What can be cooked from squid: quick and tasty

The worst TV set is Belarusian. Internet experts and couch skeptics are sure of this. We decided to figure out why our televisions are criticized and compare them with foreign counterparts.

Market situation

A little more than two years ago, the production of Belarusian TVs was suspended. In September 2015, 300 were made, in October - none. This coincides with the general trend in the Belarusian market: Samsung notes that sales have been falling since 2014, and in 2016 compared to 2015 they decreased by 15%.

Trying to get out of the crisis, "Horizon" was going to make a TV as good as Sony. This was announced by the head of the company's prospective development department in early April.

Perhaps, "Horizon" or "Vityaz" will really become more competitive in the eyes of buyers, but for now it remains to compare them with others in terms of price and characteristics.

Horizon: six models, almost no reviews

The first is the screen size. Vityaz and Horizon have screens ranging from 24 to 65 inches. In total, Horizont has 6 models on its website.

Consider the three Horizons that sellers often offer and that buyers sometimes leave reviews.

The image refresh rate is 50 Hz, and, according to the reviews, this is not enough. Even the smallest of TVs has a resolution of 1920 × 1080; buyers evaluate the image very differently, but more often positively.

Power consumption for "Horizons" is not indicated, but the viewing angle is -176-178 degrees, the contrast ratio is 1200: 1 for larger models and 5000: 1 for a small TV. It also has the fastest response time - 8.5 ms. The smallest is for a TV with a diagonal of 55 - 5 ms.

One of the advantages of TVs is SmartTV on Android. The sound quality on TVs with a screen of 43 and 55 inches is called average.

"Vityaz": cheaper, but poorer equipment

There are more of these TVs: the manufacturer indicates as many as 14 models, of which 4 are under the inscription "new". The diagonal of the screens is 24, 32, 42 and 50 inches.

But there are fewer offers from sellers and reviews than on Horizons, and there are no new models sold in Belarus. We select the three that are offered most often.

On the website, the manufacturer pays attention to the reduced weight and energy consumption. The weight is really less than that of similar Horizons. Power consumption is comparable to that of an incandescent lamp.

The viewing angle is less than that of the "Horizon": the small TV has 178 degrees, the rest - 170. The response time is 8 ms, except for the small TV (6.5 ms). Contrast ratios are respectively 1000: 1 and 3000: 1. As the authors of the reviews write, two of the three described TVs are average.

In general, "Vityaz" costs the same as the "Horizon", or slightly cheaper. It is lighter and, perhaps, consumes less energy, but has much less functionality and worse characteristics.

Prudent consumers will pay attention to the warranty. It does not depend on the manufacturer or country and ranges from 12 to 36 months.

What analogues can be purchased for this money?

Analogs from foreign manufacturers, as close as possible in price.

Buying a TV from the budget segment, we can get a Korean, Chinese or Hong Kong product for the same money, perhaps lighter and with better speakers. If you're lucky enough to find - for example, Dutch.

The issue of quality remains open, some things should be seen for yourself, and not evaluated via the Internet.

We are catching up with the market

There are no projection TVs or curved screen TVs among Belarusian models. But they can outperform others on price or design. For example, Vityaz 32L301C18 and HORIZONT 22 LE5216D look more aesthetically pleasing than Samsung LT22C350EXQ.

Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere: we hardly ever make components ourselves. We are secondary and are trying to catch up with the market, and not only in relation to TVs. This image of the product does not in any way increase the sales of TVs made in Belarus.

Foreign brands versus image

They tried to eliminate this factor more than once through cooperation with foreign manufacturers. It has been successful, as is the case with Sharp TVs. Sometimes it was doubtful.

The last attempt dates back to 2016. In September, Panasonic announced that it had launched TV production in Belarus. Presumably, this was supposed to be done by the Belarusian-Chinese joint venture Midea-Horizont from the Gorizont holding.

One of the first models announced for production was the Panasonic TX-43DR300ZZ. In September 2015, it came to Russia - the main market for the export of our TVs. It is also sold here, but made in China, Japan, the Czech Republic or Russia. So far, you still cannot find Panasonic collected in Belarus in Internet catalogs.

Ten minutes from the center of Minsk - and we find ourselves in a real industrial zone, gloomy and deserted. The shift is in full swing, and the idle people have nothing to do here. "Television" history at the site on Sofia Kovalevskaya Street is long, back in the 70s cases were produced here - wooden cases for TVs. Later, the hulls were made of plastic, and an injection molding production was created here.

Externally, the site has changed little. Old buildings and cheerful quotes from Mayakovsky.
Casting of body parts and production of polystyrene foam shock absorbers are still an important production stage. 4 molding machines are installed in the foam packing area. If necessary, everyone works, but during periods of low load, they try to work on a minimum amount of equipment - steam is used in the technological process, and since the product is expensive, you have to save money.

So the belief that "Horizon" gets by with a screwdriver assembly, or even "re-sticking labels", is an obvious delusion.

It is not crowded at the installation site of electronic units. There is a machine here that makes automatic installation of radioelements: a super-efficient automatic installation of surface-mounted components. However, some of the components are still installed manually.

This is how international cooperation has developed: all electronics and household appliances are made at the same factories that serve many brands. Taiwanese, Malaysian and Chinese factories on the same lines simultaneously produce products of several dozen brands for the whole world. Last year, Gorizont produced more than 530 thousand TV sets, and about 80% of them are not under its own brand, but Toshiba, Sharp and others. For example, Sharp TVs of large diagonals in Eastern Europe are produced only in Belarus and Poland.

Gorizont notes that there is now tough competition among the TV manufacturers of the Customs Union: several serious factories have been created in Russia (a large assembly plant operates in the Kaliningrad region, Samsung has invested in a serious production in Kaluga, LG TVs are assembled at a plant near Moscow in Ruza, etc.) .NS.).

A complete set is supplied to the conveyor - modules from the assembly area, body parts and foam packaging from the molding and casting area. Prior to assembly, an incoming inspection of all components is carried out, starting from the LCD matrix (Horizon receives matrices from different manufacturers: there are few companies producing matrices in the world).

On the conveyor belt, workers work shoulder to shoulder, it is inconvenient to ask questions arm in arm, and Denis Zhilko himself lists the main operations: reinforcing body parts, installing an LCD panel in the body, installing a power module, chassis and connecting them. All these operations are 250.

However, this is one of the few places in the enterprise where it is really crowded. Almost half of the production operations are now automatic and do not require operators. Japanese engineers have completely modernized production, introduced modern technical processes, and now they are constantly in Minsk, continuing the modernization.

The next step is to check and set up the TV. Here the matrix is ​​checked for broken pixels and other damages. Then - checking external devices, TV functions, adjusting the white balance, checking the sound quality and appearance.

No matter what kind of production we are talking about, the issue of wages cannot be ignored. Payment for labor on the assembly line is piece-work and depends on the number of TVs made by the team per shift, says Denis Zhilko. The average salary on the assembly line is about 6 million Belarusian rubles.

I once told you that. I suggested: "It is curious that at different times in Minsk as many as three factories produced television sets! It seems that no other city in the USSR had this", to which comrade ahitech objected: "Well, this is not entirely true. In those same years, three factories in Nalchik produced television sets ...", and later comrade 2211103 told that in Minsk they still made TVs GoldStar and Grundig.

A little later, when I made an entry in LiveJournal about that, I decided to collect information about the factories that produced televisions in Belarus and add the list to the same entry. But very quickly it was discovered that the list threatened to become very large. So I dived into the topic deeply and wrote a separate article about it.

It turns out that Belarus is literally the country of TVs!

Attention! Full-size photos can be viewed at the link at the end of the post. You can also manually copy the URL of each photo and paste it into the address bar of your browser, then the picture will open in full size.

Television receivers, ultra-compact and very expensive devices: the "television" history of Belarus

Perhaps everyone in Belarus knows that television sets are produced by two factories: "Horizon" in Minsk and "Vityaz" in Vitebsk. Meanwhile, over the years, there have been many more different manufacturers of television equipment in our country.

According to our calculations, in the nineties, up to ten firms in three cities of the country produced televisions simultaneously, and there were more than fifteen different factories and firms building televisions in total. Today 42.TUT.BY will try to remember all of them by name.

From handicraft to serial production

The first Belarusian-made TV set appeared in the country more than eighty years ago - even on the eve of the new 1933, Genrikh Bortnovsky was catching holiday programs on his homemade product.

The first TV set by Heinrich Bortnovsky

But it was a handicraft production of a talented self-taught - there were only a few people in the country who made their own TV set. The first industrial, serial TV in the BSSR appeared only in the mid-fifties. We recall the chronology of the production of Belarusian "blue screens".

In 1907, on the far outskirts of Minsk, a sawmill was opened, which since 1921 has become a factory under the name "Derevobedelochnik". Shortly before World War II, the plant's profile changed: now, since 1940, it is the Minsk Radio Plant, since 1958 - the Minsk Instrument-Making Plant named after Lenin.

After the collapse of the USSR, it began to be called the Belarusian Production Association of Radio Engineering "BelVAR", even later - "Minsk Instrument-Making Plant", and now - "Amkodor-BelVAR".

But until now, according to old memory, the plant is often called "Lenin's plant". It was here in 1954 that the first Belarusian TV sets began to be assembled, and they were produced here for almost two decades. The first-born was called simply - "Belarus", under the same name radio receivers were produced, and later - TV and radio.

TV "Belarus". Image from the magazine "Radio", No. 09 "1955

The firstborn had a screen with a diagonal of 31 cm (image size 18 × 24 cm) and was designed to receive three television channels, but only one of them could be shown (to watch the other, it was necessary to change the high-frequency unit).

The model lasted in production until May 1955, then it was replaced by other developments. Passers-by besieged the shop windows of GUM in order to at least once look at the unprecedented miracle.

In total, the plant produced large and small series of television sets of the following families: "Belarus" (with indices "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "110", "210", "7−2 "," 110M ")," Neman "(also with indices" 2 "and" 3 ")," Zorka "(models" 2 "," 201 "," 202 "," 2-1 "," 3 ") , "Horizon" (also with indexes "201", "202", "101", "104", "191").

The Gorizont-101 TV (1970) received the largest screen in the USSR: 65 centimeters diagonally. Some sources indicate that the radio plant also assembled Voskhod televisions, but they were still produced in Kiev.

The emergence of "Horizon"

By order of the Minister of Industry of July 10, 1972, on the basis of the Minsk Radio Plant named after Lenin, the "Horizon" association appeared, which took over from its ancestor the baton for the production of televisions.

Already in the second half of 1972, they mastered the production of the Horizont-102 TV set. In 1986, the production of the last model of TV set with lamps - "Horizon-736" was discontinued, and in 1987 they began production of TV sets also under the brand name "Selena". In general, the Gorizont plant brought to the market a huge number of TV sets and produces TVs to this day.

TV set "Horizon-102". Photo from the website Retrotexnika.ru

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of joint ventures, subsidiaries and small enterprises were created at Horizon, which received legal and financial independence and survived as best they could. At least six of these "Horizon" offspring were used to make television sets. Here is a short list of these "offspring":

• In 1986-1987 the plant "Sensor" was created on the basis of microelectronics workshops, and in 1989 on the basis of it and the subdivision of department No. 28 - NPK "Signal". He has been producing televisions since 1994;


• In 1991, a small enterprise "NOIR" ("innovator, inventor, rationalizer") was created, it specialized in the design and implementation of new technology. In the late 90s it became a subsidiary and in 1997 began to assemble television sets;


• In 1991, on the basis of the sixth converted workshop, a joint venture of Cable and Satellite Television (JV KST) was created. The enterprise was engaged in the production of cable networks and systems, and in 2000 began the development of the TV model 63CTV-691 CAT;


• In 1993, on the basis of the plant for radio and television cases, the plant "Almagor" was created, which at first was engaged in the production of furniture, and then took up televisions;


• In 1993, the Yunatstva enterprise was created: high school students worked in the new building in the courtyard of school No. 21 - the enterprise became their training base. Among other things, they assembled TV sets "Horizon 32ТЦ-466" in plastic cases;


• In 1993 the Gorizont plant, the Belit postavsky plant and the Ekranas enterprise from the Lithuanian Panevezys created a joint Belarusian-Lithuanian enterprise Beligor. Here they produced the Beligor 51TC600 model, as well as the first in the CIS TV with digital signal processing - Horizon 54DTV-675.

Note in the newspaper "Vecherny Minsk" for December 1999

In an interview with TUT.BY, Gennady Azarov, First Deputy General Director of JSC Horizont Holding Management Company, said: “Last year, more than 530 thousand TVs were produced, and about 80% of them were not under their own brand. We produce TVs Toshiba, Sharp and others ".

It turns out that Horizon began assembling Sharp TVs back in 1997, Panasonic in 2004, and Toshiba in 2011. The publication "Zavtra your country" reports that the general director of "Gorizont" Vladimir Semashko, who later became the minister of energy, tried to organize the assembly of Turkish Vestel TV sets at the plant, but we have not yet found confirmation of this fact.

Plant in Vitebsk

In 1958, the Monolit radio components plant was founded in Vitebsk. It is known that in 1975 an experimental model of the Elektronika-Micro TV was released there, but no details about it could be found.

However, many factories, design bureaus and even individual citizens tried to develop miniature wearable TVs. In the same 1975, at the 8th Republican exhibition of radio amateurs-designers DOSAAF in Lviv, portable TV and radio receivers "Yantar-2000" by Eliseenko and "Sinevir" by Chliyants were demonstrated.

Probably, "Elektronika-Micro" from Vitebsk craftsmen remained just an experimental development:

It was decided to establish the Vitebsk Television Plant in the spring of 1976. About 150 proposals were received for the competition for the best name of the TV, including “Spectrum”, “Zenith”, “Pearl”, “Vityaz”, “Krynitsa” and others.

Already in November 1977, the factory workers produced two working samples of the Vityaz-722 color TV set, which were shown in Moscow at the anniversary exhibition at the Ministry of Radio Industry.
Less than a year later, the first serial TV of this model rolled off the assembly line, and by the end of the year, 500 copies had already been built (it was also produced at other factories under the name "Chaika", "Temp", "Electron"). The device cost 755 rubles. The Vityaz company still produces televisions.

TV "Vityaz-722". Snapshot from the magazine "Radio"

TV radios and ultra-small TVs

In 1959, the Ordzhonikidze Minsk Counting Machine Plant, known for its Minsk computers, was launched. Expanding, it received the name "Computer Engineering Plant", later - the Minsk Production Association of Computer Engineering. Under the same name - MPOVT - the enterprise still exists (since 2012 - as part of the Horizont holding).

In addition to computers, such unique combines as TV radios - that is, a hybrid of a radio tape recorder (which, in turn, is a hybrid of a tape recorder and a radio receiver) and a television - were produced here in experimental batches.

In 1982, an experimental batch of the Amfiton TM-01 TV radio was released, in 1984 - Amfiton-301. But in general, most of the goods under this brand were produced by the Lviv plant.

TV radio tape recorder "Amfiton TM-01". A snapshot from the magazine "New goods" for 1987

Back in 1993, the plant began assembling the first black-and-white Veras TV sets. Over the next decade, black and white (models 410, 511, 512) and color televisions (model 601) of various modifications with screen sizes of 21, 23, 24, 31, 34, 37 cm were produced.

Since 2004, the association stops the production of consumer radio goods (radios, televisions, car radios) and switches to the production of automotive equipment.

Veras 37TC-601 TV set. Photo from the site Prodano.by

TVs of foreign brands were also collected in Belarus

The Minsk production and commercial company "TAIR" and the Polish company NTT System in 1993 organized a joint venture "TAIR - New Technological Systems", which eventually grew into a large company selling computers under the NTT brand.

And here is a short list of businesses and brands of their TVs

List with additions and updates as of December 15, 2016:

Radio plant them. Lenin / BelVAR (Minsk) - "Belarus" (from 1954), "Neman" (from 1960), "Zorka" (from 1965), "Horizon" (from 1968)
Plant "Horizon" (Minsk) - "Horizon" (since 1972), "Selena" (since 1987); also assembly Sharp (since 1997), Panasonic (since 2004), Toshiba (since 2011), Akai and General Electric; possibly Vestel (from late 1990s)
Subsidiaries of the Gorizont plant:
NPK "Signal" - "Horizon" (since 1994)
MP "NOIR" - "Horizon" (since 1997)
JV "KST" - "Horizon" (since 2000)
"Almagor" - "Horizon" (from the mid-1990s)
"Yunatstva" - "Horizon" (since 1993)
"Beligor" - "Horizon" and "Beligor" (since 1993)
Plant "Monolit" (Vitebsk) - "Electronics-Micro" (1975)
Plant "Vityaz" (Vitebsk) - "Vityaz" (since 1977)
Computer plant / MPOVT (Minsk) - "Amfiton" (since 1982)
"Brest Electromechanical Plant" (Brest) - "Berestye" (since about 1992)
"Caliber" (Minsk) - "Caliber" and "Mara" (since 1992)
"Radiopribor" / "Radiovolna" (Grodno) - "Veras" (since 1993)
"Brest Electrotechnical Plant" (Brest) - Curtis assembly (since 1994)
Firm "Euromedia" (Vitebsk) - TVs of an unknown brand with picture tubes Samsung (from late 1994 or early 1995)
Firm "TAIR" (Minsk) - "GoldStar" (since 1995)
Firm "RAMPO" (Minsk) - "Grundig" (since 1995)
KB "Display" (Vitebsk) - "Vityaz" (since 1998)
"Belit" (Postavy) - "Horizon" (since 2011)

In total, at least 20 factories, firms and associations - all together they brought more than two dozen TV brands to the market.

Update as of August 15, 2016:
It turns out that Akai and General Electric TVs are still being assembled at Horizon http://42.tut.by/351583

Update as of November 27, 2016:
1) At the Minsk plant "Kalibr" from the end of 1994 or from the beginning of 1995 they began to assemble the color TV "Caliber-3Ts" (information from the newspaper "Vecherniy Minsk" for January 12, 1995);
2) Brest Electrotechnical Plant since mid-1994, together with the Polish company Curtis, has been producing televisions of the same name Curtis (information from the newspaper "Vecherniy Minsk" for January 18, 1995, with a photo);
3) The joint Belarusian-Swiss enterprise "Euromedia" in Vitebsk from the end of 1994 or from the beginning of 1995 produced televisions with Samsung picture tubes with a diagonal of 37 and 51 cm (information from the newspaper "Vecherny Minsk", February 27, 1995, with a photo).

In addition, in the nineties, many small firms assembled televisions: its employees, housed in a rented apartment, riveted "boxes" from purchased components. Often, employees took work home.

My father, for example, at one such firm was assembling a PTK module (TV channel switch) with a remote control for the 5th and 6th generation "Horizons". He soldered, my brother and I then looked for defects in soldering and torn tracks (for which we received a monetary reward). We also stuffed the boards with details, bent resistors / capacitors / diodes, etc. (resistors are simpler, but for flag capacitors it was necessary to bend the legs with a "house"), inserted wires, cleaned and tinned contacts (oh, those quartz, damn them!) and much more. After assembly, we connected finished products (up to 50 at a time) to our TV and checked the operation of the system.

In the comments to my article they write:

"The middle of the 90s of the last century is the era of mass production of TVs in artisanal conditions. It was a whole business put on stream. In those days, the 2nd dormitory of the MRTI was an assembly line, where each room specialized in a particular operation. Some were engaged in the wholesale purchase and distribution of parts, others "stuffed" the boards, that is, manually, using simple home-made bending devices, installed electronic components on the printed circuit boards, others cut off the electrodes of the parts with wire cutters (how many short and sharp cuttings it was!) And bent protruding legs, the fourth soldered the boards with the so-called "wave" (how it all smelled!), the fifth were engaged in setting up and eliminating board defects (oddly enough, but everything worked, even if you confused something), the sixth were assembled from boards and power parts of the TV itself, the seventh were engaged in the final setting and performed the functions of the OTK. Finally, the eighth were engaged in sales. Of course, seals were put on the TVs and warranty documents were written out. This was done by several rooms in the 1st dormitory ..."

"In the 90s, dozens of basement firms and private traders in Minsk were engaged in dashing production, that is, assembling horizon TVs. They bought boards and cases on the horizon, and CRTs were brought from the Baltic states. The products were sold in the former market near the youth palace, but most of them went outside the borders of Belarus. They say that such was the agreement with the Horizon plant so that there would be no competition. It seems that even in terms of quality, this samopal was higher than factory products.."

An important addition about the Brest plant in the comments to the article on TUT.BY from the reader ales-brest:

"Well, since the tutbay did not find traces of the Brest TV sets, then I will add.

Berestye TVs have been produced at BEMZ since about 92. The initial model was based on monitors from a PC and was supplied with a 31cm BW picture tube. a wooden case and an absolute reluctance to repair this miracle of the defense industry by anyone other than his own factory workshop. Well, what can you do, the technologies are military, monumental, and the radio components are a remake of the perestroika - until you pull the part out of the thick double-sided board, you will be tormented, and the layout was still the same. Initially, such a technique should not break at all, because such repair is a feat.

Later, color TVs Berestye 32VTTs-001 appeared, with the same design, practically unchanged cube case, and with a 32 "kinescope. Components became a terrible scourge, because initially the TV was relatively not bad, but outdated by the beginning of release. (your humble servant) managed to cram a PAL decoder, a bass unit, and even a remote control system with a graphic display and a teletext system into this TV set, which at that time was just the edge of progress. True, the picture tubes of the Moscow plant did not live long, so the TV set honestly worked for 5 years and having survived 3 replacements of the high-voltage transformer, it was disassembled for spare parts. Also at BEMZ, screwdriver assembly of imported TVs was carried out in the 90s, unfortunately I have already forgotten the name ... but a very unknown manufacturer.

Berestye color and bw image televisions initially could work as a full-fledged TV - they had selectors for MV and UHF ranges, and an UPCH unit, unified with 4th generation Horizon TVs, for example, Horizon 61TC411D. At the same time, an RGB input was installed in each TV set, which made it possible to connect this TV to a computer Byte or Byte 01. The TV was also equipped with a program selection unit with mechanical adjustment for 8 TV channels, completely similar to that installed in the Horizon 51TC418D TV.

Berestye TVs had nothing to do with Electronics 32VTTs-201/202, neither externally nor constructively. Berestye used their own circuitry, unlike anything else. Approximately, the Berestye radio path was very similar to Horizon, the synchronization and sweep device was similar to the circuitry of the Shilalis Baltic TV. The Berestye case was an exact reduced copy of the Horizon 51ТЦ418 - wooden with a plastic front frame and a plastic back cover. "

A year ago, I noticed that a group of private individuals under state status privatized actually state property for several hundred million dollars in the center of Minsk ().

Chronically unprofitable since the beginning of the 90s (only in 2005 it became profitable) "Horizon" lobbied in 1996 for the president's visit to them. It is clear that at that time it was a Belarusian brand that the authorities wanted to keep. Horizon received government support and took out loans from banks. He took out a loan of $ 5 million from the MinskKonmleksbank OJSC of the late Kravtsov. And did not return it In 2005, the bank was merged with Belarusbank. And the reason for the loss of the bank is precisely this loan. In the Belarusian model, few people have such a lobby power (no loan repayment for 6 years).

In 2002, Gorizont became an OJSC. The state has 100%.

If in the 90s the plant in advertising boasted of its microcircuits, which only Philips had. This has long been forgotten. The fact is that the peasants in the first generation (directorate) did not read books about the fact that microcircuit production requires investments of 5-20 million dollars. every two years.

The financial situation does not change - losses reach up to a quarter of revenue. The fact is that the directorate itself understands that the payback threshold is the release of a million TV sets (http://news.tut.by/economics/346235.html). And the company reduced its output from 600 thousand in 2005 to 300 thousand today. The company consumes 10-15% more currency than its proceeds. But the directorate manages to convince the authorities that the brand must be supported.

Since 2008, part of the space has been given to a joint venture with the Chinese for the assembly of microwave ovens. They began to produce vacuum cleaners. But this has nothing to do with the TV factory.

In 2012, a holding was created on the basis of Horizont. Today it has 25 businesses including Brest Electric Lamp Plant, OJSC MPOVT, Minsk Plant Thermoplast, OJSC Izmeritel in Novopolotsk, OJSC Minsk Plant Kalibr.

Arrived and it didn't add. But an organized group of persons (so it will be called in a future criminal case) created a development company " Gorizont-Belinvest-Developer "for the development of a land plot on Krasnaya and received the status investment agent, which, along with the Chinese company, will equip the Chinese industrial park.

But the image of the TV factory must be maintained. And the legendary TV factory with 63 years of history produces world brands " More than 530 thousand were produced last year TVs , and about 80% of them are goods not under their own brand. We produce TVs Toshiba, Sharp and others "(http://news.tut.by/economics/346235.html). That is, only 100 thousand Horizons per year or 420 TVs per day. In fact, the production of television equipment has stopped. But the organized group continues to soar the brains of the Belarusians: " this year we will start producing custom-made tablets, no matter how ironic some may be on this score. There will also be built-in household appliances, multicooker popular today.and other equipment demanded by the market. - Not under the Horizont brand?- Not necessary. We do not run the risk of producing goods that will then need to be attached somewhere, thinking about who to sell to. In addition, serious resources are required for the preparation and development of production, and the investment will not pay off soon.

Nevertheless, the guys promise, " that one of our factories will be the first to become a resident of the Industrial Park is not even discussed. As soon as the necessary infrastructure is created there, again, with our participation, we will immediately begin the project of transferring the plant there from the street. S. Kovalevskaya ".

So. Fully state-owned. He cannot live in losses, without state aid. Grabs on any part-time job. And is he going to build a factory in the forest? What money do forensic optimists hope for? Yes, not at all. The state will obviously not give it. The plant is not needed for television equipment. And for vacuum cleaners-multicooker under the Horizon brand, no one needs either.

I think that only a real estate management company will have a brand. That is

goodbye, TV and Radio Plant "Horizon". Yes, hello to the developer "Horizon". And there will be more ten rich people in the country.

The predecessor of JSC Gorizont was the Minsk Radio Plant, established in November 1940, on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of the October Revolution. In September 1939, after the Red Army occupied Vilnius and the Soviet leadership decided to transfer it to Lithuania, all Vilnius factories were nationalized and their equipment was dismantled and sent to the USSR. The equipment of the Elektrit radio plant was transported to Minsk, where a new radio plant was created on the basis of the Derevoobdelochnik sawmill and furniture plant.

The choice of the construction site was justified by the following factors: 1) One of the complex operations - the manufacture of wooden cases for radio receivers, at that time accounted for a quarter of all labor intensity. 2) The Derevoobdelochnik plant, which produced different types of furniture, could cope with the task of manufacturing cases for radio receivers without any special difficulties.

Ten minutes from the center of Minsk - and we find ourselves in a real industrial zone, gloomy and deserted. The shift is in full swing, and the idle people have nothing to do here. "Television" history at the site on Sofia Kovalevskaya Street is long, back in the 70s cases were produced here - wooden cases for TVs. Later, the hulls were made of plastic, and an injection molding production was created here.

The reconstruction of the former sawmill and furniture enterprise into a radio factory was carried out in an extremely short time - it began in December 1939 and was completed by November 1940. Since the technological equipment of the company "Elektrit" was used, the plant began to produce models of radio receivers of this company. The 1939 Komandor and Herold radio models were used, and in 1940 the production of the KIM, Pioneer and Marshal superheterodyne radio receivers began. The appearance of the radios was the same as the Polish Komandor and Herold radios, the electrical circuit was revised and improved. The new radio plant became known as “Radio plant im. Molotov ".

During the war, the Minsk radio plant was destroyed, but after the liberation of Minsk, the restoration of the plant began. Since 1947, the Marshal radio has been produced under the name Minsk. On the basis of the radio receiver "Minsk" since 1950, the radio "Minsk R7" has been produced. In the 50s, the range of radio-technical products was expanded: “Minsk-55”, “Minsk-58”, “Belarus-57”…. In 1957, the radio plant was renamed into the "Minsk Radio Plant named after Lenin".

In the 60s, transistor radios began to gain popularity. At the Riga Radio Plant VEF, the production of transistor receivers of the Speedola family began, the first such receiver was produced in 1960. Mass production began in 1962, the receiver turned out to be very successful and quickly gained popularity in the USSR. The design of the "Speedola" became the basis for the development of many subsequent models, which were distinguished by numerous improvements. One of these models, "VEF Transistor-17", was transferred to the Minsk Radio Plant in 1968, and on the basis of this model the production of the "Ocean" family of receivers was started.

In 2007, a joint venture was established with the Chinese company Midea Group for the production of household appliances.

In 2010, the enterprise was reorganized into the Horizont holding, which includes 4 business areas and ten independent companies that are part of the holding.

Interesting fact: From 1959 to 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald, the only official suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, worked at the enterprise.

Externally, the site has changed little. Old buildings and cheerful quotes from Mayakovsky.
Casting of body parts and production of polystyrene foam shock absorbers are still an important production stage. 4 molding machines are installed in the foam packing area. If necessary, everyone works, but during periods of low load, they try to work on a minimum amount of equipment - steam is used in the technological process, and since the product is expensive, you have to save money.

At the casting site, casings for television equipment are produced. The production process can be divided into several stages: material preparation, mixing and the casting process itself. Photo courtesy of the company "Horizont"

So the belief that "Horizon" gets by with a screwdriver assembly, or even "re-gluing labels", is an obvious delusion.

"We have requirements that we are obliged to fulfill and fulfill. In order to supply goods to Russia and enjoy the benefits at the same time, we have indispensable conditions: these must not be simple assembly operations, there must be soldering and casting - these are mandatory requirements." , - says Denis Zhilko, deputy director of the Gorizont electronics and household appliances plant for production.

It is not crowded at the installation site of electronic units. There is a machine here that makes automatic installation of radioelements: a super-efficient automatic installation of surface-mounted components. However, some of the components are still installed manually.

Soldering is still not complete without manual labor. 10 people work on the assembly line for manual soldering of boards. "If necessary, we simply recruit staff. Last year there was a serious recruitment - under a large order," Zhilko notes.

"We strive to retain the most qualified employees. When we recruit personnel, we try to put less qualified workers on assembly, for simpler operations. You cannot put a person on the street for assembly, the requirements for assembly are strict," the deputy director explains.

One soldering point takes a fraction of a second. Depending on the complexity of the soldering, the product takes up to 10 seconds.

Until that moment, several production stages (casting of body parts, manufacturing of foam packaging, installation of radioelements) went in parallel. Now it all flows down to the final assembly area. Horizon has three conveyors designed for different maximum diagonal. The first is for TVs with a diagonal of 15-32 inches, the second is 32-46 inches, the third is from 32 to 70 inches.

This is how international cooperation has developed: all electronics and household appliances are made at the same factories that serve many brands. Taiwanese, Malaysian and Chinese factories on the same lines simultaneously produce products of several dozen brands for the whole world. Last year, "Horizon" released more than 530 thousand TV sets, and about 80% of them are not under its own brand, but Toshiba, Sharp and others. For example, Sharp TVs of large diagonals in Eastern Europe are produced only in Belarus and Poland.

Horizon notes that there is now tough competition among the manufacturers of TV sets of the Customs Union: several serious factories have been created in Russia (a large assembly plant operates in the Kaliningrad region, Samsung has invested in a serious production in Kaluga, LG TVs are assembled at a plant near Moscow in Ruza, etc.) .NS.).

Serious modernization took place here back in the early 2000s: before, 500 TVs were assembled per shift, today up to 1000 come off the assembly line.

A complete set is supplied to the conveyor - modules from the assembly area, body parts and foam packaging from the molding and casting area. Prior to assembly, an incoming inspection of all components is carried out, starting from the LCD matrix (Horizon receives matrices from different manufacturers: there are few companies producing matrices in the world).

On the conveyor belt, workers work shoulder to shoulder, it is inconvenient to ask questions arm in arm, and Denis Zhilko himself lists the main operations: reinforcing body parts, installing an LCD panel in the body, installing a power module, chassis and connecting them. All these operations are 250.

However, this is one of the few places in the enterprise where it is really crowded. Almost half of the production operations are now automatic and do not require operators. Japanese engineers have completely modernized production, introduced modern technical processes, and now they are constantly in Minsk, continuing the modernization.

Then the back cover is closed and the TV is installed on the support. Now it's time to check the electrical safety of the product - the so-called breakdown test, which all TVs go through: a high voltage is applied to the product and they see if the insulation and safety elements have withstood.

The next step is to check and set up the TV. Here the matrix is ​​checked for broken pixels and other damages. Then - checking external devices, TV functions, adjusting the white balance, checking the sound quality and appearance.

This is the largest TV set that can be assembled in Minsk - 70 inches diagonal. There is no technical possibility to increase the diagonal: the conveyor was bought for a maximum diagonal of 60 inches, but buyers' appetites grew, and they had to modernize it to match.

And behind it - the last control - weighing, which allows you to check whether you forgot to put anything in the kit (remote control, mounting rack, manual, modem, etc.). A green light means that the TV has invested in the mass norm. If not, the complete set will be rechecked.

The cycle of making a TV is from 30 to 70 seconds. The productivity of such a conveyor is from 400 pieces per shift (70 diagonal) to 1000 (32 inches). On "Horizon" they note that consumers' appetites are growing: the most popular diagonal is already 32 inches. Other functions required by the customer include wi-fi, interactive television, and the ability to connect to a smartphone.

No matter what kind of production we are talking about, the issue of wages cannot be ignored. Payment for labor on the assembly line is piece-work and depends on the number of TVs made by the team per shift, says Denis Zhilko. The average salary on a conveyor belt is about 6 million rubles.