NZ's oldest working telly revealed

Elva Reynolds with her winning certificate. Photo / Going Digital

A television from the West Coast has been named as New Zealand's oldest working television.

The 53-year-old kitset TV was revealed as the winner of the the Going Digital Oldest Telly competition on Breakfast this morning.

It was also converted to digital with a Freeview set-top box and RF modulator.

The competition, run by Going Digital at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, aims to spread the word that New Zealand is going to digital TV and letting people know what they need to do to make the switch.

Owner Elva Reynolds of Hokitika, 92, told Breakfast her husband, who assembled the set, would have been honoured by the win.

Winston Reynolds, the former mayor of Hokitika, put the set together in 1958, the same year Sir Edmund Hillary reached the South Pole and the 111 emergency number was introduced to New Zealand.

Assembled with parts from Australia, the TV was one of the first sets on the West Coast and even received a signal from across the Tasman before television transmission finally arrived on the Coast in 1972.

The set was eventually donated to Hokitika Museum in the 1970s.

Manawatu-Wanganui turned up the most antique-style televisions, with 43 emerging. Waikato was next, with 41, then Auckland (36), Canterbury and Wellington (both 26) and Hawke's Bay (19). Marlborough (three) and Tasman (two), tailed the entry list.

Going Digital has set up a website to outline regional differences, with a step by step guide to finding out the best method of digital television for each situation.

Households with Freeview, TelstraClear or Sky already watching digital TV will not be affected or need to do anything, unless they have other sets which have not gone digital.

Older television sets can go digital with a set-top box, along with a commonplace RF modulator, available from most electronics shops.

The switch to digital television will begin with Hawke's Bay and the West Coast in September next year.

- NZHERALD STAFF