SONY KV-1484MT YEAR 1990.

This 15 inches color television, the SONY KV-1484MT , is particular;

It's a multi-system TV set.

They were inexpensive and claim to handle 15 systems, they do a great job on PAL, SECAM, MESECAM, and NTSC. They can detect a signal and
automatically switch to its format.

Multi -standard Operation: Multi -standard sets were becoming more common even  with the international exchange of tapes and the interest in satellite TV. They must have switchable polarity at the vision detector, a sound section capable of handling a.m. or f.m. signals at four different carrier frequencies, and some means of decoding the three main colour systems. If you're content with monochrome reception all three sys- tems are to a degree compatible, provided you adjust the field hold and height on a UK set for 525-line/60Hz field .rate signals. Colour decoders that sort out PAL and SECAM already existed and more are on the way. Most of us have been used to the idea of PAL -only working for so long that a bit of information on the other two systems may not come amiss at this point. The chrominance subcarriers in the SECAM system - one for each colour -difference signal - were frequency modulated but remain in the area of .4.5MHz. Saturation is represented by frequency deviation. The two colour - difference signals Dr (red) and Db (blue) were transmitted on alternate lines, the decoder demodulators receiving their inputs directly and via a 64μsec delay line on alternate lines. Synchronised switching was required to ensure that the demodulators receive the correct signals. Since the subcarrier is present throughout the line there's no need for a crystal oscillator in the receiver. As with f.m. sound, pre emphasis was applied at the transmitter and de -emphasis at the receiver. There's a choice of ident signals, either an extended burst of Dr or Db during the back porch period or ten lines of triangular subcarrier, alternately Dr and Db, during the field blanking period. The unmodulated subcarrier present in monochrome parts of the picture showed as a "fuzzy" trace on oscilloscope waveforms. The NTSC system (USA, Japan, etc.) had a similar line frequency to ours but runs at 60 fields per second. The line period differs therefore and the vision bandwidth is narrower. The suppressed chrominance subcarrier wass phase/amplitude modulated as was in PAL, but without the phase change on alternate lines. The subcarrier frequency was around 3.58MHz, with a 9Hz burst on the back porch.

And it's even portable, doesn't weight much and his power supply is a self switching mains voltage !

Of course it has superb picture and colors !

The Trinitron colour tube, designed by and used exclusively by Sony in all its colour receivers, was the first to have an in -line gun arrangement. The Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) has been slowly changing since its con- ception about 50 years ago. Since then the emitter, accelerator and focus structures at the “gun” end have been added to the vacuum tube to shape and control the amount of electrons from the gun. At the target end of the CRT, the luminescent screen is made of a phos- phor mixture. Phosphor glows white when struck by electrons. Phos- phor brightness is directly proportional to the amount of electrons that strike the phosphor. The CRT sport brightness was controllable with a gun and phosphor screen. The electron beam produced a spot of light that was stationary on the phosphor screen. Placing an electromagnetic field near the electron beam after it left the gun created movement. The spot intensity and location were now controllable and the CRT became known as the pic- ture tube. To produce a color picture on the CRT screen; three independent gun structures are used. The electron guns produce different amounts of electrons targeted to their corresponding Red, Green and Blue phos- phors. Red, Green and Blue are the primary colors for light. In 1968 the Sony Trinitron picture tube was a departure from the tradi- tional three-gun color picture tube. Three major changes to the old color tube created a distinctive Trinitron picture tube:

 1. Instead of three small electron guns, focus was improved using one large electron gun structure that all three beams pass through.
 2. Electrostatic convergence plates were added to bend the outer elec- tron beams so they would land on the corresponding red and blue color phosphor.
 3. A continuous vertical slotted aperture grill at the screen end that: • Reduces the effects of terrestrial magnetism. • Prevents adjacent and stray electrons from striking the wrong phos- phor. • Allows more electrons to pass, increasing brightness without short- ening life. • Results in a flat screen. This reduces annoying room light reflections (glare).

It has a single gun assembly with three cathodes mounted in line horizontally, a striped -phosphor screen, an aperture grill with vertical slots instead of the traditional type of shadowmask, and a faceplate with cylindrical rather than parabolic curvature. The Trinitron tube produces a very good display - some people, including the   Obsolete Technology Tellye ! - author, would say the best aven if some exceptions with the PHILIPS ERF Series. There are sound technical reasons for making this claim, for example the design of the large electron lens which provides excellent resolution. An advantage of the cylindrical in comparison with the traditional parabolic faceplate is the fact that most of the external light that falls on it is reflected away from instead of towards the viewer, thus improving the. contrast and reducing eye strain.
The Black Trinitron introduced a couple of years ago gives a further improvement in this respect (the faceplate has been darkened to a black colour). Since the first Trinitron tubes appeared in the UK in the late sixties there has not been a great deal of change in the design, though a number of improvements have been introduced. More recently we have had the Black Trinitron mentioned above and the Pan -focus gun which gives uniform focusing over the entire screen area, eliminating any need for dynamic focusing but further added in large screen models in the 70's and 80's and 90's.

Sony Corporation (Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha) (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or US$77.20 billion (FY2010).

Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, products for the consumer and professional markets.

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its eight operating segments – Consumer Products & Devices (CPD), Networked Products & Services (NPS), B2B & Disc Manufacturing (B2B & Disc), Pictures, Music, Financial Services, Sony Ericsson and All Other. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson, and Sony Financial. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men.

History
Masaru Ibuka, the co-founder of Sony:

In late 1945, after the end of World War II, Masaru Ibuka started a radio repair shop in a bomb-damaged department store building in Nihonbashi of Tokyo. The next year, he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G.

In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled in the United States and heard about Bell Labs' invention of the transistor.He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company. While most American companies were researching the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka and Morita looked to apply it to communications. Although the American companies Regency[disambiguation needed] and Texas Instruments built the first transistor radios, it was Ibuka's company that made them commercially successful for the first time.

In August 1955, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo released the Sony TR-55, Japan's first commercially produced transistor radio.

They followed up in December of the same year by releasing the Sony TR-72, a product that won favor both within Japan and in export markets, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Featuring six transistors, push-pull output and greatly improved sound quality, the TR-72 continued to be a popular seller into the early sixties.

In May 1956, the company released the TR-6, which featured an innovative slim design and sound quality capable of rivaling portable tube radios. It was for the TR-6 that Sony first contracted "Atchan", a cartoon character created by Fuyuhiko Okabe, to become its advertising character. Now known as "Sony Boy", the character first appeared in a cartoon ad holding a TR-6 to his ear, but went on to represent the company in ads for a variety of products well into the mid-sixties.[8] The following year, 1957, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo came out with the TR-63 model, then the smallest (112 × 71 × 32 mm) transistor radio in commercial production. It was a worldwide commercial success.

University of Arizona professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D., says, "Sony was not first, but its transistor radio was the most successful. The TR-63 of 1957 cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics." By the mid 1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1968.

Sony's headquarters moved to Minato, Tokyo from Shinagawa, Tokyo around the end of 2006.
Origin of name

When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a romanized name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials, TTK. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TKK.

 The company occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was "Tokyo Teletech" until Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.

The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word Sonus which is the root of "sonic" and "sound" and the other was "sonny," a familiar term used in 1950s America to call a boy.The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955 but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958.

At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.

By Japanese standards Sony is a comparative newcomer. It started out in May 1946, recently celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Most of the major Japanese companies in the consumer electronics field were formed much earlier. Hitachi and Toshiba for example date from the nineteenth century, Matsuhsita from the early years of the twentieth century. During those fifty years however Sony's achievements have been second to none. Sony started operations as Tokyo Tsuchin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). Its aim was "to make unique products", and to "create and introduce technologies that larger companies cannot match". One of its earliest achievements was Japan's first reel-to-reel audio tape recorder, which was launched in 1950. The tape to go with it, also developed by the company, was called Soni-tape. In 1954 the company launched the first all -transistor radio to go into production anywhere. When, in the following year, it decided to start exporting, a simple brand name that would be easily recognised in any part of the globe was required. Sony was the obvious answer, and in 1958 the company changed its name to the Sony Corporation. The Sony Corporation of America was set up in 1960. Sony UK, in 1968, brought Sony to Europe. Innovation continued apace. In 1960 Sony launched the fast fully transistorised portable TV receiver. Five years later the first open -reel video tape recorder for domestic use was introduced. The Trinitron colour system arrived in 1968. It was incredible, though typical, that Sony should develop its own colour TV tube from scratch. While relying on the traditional three primary colour phosphors and a shadowmask, the phosphors were laid down in stripes, the mask became a shadow grille, the guns were arranged in -line and the faceplate became much flatter. This was to be the way tube development would go. The Betamax VCR system was introduced in 1975. It is today generally accepted that it was the best of its time. But, as with the Trinitron system, Sony wouldn't licence it to other manufacturers. That mistake led to its demise, and wasn't repeated. The 8nun video system, which has come to dominate the camcorder field, was launched by Sony ten years later, in 1985. Meanwhile Sony had had an extraordinary success with the Walkman portable audio system, which was launched in 1979. This is claimed to have been "the single best-selling consumer electronics product ever marketed". Sony kept up the pace of development, moving on to digital systems. The MiniDisc, capable of both record and playback, arrived in 1993. In 1995 Sony was first to launch a digital camcorder. A home DV recorder is due later this year, along with a device called the DV cap: this links a DV camera to a PC for editing and image manipulation. There have been a number of other significant developments in recent times. The highly successful PlayStation established Sony in the video games market. Sony is to introduce its first PC later this year, while "a true living -room computer" is promised for next year. Plasmatron large, flat screen TV sets are already available in Japan. DVD players are another imminent prospect. All in all it has been an extraordinary story, and Sony's position at the centre of electronics development looks set to continue indefinitely. The company has combined world -class R&D capabilities, manufacturing excellence, the ability to read and to create markets, and remarkable marketing skills. The UK's main CE innovator for a long time, Amstrad, makes a sorry contrast. For a time Amstrad couldn't do anything wrong. It came up with a string of innovative ideas and products, skillfully meeting and developing user requirements. Packaged audio, wordprocessors then an IBM PC clone. There were the combined TV/VCR units, then the video Double Decker. Amstrad was in and out of audio, video and TV, always with highly competitive products. The company came up with the first Sky package at under £200. But while it came up with products that met contemporary needs, it never seemed to take root and grow. We are now witnessing its final dismemberment. Psion, the hand-held computer manufacturer, is negotiating to take over Amstrad's digital telephone interests, which fit in with its own product development programme. Amstrad's loss - making consumer electronics interests are to be split between Betacom, an affiliated company, and a new company to be called Digicom Technology. The latter will take over Amstrad's analogue satellite business and inherit a small R&D operation. How did Sony succeed, starting out with twenty employees, no machinery and negligible capital, while Amstrad simply shuffles off stage? Because Amstrad never developed a comprehensive business strategy. It came up with bright ideas, subcontracted production, stocked up then walked away as soon as the market turned.

It's the tragic story of much of UK and European industry.

R.I.P. EUROPE.