On youtube, ran across a vintage European Philips vacuum tube TV set. Was looking for a song "what the ****" and found a short clip of someone in a skintight outfit dancing, with a vintage TV set on the left. That likely isn't that interesting here, but a more on topic clip featuring the TV itself would be. As Europe was a 625 line PAL area, and the mains 250V50Hz, all Philips would have had to do is install a different tuner to tune Aussie TV channels, if they differed from channels in Europe. Though I understand that import tariffs in Australia were pretty steep back in the 60's. Or maybe Philips might have them built in Australia...

Because Philips was probably one of the only true worldwide manufacturers at the time they did most of their design work in Holland but left it to their many local markets to manufacture the products.

Strange as it may seem, probably more for radio than television, bakelite cabinets were more or less identical but the circuitry inside was very different in a lot of cases.

European electrical products have always had what I deem an un-necessary complexity. This was a selling point in Europe and Britain because their cabinets looked plain and/or industrial whereas Australia and the United States tended to keep the guts as simple as possible, relying on extra valves to provide more punch in the top models and fit these circuits into more elaborate and colourful cabinets. Between 1946 and 1955 companies like Astor and Healing made mantel radios in more than ten colours. To a lesser extent, AWA, Kriesler and Tasma made some very cheerful-looking receivers. The American Fada 'bullet' was also made in many colour combinations.

Whether this extended to television I am not sure, as most early sets were in timber cabinets and countries like Australia already had well-established factories for making furniture and radio cabinets. Beale and Ricketts & Thorpe to name two. Beale also doubled as a maker of fine pianos.

Not only were import tariffs prohibitily high - around 57% until the Labor Government lead by Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, began a regime of rolling back tariffs to their current point of 5% which is meaningless given the rates of pay enjoyed by Australians compared with major trading partners like China, Taiwan and Thailand - tariffs applied to all imports and in many cases only parts could be brought in. Fully manufactured radios were not permitted to come in but valves and other components could be and assembled into working radios here.