There was a time before portable TVs and personal media players when the idea of putting coin-operated TVs everywhere, from restaurants to airports and laundromats, would have seemed like a solid business model. Thus was born the Vend-o-Vision by Mini-TV USA, which presented itself as a cash earner for businesses and a way to make their customers even happier. One of these new-in-box units recently made its way over to [Mark] of the SpaceTime Junction YouTube channel.
This unit is very simple, with what appears to be an off-the-shelf Panasonic black-and-white TV with UHF and VHF reception capability, inside a metal box that contains the timer mechanism, which is linked to the coin mechanism. Depending on a physical slider with three positions, you get anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes per quarter, with the customer having to tune into the station themselves using the TV’s controls. A counter mechanism is provided as an option.
As would be expected from a new-in-box unit, after chiseling off the 30-odd-year-old Styrofoam packaging, it fires right up and works fine. Of course, it’s a small black-and-white TV, so it’s not incredibly useful, and clearly wasn’t even back in 1989 when the Vend-o-Vision first appeared.
After some finagling with adapters, [Mark] gets everyone’s favorite movie playing on the tiny screen, giving us the first glimpse of what it would have been like to gaze at this miracle of technology back around the early 1990s in a noisy laundromat or restaurant. One can hardly imagine why it didn’t catch on.
We can see a patent for this appear in a 1990 scan of the USPTO’s gazette, where it’s listed as being first in commercial operation on the 29th of November 1989. The system was short-lived, however, with in 1995 the FTC settling with the company for deceptive practices, as the company had overinflated the projected earnings per TV when it started flaunting it at tradeshows in 1990. A few years prior, Mini TV USA appears to have already ceased operations, making these remaining Vend-o-Vision quite rare indeed. These types of coin-operated TVs were usually in public places or hotels. But we’ve seen coin-operated TVs that briefly appeared in homes, too.
Being able to turn them off for a quarter might be the more solid business model in certain pubs ;-)
When I’m in my favourite pizza place and the TV is blasting some cringeworthy gen-Z pop I simply put on my Peltors I EDC in my backpack and then eat in peace. It looks weird maybe to some freaks but I’m already autistic so I don’t care much (I’m kinda like Trevor Philips IRL.)
For many years, the best selling record on some jukeboxes was a blank platter so you could put a nickle in and shut the machine up for 3 minutes. More here: http://musicweird.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-sounds-of-silence-brief-history-of.html
TV-B-Gone FTW
Black-and-white in 1990? I wonder why it didn’t catch on!
Portable BW units were still pretty common being sold new up to the 00s when LCD was cheap enough
A quarter for 15 minutes of TV in public, I don’t think their clientele were demanding 36″ trinitrons.
here in the U.K. in the 80s, you could rent TVs in your house like that. An you insert coins to keep it on. From time to time, the coin collectors came to collect the coins from the TVs.
I remember them in Greyhound bus terminals in the late 1970’s. The chairs these things were bolted to were more comfortable than standard bus terminal seats, so I sat in one of them if it wasn’t being used (which they often were). I ended up sleeping in one once in 1976 when I got stuck overnight in the Binghamton, NY Greyhound terminal.
yea i remember seeing these in bus stations when i was 5 or so, i dont think i had started. i may have used one, i seem to recall watching the three stooges on one of them after finding a quarter under one of the chairs.
“… FTC settling with the company for deceptive practices…” – those were the days when FTC had such powers.
Rewind to present and find no single body, not even DOJ, capable of doing much besides the usual (slap on the wrist and a finger wagging “bad boy!”)
Meanwhile you can watch a TV free in most businesses that have em
Professor Brian O’Blivian would approve!
“The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye”
TV B-gone would not work with these. No remote control access.
I remember them from the NYC Port Authority (the old location). Whenever my dad would go to pickup our grandmother, I would go and use them.
You can also see them being used in the movie “Adventures in Babysitting”
LOL
How did they ever make that business model profitable?
Even if every customer was perfectly honest, the number of coins collected wouldn’t even pay the salaries of the coin collectors