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Channel Range on Old Zenith TVs

J

Joey1986

Most of us on this board know that UHF channels 70-83 were removed from television use in 1983. How come Zenith TVs manufactured into the early 1990s still had the ability to tune such channels? I had a Zenith set made in February 1990, and my uncle had a couple such sets from 1992 or '93 on which that was the case. I know that this was not the way it was with every brand as my next-door neighbors have a Hitachi in their living room that was made in 1988 and only tunes channels up to 69 with the tuner set to [NORM] (for antenna users).

A similar question that I have about the Zenith sets from that era is that with the tuner set to [CABLE], there was a channel 0 (zero) and a channel 00 (zero-zero). I have never a seen a non-Zenith TV thaqt had those channels. All I know is that the frequency of channel 0 corresponded to channel 98 on other brands of TVs and that the frequency of channel 1 corresponded to channel 99 on other brands of sets. (Example: a friend of mine had a newer Dynex TV in the living room of her apartment near UCLA where the Public Access Channel was 98 and Leased Access was 99--the channels that Time Warner Cable actually carried them on [Leased Access has since been moved to digital channel 165, so 99 is now blank]. On her old, early-1990s Zenith TV, those were cable channels 0 and 1, respectively.) Why did Zenith assign the cable channel frequencies differently from the other TV manufacturers?
 
I have a Gold Star TV with detent tuning dials which I bought shortly before the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991.
It too has the ability to tune all the way up to Channel 83. My guess is that the manufacturing process required additional lead time in order to comply with the new frequency bands, and that the factory in Korea had not yet retooled to do that. (or, since I bought the set in Detroit, Michigan, it may have been manufactured with the Canadian market in mind. I believe that the French language station in Windsor was on channel 73 at the time)
 
I don't know if this answers the question, but when I living in San Bernardino, Ca. through 1987, a local UHF station had a translator in nearby orange groves that broadcast on channel 77. Perhaps there were many other translators that beamed beyond channel 69 that continued to operate.
 
There were still a few translators in some areas broadcasting in the 70-83 range as late as only seven years ago in the United States. Canada eliminated that part of the TV band entirely in 1983. CBEFT in Windsor was on Channel 78 before that, CBLFT-8 in Kitchener was on Channel 76, and CITY-TV in Toronto was on Channel 79. I believe there were a couple low-power CBC repeaters in B.C. broadcasting in that range as well.

A JVC set we got in 1985 tuned up to Channel 83. Don't think the RCA we got in 1996 did though.
 
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