Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This Admiral Television Set has a feature called "Instant Play" which was available from 1967 onwards. It is a technique that keeps the vacuum tubes "hot and ready" so that the TV powers on in about 1 second. In this video, we time the "cold" power on and compare to the instant play power on, and surprisingly the instant play is even faster than a modern flat panel television being fed the same signal! Unfortunately, the energy cost of doing this is high: it consumes 32 watts of power in standby mode. Obviously, the LCD panel has better picture and sound but this goes to show that even in the move from analog to digital television some tradeoffs were made! I guess HD is definitely worth giving up the ability to power on and tune a signal very quickly...
0:00 Intro
0:28 Tubes and Transistors
0:50 Cold Start Test
1:36 Elvis Warm Start Test
2:10 Faster than a flat panel
2:36 Sun shield removal
2:53 Power consumption
3:24 Conclusion
#AnalogTV #VintageTech #1960s
This Admiral Television Set has a feature called "Instant Play" which was available from 1967 onwards. It is a technique that keeps the vacuum tubes "hot and ready" so that the TV powers on in about 1 second. In this video, we time the "cold" power on and compare to the instant play power on, and surprisingly the instant play is even faster than a modern flat panel television being fed the same signal! Unfortunately, the energy cost of doing this is high: it consumes 32 watts of power in standby mode. Obviously, the LCD panel has better picture and sound but this goes to show that even in the move from analog to digital television some tradeoffs were made! I guess HD is definitely worth giving up the ability to power on and tune a signal very quickly...
0:00 Intro
0:28 Tubes and Transistors
0:50 Cold Start Test
1:36 Elvis Warm Start Test
2:10 Faster than a flat panel
2:36 Sun shield removal
2:53 Power consumption
3:24 Conclusion
#AnalogTV #VintageTech #1960s
