350
The quest to save the world’s largest CRT TV from destruction
(arstechnica.com)
The guy made a cool video about it
I really regret recycling my 32 inch Trinitron back in the mid-2000's...
You know what was great about the era of CRTs? We didn't know what we were missing. If you look at almost every 70s/80s scifi movie depicting the future decades from then, and there is a computer display of some sort, it will be a CRT. Even inside vehicles.
Star Trek is the only one where I saw flat panels (LCARS terminals). AND they were touchscreens.
Back to the Future 2 had 16:9 flat screen TVs that were wall mounted. It's one of only two things it got right about the future, the other being that Japan would still be using fax.
Canada too, instill see loads of fax use here
CRTs have a huge advantage of not having fixed screen resolution. And my memory is not very good, but I think my eyes really did get tired much slower from them than from LCDs. I guess their size and their dangers were more important.
After all, space and health are very basic concerns in our world.
Our eyes are also much older now
If you don't regularly transplant new ones in maybe.
[...] but I think my eyes really did get tired much slower from them than from LCDs.
Depends on a refresh rate. < 60 Hz sucks, 75 Hz is acceptable, 85+ Hz ideal.
And how noisy is it, I mean in a high frequency range.
They had terrific brightness. (At least until they started to wear out)
The resolution was a mixed bag. They couldn't handle the resolutions we have today, But when you were running 800 by 600 on a 1600x1200 they looked pretty crisp. It was a problem on LCDs before they got their pixel counts up because they were driven purpose built for a given resolution and anything else was a hack.
Nowadays 800 by 600 on a 4K screen looks pretty decent.
The biggest problem we're dealing with replacing CRTs with LCDs are the sharpness was crap so the content looked good soft. We have to throw shaders and all kinds of crazy stuff on ROMs to degrade the screen enough to make them look good. And then any light screen devices that use pixel scanning for location just don't work because newer technology doesn't work that way. The best in the light guns are going so far as to use camera sensors to detect location.
I like the future tech of Camerons Avatar better than the bulky consoles in Star Treck and the like.
These are so far apart though. Future tech in a movie from 2009 (where we already had LCDs and iPhones) compared to TNG in 1987.
Even if they could have been even more forward thinking in their design, they wouldn't have been able to film I back then. LCARS was just backlit scribs with some CRT displays undreneath in areas that needed to animate. You couldn't CG it then and have it look believable.
Reminds me of when me and a few friends moved another friend's desktop with CRT monitor accross Stockholm, during rush hour, in a snow chaos, using public transport.
I remember carrying the CRT monitor walking in a crowd when I feel myself slipping on the hard packed snow, I didn't fall but I did glide with little ways of stopping.
Haha, I remember taking my desktop and 19" CRT in my newspaper trolley to LAN parties in snow in Norway. The cover was great, but I also remember that my computer was driven to my house afterwards. I was too tired to drag it up the hill after not sleeping for days lol. Good times 🙂
I remember when my parents offered to trade me their 32" Phillips-Magnavox for my puny little 27" because they were "trying to downsize". I felt so fuckin cool playing Max Payne and Fable on my original Xbox.
I bought my first tv when I was around 18. 32" Sanyo Flatscreen CRT. it replaced an old 13" Orion I had been gifted years before.
The color, image, just the quality of that TV was fucking AMAZING. It made every game beautiful. I wish I still had it tbh. I have a basement now that I would love to turn into a retro gaming lounge.
I also had a ViewSonic G225fb for my desktop I got for free from work. dumbasses had no clue it was 1000x better than the standard LCDs they replaced it with. 2k 120hz refresh in 2007-8. couldn't beat it.
Those Viewsonic CRT monitors were amazing. I got one cheap from someone that was "upgrading". As if you could upgrade from a Viewsonic in the early 2000s. That thing was a beast. By far the largest and heaviest monitor I've ever had.
There was a terrible period where pretty much every LCD screen you could get was 1080 horizontal lines. My two LCD monitors are from not long before that time. One is starting to fade and it's nice to know that when I need to replace it I will be able to get something that is at least as good.
My friends parents had a 32" CRT in their living room on a massive stand and us kids had to lay right in front of it when watching TV which was always a little terrifying because it would have crushed us to death had it ever fallen.
That would be cool for playing console games on, but I sure wouldn't want to have to move it.
I'm almost certain I've moved a CRT or two that were heavier than that.
80s/90s kids remember being able to throw their controllers at the TV without fear. (Console games on a console tv to console the cold war anxiety)
80s/90s kids remember being able to throw their controllers at the TV without fear.
Fuck, I never would think to throw my controller at the screen!
I also don't ever throw my controllers in general. Why would I want to break them? Lol.
When you're a small child and you get extremely frustrated about dying to the same boss one too many times in a row, you have to vent that somehow.
It only happened once, I got so frustrated I bit the controller and threw it. You can still see the bite marks. (I was at most 11 years old.)
I love my kid-gamer self.
I was really bad at games, but I would always chalk it up to "I'm just a kid and it's okay to be bad."
spoilt kids tantrum -> brain goes into standby
Things made in the 80s never broke.
Except for the people 🥲
Yeah man! As a thing made in the 80s myself, I gotta tell ya, I'm feeling pretty broken these days.
But I don't blame the build quality, I blame the 8 year old, that dude will be the death of me.
survivorship bias
My mother had a behemoth of a Panasonic console TV in her living room right up to the early 2010s. Still worked when we got rid of it, too, just finally decided it was time to upgrade. I remember, when we moved it, there was a half-inch-deep sunken area where it sank into the floor over the years, compressing the carpet.
I once had a 38" in my 3rd floor apartment and had to move to another 3rd floor apartment... No elevators present.
Motherfucker was the operative word.
Yeah. I think products like that are designed for people who pay others to move it for them.
I was in my 20's, had the bills handled, and my priorities in a funny place.
My parents had an old 42 (maybe bigger) inch "flat" screen Sony Trinitron CRT that could do 1080i for years.
Whenever they wanted to move it, it took multiple people, joining in on the move was a right of passage lmao
They would honestly still have it, if not for my brother....
https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony
Doesn't look like Sony made a 42". They did make a 43", which is what this story is about, but it was only 480p not 1080i. The largest 1080i CRT they made was the 34".
Hmm, I went through that entire link on gallery mode and I actually didn't see my parents TV in there. I also couldn't find it on a general Google search or Wikipedia
One of its defining features that I remember clearly, was it had a downward rectangle "paddle" for a power button that had that "fake vent" texture on it, and I didn't see that on any of the wide screens on that link.
So either what my parents had is some sort of forgotten model, or I got the brand wrong, but I'm like 80% it was a Sony
Your parents were ballers then. The one in the video is the largest one made and 42 inch. And it cost $40000
If it did 1080i, I’m guessing it was a widescreen model. Done in the early 2000’s. I got a 36” trinitron for about $1600 that did 1080i/720p. Heavy as crap, but damn fine picture. Halo looked awesome.
this just sent me down a nostalgia rabbithole.
in the late 90s and early 2000s my grandparents had two interesting Televisions in the house, one was a very large CRT TV that they kept using until the late 2000s or early 2010s. but the other was an ENORMOUS flatscreen that was so big it looked like a CRT on the back, I dont even know what kind of technology it was, Im assuming it wasn't a CRT though if this one here in this video is the largest, because the one they had was 2-3 times its size horizontally. (they had it in the late 90s, Im g oing to assume it was an early version of a plasma but im not sure really)
I'm guessing it was a rear projection TV, maybe a DLP
its probbly the rear projection. it looked like this, but my memory tells me it was quite a bit bigger https://i.redd.it/ig6k6bngyaca1.jpg
edit - its actually probably that same model i linked or a bigger version of the same line, its an RCA, I know they had a lot of those throughout the years, my grandfather ran a furinture, electronics, appliance and computer store in the early 2000s and the house was always full of Panasonic, RCA, and "Zenith" electronics. As well as the occasional thing from the more well known brands like Hitachi, Toshiba, and Sony.
but Zenith and RCA were dominant there
double edit - it appears RCA went defunct before I was even born, so if it was an RCA it would have been something he bought used, or had kicking around from before I was born.
I had inherited a similar one to that. Had to toss it when the audio stopped working, the color went beyond dim, the signal was all messed up, and it had magnetic damage (from the grand keeping his massive speakers on either side).
From someone who made the screen trippier and trippier as a kid until he Icarus'd it, strong magnets taped to a drill bit and spun at high speed around the screen can degauss it. But this type of information basically has no application anymore
Speaking of Icarus, the Parker Solar probe has made its closest approach to the sun this morning. It cut contact (as planned) on Monday and it's probably reconnecting on Friday. That little guy is great. 3.8 million miles from the surface at 430,000mph.
I did not know that. I just dealt with the psychedelic colors lol
I had a 30inch 1080i flatscreen crt.
I loved that thing, it cost $1000 and I used it all the time.
I still have this one!
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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