Comments on: Fairchild Channel F 101: A Beginner’s Guide

By: Fredric

Fredric — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:58:53 +0000

You write: “Germany would see the Saba Videoplay in 1978, which would lack the internal speaker and would feature an “Eject” button for cartridges.”

I’m pretty sure that SABA Videoplay has an internal speaker also and 100% sure that the SABA Videoplay 2 does not.

ALL clones of the Fairchild System has an EJECT-button except the ITT Tele-Match Processor.

By: executioner

executioner — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:18:04 +0000

Good article, didn’t know much about this one.

By: Hatta

Hatta — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:22:38 +0000

I have one of these. The controllers are… unique, which is really the most interesting thing about the system. The games are pretty poor too, nothing much better than Combat, which is better on the 2600 anyway. Really, not much to recommend it besides owning a piece of video game history.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:17:06 +0000

I’ve never even heard of this thing. Thanks for the info, Ack.

By: otaku

otaku — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:39:31 +0000

Kinda want one of these just like I want an odyssey probably would barely if at all play it but would like to have one if only for awhile. Collecting atari and vectrex stuff though right now which is eating up all my $$$

By: Calibrator

Calibrator — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:16:54 +0000

Minor correction (typo?):
One of the German companies to release a variant of the Channel F was called “Nordmende”, not “Normende”.

Interestingly, Nordmende was a well-known German producer of TV sets back then, like Saba and Grundig.
Grundig sold a variant of the Interton VC-4000 console (which originated from chipmaker Signetics – a Philips company), called the “Grundig Super Play Computer 4000″, which could only be connected to Grundig TVs through a proprietary RGB-interface (supposedly offering a very good picture quality).

They apparently saw the consoles as extensions of their TV sets, as accessories if you so will – and a way to participate.

However, all these consoles seem to be weaker than the Atari 2600 and AFAIK apart from Philips (Magnavox Odyssey = Philips G7000, next gen = Philips G7400+) none of the TV makers ever brought out a second, better generation. We may never know if the video game crash or their own failed marketing attemps are responsible for that.