450lbs… that’s approaching piano territory. Smaller grands are 600 or so, with a full sized concert 9fter being 900-1100.
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I guess it makes sense considering the price. I wonder how many of them still exist today.
34” diagonal, 196lb.
Edit: A googling suggests it was launched end of ‘98 for $9k. $17k in 2024 dollars.
I know it's just theorycrafting, but I do wonder what kind of CRT someone could've created if it wasn't for market economy forces.
https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/liyitz/the_pictu...
https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/egvuqt/kv3000r_u...
And this guy "I have a Sony KV-3000R in New Condition. Mike exestexas@aol.com" https://www.avsforum.com/threads/seeking-sony-pvm-4300-and-k...
There are all sorts of complex magnet arrangements to tune the beam to stay in focus across the image area, i don't know how that will scale with size, but it's probably more of a complexity when assembling the sets to calibrate the tubes.
"Today, CRT markets are being threatened by flat-panel displays (FPDs) even though the screen quality of the CRT is one of the best of existing display devices. The depth of CRTs is one of its most important design factors to maintain its dominant position in the display market. Thus, a 32-in.-wide deflection-angle 125° CRT (tube length of 360 mm) has been developed, and mass production began in January 2005."
That was the Samsung Vixlim.[2] Apparently worked OK, but obsolete at launch.
Goes down in history as another last and greatest achievement of the wrong technology, along with the Doble steam car, the SS United States, 3-projector Cinerama, quadrophonic phonograph records, and the Olivetti Divisumma 24 mechanical four-function calculator.
[1] https://sid.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1889/1.216683...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/xgtmdw/does_anyo...
Past that you had projection TVs. They could get way bigger but the picture was also dimmer and perhaps not as sharp? I only remember being around one a few times, we never had one.
It may have had a better picture, at least for analog stuff which was most all of it at the time. But the biggest factor was size. At ~150-200 lbs I couldn’t move it and would need new furniture to hold it.
The LCD I bought probably weighed 40 pounds, was easy to move, and my existing furniture was fine. It was 720p only though.
It was also a Trinitron.
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/System_Handbook/Sun_sysh...
https://lowendmac.com/2019/rca-mm36100-amazing-under-the-rad...
Color plasma screens did not become a real thing until the early 2000s or so.
Here's a pic of one:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VkcAAOSw1jpij-aq/s-l1600.webp
I found a brand new one from someone's house where the person had died a long time ago and three of us lugged it back to my house (three people can barely lift it). I grabbed it for light gun games, but it uses some sort of digital filtering on all the inputs which stops gun games from detecting the scan. I was going to take it apart and figure out how to bypass it, but I lost it in my divorce lol.
At some point I had one of those ugly wooden desks with the Trinny crammed into it and a dinky 17" CRT next to it. Ran S-Video and then eventually Component to the TV for games and movies. Pretty sure the desk sagged from all the weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube#Body
https://www.epa.gov/hw/frequent-questions-about-regulation-u...
(This isn't really an answer to the overall question—just a narrow observation of interest).
I still use it as a bedroom TV. I can barely lift it myself and it claims to use 450watts of power. It's certainly a lot. It's notably warm near it and will heat my room if I don't open the door.
Still the picture quality is very good at a distance. Only oled or micro led displays look better.
67.4 lbs, but 20" and 1600x1200, which was incredible 25 years ago. It was by far the best monitor of my friend group, despite the heft.
It took a long time to find an LCD to replace it with.
The picture quality on the KV-40XBR700 was amazing for the era (~2003). My Dad cleverly cut a hole into the wall up high and stuck the TV into it, then put a picture frame around it giving us one of the first "high definition flat screens" even if it was an illusion.
Of course these days our 43in TV weighs less than 20lbs and is mounted with a couple small wall anchors.
Like the CRT, it has glowing phosphors in a tube. Unlike the CRT, it is pixel addressable, where the CRT is basically not addressable, or maybe just field, frame and or line addressable. Of course the tradeoffs are well known. Resolution scaling on a CRT is rarely an issue, except when the dot mask is too coarse. It still looks great. It can be a major issue with pixel addressable displays, when uneven multiples are in play.
In my experience, a good plasma is right there with the CRT on color gamut and contrast, even does well on speed. Or can. Mine is 120Hz and does not lag more than a CRT does on 60Hz signals.
(If you want a fast one, get one of the 3D capable TV sets from that era. They have fast video processors and basically can run at least double the necessary frame rate. And if you have an nVidia GPU and good CAD software, you can even use one as a wall sized 3D display featuring a bunch of things an ordinary set will struggle with and large assembly visualization as well as technical surfacing being two use cases I found amazing.)
AMOLED looks like it may be the next plasma. I have one from Waveshare that is 10.5" and has 2560x1600 resolution. I wish it were bigger. It is fantastic! It has a much higher DPI than my plasma does and appears to not require a PWM cycling of pixels to get those hard to hit grey levels.
I am learning I like displays where the light is not filtered down to a color, instead is just emitted at the color. Micro LED could be another contender if they can get the dot pitch high enough.
All that said, I keep a few CRT displays. I really like them for retro computing and gaming.
Side note at the time I had a 144" projector as well and the 37 was the pip on the side. My cleaning lady (I traveled a lot) kept rearranging the room around the TV because she couldn't grok the projector. I had to turn it on for her one day before she stopped moving things. The big o on her face was priceless. Also the big o on that screen was also priceless as was ssx3
I worked in a lab where we routinely held a few micro-torr of vacuum, which is about the limit for mechanical pumps. Cathode ray tubes are typically thousands or tens of thousands higher pressure.
We ran 1/4” wall thickness glass even in large flat stretches without issue.
I’m guessing the weight of large cathode ray tubes are more for durability than need for the vacuum inside.
HD was around, but incredibly uncommon, in the late 90s. I remember seeing news segments and stuff on it every once in a while about how it was coming “soon”.
It doesn’t seem too unlikely to me that you might be able to trick some buyers into thinking “oh that’s that thing I heard about“.
Relive these days with the KV-40XBR800, only $750
Metal-cone CRTs were common in the early decades, and had a flatter screen than typical all-glass construction; here's the largest of those, a 30":
https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_30bp4.html
a TV using it cost almost $1800 in 1952 (equivalent to over $21k today):
https://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_ra-119.html
I think metal-cone CRTs became unpopular due to the glass-to-metal seal not being as reliable, and difficulties with insulation (the whole cone is at the final accelerating voltage.)
This television had a couple of interesting traits. Sony flat Trinitrons were apparently the only true flat CRT televisions where both the outside AND inside of the tube were flat. This is why they were so heavy - the flat glass had to be thicker to withstand the vacuum inside.
It was a high definition television, but it was 4:3 aspect ratio. They sold a 34 inch CRT that was the only 16:9 CRT they offered at the time.
Additionally, the size of the 40 inch tube apparently left it extra vulnerable to stray magnetic fields. CRT screens all respond to magnets by producing rainbow colored distortions, but the 40 inch was extra sensitive. We delivered one to a house and turned it on only to find that the screen colors were distorted. I'm not sure how we figured it out, but we realized it was the proximity to the metal floor beam, so we moved the TV to another spot in the room and the color distortion went away.
For context, you could get an HD 65 inch rear projection wide screen television at the time that only weighed 265 pounds. I delivered both the 40 inch and the 65 inch up a flight of stairs. Those moving straps that hang from your forearms were not yet popular.
I had a year of sickness, or so, back in the day. I decided I was gonna blow as much money as I could on the "best" TV setup. I bought a 42" plasma TV, and I sat it on the floor in my living room, in front of a window.
You could see the heat-haze above the screen, the air shimmering in front of the window, after it had been on for a while.
Lovely display, far too expensive, and far far too heavy, but for the five+ years I kept it I think I got my money's worth.
The desk, not so much, it ended up, uh, ergonomic.
One of benefits of CRT was they flawlessly handled lower resolutions in a way impossible for LCDs. Very much required for the hardware of that era.
I've even worked on a color science-related project that attempted to use LG OLED TV as a poor man's reference display, and turns out they use a lot of tricks like dithering, heavy power limiting and low brightness resolution for each subpixel that make them look bad when pixel-peeping.
A mirror coated in a thin layer of oil that is deformed by electrostatic charges.
The screen size was 27 inches, and it was a big, heavy honker.
I think it was a Samsung. Many moons ago.
It was non-optimal. There was visible fringing on the edges.
I don’t miss CRTs.
Yes, I imagine the cost of shipping something from Japan to the States across the Atlantic would be nothing to sniff at.
Are there differences between OLED sources? I'm using Samsung AMOLED displays at present. I don't have access to an LG.
Do you have any thoughts on DPI for microLED?
I will definitely poke at the displays I have more to see what I can learn.
Managed to sell it about five years back for $200, and someone picked it up from my house and carried it out of my basement. It was a win all around. They got an amazing display for their old consoles, and despite my fondness for the same, I just wanted to be rid of the thing because I was prepping to move and wanted to rid the house of CRTs.
However, aperture grilles also use differently-shaped glass from shadow masks. The screens are only curved horizontally like a cylinder rather than on both axes like a sphere. This requires thicker, heavier glass to hold the vacuum.
Later flat-glass shadow-mask tubes were much closer in weight to flat Trinitrons.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961...
The meat of the comment is that you don't need much material to withstand Earth's atmosphere compared to pressure vessel. It's a common misconception for folks who don't work with vacuums.
Having carried my share of heavy CRTs I can share that most of the weight is in the front glass. It needs to support the phosphor wire mesh and withstand the pokes and stabs of the world while not compromising the fragile thin-walled neck.
The overall tube size is 45”, the actual screen size is 43”. I believe it was mandatory in the USA to market TVs based on screen size, in most of the rest of the world they were sold based on tube size.
That’s why common sizes of 4:3 CRT TV in the US were 13/20/24/27/32” whereas in the rest of the world the same size TVs were sold as 14/21/25/29/34”. Interestingly the tubes’ internal part numbers are based on the screen size in centimeters: 34/51/59/68/80 cm.
The heat is probably what will eventually get me to replace it.
In fact I'm pretty sure that Sun, SGI and HP all used the same OEM. They were really nice Trinitron displays though and this meant they were well interchangeable too. Which was great because by PC standard they used a weird DB25 with 3 composite RGB connector and sync on green iirc.
20 years ago the small video company I worked for had a $30K Sony PVM monitor that was probably only 30-35 inches. So the $40K price in 1990 doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The only thing interesting about this is "biggest CRT ever made" because it shows the limits of CRT technology.
What I actually found was dog-shit quality video looked AMAZING on it, as did downsampled high-res video -- I had a media center pc hooked up via DVI, and off it went.
I replaced it with a 1080p 55" OLED in 2014 or 15 when it became unwatchable, and it's been incredible as well aside from very rare, short instances of judder.. As per my Zenith experience above, I figured lower-res (not 4k) would be better in the long run.
Curious to see how long it lasts, but it's still very bright and very good almost a decade later, no burn-in, no dead pixels, and it's on constantly.
I think the difference is that I’ve already watched 4K content on my computer but hdr is genuinely something new.
I've still got a 42 inch GT60 plasma and while it certainly runs hot it's pulling about 140W on average so it's no space heater. It's become a bit more noisy, but not in a way that impacts viewing for me. After a while you don't see it anymore just like film grain...
CRTs were 4:3 aspect ratio. I remember that a 19" CRT was about the same size as a 21" LCD with 16:9 aspect ratio.
