late 90's -- a 125W RCA 5.0 home-theatre-in-a-box, a Kenwood 103SW subwoofer that cost more than that htib, a 27" RCA television, and a Panasonic stereo VCR. To say I noticed a slight difference when I upgraded to a 600W Yamaha RX-V630 receiver and Athena Audition series speakers around 2003, would be a criminal understatement.

 

[ken0042]

Summer of '93. I "borrowed" (read: stole) my parents' old Technics stereo system. Old style tuner and big speakers. Me and my room mates decided we needed some sort of remote control for it, so we ran it through the Sony TV I had in order to be able to control the volume by remote.

It must have sounded horrible by the standards that I'm used to today. And it was always a pain, because back the the way to change the Sony from using it's own speakers and using the audio outputs was a manual toggle switch on the back of the TV.

 

[mikey060]

I first started bulding mine in about late 2002. keep in mind im only 16 now . I had an old LXI receiver which i got off a friend for free. I wired up my sanyo cd player to it and hooked up a pair of realistic book shelf speakers. I then bought a pair of Sansui S-930 towers. Finally, i got tired of blown fuses, and speaker channels barely working, so last year i decided it was time to upgrade. I shopped around for a few months and finnally found what i was looking for. So early boxing day morning, i waited in the cold with my dad from about 3 am to 7 am when the store opened. I got one of 3 Harmon Kardon AVR 130 in the store, and ended up saving myself about 500$. I now have the AVR hooked up with my sansui towers, and realistic surounds, on the video end a panasonic dvd player, with a zenith 28" tv . I dont have a sub yet, but it sounds great anyways (by my standards atleast hehe). I am now looking to buy some bass shakers to give me some of the lows i crave. But hey i figure for 16, its pretty decent, and there is always room for improvment .

 

[filper]

mikey060,

You sound like me when I was 16.

I can only imagine how many advances we will see over the next 30 years in home electronics when you reach my age.

Do yourself a favour and snap a picture of your gear as it is now, and then when you hit 46, compare the two.

 

[mikey060]

Thanks for the great idea filper. Ill take some pics as soons as i can

 

[Atlantic Home Theatre]

1985 Ht

20" "flat screen" Emerson, quite nice picture for back then especialy for Emerson, also very stylish.

Zenith 4 head HiFi VCR, which cost me $600 in '84 and was a complete piece of crap from day one.

Sony 20 watt receiver, turntable, tape deck

Wharfedale Mach 5 speakers which i still use in my current HT and sound as amazing as the day i bought them 20 long years ago! as an aside, my wife and I spent a whole day checking out potential new speakers up to $7000 and were unable to find anything substantialy better than the the old Mach 5'
Guess they really were all they were cracked up to be way back then.

Thanks for the memories !...Cheers.

 

[conorl]

4vr-5445

Well I guess my first Combined A/V setup was my1985 NEC 27" TV with
A pair of small ADVENT speakers for the rear channels running off
the TV, with a secondary audio feed off it to my 1974 Vintage
JVC 4VR5445 4- channel descrete audio amplifier which was hooked to
4 Dual TG 911 3 -way floor standing speakers as well as 4 Large advent
2-way speakers in a series paralell setup.

All of this gear is still in daily use by the way, the TV now resides
in My bedroom, and the 4 Channel JVC is hooked up to a 36" RCA TV
In the livingroom and is still used daily.
P.S.
The JVC amp was thier top of the line product in 1973 and
was purchased April 1973 for a
wopping $1400 txs in , in 1973 dollars ( you could buy a new Car for $3000) but it has and still does perform flawlessly for some 33 Years now, Guess You Get What you pay The JVC 4VR5445 is my most prized piece still as it is incredibly rare vintage piece of gear with less then 15 units ever being sold in North America,in the 1 year it was produced and in my contacts with JVC Canada
and JVC japan only 3 units were ever sold in canada and mine is the only Know unit of all the 15 to still exhist, besides the original prototype.
These recievers were built in very limited #'s and shipped as ordered according to JVC japan. Its a honking paperweight too at an incredible
57 LBS. Its a heck of a piece of gear.

.

I have one of these, (less the din-plug, lost recently in a move, but possibly located)
Is it truly that rare?
It sure is heavy, and large too. I got it at a junk/antique store in the early 90s in NJ.

 

[RRH]

Yes, According to The product manager I was corresponding with, The Factory serial #s Say less then 100 were ever produced world wide,
I'd say that makes it a pretty rare piece of gear today especially if its still operational as mine is. Lets Put it this way as well, Have You ever seen another
one besides the one you have, I haven't and Ive looked pretty extensively, on vintage sites ect, lots if the stereo models but the true 4 channel decrete 4VR5445 models were Very rare beasts to begin with at least that's what I was
told.
Its nice to Know there is at least another survivor out there.
P.S. I also Still Have the original wired volume and balance remote that plugs into the din port.

 

[MarcP]

Back in 1991, while living on a university student budget, I decided to try something. Connect my stereo system to my roomate's stereo Proscan VCR. The result got me hooked. After buying more and constantly upgrading, I don't think I ever got out of the university student budget.

 

[teenie]

Ah the humble beginnings....

1991... got a 31" RCA colortrak 2000

Noticed on the back of the TV it speak connections for rear speakers... So I decided to hook up a pair of bookshelf Audio Research speakers(I beleive)

Mounted then at the rear of the room at the corner of the ceiling and wall and soon afther that I was hooked on the new setup!

The TV had a setting for a MATRIX type sound setup.

Well, with the GE HIFI VCR.. I was golden... It was just enough to notice effects that added to realism of the movie watching event got a huge kick out of people asking where are those sounds coming from?

2 years later.... Denon AV Prologic receiver B&W speakers for the front... same rears and a Mirage CC. Oh and a Pioneer LD player.

Of course it does not stop there.... but I think I covered off my FIRST home theater setup.

 

[conorl]

Its nice to Know there is at least another survivor out there.
P.S. I also Still Have the original wired volume and balance remote that plugs into the din port.

I must go and look at the s/n, it's in storage now. I didn't know there was a remote- do you have a pin-out diagram?

 

[RRH]

Don't Know Conorl I do Have the Original Factory Schematics that came with it still though so I will take a look. The Din Plug-in is for the remote, IT is a wired box with a joystick Balance contol and a volume dial, pretty cool for its day actually.