The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300

My AIM username for a while was kw34hd1 which is the model of Sony’s first (and maybe last?) 1080i CRT. I recall it being around $25k too at the time.

34” diagonal, 196lb.

Edit: A googling suggests it was launched end of ‘98 for $9k. $17k in 2024 dollars.

These kinds of TVs were under $2k a few years later. I had a Panasonic CT-34WX53 "Tau" display that I bought for $1600 in 2002.

and those Taus are still selling for that much due to the retro gaming craze and scalpers.

I was seriously considering Sony’s 32” CRT for my first HDTV around 2006 or so. It must have been right about the tail end.

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.

Which is strange because 240p and 480i absolutely looks worse on them than on an SD TV. Better than a flat panel though to be fair.

Yeah I would think that if you just wanted an amazing image from a PS1 or SNES then you'd want a regular aspect ratio anyway. If I was going to plunder eBay for such a thing I'd go with a Panasonic SuperFlat.

It’s so weird. The Super NT is as accurate as anything and has an HDMI out. I love CRTs and Trinitrons but I’d never want to game on one (again).

They made a 40" CRT. I used to find them for free all the time on Craigslist because people just wanted them gone.

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.

That’s the one I had. What a beast. I gave it away around 2009 when I got my first LCD.

IIRC, Sony CRTs also love blowing up their flyback transformer boards.